african-american

ALA 2026: Politics in American Fiction

ALA Annual Conference (May 20-23, Chicago, IL)

Proposing a panel or panels on postmodern-era US Fiction for this year’s American Literature Association Conference, which will happen in Chicago from May 20-23.

The African American Literature and Culture Society invites abstracts (of no more than 250 words) for presentations at the annual conference of the American Literature Association (http://americanliteratureassociation.org/). We will also consider a limited number of panel proposals (of no more than 500 words).    

The Margaret Fuller Society invites proposals for a panel at ALA 2026 about teaching in difficult times. As we head into the spring 2026 semester—the mid-point in an academic year when students and educators read U.S. literature amidst rising book bans, closing degree programs and DEI offices, and even the dismantling of the Department of Education—many of us are facing existential crises about how to do what matters to us most. How to support our students? How to sustain our disciplines? How to teach in ways that do justice to our subjects? The most basic day-to-day parts of our teaching lives have never felt more vulnerable—or more urgent.

We invite faculty, advanced graduate students, and independent scholars to apply for a three-week National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute on the New Deal era Federal Writers’ Project (FWP), taking place June 29–July 18, 2026. The institute will be conducted in a hybrid format, with the first and third weeks held virtually and the second week convening on site at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. for guided research in its extensive FWP collections. This interdisciplinary program offers participants the opportunity to deepen their understanding of the FWP and to develop hands-on experience using its rich documentation of American lives, communities, and cultures for teaching, research, and scholarship.

As part of the 10th International Conference on the State of Mark Twain Studies, the American Humor Studies Association (AHSA) invites proposals for either a panel or a roundtable discussion. The Elmira conference will expand its traditional focus on Mark Twain by including sister organizations such as AHSA. The conference theme is “Irreverence, Rebellion, and Resilience.”

Call for Papers | Society of Early Americanists
American Literature Association | 37th Annual Conference | May 20–23, 2026 | Chicago, IL

New Directions in Early American Poetry Studies

This panel will develop and expand upon conversations about new directions in early American poetry studies begun at the SEA-sponsored panel on this topic to be convened during the ALA’s “American Poetry: A Symposium” (March 26–28, 2026).

Papers and presentations are invited that highlight new directions and recent developments in the study of early American poetry and poetics. Topics might include (but are not limited to):

Call for Papers | Society of Early Americanists
American Literature Association | 37th Annual Conference | May 20–23, 2026 | Chicago, IL

Teaching Early American Literature Outside the Survey Course

While recent decades have seen significant shifts in pedagogical approaches to early American literature, most undergraduate students (including many English majors) still obtain the bulk of their early American literary knowledge from some version of a broad survey course. Recognizing the potential limitations of such encounters, then, this roundtable asks: Where else in our curricula are we (or should we be) teaching early American literary texts?

CALL FOR PAPERS

for a joint symposium to be hosted by the

Catharine Maria Sedgwick Society and Lydia Maria Child Society

Williamsburg, Virginia

June 24-27, 2026

(Deadline for proposals: February 5, 2026)

The Catharine Maria Sedgwick Society and the Lydia Maria Child Society invite proposals for a joint symposium to be held on the campus of the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, June 24-27, 2026.

Mimbres School Monsoon Session 2026, Aug 10-14.Slavery’s Domestic Economy

The Mimbres School for the Humanities invites applications to participate in our first in-person Monsoon Session Symposium. This symposium takes recent historical and theoretical work on slavery in the Americas as an occasion to ask what it would mean to take the family and the household, rather than labor or industrial profits, as the primary point of departure for understanding the slave power and its various afterlifes in the present.

American Literature Association

May 20-23, 2026

Palmer House, Chicago, IL 

The Richard Wright Society announces two sessions on Wright to take place at the 37th Annual American Literature Association Conference.

Rethinking Richard Wright’s Depiction and Analysis of Gender and Sexuality

SILENCE &—

What is silence? Might it be a gaping void or a buzzy medium—the absence

Through their intricately textured scenes and characters, the ten plays of August Wilson’s American Century Cycle chart the epic historical contours and idiomatic genius of Black American life across the entire twentieth century. Despite his plans for continued literary production after the Cycle’s completion, Wilson died shortly after the final play (Radio Golf)’s world premiere in 2005. 

Two decades hence, and now in the second quarter of the twenty-first century, Wilson’s presence and prescience in American culture are not only enduring but expanding:

THE THIRD ANNUAL WOMEN, GENDER, AND SEXUALITY STUDIES GRADUATE SYMPOSIUM

A Century of Black History Commemorations

“The Impact and Meaning of Black History and Life Commemorations in Transforming the Status of

Black Peoples in the Modern World”

Morgan State University, April 2, 2026