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*****Deadline extension till 1 December 2025*****
(In)Secure Fictions: South Asia and 9/11
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
Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)
Annual Conference
47th Annual Conference, February 25-28, 2026
Marriott Albuquerque
Albuquerque, New Mexico
NEW Submission Deadline: November 14, 2025
The extraordinary success of K-Pop Demon Hunters (2025) as the most-watched original title in the history of Netflix (with over 325 million views) invites the reconsideration of a surprisingly vast and multivalent “mega-trope” that has proliferated throughout popular culture in numerous variations for centuries. Its deep roots in folklore and mythology remain to be further explored, mapped, and connected with its various historical expressions throughout indigenous worldviews, Classical cultures and civilizations into Late Antiquity and ultimately through the global Middle Ages and straight through into the interactions of Western, East/Asian, and diverse global civilizations of the contemporary period. While this mega-trope is here identified
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
NEW submission deadline: November 14, 2025
Call for Papers
Medievalisms Area
Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)
47th Annual Conference, February 25-28, 2026
Marriott Albuquerque
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Submissions open: September 1, 2025
Proposal submission deadline: November 14, 2025
Call for Papers
Taylor Swift & Swiftie Studies
Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)
47th Annual Conference, February 25-28, 2026
Marriott Albuquerque
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Proposal submission deadline: November 14, 2025.
Utopian Impulses in the 2020sAn Interdisciplinary Graduate Student ConferenceUniversity of Cincinnati - Friday, February 6th, 2026 Among its political and technological predicaments, America’s 2020s have been a time of steady upheaval, crisis, and change. As we continue to wrestle our way through the agendas, regimes, and big-data systems of this historical moment as teachers, students, and researchers, we recall the utopian thinking of More and Marx, which reminds us “to keep from being blinded by what seems normal — to help us see that what is natural is constructed, not inevitable” (Elbow, p. 83).
Call for Papers Extended!
SPORTS & POPULAR CULTURE
Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)
47th Annual Conference, February 25-28, 2026
Marriott Albuquerque
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Submissions open: September 1, 2025
Proposal submission deadline extended: November 14, 2025
Shakespeare is one of the inventors of the category of the human as many modern and contemporary cultures know it. Even his most monstrous and otherworldly creations have a detectable human side. The critical tradition of Shakespeare has already established that these characters are to be read as reflections of certain psychological aspects and repressed characteristics of the main characters of his plays, as allegorical representations of emotions, principles or beliefs, as codification of ethnic and sexual differences, etc. Thanks to this tradition, focusing on the human side of these characters has become the norm. It happens almost intuitively as soon as a critic or scholar starts their analysis of these characters.
Online, international, interdisciplinary conference titled:
The Hidden Faces of Violence: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Abuse, Trauma, and Resistance
Dates of Conference: November 28-29, 2025
American Literature Association
37th Annual Conference
May 20-23, 2026
Chicago, IL
WRITING THE MIDWEST: A Symposium of Scholars and Creative Writers
The Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature (SSML)
May 28-29, 2026. Kellogg Hotel and Convention Center, East Lansing, Michigan
About SSML and The Writing the Midwest Symposium: The Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature (SSML), founded in 1971, exists to support the study and dissemination of work in Midwestern literature, art, film, and scholarly study.
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.
Come join academics and working professionals at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis, April 8-11 2026!
We are considering proposals for sessions organized around a theme, special panels, and/or individual papers. Sessions are scheduled in 1½ hour slots, typically with four papers or speakers per standard session. Presentations should not exceed 15 minutes. Working professionals, scholars, educators, and graduate students are all encouraged to submit.
Proposals within animation studies in relation to popular culture are welcomed. Possible themes for papers/panels include but are not restricted to:
Focus- Intra-European colonial histories/linguistic nationalism, the Nordic colonial legacies and the Sámi/de-centering dominant narratives of North-South polarity. Further to explore points of convergence between the North-South, South- South, paving way for transversal exchanges.
