interdisciplinary

In the definition given by Podnieks, matrifocal literatures are written and narrated by mothers in the first-person or limited third-person voice, rendering maternal identity and experience from subjective perspectives. Such narratives (re)value the significance and meaning of maternal figures in cultural, social, and national arenas, and often contest or negotiate traditional ideologies of the “good” mother as self-sacrificing, nurturing, and sexless with her antithesis, the “bad” mother. In the last few years, we have seen the rise of matrifocal writings published to break taboos about previously silenced reproductive experiences, create a sense of community, support, and care, and, overall, empower people.

Today's ecological problems demand not only ecological awareness but also a fundamental rethinking of the human-nature relationship with the more-than-human world. Increased climatic change, species extinction, ecological degradation, and planetary instability. Challenge anthropocentric assumptions where humans are seen as separate from, superior to, or sole interpreters of nature.

Theme:                 Pentecostal Theology: A Discipline of the Future? Perspectives, Tensions, and Horizons

Date:                     October 30–31, 2026

Location:              Virtual (Zoom)

Time:                    09:00–17:30 EST

Languages:          Spanish and English

Host Institution:

Black Aesthetics and the Affordances of Photography

International Conference, Amerika-Institut, LMU München

Philologicum, 9-11 June 2027

Thinking through and with the concept of Black Aesthetics this conference addresses the Affordances of Social Justice Photography in order to consider the medium’s possibilities toward placemaking, activism, and social justice as well as the varied agencies inherent in photographic images and in different processes of looking.

In this modern moment, there have been a myriad of proposals exploring the contours of “speculative fiction”—be that social, environmental, &c. This session seeks to deconstruct the ways in which the speculative shapes the contours of the “real” or realized. Though sensationalization can be found in works of fiction, the threads of one’s reality—intersectional as it may be—provides a rich narrative that encourages further exploration and the fears provided in what we would safely relegate to fiction. However, there remains a “seeping out” of those fears that can eerily be represented in the real world.

The Graduate Journal of Food Studies invites submissions for a special issue exploring the theme Food as Joy.

Food is and will always be a source of pleasure, celebration, creativity, and connection. This issue seeks contributions that examine the intersections, tensions, and possibilities of food as a source of joy. We welcome interdisciplinary perspectives and encourage submissions that engage with food's social, cultural, political, environmental, and emotional dimensions.

International Conference

Université de Montréal

February 5-7, 2027

                                                                                         Call for Papers

                           Geo-Medical Syndemics: Earthquakes, Geotrauma, and Mental Health in the Planetary Imagination

Proposed panel for the Association for Asian Studies conference, AAS to be held in Boston in March 2027.

Between the Arts, the 36th annual international conference on Virginia Woolf, invites contributions across the fields of academic and artistic research that emphasize artistic expression, and draws on the inspiration of the Bloomsbury group, Woolf’s circle of artists, writers, critics, and public intellectuals.

CFP: Smell Studies Journal

General Editors: Will Tullett, University of York and Manon Raffard, University of Manchester.

Editorial board: Andrew Kettler, Chanelle Dupuis, Jayanthan Sriram, Ally Louks, Hsuan Hsu, Sandra Barré.

The Passage of Time and Generational Conflict: Theory, Narrative, Thought

Submission deadline: Friday, 30th October 2026. We kindly invite prospective authors to register on the journal website some days ahead of the deadline.

Peer-review (est.): March 2027.

Publication date: 30 May 2027.

Editors: Alessandro Cifariello (University of Tuscia), Emanuela De Blasio (University of Tuscia), Giovanni Palilla (University of Tuscia), Roberto Romagnino (University of Tuscia), Victoria Almonte (University of Tuscia)

In both her life and her literary work, American writer Edith Wharton was a keen observer and recorder of the interrelationship(s) between power and community at the end of the 19th century and throughout the early decades of the 20th. Born into the world of wealth and privilege of “Old New York” society, Wharton grew weary of its longstanding communal norms and constraints. At the same time, however, she was also openly critical of the ostentation and conspicuous consumption on display during the annual Newport, RI “summer season.”

The ancient Greek concept of parrhesia, or “fearless speech,” examined by Michel Foucault in a series of later lectures, has generated a steady stream of scholarship from a variety of perspectives: philosophical, political, social, even personal. Considering instances of parrhesia in literary texts can help us understand the underlying tensions between oppression and resistance, especially for those figures whose parrhesia takes the form of refusal.

Tentative Title- Cross Imagination and Literary Production: African Writers and Indian Characters, Indo- African Writers and African Characters

Globalectics is the interrelationship of all things, the mutual containment of the local and the global.”
— Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Globalectics: Theory and the Politics of Knowing (2012)