Call for Papers:
LFA 2025: GHOSTED! PRESENCE, ABSENCE, AND ADAPTATION
LITERATURE / FILM ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE
Hosted by Georgia Southern University at the DeSoto Hotel, Savannah, GA
Conference Date: SEPTEMBER 25-27, 2025
CFP Application Deadline: May 16, 2025
Ongoing trends in arts, technology, and politics seem to insist that ours is an era of ghostliness, caught in the increasingly fraught relationship between absence and presence. From persistent video conferencing to AI-generated artwork, from true crime documentaries to ever-living franchises, from climate change to political chaos, it has become increasingly clear that not only is the present constantly haunted by our past, but that the very boundaries between the material and immaterial, the past and present, the here and elsewhere are blurring in a way they never have before. As texts that constantly negotiate their relationships to their intertexts, adaptations may prove to be reflective of and instructive for such times, providing meditations on the strained connections between absence and presence.
As we gather in Savannah, GA – ranked among America’s most haunted cities and a recent US News and World top 30 destination in the US – the Literature/Film Association invites scholars across multiple disciplines to meditate on the often ghostly relationship between absence and presence in adaptation. Possible topics could include:
- Presence and absence in a variety of media, including visual arts, games, music
- “Haunted” texts or uncanny media
- Haunted objects, places, or people and their representations in media
- Presence and absence in representations (fictional or nonfictional) of historical events
- Ghosts, spirits, souls, and their shifting representations across media
- Theories, concepts, or frameworks that haunt the study of film and literature (or ought to be resurrected)
- Adapting (to) digitally-mediated phenomena like “ghosting,” “dead links,” and posthumous posting
- Hauntology as methodology
- The present or absent author/creator in the process of adaptation
- The felt absence or invisible presence of sources, authors, characters, or cultures in adaptation
- Pedagogical practices for exploring the relationships between media
This is a multidisciplinary conference. As such, we welcome studies of American and international cinema, film and technology, television, new media, and other cultural or political issues connected to the moving image as well as studies of “texts” broadly conceived, including artworks, history, music, and dramatic performances. In addition to academic papers and pre-constituted panels, presentation proposals about pedagogy or from creative writers, artists, video essayists, and filmmakers are also welcome.
Please submit your proposal, which will consist of a title, 250-word abstract, and keywords, via this Google Form by May 16, 2025. You will receive a confirmation email within 48 hours. If you have any questions or concerns, contact Amanda Konkle at litfilmconference@gmail.com. Accepted presenters will be notified by June 5, and a draft conference program will be available by July 15 to enable travel planning.
The conference registration fee is $230 ($190 for students and retirees) before September 1, 2025 and $255 ($215 for students and retirees) thereafter. All conference attendees must also be current members of the Literature/Film Association. Annual dues are $50.
Presenters will be invited to submit their work to the Literature/Film Quarterly for potential publication. For details on the journal’s submission requirements, visit their website here.
To register for the conference and pay dues following acceptance of your proposal, select your registration and click on the PayPal “Buy Now” button below that will take you to where you can sign in to your PayPal account and complete the transaction. If you aren’t registering for the conference but want to join or renew as a member, you may just pay membership dues ($50).
The booking link for rooms at the De Soto is currently live: Literature/Film Association, with a rate of $209 for Thursday and $239 for Friday and Saturday.