Plant Lives: Sacred Interdependencies in the Arts of the Americas

A planting event and conference hosted by the Yale Institute of Sacred Music

April 11, 2026

In 1831, the preacher Nat Turner testified that hieroglyphics had appeared to him on leaves and corn stalks in a field. These hieroglyphics, he said, relayed divine messages that inspired him to lead a rebellion of enslaved Virginians. The starting point for this one-day conference is the many capacities of plants to transmit divine insights across time. This event at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music will explore the ways in which plants perform, evoke, and embody sacred relations throughout the Americas.

Mysteries and Mayhem is our fourth conference theme. Why do we continue to crave mystery stories?  What do they tell us about our need for suspense and our desire to solve riddles,  including the most famous of all:Whodunnit?  What do these stories of murder and mayhem teach us about the nature of evil, ideas of sin, and the essence of a villain? What do we hope to see in the survivors of these threats?  –And what do we expect from the detectives and heroes who reveal the truth in these stories? We seek papers and creative projects that explore these and related questions. 

YSLS (Young Scholars Literary Sympsium) welcomes your undergraduate,  graduate,  educator,  and independent scholar proposals! 

… Ond þis geþeaht ic sylle eallum wyrhtum, þæt anra gehwylc cræft his geornlice begange, forþam se þe cræft his forlæt, he byþ forlæten fram þam cræfte. Swa hwæðer þu sy, swa mæsseprest, swa munuc, swa ceorl, swa kempa, bega oþþe behwyrf þe sylfne on þisum, ond beo þæt þu eart; forþam micel hynð ond sceamu hyt is menn nellan wesan þæt þæt he ys ond þæt he wesan sceal. 

DATE: Feb. 25-27

Humanities Education and Research Association

Theme: “The Essential Humanities in Practice and Perseverance” (Virtual Conference)

In keeping with HERA’s mission to promote the study of the humanities across a wide range of disciplines and interdisciplinary studies, we invite proposals for the 2026 conference. Submissions are encouraged from educators at all levels (including undergraduate and graduate students) and from anyone with an interest in the arts and humanities. Proposals for papers, panels, or workshops must be submitted through the conference web portals.

 *Imaginations - Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies (open access and peer-reviewed)*

 <https://imaginationsjournal.ca/index.php/imaginations>

The London Journal Early Career Publishing Workshop

The London Journal is committed to supporting early career scholars develop work into a publishable journal article. To this end, we are hosting a free workshop to provide practical advice and support on developing research (which might include thesis chapters or conference papers) into publishable, full-length journal articles.

Fabulating history in contemporary bio/fiction

1 /2027

Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai. Philologia

philologia.studia@ubbcluj.ro

Guest editors

Ágnes Zsófia Kovács, University of Szeged, Hungary

agnes.zsofia.kovacs@gmail.com

Anna Kérchy, University of Szeged, Hungary 

Lolly Willowes at 100: Sylvia Townsend Warner, Religion, and the Supernatural

IAS Common Ground, University College London, 29-30 May 2026

Call for Nominations:

2026 Award for Best Scholarly Monograph on the American Gothic

The Society for the Study of the American Gothic (SSAG) invites nominations for its biennial Award for Best Scholarly Monograph. This award is open to all scholarly monographs published in the past two years that focus on some aspect of the American Gothic. The winner of the award will be announced at the Society for the Study of the American Gothic business meeting, at the American Literature Association conference in May 2026 (exact date TBA).

Eligibility

This panel explores the intersections of literature, sociability, and the history of emotions in the Hispanic world during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Following Raymond Williams’s notion of “structures of feeling” and Barbara Rosenwein’s concept of “emotional communities,” as well as more recent work in affect theory (Ahmed 2004), we consider emotions not as private, psychological states but as cultural and social practices. Recent scholarship has also stressed the dual nature of emotion concepts—oscillating between natural and normative kinds (Scarantino 2025)—and their role in shaping both political discourses and collective identities.

 “I, I wear a plastic suit / Plastic is my food / Perhaps, I’m plastic too,” sang the iconic Yugoslav New Wave band Idoli in their 1981 song “Plastika” (“Plastics”). These lyrics captured a 1980s moment in which Yugoslav production, import, and consumption of plastics reached their peak. Yet the groundwork for it had been laid in the preceding decades, since plastics production had begun shortly after the Second World War and rapidly permeated all aspects of everyday life (see Filipović 2023). Importantly, Yugoslavia’s trajectory differed from that of the Eastern Bloc.

Call for Papers

Following the success of the I International Conference on Gender Studies & Intermedial Narratives (UCM, 2024), this new edition seeks to go further, deeper, and bolder. If last year we worked around the idea of intermediality, this year we want to explore its most visceral and material dimension: how gender is inscribed on, through, and as bodies—and how bodies themselves become texts, interfaces, archives, and narrative machines.We begin with a simple premise: every text is a body, and every body is a text.

