twentieth century and beyond

Narrativising Infrastructure

Special issue for The Global South

Issue editors:

Goutam Karmakar, University of Hyderabad, India

Payel Pal, The LNM Institute of Information Technology, India

Don't Look Away: The Monstrous, the Gothic, and Survivance in the Worlds of Stephen Graham Jones

Organized by the Stephen Graham Jones Society

Chair: Dr. Billy J. Stratton, University of Denver

The Stephen Graham Jones Society invites proposals for a panel at the 2026 American Literature Association (ALA) meeting. We welcome submissions from emerging and established scholars investigating the vast, ever-expanding body of work by Stephen Graham Jones. This panel will focus on the recent and ongoing scholarship surrounding his horror fiction, as well as its significant pedagogical value in the contemporary classroom.

The Bonnie Jo Campbell Society is sponsoring a panel at the upcoming American Literature Association Conference in Chicago, IL (May 20-23, 2026).

As a native Michigander, Campbell is associated strongly with the American Midwest, where much of her fiction takes place. This panel hopes to interrogate that relationship, either through analyses of the Midwest in Campbell's work, or in relationships with other Midwestern writers and their fiction.

Please send an abstract (200 words) and a brief bio to Dr. Ross Tangedal (ross.tangedal@uwsp.edu) for consideration by January 1, 2026.

Memory, Myth, and Meaning: Cather in Dialogue with America 250

Willa Cather Spring Conference | Thursday, June 4 - Saturday, June 6, 2026 

This year marks the centennial of My Mortal Enemy, one of Cather’s least affirmative works and one not produced in the Cather Scholarly Edition (translation: much important work remains to be done!)  We invite papers on new approaches to My Mortal Enemy, including but not limited to the following considerations of style, form, provenance, and themes:

The American Association of Australasian Literary Studies (AAALS) invites proposals for a Virtual Seminar Series held during the month of June 2026 over Zoom. This seminar series will take place in lieu of the 2026 AAALS conference.

Seminars can be of two types:A) panel or B) roundtable. Panels can have between 2 to 3 speakers. Roundtables can have 4 to 5 speakers.

The English department at Duke University is thrilled to host the 11th annual Post45 Graduate Symposium on February 20-21, 2026.

The Post45 Graduate Symposium seeks graduate-level works-in-progress related to post-1945 media, arts, literature, textual or visual objects, digital platforms, politics, and culture. We welcome submissions that expand our conception of objects and meaning-making post-1945 or place them in comparative, transnational, or hemispheric frames. We especially welcome contributions that foreground the importance of race, gender, class, and sexuality to post-45 studies. 

This special panel to be held in the Area for Esotericism, Occultism, and Magic of the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association seeks 15-20 minute conference presentations from all disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives examining any and all aspects of the emerging trend of “reality shifting” in relation to popular culture, particularly that of Generation Z.

Mystery / Detective Fiction Area

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

47th Annual Conference, February 25-28, 2026

Marriott Albuquerque

Albuquerque, New Mexico

https://www.swpaca.org

EXTENDED proposal submission deadline: November 14, 2025

In 2025, broad legislative and cultural backlash is focused on eliminating even the idea of trans people from public space. When public space is inaccessible, online communities have, for more than the past twenty years, been a place where trans people can still find one another, self-represent, and build their own publics. Now the walled world of the app economy, organized personal attacks, discriminatory social media algorithms, ID verification laws, and government intervention are changing the internet too. At such a moment, understanding the ways that trans people navigate their digital worlds is more important than ever.

The English department at Duke University is thrilled to host the 11th annual Post45 Graduate Symposium on February 20-21, 2026.

The Post45 Graduate Symposium seeks graduate-level works-in-progress related to post-1945 media, arts, literature, textual or visual objects, digital platforms, politics, and culture. We welcome submissions that expand our conception of objects and meaning-making post-1945 or place them in comparative, transnational, or hemispheric frames. We especially welcome contributions that foreground the importance of race, gender, class, and sexuality to post-45 studies. 

What happens when the present becomes historical to itself and the contemporary turns into a categorizable literary-historical formation? Is that even possible, that is: can the contemporary ever become historical (to) itself? This special issue seeks to examine the conditions that would allow us to understand the contemporary as a distinct literary period which began in the 1990s—with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the rise of neoliberalism, and the growing sense that postmodern irony had outlived itself—and has now arguably come to an end. Not coincidentally, this was a period of almost uncontested, unipolar US political hegemony on a global scale.

The Flannery O’Connor Society
The Society for the Study of Southern Literature
March 28th-31st, 2026
Fisk University
Nashville, TN

The Flannery O’Connor Society invites abstracts (of about 300 words) to be submitted for participation in an open topics panel on Flannery O’Connor’s life and work at the biannual conference of the Society for the Study of Southern Literature.

Call for Papers: The Willa Cather Foundation seeks proposals for 1-2 panels at the 37th annual conference of the American Literature Association, held at the Palmer House in Chicago from May 20-23, 2026.

Topics could include (but are by no means limited to) race and ethnicity, indigeneity, settler colonialism, Queer histories, labor and leisure, Cather and other writers, teaching Cather, urban/rural spaces, philosophy and religion, approaches to Cather’s letters, ecological issues, and material culture.

While proposals on any topic pertaining to Cather’s life and writing are welcome, 2026 marks the centennial of the publication of My Mortal Enemy, so papers on that novel would be of particular interest.

The Saul Bellow Society will host one session at the American Literature Association’s 37th Annual Conference at the Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, on May 20-23, 2026.  Proposals for papers on Saul Bellow and Chicago are particularly welcome but may address any aspect of Saul Bellow’s work or life, including comparisons with other authors. 

Proposals for presentations should include a title, your name and affiliation, e-mail address, and a short abstract.  The Saul Bellow Society welcomes proposals from established and newer scholars, including graduate students.