Framing Question– To what extent can multilingual interactions in the Nordic regions disrupt linguistic hierarchies rooted in colonial legacies and reshape dominant language ideologies? How do these disruptions inter-act with the multilingual societies elsewhere such as South Asia, South Africa, Chile and Colombia, and processes of vernacularisation set in motion with respect to colonisation in some cases.
Call for Proposals: Edited Volume, North Meridian Press, “Subtle Body Horror.”Oct 15
LEO SEWELL ASSEMBLAGE SCULPTURE (Pennsylvania, born 1945) Seated Woman. Assembled from toys, coins, bits and fragments of metal, glass, wood, and plastic.
Call for Proposals
Anthology Editors: Kailey Tedesco & Mauve Perle Tahat
We invite contributions for Subtle Body Horror, an anthology exploring the intersections of embodiment, pain, and transformation.
The title plays on the idea of the “subtle body," the energetic or spiritual body, and the notion of “subtle” as slight, creeping, or insidious.
General Issue | Rolling Submissions
The Critical Gender Studies Journal / Revista Crítica de Estudios de Género invites submissions for its upcoming general issue. We welcome original research articles, theoretical essays, creative interventions, and reviews that explore the multifaceted dimensions of gender and sexuality across diverse contexts and disciplines.
CALL FOR PAPERS ANNOUNCEMENT:
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Migration and the Early Modern Spanish Empire
June 10th–12th, 2026
Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland
__________________
Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
Thomas O’Connor
Professor
(History)
Maynooth University
Mayte Green-Mercado
Associate Professor
(History)
Creative Editor
FEMSPEC, an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal dedicated to challenging gender through speculative means in any genre, seeks a volunteer editorial collective member starting for 26.1 no later than January 1.
Duties include:
Attending collective meetings on a regular basis (now Friday 10:30 AM EST)
Receiving creative submissions to screen and coordinate peer-review
Seeking creative submissions and reviewers through professional channels and personal networks, and by distribution of brochures at appropriate conferences and to Creative Writing programs
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.
“Teaching Annie Baker”
Comparative Drama Conference
Madison, WI, July 9-11, 2026
Deadline: December 12, 2025
Call for Papers
Global Indigeneities and Life Narratives: Special Issue of Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly
A Special Issue of Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly
Guest Editor: J. Kēhaulani Kauanui,
Eric and Wendy Schmidt Professor of Indigenous Studies and Anthropology, Princeton University
Submit: 400-word abstracts to kauanui@princeton.edu by December 1, 2025
https://manoa.hawaii.edu/cbr/publications-productions/biography/calls-fo...
“It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”
George Orwell, 1984
Call for Proposals: Fredric Jameson and the Future of Critical Theory
April 10–12, 2026
Duke University, Durham, NC, USA
Keynotes by Michael Denning, Jane Gaines, Achille Mbembe, Toril Moi, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.
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Fredric Jameson (1934–2024) insisted on “imagining a future which might be radically and constitutionally other.” The urgency of this task rested on his understanding of Critical Theory “as a way of keeping the negative alive in a period in which praxis, the unity of the negative and the positive, itself seems suspended.” We invite proposals for papers on Jameson’s work and its implications for the future of critical theory.
Call for Papers: Film International: Journal of World Cinema
Special Issue series: Diasporic Cinemas
View the full call here>>
https://www.intellectbooks.com/film-international-journal-of-world-cinema#call-for-papers
Series overview
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.
We are excited to announce a new interdisciplinary seminar series for postgraduate students and early career researchers on the Long Middle Ages, a period covering the Late Antique, Medieval, and Early Modern Periods. This series aims to bring together scholars working across this period to establish new connectivity and inclusivity between these disciplines, and to provide a more relaxed space for new and emerging researchers to present and test out ideas.
Special Issue
Shopping Fictions: Representing Shops and Shopping in British Literature and Culture
Dear Scholars and Researchers,
We are delighted to invite original and scholarly book chapters for an upcoming edited volume titled Emerging Trends and Future Directions in Comparative Literature.
