Nineteenth-century British literature frequently interrogates the boundaries of community dynamics, examining not only what the individual contributes to a collective and what it means to belong, but how communal engagement fundamentally reshapes the individual. 

Consistent with the NeMLA 2027 theme, "Empowering Communities," this panel explores a vital dual imperative within the nineteenth-century British novel: the structural tension between individuals whose actions serve to empower their communities, and communities that conversely function to shield and empower otherwise fragile individuals.

Beecroft argues in The Cambridge Companion to the Novel that, if we understand the novel as storytelling in any narrative form indigenous to a particular culture or people, then we must acknowledge the existence of multiple novels, each with distinct temporal and spatial origins. He maintains that storytelling traditions are embedded in every society, and that many of these traditions have complemented, intersected with, or diverged from Western narrative forms (46–48). However, the narrative form canonized as the “novel” in the Western literary tradition has a specific historical and aesthetic origin in ancient Greece.

In keeping with Katherine Philips’s reputation as an exemplary practitioner of friendship and curator of connections, this panel invites papers that put Philips’s work in conversation with writers outside the Society of Friendship, outside coterie poetry, outside the English context, or even outside the early modern period altogether. 

6/26/26 - 8/31/26: Subs are OPEN for our big 10th Issue: A Day In The Life.

… um, like The Beatles’ song?‍ ‍

YES!

We’re interested in the ways in which art like this exists in the world — with such wildly different fragments and contrasting energies not just coming together but overflowing with a vivid, mad, inventive creativity! (We do like this song.)

So, do we want poems and artworks about this song, or pieces about The Beatles? NO!

When Henry James described the Victorian multi-plot novel as “large loose baggy monsters,” he didn’t have twentieth and twenty-first century horror in mind, but the echoing effects of the Gothic on writers like Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Charles Reade, and others. These writers drew on the multiplied plots and perspectives of the Gothic to represent how social worlds were constructed and constrained. 

William Shakespeare's plays are replete with themes that resonate with contemporary ecological anxieties. From the imagery of nature in The Tempest to the exploration of human ambition and environmental limits in Macbeth, Shakespeare's works offer a rich terrain for ecocritical analysis. This volume seeks to uncover how Shakespeare's plays can inform our understanding of sustainability and inspire new perspectives on human-nature relationships.

In her resolute commitment to telling stories about Black life without the white gaze, Toni Morrison articulated a model of community empowerment grounded in local knowledge, intra-communal collaboration, and the self-reflexive narration of Black worlds. While Morrison remains one of the most visible public advocates of this aesthetic and ethical orientation, practices of Black worldmaking across African and diasporic literatures have long exceeded mere response to anti-Blackness. Even under conditions structured by racial violence, coloniality, displacement, and social rupture, Black communities have continually generated modes of life, relation, memory, and imagination that assert the possibility of worlds otherwise.

Oceanography & the Blue Humanities: Literary Geographies of Islands and Water Bodies

December 09-12, 2026 

Concept Note:

The Winter's Tale: From Page to Stage

 IASEMS Tempera Seminar 2027

 University of Padova, Dipartimento di Studi Linguistici e Letterari

 7-9 June 2027

Location and Date: May 20-23, 2027 University of Houston 

In-person and Virtual: This panel will meet in-person

UMBRELLAS FOR FISH

An International Journal of Absurd & Existential Drama

We are now accepting submissions for our September 2026 Issue.

Submission Deadline: August 25, 2026Website: https://ufjournal.wixsite.com/umbrellas-for-fish/submissions

Email: ufjournal@aol.com

This roundtable discusses the convergence of literary expression and digital activism as means of empowering a community. The shift of passive representation to active agency in the 21st century can be common in the digital space where the local knowledge is stored and disseminated. We discuss how marginalized groups, namely Dalit writers and activists, have used digital humanities to evade authoritarian gatekeepers and develop transnational solidarities. This session welcomes people to talk about how online spaces can be seen as a form of regenerative space where the testimonios of Dalit can be heard, transforming the world into a supportive space of collective action and literary insurgency.

Digital Social Sciences (ISSN: 3078-4980 (Online), 3078-4972 (Print) is an international, peer-reviewed, open-access journal dedicated to advancing interdisciplinary research on the transformative impact of digital technologies on society. The journal provides a global platform for scholars, researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to examine the opportunities, challenges, and implications of digital transformation across the social sciences.

The Editorial Board invites original, unpublished, and high-quality manuscripts for Volume 3, Issue 2 (2026).

Themes of Interest

Public understanding of American cultures—peoples, neighborhoods, languages, foods, histories, arts, religions—has always been vulnerable to myth and misinformation, in particular from the far right. Collectively the humanities work to establish an ever-more accurate/inclusive lens on culture, but the (re)mainstreaming of far-right voices has dangerously distorted the diverse American story.

CFP: Handbook of the Cultural Legacy of 9/11. (under contract with Springer)

 Edited by:

 Marc A. Ouellette, Old Dominion University, (mouellet@odu.edu) and Peter Pericles Trifonas, University of Toronto

UVA Wise Medieval-Renaissance Conference XXXIX
Undergraduate Sessions
The University of Virginia’s College at Wise
September 17-19, 2026

Keynote Address:  
“Arthur's Great Death in Malory and its Afterlives”
Karen Cherewatuk, Saint Olaf College

CALL FOR PAPERS FRAME 40.1 “(Be)Longing”

Haryanvi Dalit theatre occupies a highly marginalised position within the broader landscape of Indian theatre. It may aptly be described as “the marginalised among the marginalised,” as it has remained largely excluded from both mainstream theatre studies and Dalit cultural historiography. Haryanvi Dalit Swang theatre was active long before the Dalit Panther Movement, but it received little attention due to its lack of publication and translation into English. This book seeks to recover, document, and critically examine the neglected legacy of Haryanvi Swang, with particular emphasis on its Dalit traditions and practitioners, thereby contributing to a more inclusive understanding of Indian theatrical heritage.

This panel invites theoretical and pedagogical explorations of experiential approaches to teaching environmental studies in higher education through the frameworks of new materialism, transcorporeality, affect theory, and embodied pedagogy. Aligning with NeMLA 2027’s theme, “Empowering Communities,” the panel examines how environmental learning can move beyond hierarchical and text-centered models toward collaborative, community-oriented, and experiential forms of knowledge production.

Rome and Capri, 21–28 June, 2027

F. Scott Fitzgerald visited Italy on two distinct occasions: first in the spring of 1921 during his and Zelda’s long-deferred honeymoon trip, and again from late 1924 to early 1925 during his unsuccessful attempt to economize. While the Fitzgeralds made brief stops in Venice, San Remo, Portofino, Savona, Pisa, Fiesole, Florence, and Naples, it was in the two host sites of this conference—Rome and Capri—that he spent the most time. It was here that he found inspiration for some of his most celebrated works, as well as several others that remain underexplored.

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.

UVA Wise Medieval-Renaissance Conference XXXIX (9/17-19) deadline for submissions: June 26, 2026 full name / name of organization: University of Virginia-Wise Center for Medieval-Renaissance Studies contact email: kjt9t@uvawise.edu 

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: