Religion, Morality, and the American Presidency: The West Wing at 30
Edited by Ilaria W. Biano

Deadline: September 30, 2026

Premiering in 1999, The West Wing quickly became one of the most influential television portrayals of American political life. Through its depiction of the Bartlet administration, the series offered a powerful narrative of the presidency as a site of moral deliberation, civic responsibility, and public leadership. The show remains a significant reference point in discussions of political authority, democratic institutions, and the ethical responsibilities of governance.

Plant Pedagogy: Words Beyond Walls

Series Editor— Prof. Douglas Vakoch

Editors—  Dr Subhashis Banerjee, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Nagaland University, India and Dr Tanmoy Bhattacharjee, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Women’s Christian College, Kolkata, India

Prospective Publisher— Bloomsbury (Critical Plant Studies Series)

Special Issue: ‘Cowboy Carter: Reimagining the American West through Fashion, Music and Performance’

Guest editors:

Elizabeth Kealy-Morris, Manchester Fashion Institute, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK

Sonya Abrego, Fordham University, USA

Robb Hernández, Fordham University, USA

Embodied Ecologies and Sacred Landscapes: Interpreting Indian Knowledge Tradition on Island Spaces (ISOIS 2026)

December 14-15, 2026

Concept Note:

Indian knowledge traditions have long imagined land, water, and life-worlds as sacred, relational, and more-than-human, weaving together rituals, narratives, cosmologies, and practices of care that exceed modern disciplinary boundaries. Island spaces—whether riverine sandbars, coastal archipelagos, sacred groves on hill-islands, or temple-tanks experienced as spiritual islands—offer particularly rich terrains for exploring embodied ecologies, ritualised forms of dwelling, and ecological memory.

The E. E. Cummings Society and the Society’s journal, Spring, invite abstracts for 20-minute papers for the 54th annual Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900, Feb. 18-20, 2027, at the University of Louisville (https://events.louisville.edu/conferences/list-conferences/louisville-conference-literature-and-culture).

In 1996, Carl Sagan warned us of a time when people would lose their ability to question, “when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few . . . when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.” Maybe Mr Sagan was somewhat pessimistic when writing The Demon-Haunted World. But then again, in times of conspiracy theories, Ancient Aliens, Antivaxxers, and Holocaust Deniers, the Age of Information appears just as capable of spreading dangerous frauds and charlatans as it is of disseminating reliable scholarship.

How do postcolonial literatures imagine hospitality in a world shaped by colonial histories, forced migration, displacement, and contested belonging? This panel invites papers that examine the ethics and politics of hospitality through postcolonial, diasporic, and transnational literary and cultural texts. Moving beyond hospitality as a simple act of welcome, the panel seeks to explore its tensions, contradictions, and possibilities: Who is welcomed, excluded, or rendered perpetually a stranger? How do migration, exile, memory, language, and cultural difference reshape notions of home, community, and kinship?

The Text, an International Peer Reviewed Online Journal of Language, Literature and Critical Theory (ISSN: 2581-9526)invites original, unpublished research papers for January 2027 issue.

Indexed in:

1.     Google Scholar

2.     ERIH PLUS (European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences)

3.     IAMCR (International Association for Media and Communication Research)

4.     Citefactor (Directory Indexing of International Research Journals)

5.     DRJI (The Directory of Research Journal Indexing)

The IX edition of the Congress will take place on 17, 18, 19 and 20 November 2026. Sessions on 17 and 18 November will be held online, while sessions on 19 and 20 November will take place in person at the Auditorium of the Congress Centre "Ciutat d'Elx" (Elche, Spain). There are 3 participation options:

> Option 1: In this modality, the proposals submitted will follow the main thematic line of the new edition of the Congress: The origins of the fantastic genre in audiovisual culture.

This panel examines how literary and cultural texts from diverse global traditions imagine masculinity not merely as an individual identity but as a relational and communal practice. In an era marked by migration, political polarization, social fragmentation, environmental crisis, and renewed struggles for collective empowerment, narratives of masculinity have become central sites through which communities negotiate belonging, responsibility, vulnerability, and resistance.

Verschwinden: Disappearing into Providence

Rhode Island as a Literary Constellation

Call for papers: Panel at the 2027 NeMLA conference (March 6 - 9, Newport, RI)

Due date for paper proposals: September 30, 2027

Submission link: https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/22479

In the hope of connecting our academic endeavors more closely to the places and times we find ourselves in, this panel proposes Rhode Island, and close by Providence in particular, as a nodal point for a constellation of German, American, and European literatures, histories, and cultural memories.

