Mennonite/s Writing 10: An International Conference
June 13–15, 2025 @ Canadian Mennonite University
Organizers of the 10th Mennonite/s Writing conference invite proposals for critical and creative presentations on any aspect of Mennonite literature, including the 2025 conference theme of “Words at Work and Play.”
In her 2020 study, Making Believe, Magdalene Redekop attributes the surge of creative writing by North American Mennonites in the late 20th century to the “many Mennonites [who] have been willing to play and be serious at the same time.” Indeed, from the martyr ballads and trickster tales of the early Anabaptists through centuries of sermons, hymns, and diaries to the bestselling fiction and poetry of today, creative writing among Mennonites has always been a type of deeply serious play. At once a form of labour and of entertainment, Mennonite literary work continues to be a source of community and transgression; a means of memory and of revision; a practice of devotion, resistance, lament, and joy.
In keeping with the field’s long-standing practice of working across creative and critical boundaries, we invite proposals for scholarly presentations as well as creative and genre-bending work from across and beyond the academy, including: work in any literary genre or medium; audio and visual arts; theatre and film; historical writing; social critique; theological reflection; religious studies; anthropology; community-engaged research; race, ethnicity, and gender studies; ecocriticism; reconciliation and Indigeneity; postcolonial writing; autotheory; ethics; digital humanities; comedy; publishing, printing, and editing; podcasting; translation; and even literary criticism.
We especially encourage submissions that will broaden and enrich the field’s historical, geographical, methodological, and disciplinary range.