We welcome contributions on, but not limited to, the following themes:
Suggested Themes
World Literature as a Comparative Practice
Emerging Trends in Digital Humanities
Future of Comparative Literature
Digital and Cyber Literature
Globalization and Cultural Exchange
Cultural Hybridity, Adaptation, and Translation in a Globalized World
Translation Studies
The Kate Chopin International Society is seeking individual proposals for two sponsored panels at the 2026American Literature Association conference in Chicago, Illinois, May 20–23, 2026
The first panel, a roundtable on “Teaching Kate Chopin,” seeks short (seven- to eight-minute) papers/remarks that address anyaspect of or strategy for teaching Chopin’s life or work to today’s students—to students of any kind at any level using any materials or technology in any educational environment anywhere. Proposals should include a title, your name and affiliation, and a paragraph about your proposed remarks.
Representation matters – but to whom? And how?
This iteration of the Critical Approaches to Black Media Culture conference considers the ongoing significance of representational analysis as well as the critical possibilities enabled by the turn to resonance in Black media and cultural studies. Our theme, Representation and Resonance, invites original research into images and storytelling, circulation and flows, and reception practices.
While we especially invite papers on this topic, we are open to any and all critical inquiry into Black media culture, broadly defined. Our hope is to bring together any and all scholars interested and invested in Black media culture, regardless of discipline or method.
Violence: Legacies of Conflict in Ireland
Comhfhios Boston College
February 7th, 2026
Connolly House, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA
The Irish Studies Graduate Students of Boston College, in conjunction with the Irish Studies Program, are pleased to host the 9th annual Comhfhios Boston College conference. Comhfhios (pronounced “co-is”) meaning “knowledge together,” or “open to all knowledge,” invites emerging scholars in all Irish Studies fields to gather in Boston.
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.
“Care & Communities” - Shifting Tides, Anxious Borders (STAB) 2026
Binghamton University, Department of English
Conference date: March 21, 2026
Submission deadline: January 31, 2026
“Dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity. Moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, revelling in our differences; this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values, of meaningful community.”
-bell hooks, Teaching Community
Call for Abstracts: 12th World Conference on Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, and Education
Dates: May 18 - 19, 2026
Venue: ARCOTEL Wimberger Wien, Neubaugürte, 34-36, 1070, Vienna, Austria
CPD Accreditation
As a Certified CPD Accredited Provider (Provider Number #785414), this conference offers 18 CPD credit hours, providing attendees with valuable recognition for their professional development. Verification is available at https://thecpdregister.com/view/eurasia-conferences-816429.
University of Arizona Graduate Literature Conference: Imagining the End(s)
Conference Dates: March 6-8, 2026, Tucson, AZ, USA
“It is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism” (Mark Fisher)
“But the plot too has its own history” (Wynter 101)
What is it we have in mind when we imagine the end of the world or the end of capitalism?
Is it the temporal–the closing, conclusion, finale, the end of capitalism’s historical epoch?
Is it the spatial–the enclosure, edge, boundary, limit between persons, places, or things, the end of capitalism’s spread or reach?
Call for Panelists – Rachel Carson Center Conference 2026 (“Beyond Dualism—Thinking Creatively Across Worlds”)
In an era of climate crisis and ecological anxiety, the boundaries between humans, nature, and technology are becoming increasingly blurred.
This panel—Sensing and Repair—invites researchers and practitioners to explore how art, science, and education can work together to restore our connections with the living world.
The long nineteenth century was a period marked by industrial revolution, scattered religious beliefs and technological advancements. The Gothic tradition recorded these significant changes through a language of monstrosity, excess, and horror as the Industrial Revolution gained momentum, coal and steam power expanded, and as soon as the British Empire increased its extractive demands on colonized ecologies and laboring bodies. This edited volume proposes a new way of looking at Gothic figures such as vampires, parasites, doubles, and consuming machines in order to examine how such tropes adumbrated the anxieties, ethics, and violences of environmental extraction.
