Call for Papers for Panel at the Modern Language Association Convention in Los Angeles, January 2027:

Before the Algorithm: Generative Storytelling and Emancipatory (Meta-) Fictions in Pirandello and Beyond

Organizers: Francesca Magario and Michael Subialka

What does it mean for a story to generate itself, and who (or what) counts as its author? Long before digital algorithms made “generativity” a technical concept, modernist writers like Luigi Pirandello experimented with forms in which stories seem to produce themselves and characters claim a life independent of their creators, crafting a potentially emancipatory form of metafiction. By dispersing agency across authors, texts, performers, and audiences, these works challenge the idea of authorship as singular and sovereign and invite us to rethink narrative as a collaborative and contested process.

When Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author premiered in Rome in 1921, the audience struggled to comprehend the spectacle before them: fully formed fictional entities, equipped with profound self-awareness, interrupt a theatrical rehearsal to demand that their unfinished story be staged by living actors and fixed in writing by an author who could grant it legitimacy. Speaking with urgency and intention, these characters recount their past both to the performers on stage and to the audience in the theater, effectively outsourcing the interpretation of their drama to human intermediaries. Yet, their apparent autonomy remains constrained by those same intermediaries (the actors who interpret and re-enact their story and the audience’s own interpretation of the theatrical performance as a whole), revealing a system in which agency is shared but never fully possessed. Long before code and algorithms began to generate narratives, metafiction already stages the paradox of semi-autonomous creations who possess agency but not authorship. In this sense, Pirandello experiments with operations that are now associated with artificial intelligence, including self-generative storytelling, the destabilization of human authorship, and the unsettling interaction between human and nonhuman entities.

In line with this year’s Presidential Theme of “Emancipatory Narratives”, this guaranteed panel sponsored by the Pirandello Society of America invites the submission of abstracts that consider how modernist productions challenge the constraints of conventional authorship to establish narrative spaces in which creative agency is shared among all participants. From the metafictional dynamics in which fictional characters actively negotiate their existence with an author (their own or another), to readers and audiences compelled to confront questions of autonomy and self-determination, these formal strategies emerge as precursors to current imaginaries of consciousness, authorship, and the unstable boundaries between reality and artificiality. In this way, “emancipation” might be seen as naming not simply liberation from authorial control, but a dynamic process of narrative generation in which autonomy emerges through constraint, iteration, and collaborative mediation.

Possible approaches include (but are not limited to): comparisons between metafiction as generative storytelling and machine learning; reader and audience participation as a form of co-authorship and co-generation; character autonomy, recursion, and narrative self-reflexivity in modernist fiction and drama; the ethics and politics of unfinished or proliferating narratives; the relationship between emancipation, form, and constraint in experimental narrative structures; and theoretical engagements with authorship, mediation, and agency (e.g., from narratology, philosophy, media theory, or performance studies).

The panel is interdisciplinary and invites not only work that directly focuses on Pirandello but also topics that can be fruitfully put into dialogue with Pirandello’s modernist practices. We likewise invite theoretically driven work that explores the underlying questions around emancipatory and generative narratives raised by the panel’s topic.

Submission Guidelines:

Please send a ~300-word abstract and a brief (150-word) bio to Michael Subialka (msubialka@ucdavis.edu) and Francesca Magario (francesca.magario@duke.edu) by March 13, 2026.

For any questions, feel free to contact the organizers at the addresses listed above. We welcome submissions from scholars of all backgrounds and career stages.

Call for Article Submissions for the 2026 Issue of PSA:

• We are happy to announce that we are now accepting submissions for Volume 38 of PSA, the peer-reviewed scholarly journal of the Pirandello Society of America. The volume will be published in summer 2026, both online and in print.

   

  This issue will be open topic, but we also invite contributors to reflect on the 100th anniversary of Pirandello’s final novel, Uno, nessuno e centomila (One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand). Long regarded as a summation of many of Pirandello’s lifelong concerns, the novel dramatizes the fragmentation of identity, the impossibility of coinciding with others’ perceptions, and the dissolution of stable categories of self. Its experimental blending of narrative and philosophical inquiry situates it within the wider field of modernist innovation, and its exploration of interior life versus external social roles continues to challenge readers and critics alike.

   

  The anniversary provides an occasion to return not only to this novel but also to the broader questions it raises across Pirandello’s corpus and in dialogue with other modernist and contemporary figures. How do issues of multiplicity, perception, and selfhood connect with the scientific and philosophical discourses of Pirandello’s time—from psychology and psychoanalysis to relativism and existentialism? How do they resonate with the political and cultural debates of the 1920s and with contemporary concerns about fractured or digital identities? And what insights emerge when we place Pirandello alongside other writers, artists, and thinkers who grappled with similar dilemmas of modern subjectivity?

   

  We welcome submissions on any aspect of Pirandello’s work or related contexts, broadly conceived. Comparative, interdisciplinary, and transnational approaches are encouraged, as are studies that link Pirandello to other modernist and contemporary figures, movements, and debates. Disciplinary perspectives may include (but are not limited to): literary studies, theater studies, cinema studies, cultural studies, philosophy, religion, history, and mass media culture. Possible topics can span from interpretations and re-readings of Uno, nessuno e centomila to considerations of digital selves, avatars, and online multiplicity in the twenty-first century. If you would like to discuss a possible submission in advance, please contact the Editors at editorpsa@gmail.com

   

  Guidelines

  ·       Deadline: January 19, 2026

  ·       Length: Articles are generally 6,000–8,000 words

  ·       Format: Word document, MLA Style Manual (in-text references, minimal endnotes, works cited)

  ·       Submission: Email manuscripts to editorpsa@gmail.com

  ·       Review: All submissions are peer-reviewed by at least two readers using a blind review process

  ·       Anonymity: Include a separate cover sheet with name, affiliation, and contact info, as well as a short Bio of no more than 100 words; omit self-identifying information in the main text and headers/footers

  ·       Language: Submissions must be in fluid English; the journal cannot provide extensive editing or translation services

   

  Reviews

  PSA also accepts reviews of scholarly works and performances relating to Pirandello on a rolling basis. Reviews are generally ~1,000 words and may include images (authors are responsible for image permissions). Contact the Editors at editorpsa@gmail.com to propose or submit a review.

   

  Translations and Creative Work

  PSA publishes new translations of Pirandello’s works or closely related works not previously available in English, as well as original creative work with a clear connection to Pirandello. Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis; contact the Editors for more information.