Call for Papers

Child's Play in Popular Culture: History, representations and consumption

PopCRN – The Popular Culture Network invites scholars to explore the diverse representations of childhood in popular culture at a virtual symposium to be held online on 30 April – 1 May 2026.

From dolls and board games to digital playgrounds and interactive media, the concept of play has been a defining aspect of childhood across cultures and historical periods. Popular culture has both shaped and been shaped by children’s play, reflecting broader societal values, anxieties, and technological advancements.

The way our current globally interconnected and digitally enabled capitalist formation continuously reshapes itself to reinforce categories of class and overarching capitalist structures requires analyses that engage and critique these adaptive forces of capital. Responding to this need, this seminar seeks to examine the relationship of texts to a global capitalist economy by asking how class and capitalism function within and exert force upon texts and their contexts—in film, literature, art, video games, social media, and other extratextual spaces such as fan sites.

The Jahrbuch für internationale Germanistik, published by Peter Lang and indexed by the Web of Science (Arts and Humanities Index – AHCI) and Book Citation Index (BKCI), is calling for submissions for its upcoming special issue on Addiction and Crisis in German and English Narratives.

This issue will address how addiction—in its various manifestations such as substance abuse, behavioral dependency, and psychological compulsions—is depicted in literature and culture. We particularly seek contributions that situate addiction within broader societal, existential, and ecological crises in German- and English-language narratives.

Possible areas of focus include but are not limited to:

Seminar  “P raises his head”. Acts of Resistance in Samuel Beckett

Convenors:

Davide Crosara (“Sapienza” Università di Roma) davide.crosara@uniroma1.it

Rossana Sebellin  (Università degli Studi di Roma “Tor Vergata”) sebellin@lettere.uniroma2.it

Abstract

On the 100th anniversary of Alain Locke's New Negro anthology, this panel seeks presenters eager to discuss what they see as new trends in New Negro research.  Possibilities include the New Negro in international, regional, or local contexts; the New Negro in newspapers, magazines, college yearbooks and other digitized sources; the New Negro on the move, re-envisioned to meet the needs of different socio-political groups; the New Negro in literature (especially in literature relatively new to the canon); the New Negro is conjunction with other "New" movements:  the New Woman, New Psychology, New Thought, and the New American.

Call for papers

On Metamorphosis. Interdisciplinary Perspectives

International Conference, Palermo, 8th - 9th May 2025

Cultures and Societies Department, University of Palermo, Italy

Academy of Fine Arts, Palermo, Italy

French Cultural Center, Palermo, Italy

Deadline for abstracts: April 20th, 2025

What Ever Happened to Gary Cooper?

How 21st Century American Television Shaped a Political Revolution

Faculty of Foreign Languages is pleased to announce that its 14th International Conference on Language and Literary Studies will be held on 30 and 31 May 2025. The topic for this edition of our annual conference is

LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND EMPATHY

In the past two decades, scholars of environmental literature have begun expanding the Euro-American canons and contexts that have long dominated ecocriticism and publication, teaching, and reading practices in the West. The perspectives on humans’ relationship with the nonhuman world that emerge from alternate global sites often complicate and even challenge the values and priorities of Western environmental scholarship and activism.

Existence and Coexistence in the Age of Crises

The American Studies Association of Korea (ASAK)

October 17-18, 2025

Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea 

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Mel Y. Chen, University of California, Berkeley, USA

Jasbir Puar, University of British Columbia, Canada

Ok Yeon Yi, Seoul National University, Korea 

PopCRN (the Popular Culture Network) is back with a virtual conference exploring all things Disney, to be held online on Thursday 24th and Friday 25th of July 2025.

Since the Walt Disney was founded his eponymous film studio in 1923, the Disney brand has been a mainstay of popular entertainment. The iconic Micky and Minnie Mouse head the line-up of an impressive array of characters and actors that have become cultural icons. Today Disney is a conglomerate of entertainment businesses, investing in theme parks, sports television, a cruise line, resort destinations, National Geographic Expeditions, clothing, games, and publishing.

We are seeking chapter abstracts on Zadie Smith’s short stories, non-fictional prose, The Embassy of Cambodia and The Fraud to be added to the confirmed chapters of a collection of essays on Zadie Smith to be published by an international publisher. Abstracts should not exceed 500 words.

Contact mail: ataberkc@metu.edu.tr

CfP: Fafnir: Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research - Issue 2/2025ISSN: 2342-2009  Fafnir – Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research invites authors to submit papers for issue 2/2025. Research into any and all aspects of science fiction, fantasy, and other speculative genres is welcome from a range of disciplines. Please see below for details.  Fafnir is a peer-reviewed academic journal published online twice a year. It is a completely open-access, non-profit publication of the Finnish Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy Research (FINFAR).

Wyndham Atlanta Buckhead Hotel & Conference Center, Atlanta, GA

The South Atlantic Modern Language Association invites proposals that explore any aspect of the general theme for the 2025 conference: “Knowledge.” Please find a general description of this theme here: https://southatlanticmla.org/conference-theme-and-cfp/.