twentieth century and beyond

CFP: IRCL Special Issue on Energy Perspectives on Children’s and YA Literature  

Have you ever paused to consider the energy infrastructure supporting the adventures of Anne in Lucy Mongomery’s Anne of Green Gables (1908)? As an avid walker, Anne probably has a relatively low carbon footprint. Over a century later, in Maja Lunde’s The End of the Ocean (2017), struggles over energy development has become a central literary topic, underscoring the message of the UN Secretary General António Guterres, who at COP 30 urged that “The fossil fuel age is ending. Clean energy is rising. Let us make the transition fair, fast, and final" (United Nations, 2025).   

CALL FOR PAPERS

Disposable Bodies and the Aesthetics of War: Representations of Vulnerability, Violence, and Resistance in Literature and Culture

Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai. Philologia

3/2027

Guest Editors:

Dr. Andrea Roxana Bellot

Associate Professor, Department of English and German Studies

Rovira i Virgili University (URV), Tarragona, Spain

andrearoxana.bellot@urv.cat

Asia in the Caribbean 

Virtual seminar at the

American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting

May 15, 16 2027

This panel aims to explore the political, social, and economic significance of community in the works of John Steinbeck. Steinbeck’s works reflect a deep concern over the sicknesses of the United States—racism, economic inequality, and political upheaval to name a few—that were causing its people to be increasingly more isolated from one another. As Charles Johnson notes, “homelessness and loneliness… shape and direct the speech and actions of every character and situation that Steinbeck presents.” In both his fiction and non-fiction narratives, Steinbeck laments the wounds left by social and economic systems whose persistence hinges upon isolation and discord.

Silences as Resistance in Public Narratives

Silence is generally seen as something to surmount: we break silence; we give voice to silenced stories; we speak out against injustice. But silence can be a powerful mode of expression in its own right. There is a history of silent protest. Silence can reject dominant expectations or refuse to offer up a story for voyeurism, appropriation, or commodification. It can push reader-listeners to listen for something wordless, to play an active role in striving to understand, and simultaneously to recognize the limits of their ability to understand another person’s trauma. Silence is rarely ever singular.

American, British and Canadian Studies

Special Issue
After the Human, Before the Machine: Rethinking Creativity, Reading and Interpretation in Contemporary Anglophone Culture
December 2026

Deadline extension: 5 October 2026

Guest Editors
Merritt Moseley, University of North Carolina, Asheville (moseley@unca.edu)
Alexandra Mitrea, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu  (alexandra.mitrea@ulbsibiu.ro)

Call for Papers: Journal of Wyndham Lewis Studies 13 (2026/2027 Issue)

The Journal of Wyndham Lewis Studies (JWLS) invites submissions of original articles and book reviews for its upcoming issue. As the pre-eminent peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the life, writings, and art of Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957), JWLS seeks contributions that make decisive, innovative interventions in Lewis scholarship and broader modernist studies.

Submission Guidelines

Seeking papers on queer poetics and criticism for a supple program on "other traditions" and (punning) "queeries". Contributors might consider models such as: Eileen Myles, whose essays and lectures construct a literary history inseparable from aesthetic inheritance; the New Narrative Writers; Anne Carson; Heather Love; José Muñoz; Elizabeth Freeman; the New York School poets and painters; and Wayne Koestenbaum, whose work models engagements with cultural history that amount to queer methodology in practice. Papers on related topics or their complications are enthusiastically sought.

The plantation’s agribiopolitical reorganization of environmental and (enviro-)racial relations has remained a focus of scholarship concerned with the afterlives of its logics. Yet, as Sylvia Wynter has argued, other narrative sites produced by and in dialogue with the plantation, such as the provision grounds, offer a means to think beyond the plantation’s hegemonic, monocultural narrative. In the Caribbean context of Wynter’s work, the provision grounds were found at the edge of the plantation hidden away from the main house, serving as a subsistence refuge for enslaved peoples to cultivate food on Sundays.

CALL FOR PAPERS/AMERICAN LITERATURE

COLLEGE ENGLISH ASSOCIATION ANNUAL CONFERENCE

APRIL 1-3, 2027 / ST LOUIS, MO

SUBMISSION SITE IS OPEN: https://www.conftool.pro/cea2027 

DEADLINE: 11/01/2026

For its 2027 annual conference,the College English Association (CEA) invites proposals for papers and panels that explore the theme of “Gateways” and their significance in literature, criticism, and pedagogy. we also encourage proposals on GENERAL TOPICS, including AMERICAN, BRITISH, AND WORLD LITERATURES.

DON'T KNOW CEA? YOU SHOULD!

Consuming US Popular Culture: Media Aesthetics, Ethics and Literacy

Virtual Conference | 27–28 November 2026

Thinking Stupidity: Literature, Philosophy, and Critical Theory

This seminar explores the problem of stupidity, ignorance, and idiocy in literature, philosophy, and critical theory.

Originally coined by David P. Barash and Judith Even Lipton in their 2001 book The Myth of Monogamy: Fidelity and Infidelity in Animals and People, “the myth of monogamy” is defined as “the often unspoken assertion that even desire-at-a-distance is not only wrong, but a uniquely human sin.” This roundtable builds on this definition and suggests that in 2026, the “myth of monogamy” also refers more broadly to the pervasive (and socially constructed) idea that monogamy is biologically natural and socially superior.

Seminar Title:
Based on a True Story: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Retelling What Really Happened

Organizers:
Dr. Priscilla Charrat Nelson, Providence College
Dr. Claire Rodan, University of Maryland

Paper submissions are currently open.