How does the novel resist? Both as an action (movement, predicate) and as a form (structure, construction) how does the novel as a genre engage in resistance? Of what, too, is the novel resistant? Studies of the novel have long emphasized the genre’s capacity to control and coerce, as in the work of D. A. Miller and Nancy Armstrong, to name a couple. This panel instead invites papers that approach the novel as a resistant structure and a form of resistance. What might it mean to read the novel not as an instrument of control, but as a site of formal, aesthetic, or material resistance?
This panel invites work that considers how resistance operates at the level of narrative form, structure, and textuality. How do novels resist coherence, closure, legibility, authority, or other forms? In what ways might the novel’s formal features—its organization, its materiality, its modes of mediation—function as resistance to dominant cultural, political, or epistemological systems?
Submissions are not bound by period, language, nationality, or subgenre. Papers that approach the novel across literary traditions and historical moments are welcome. Topics may include, but are not limited to:
The novel as a defiant or resistant form Innovation or what is “new” or “novel” as resistance Formal resistance: fragmentation, opacity, nonlinearity, etc. The materiality or physicality of the novel as resistance Resistance to immediacy (Kornbluh) Architecture, form, and resistance in the novel Genre resistance and the limits of novelistic form Narrative strategies or forms that disrupt or refuse dominant structures of power The novel and resistance to social, political, or institutional authority
Presentations that engage the PAMLA Conference 2026 theme, “Our Ruling Classes: Culture, Power, Conflict,” are especially welcome.
Abstract: 250–300 words Brief bio: 50–75 words Deadline: 25 May 2026 Submission Method: PAMLA online system Contact: Dr. Rachel A. Sims | rachel.sims@phoenixcollege.edu