From the sharp-tongued salon epigrams of Oscar Wilde to the dazzling televised interviews of Billy Porter, public figures have long crafted language as part of a deliberate performance of self. Whether through aphorism, irony, coded speech, or lyrical flourish, language can operate not just as communication but as an act—a way of fashioning identity, queering social norms, or asserting cultural difference.

This seminar invites papers that explore how individuals across history and cultures have spoken themselves into being. We are interested in the linguistic and performative strategies by which authors, artists, activists, and other public figures create distinct personae, negotiate belonging, and resist conformity. Approaches may include, but are not limited to:

• Historical and literary case studies of figures who use language to construct identity (e.g., dandies, political orators, salonnières, avant-garde writers).
• Gender and queer performativity, examining how speech acts destabilize or reimagine norms.
• Intersections of the verbal and the visual, from fashion and gesture to stagecraft and media persona.
• The materiality or fetishization of language—words treated as crafted objects of aesthetic value.
• Cross-cultural and multilingual performances of self, including code-switching, linguistic play, and translation as self-fashioning.

We welcome interdisciplinary perspectives drawing from literary studies, cultural theory, gender and queer studies, linguistics, and performance studies. By foregrounding language as both medium and act, this seminar seeks to explore the power of words to make, unmake, and remake the self in public life.

Please submit a 250–300 word abstract via the ACLA portal.