Where the Elite Meet to Sound Indiscreet

Actual panel proposals culled from the 2009 MLA Conference Call for Papers:

Dogs in Art and Literature in Early Modern Europe.
Naturally, I'd bring Addison as a visual aid. She would most certainly agree to sniff everyone in attendance.

Transformative Texts: Books that Rocked the World.
If this were about Books that Rocked My World, I'd talk about how I was scandalized the first time I read Catcher in the Rye at all the f-words.

Rethinking Sex.
Not something I want to do in a room full of academics, frankly.

Romantic Climates.
Logically the above session should be paired with this one, right? I'm thinking the Bahamas... Except that "Rethinking Sex" is in Women's Studies in Language and Literature and this one is in the English Literature category, so they could be real snoozers (...with apologies to anyone in either of those fields who might take offense. But, really, lighten up!)

Eighteenth-Century Thing Theory.
I have a theory about things. But it's a 21st Century theory. Alas.

Teenaged Monsters.
aka four papers about Buffy.

Framing Ourselves: Glasses in Literary Academia.
Obviously the nerdiest frames win.

Stolen Lives: Identity Theft and Contemporary Narrative.
Social Security number and mother's maiden name required for all abstracts.

And the winner for most quintessentially self-deprecating, metatextual, annoyingly abstract and cheeky panel topic goes to:
MLA in Free-Fall: The Unbearable Hollowness of MLA Conventions
"Conceptual vacuity, lessness of theory, urge for back- to- basics in MLA papers and the dying culture of capital." Now go hit that 15th Century Germanic Literature happy hour, everyone!