This is a Call for Papers for a special issue titled, "Mapping the Diverse Horizons of Oral History in India: Theory, Method, Practice." The central idea of the special issue is to map the multiple directions in which oral history is evolving within India today and to highlight its significance in understanding lives, histories, and identities that often remain outside conventional archives. The issue will be published in collaboration with The Oral History Review [ https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/uohr20  Scopus, Q1].

We invite interested individuals to send us an abstract based on the following themes, but not limited to:

NATIONAL SEMINAR ONDigital Futures and Beyond: Emerging Paradigms in English Studies

27 December 2025

Organised by
Department of English, Hill-Top Degree College, Mohana, Gajapati, Odisha
Venue: Seminar Hall, Hill-Top Degree College
Website:www.hilltopdegreecollegemohana.edu.in

 Invitation

Perennially understudied, Eurasia – as both a geographical and conceptual constellation – opens up a novel and fertile space for scholarly contributions. This call for papers invites submissions that engage with the region’s alternative media, information, and communications histories, bridging past and future frameworks, methodologies and forms.

ATHE 2026

“ACTIVATING IMAGINATION IN/AND COMMUNITY”
July 22–26, 2026  |  Baltimore, Maryland

This year’s conference theme, "Activating Imagination in/and Community," asks us to think deeply and courageously about the role of theatre and performance in shaping our shared presents and collective futures. It challenges us to contemplate not just what we do, but how and with whom we do it, while recognizing that, in the face of growing political repression and institutional instability, our collaborations—across disciplines, communities, and identities—are simultaneously more vulnerable and vital than ever.

Institute for the Humanities, University of Manitoba, February 5–6, 2026

The Institute for Humanities at the University of Manitoba invites proposals for papers and panel presentations for the international conference Identity in Motion: Literary Representations of Refugees, Exiles, and Immigrants. This conference seeks to explore the diverse literary portrayals of displacement, migration, exile, and the refugee experience across genres, languages, and cultures. We welcome interdisciplinary approaches, including but not limited to literary studies, cultural studies, history, and sociology.

Website: westcoastreview.org

West Coast Review (SDSU Press) is seeking art, flash fiction, short stories, and any creative prose that falls in-between. This includes creative non-fiction, memoires, craft essays and experimental prose pieces. We accept all genres--we just want pieces that are bold and embrace the diversity found on the west coast!

Guidelines:

We accept simultaneous submissions, but please withdraw your submission if accepted elsewhere. We do not accept previously published work. We do not consider work posted to blogs, personal websites, or social media to be previously published. We do not accept work that has been created with AI.

Call for Papers:

Conventions and Subversions in Sino-Western Theatrical Settings

Edited by Kelly Kar Yue CHAN, Chi Sum Garfield LAU and Chi Chun CHAN

We are soliciting chapter proposals for an edited volume that contains 8-10 chapters of research articles which represent the efforts from both members of the academia and practitioners of theatre to sustain the tradition of Sino-Western theatrics, while demonstrating the evolving aspects of contemporary performances under the inexorable trends of digitalization and globalization.

This call invites the submission of proposals for a dossier that will be submitted for consideration to A Contracorriente: A Journal of Latin American Studies. The dossier will focus on the following theme:
Material Plots: Commodity, Capitalism, and National Imaginaries in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Hispanic American Literature

Nesir: Journal of Literary Studies invites submissions for its 10th issue (April 2026) and 12th issue (April 2027), dedicated to the twin special issues “Theoretical Inquiries, Critical Dialogues I–II.”

These issues welcome original research articles that explore classical or contemporary literary theories, modes of interpretation, textual analysis, narrative studies, world literature, comparative approaches, and interdisciplinary perspectives.

Prioritizing conceptual depth and metaphorical dynamism, Nesir seeks contributions that move beyond descriptive analysis of a single work, period, or national context. We encourage articles that:

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS / ÉTUDES IRLANDAISES (French Journal of Irish Studies)

Fall/Winter 2026 issue

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION: March 1st, 2026

The Editorial Board of Études Irlandaises  is currently seeking submissions for its Fall/Winter 2026 issue.

Women and the Body: Interdisciplinary PerspectivesInterdisciplinary Studies on Philology – Volume (forthcoming)

The edited volume Women and the Body will appear as part of the peer-reviewed book series Interdisciplinary Studies on Philology, published by Maurer Press (Germany). The series explores cutting-edge research across literary studies, cultural studies, linguistics, philosophy, and related fields, with a strong emphasis on interdisciplinary and theoretically innovative approaches.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS
INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY “REWIRING ECOLOGIES: GROWTH, DEGROWTH, AND TECHNOLOGICAL INFRASTRUCTURES” Thirtieth Annual Meeting 21–23 May 2026 ONLINE ONLY

The IAEP Executive Committee is excited to announce our 2026 online annual meeting. To reduce the
environmental impact of our environmental philosophy, we hold conferences in-person/hybrid in
odd-numbered years, and fully remotely in even-numbered years.