PAMLA will meet during the fiftieth anniversary of Ursula Le Guin’s “The New Atlantis,” and of her rare achievement: winning the Hugo, Locus, and Nebula awards simultaneously, for The Dispossessed, which appeared the year before. It would seem an auspicious occasion to explore her retroactively provocative contributions to what has since come to be known as clifi, and her oeuvre more generally.

All disciplines and approaches welcome.

The History and Popular Uses of the Past Area invites submissions for the Northeast Popular Culture Association’s (NEPCA) annual conference to be held online October 9 – 11, 2025.

This area welcomes proposals that explore the interconnection between history and popular culture. Proposals that examine how history is used and appropriated in popular culture are of particular interest. Some suggested topics for this area may include:

Call for Book Chapters
Courtesans, Consorts, and Outcasts
Prostitutes in patriarchal society serve as mirrors to societal norms, embodying contradictions
of desire, power, marginalization, and agency. While often reduced to stereotypes (seductress,
victim, or social menace), their portrayals reveal deeper truths about gender, class, and
cultural values. This volume seeks to explore the multifaceted representations of prostitutes
across literary traditions—from ancient Sanskrit ganikas and Greek hetaerae to Victorian
"fallen women" and postmodern sex workers—to interrogate how these figures challenge,
reinforce, or transcend societal boundaries. This project fills a critical gap in scholarship by

Concept Note:

Comparative Woman Journal – Volume 4, Issue 1 (2025)

CALL FOR PAPERS

Comparative Woman is an online journal affiliated with LSU’s Department of Comparative Literature that explores topics related to comparative literature and women/gender studies through art and academic essays.Comparative Woman Journal is inviting papers for Volume 4, Issue 1 (2025) on Aesthetic Education: From Sensibility to Critical Engagement.

THEME

Aesthetic Education: From Sensibility to Critical Engagement

SUB-THEMES (including but not limited to):

UPDATED: SEEKING ESSAYS ON SPECIFIC TOPICS, SEE DESCRIPTION AND LIST BELOW

CFP: “Provocations” for American Gothic Studies

American Gothic Studies is seeking short essays for its “Provocations” section. These pieces (2,000 words) are meant to question conventional wisdom, tackle compelling issues, or advance new theses about the American Gothic as an academic field or pedagogical subject. Please note that they are not traditional essays.

At this time, we are interested in essays that revisit, interrogate, and update older concepts and terms. Some examples might include (but are not limited to) the following:

The response to our CFP for Indian Trans Cinema has been so strong that we have expanded it into The Handbook of Indian Trans Cinema: Film, Television, and Web Series. Proposals are due July 1, 2025.

We seek a nationally diverse group of contributors from countries worldwide.

We especially welcome additional chapters on the following 16 themes, for which we already have over 40 confirmed chapters:

Theme 1. Historical Cinema

CALL FOR BOOK CHAPTERS

Spiced Histories: Cartographing Food, Culture, and Conflict in South Asia

Food is never just about sustenance. It is a charged cultural text, a site of memory and mourning, a marker of identity, a terrain of negotiation, and often, a weapon of exclusion or resistance. In South Asia—a region defined by deep pluralities, histories of colonialism, persistent socio-economic inequalities, and enduring spiritual traditions—food emerges not merely as a necessity, but as a powerful index of social structure, affective life, and ideological formation.

Friday October 24, 2024

Please consider submitting an abstract for PAMLA 2025--Italian and Italian American Foodways.

The conference will take place in San Francisco, CA, from Nov 20-Nov 23, 2025. The extended deadline for abstracts is June 30th, 2025.

Food inside and outside of Italy has long served as a locus for the construction of identity, either in the way it can represent belonging to or exclusion from a particular group. It is also a strong evocative trigger, forcing the individual or community to remember a distant memory or to recall a painful one.

In this vein, we invite presentations exploring PAMLA's 2025 theme of "Palimpsests: Memory and Oblivion" as represented through food in Italian and Italian American media and literature.

Veterans Studies is a growing field of research that addresses the significant impact of military personnel transitioning from active duty to civilian life with an emphasis on the veteran experience. This session invites papers that explore the many facets of military life exhibited in literature, theater, film, and poetry written about or by military veterans as well as scholarly explorations of the veteran experience. We welcome proposals both related to the conference theme, "Palimpsests: Memory and Oblivion," and those not related.

Lonesome Dove at 40: McMurtry, Mythmaking, and the Reimagining of the American Southwest

A Larry McMurtry Symposium

November 14–15, 2025 Southern Methodist University | Dallas, Texas Co-Sponsored by SMU English’s Narrative Now Initative and the Clements Center for Southwest Studies

Organizers:

Dr. Christopher González
English, SMU
[ctgonzalez@smu.edu]

Dr. Ariel Ron
History, SMU
[aron@mail.smu.edu]

Abel Fenwick
English, U of Arkansas
[fenwick@uark.edu]

New Perspectives on Bob Dylan (NeMLA 2026)

Deadline for abstract submission: September 30 2025

T&T VIII: ALGORITHMS, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND THE CLASSROOM

APRIL 17-18, 2026