35TH ANNUAL BRITISH COMMONWEALTH AND POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES CONFERENCE
FEBRUARY 20-21, 2026
DESOTO SAVANNAH, SAVANNAH GA
The University of Iowa
Department of English
Graduate Student Conference 2026
Elaborating Labor
Conference date: Friday, April 10, 2026
Location: Richey Ballroom, Iowa Memorial Union, University of Iowa
Abstract due date: Wednesday, December 31, 2025
Please email abstracts to c3conf@uiowa.edu
Call for Papers: Transitions: Journal of Transient Migration
Special Issue: 'Emotions and Emotionality: The Multi-Affects of the Global South'
View the full call here>>
https://www.intellectbooks.com/transitions-journal-of-transient-migration#call-for-papers
Special Issue co-guest editors:
Call for Submissions: Race in Fantasy- for The British Fantasy Society Journal (Summer 2026) ‘Race’—that socially constructed and contentious term and concept—has long been a part of Fantasy. As a way of narrativizing alterity, Fantasy excels (one could argue that it is its sine qua non), but like all other cultural forms it has been prone to the best and worst excesses of this. Although the largesse of Fantasy—its broad, catholic imaginary—embraces a rich spectrum of species, ethnicities, ontologies, and lifeworlds, it has been prone to all the cultural myopias, prejudices, peccadilloes, and stereotyping as any other genre. Exoticism, Orientalism, and Essentialism are only some of its many crimes.
CALL FOR PAPERS
Crossroads VIII: Alterity And The Comparative Imagination
University of Massachusetts Amherst, Program in Comparative Literature | Amherst, MA
April 10-11, 2026 (In-person conference)
Todd Gitlin pointed out in 1983 that ‘‘The three networks now underwrite more original movies than the studios combined” (in Stone, 2017: 616). The made-for-TV movie was a vast cultural phenomenon, commanding huge viewing figures and global, syndicated reach. Many of the most memorable and culturally resonant of these were horror films. Despite this, the made-for-TV film, especially horror, remains largely under-explored in academic writing. If, as Pirie states, ‘Our fears are among the most revealing things about us’ (1994: 224), then what might these hugely popular films suggest about the society that produced them?
Popular Culture Association
Animals and Popular Culture Intrest Area
April 8-11, 2026
Atlanta, Georgia, USA
https://sites.google.com/view/2026pcaconference/home
Issue 105 of the Virginia Woolf Miscellany Special Topic:
Panoramic Woolf (Fall 2026)
Guest Editors: Oliver Case, Evelyn Malinowski, Teresa Prudente
Please submit article proposals of approximately 300 words by 1st December 2025
Final article drafts (no more than 2500 words including Works Cited) will be due by 15 May 2026
Please send submissions to: panoramicwoolf@gmail.com
Call for Papers for an Edited Volume
Train Narratives in India: Marking 100 Years of the Electric Train in India (1925–2025)
Concept Note
2025 marks the centenary of the electric train in India, a moment that invites us to reflect on the rich and complex presence of trains in the subcontinent’s cultural imagination. From their colonial introduction as instruments of control and commerce to their transformation into symbols of progress, partition, migration, and everyday life, trains have profoundly shaped the way India moves—and tells stories.
Call for Submissions – The Soliloquist Winter 2026 Issue
Theme: Beneath the Surface
Winter is a season of stillness—but beneath the frost, roots are reaching, rivers are flowing, and stories are gathering strength.
For our Winter 2026 issue, The Soliloquist invites poets and writers to explore what lies hidden: the unspoken truths, buried memories, secret longings, submerged identities, and quiet rebellions that shape who we are. We seek work that dives below the obvious, the curated, the polished—into the depths where vulnerability, resilience, and revelation intertwine.
Workshop: “From Alienation to Affinities”
Organizers: Isabel Osuna Montilla and Klara Tolic, University of Tübingen, Germany
Call for Papers