religion

The Charlotte Perkins Gilman Society will host two panels at the 37th Annual American Literature Association Conference, May 20-23, 2026 in Chicago. We invite proposals for presentations on any aspect of Gilman’s life and work.

Possible topics include but are by no means limited to:

How do we mark transitions, generate transformational visions, and model alternate ways of being in a world imploding around us? How do we find joy while surrounded by brokenness? How do we heal when systems are structured against us? What rituals or practices can restore us, even speak to our souls? The next issue of Rejoinder explores the theme of ritual, healing, and world-making. Submissions (including essays, commentary, criticism, fiction, poetry, and artwork) should address this theme from feminist, queer, and social justice-inspired perspectives. We particularly welcome contributions at the intersection of scholarship and activism.

Unwrapping Christmas Through Arts-Based Research: A Transdisciplinary Conference

Proposal Submission Deadline: November 9, 2025

Conference Dates: December 8-9, 2025
Location: online

Fees: £100 (non-members)

Call for Papers

The esoteric, occult, and magical roots of deep ecology have become increasingly interconnected with the growing popularity of witchcraft practices, neopagan worldviews, and explicitly spiritual climate activism and environmentalism.  These developments include specific foci on particular ecological concerns and crises, but such trends are equally exemplified by transdisciplinary dialogues in which holistic scientific perspectives intersect with diverse systems of belief. This special panel seeks 15-20 conference presentations to explore these connections and their influence on, reception by, and expression through popular culture in any and all of its manifestations.  

DEADLINE EXTENDED!

Call for Papers

ESOTERICISM, OCCULTISM, AND MAGIC

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA) 

47th Annual Conference, February 25-28, 2026

Marriott Albuquerque

Albuquerque, New Mexico

https://www.southwestpca.org

NEW submission deadline: November 14, 2025 

From Unit Chairs:

• Aaron Grizzell, Ph.D. Northern California Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Foundation
• Julius Bailey, Ph.D., University of Redlands

The religious experience is of significant and acute concern among our varied African diasporic communities and is worthy of close academic exploration and study. The American Academy of Religion - Western Region (AAR-WR) Black Religion and Theology Unit’s mission is to further the development of scholarly research and discussion about the black religious experience; encourage the broadening of Black religion as an academic endeavor; and engage in discourse, from the African diasporic perspective, about religious and theological expression. 

ALA 2026: The Novel of Ideas in American Fiction

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

Dear Colleagues,

The Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at The Ohio State University is pleased to announce an upcoming conference as part of our biannual celebration of Popular Culture and the Deep Past (PCDP) in 2026. We warmly invite abstracts exploring topics related to medieval and Renaissance astrology and astronomy.Call for PapersStar Gazing: Astrology and Astronomy in the Medieval and Renaissance ImaginationPopular Culture and the Deep Past 2026

 April 10-11, 2026

Online via Zoom & Ohio Union - The Ohio State University

The submission deadline for abstracts and panel proposals is December 19, 2025. 

Islamic feminism, far from being an oxymoron, has emerged as an intellectual and political movement reclaiming interpretive authority within the Islamic tradition while advancing gender justice. It builds upon the work of pioneering scholars such as amina wadud, Asma Barlas, Fatema Mernissi, Sa'diyya Shaikh, miriam cooke, and Aysha Hidayatullah, who have demonstrated that patriarchal interpretations of Qur n and Hadich are historically contingent rather than divinely mandated.

In the Middle Ages, Christian liturgy was far more than a sequence of prayers and ceremonies: it structured religious practice, shaped sacred space, and gave material form to the expression of faith. Objects, vestments, and books played a central role in this framework, endowed with a visual, tactile, and symbolic language that embodied the theology of the sacred. The International Conference Instrumenta altaris: Ritual Artefacts and Their Images for Medieval Liturgy seeks to refocus attention on the material dimension that, throughout the medieval centuries, rendered the invisible visible and preserved —often in fragmentary form— a tangible legacy of devotion.

Dominican Theology and Practice:
The Past 100 Years
Friday, February 27-Saturday, February 28, 2026
Albertus Magnus College (New Haven, CT) Call for Papers: Dominican sisters and friars, their communities, and their collaborators have made monumental contributions to theological thought and pastoral ministry in the 20th and 21st centuries. This conference seeks to explore how Dominican theology and practice has shaped contemporary theology, ministry, and social engagement over the past hundred years.

We welcome submissions for 20-minute papers that examine Dominican theology and practice. Topics might include (but are not limited to):

LANGUAGE AND THE INEFFABLE: EXPRESSING THE INEXPRESSIBLE

8th Annual International Comparative Literature Conference Louisiana State University March 27-28, 2026 (Friday-Saturday) Virtual Format

Conference Theme

What happens when language encounters its own limits? This year's conference explores how writers, thinkers, and artists across cultures and centuries have grappled with expressing experiences that seem to transcend ordinary language—the mystical, the traumatic, the sublime, the deeply personal, and the utterly foreign.

David Lynch’s death in January 2025 fixed his life, legacy, and body of work in concrete terms, seemingly at odds with his free and fluid approach to artistic expression characterized by limitless inspiration and interpretation. Only the end of his life could render his work ‘complete.’ But if death is not an ending, then where is, and wherefore, the filmmaker who no longer makes films?

American Academy of Religion-Western Region Annual Conference, University of Nevada, March 13-15, 2026

Jewish Studies
Roberta Sabbath, University of Nevada, roberta.sabbath@unlv.edu
Alexander Warren Marcus, University of Albeta, awmarcus@ualberta.ca