Northern Illinois University is proud to host the 21st annual Midwestern Conference on Literature, Language, and Media. We invite proposals for fifteen-minute papers from scholars at all stages of their careers. MCLLM encourages individual or panel papers on any aspect of literature, language, media, or culture as well as creative writing and pedagogical approaches. Proposals might address intersections between visual and print mediums; visual developments in linguistics; work in and with "new media," including film studies; and other treatments of the theme.

This conference theme is inspired by the work of our keynote speaker, Hillary Chute, Neubauer Family Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago and Faculty Fellow at the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality. Author of Graphic Women: Life Narrative and Contemporary Comics and associate editor of Art Spiegelman’s MetaMaus, Chute is a critical authority on graphic narrative. She identifies her specific interest “in the relationships between word and image, fiction and nonfiction that we see in contemporary comic.” Dr. Chute will deliver her keynote address on the evening of March 22 following a dinner reception. Reception tickets may be purchased at time of registration.