Autism did not exist at the beginning of the world. Who we would now recognize as autistic people existed, yes. But autism itself is undoubtedly new, born in the 20th century clinic and doggedly taken up in popular discourse ever since. Autism did not exist at the beginning of the world, but now, it's hard to imagine a world without it. Despite, or perhaps because of this, autistic characters frequently feature in speculative and post-apocalyptic media—stories which take place at the end of the world but are often based on or extend from of our own reality.

To be held at the Leeds International Medieval Congress 2027 (5-8th July):

Tattooing, a form of bodily modification, has existed as a global phenomenon for centuries, persevering within the distant and near past alike. Yet, only recently have these images embedded in flesh been subjected to thorough scholarly inquiry. This panel invites papers that examine a wide range of issues pertaining to medieval tattoos, including practices of tattooing during the global Middle Ages, recent advances in tattoo archaeology, and modern tattoos portraying medieval themes. Scholars exploring the misuse (and abuse) of medieval images and symbols for contemporary tattoos are especially encouraged to apply. This session allows for both in-person and virtual presentations. 

About the Conference
In light of our deeply polarized times, the American Academy of Religion, Western Region (AAR/WR) invites scholars, practitioners, educators, and community leaders to submit proposals for its Annual Conference. This year's theme is Moving Beyond Boundaries and Silos Toward Interconnection. It reflects AAR/WR's foundational commitment to inter-religious, inter-disciplinary, and inter-generational dialogue.
 

Panel: Technoscience in Literature and Culture (special session)

(SUBMISSION DEADLINE EXTENDED TO SAT, JULY 25, 2026)

Contemporary philosophy and modern aesthetics have long stressed the potential of cinema to engage itself in the act of thinking and philosophical reflections through the presentation and assembly of moving images and sound. This presumed capacity to think and philosophize is realized by its spectators, who engage with the visual, auditory, and textual elements interwoven in films, resulting in a fusion that sparks novel thoughts and philosophical insights.

Despite the international prominence of Stanisław Lem and, more recently, Andrzej Sapkowski's The Witcher, Polish science fiction and speculative literature remain strikingly underrepresented in English-language scholarship. Existing criticism tends to orbit a small number of canonical figures and a handful of frequently revisited texts, leaving a rich, historically complex tradition, spanning censorship-era political allegory, post-1989 transformation, contemporary literary crossover, and a distinct national cinema largely unexamined outside of Polish-language scholarship.

“From America Sent”: Reading Henry Miller Today

International Conference, Sorbonne Université, Paris, 18–21 May 2027

Call for papers

Joint sponsors: Sorbonne Université (VALE UR 4085), Université Paris Nanterre (CREA UR 370), Henry Miller Memorial Library (Big Sur, California)

Organizers: Emma Frigo (Universités Grenoble Alpes and Paris Nanterre), Clément Oudart (Sorbonne Université), Michael Paduano (Independent scholar), Benoît Tadié (Université Paris Nanterre), Magnus Torén (Henry Miller Memorial Library)

The College Language Association Journal invites submissions for a special issue inspired by Adam J. Banks’s 2016 CLA Journal essay, “Dominant Genre Emeritus: Why It Is Time to Retire the Academic Essay.” In that essay, Banks challenges writing teachers to reconsider the privileged position of the academic essay and to imagine alternative forms of composing, meaning-making, and knowledge production.

The International Journal of Young Adult Literature is accepting proposals for a guest-edited special section for our 2027 issue (Volume 8). We particularly encourage researchers working beyond Anglo-American young adult literature and/or working outside of the UK and US to submit proposals.

Proposals should be sent to ijyal@roehampton.ac.uk by 31 July 2026. 

This panel seeks to explore the precariousness of media, from its physical integrity and digital ephemerality to the complications of human-machine interaction and the elided histories of players, users, fans, and tech developers. With the current encroachment of generative AI in the workplace, media production, information circulation, fan reception, real estate, and the environment, it becomes urgent to question how precariousness underlies the development, deployment, and dissipation of past media.

Transatlantic Connections and the ‘Special Relationship[s]’: BAAS Postgraduate Symposium, 2026

V&A East Storehouse, London

9th November

In 1946, Winston Churchill declared the need for a “special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States” in order to maintain world diplomacy, citing our shared language and cultural values as connecting the two countries. Although this ‘special relationship’ has continually been called into question by scholars, there is undoubtedly a channel of cultural and political exchange between the US and the UK, as well as with other countries, which has become even more urgent for discussion in recent years.