As mass movements and resistance struggles from Reconstruction and Indigenous sovereignty through women’s liberation and civil rights activism make clear, American history has been indelibly shaped by divergent, contradictory, and deeply contested understandings of a common political language centered on “freedom.”  Far from a static, settled, or predetermined concept, Eric Foner contends that “freedom” has proved “a terrain of conflict, open to very different and sometimes contradictory interpretations.” The story of the United States is, in no small part, a contest over what it means to be free.

The Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature invites essay proposals for a forthcoming issue of the peer-reviewed journal Midwestern Miscellany on the topic of Comics and the Midwest, to be guest-edited by Rachael Price (rprice@abac.edu), Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College.

The American Midwest has served as a key locale in comics and graphic novels, both as a setting for some of the most famous stories in this format and as an important center of newspaper and comic-book publishing. This volume seeks to explore the importance of the Midwest in comic strips, comic books, and graphic novels, from the early twentieth century to the present. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

Organised by University College Dublin and AMPS this conference explores how towns, cities and regions can  respond to climate change, social challenges and urban transformation. Bringing together architecture, planning, sustainability, conservation, public health and community perspectives it is explicitly interdisciplinary and explores practical, critical and conceptual approaches to creating more resilient, inclusive, healthy and livable places.

Dublin itself provides a compelling setting for the event, combining historic neighbourhoods, Georgian architecture, modernist housing, docklands regeneration, expanding transport, diverse cultural history and sometimes contentious community issues.

Look Again: (Re)Vision for Community Empowermentsubmit here: https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/22356 Accepted Panel for NeMLA 2027, Chairs: Audrey Peterson-McCann (University at Albany, SUNY ) Yolande Schutter (University at Albany, SUNY) contact email: apeterson-mccann@albany.edu 

Call for papers

Radiophonic Intermediality in

Contemporary Theatre and Performance

The Corporate Uncanny

Edited Collection | Vernon Press
Abstract Deadline: December 15, 2026

Vernon Press has accepted the proposal for The Corporate Uncanny, an interdisciplinary edited collection examining how contemporary media represent—and make experiential—the strange familiarity of corporate power.

Subject: Call for Papers: Writing Centers at CEA 2027

Call for Papers: Writing Centers at CEA 2027

Apr. 1-3, 2027 | St. Louis, Missouri

The Westin St. Louis Hotel
https://cea-web.org/the-conference-hotel

The College English Association, a gathering of scholar-teachers in English studies, welcomes proposals for presentations on Writing Centers for our 57th annual conference. Submit your proposal at www.cea-web.org

The College English Association, a gathering of scholar-teachers in English studies, welcomes proposals for presentations on BIPOC & Asian American Literature for our 2027 annual conference. Submit your proposal at www.cea-web.org

We welcome a wide range of approaches, periods, genres, and traditions. In keeping with the conference theme of “Gateways,” proposals might take up any of the questions and possibilities suggested below in the general call for papers as they relate to BIPOC & Asian American literature.

The deadline for abstract submissions is 11/01/2026.

Conference Theme: Gateways

Dates of Conference: 4-8 November 2026Format: Hybrid – Online (via Zoom) & In-Person (Thessaloniki, Greece)Note: The onsite/in-person conference will take place exclusively on 6-7 November, 2026 and be streamed live on Zoom.Organizer: KN: F.L.A.ME.S. by Konstantina Kliagkona (www.knflames.gr) International, interdisciplinary conference titled: The Hidden Faces of Violence II: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Abuse, Trauma, and Resistance Followi

This CFP is currently accepting paper proposals for the VIRTUAL 2027 Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association

Queering the Settler Colony: Comparative Perspectives on Canadian and Australian LiteratureAbstract

The comparative study of Canadian and Australian literature has long demonstrated the value of reading these two settler-colonial traditions alongside one another. Building on the pioneering comparative work of Sneja Gunew, this seminar seeks to extend this dialogue by foregrounding queer identities, sexualities, and non-normative forms of belonging as central categories of comparative inquiry.

AISCLI International Symposium

Unruly Epistemologies in the Age of Post-Truth:

Archives, Indigeneity, Authenticity, and the Politics of Knowledge

Università degli Studi Guglielmo Marconi, Roma

10-11 December 2026

Deadline for abstract submission: September 30, 2026.

"Speculative Souths" 

The Denbo Center for Humanities & the Arts 

The University of Tennessee, Knoxville 

June 10-12, 2027 

CFP Deadline: November 2, 2026 

Keynote Speaker: Kiese Laymon, Rice University, author of Long Division and Heavy 

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS — Mini Plays Review | December 2026 Issue 

Website: https://sites.google.com/view/the-mini-plays-magazine/submit 

Submission email: miniplaysmag@gmail.com

Theme: Borrowed Time

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS  Tiny Revolutions: A Flash Fiction Anthology

Small acts. Quiet rebellions. Lives changed one choice at a time.

Submission Deadline: September 30, 2026

Acceptance Notifications: October 05, 2026

Submissions: specialanthologyfreshwordsmag@gmail.com

Website:https://sites.google.com/view/freshwordsmagazine/announcements

4th International Conference

The Archival Turn: Re-anchoring Memory and Identity across Literature, Language and Media

17 – 18 December 2026

College of Language and Communication 4th International Conference (LANACOM 2026)

The Archival Turn: Re-anchoring Memory and Identity across Literature, Language and Media

28th Southeast Conference for Languages, Literatures, and Film (Feb 27-28, 2027) in St. Petersburg, Florida (on the University of South Florida St. Petersburg Campus)

Languages and Cultures in a Changing World: Identity, Responsibility, and Justice

Abstracts for papers (and panels) are now being considered. Deadline for abstracts: Nov. 16, 2026

Selected papers will be published in a post-conference anthology. To view prior publication, visit the conference website.

This panel is proposed for the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) VIRTUAL 2027 Annual Meeting on May 15 & 16, 2027. 

The Editorial Board of the History and Art Journal officially invites original and unpublished research articles for its upcoming Volume 2.

We welcome interdisciplinary submissions in English and Spanish across history, art history, and museology. Our main thematic tracks include Early Modern and Modern History, Visual Culture, Archival Research, Material Culture, and Digital Humanities.

Call for Papers | Chronologies 

The Velvet Light Trap, Volume 100 (to be published fall 2027) 

Submission deadline: October 11, 2026 

Abstract

This seminar proposes to examine Italian and Italian American food studies through the comparative frameworks of transnational circulation, intermedial representation, and cultural translation. Rather than approaching food as a stable marker of heritage or authenticity, the seminar treats it as a mobile signifying practice through which texts, images, commodities, and affects travel across linguistic, national, and medial boundaries. Food thus becomes a privileged comparative object: it links literature to film, advertising to visual culture, and national discourse to diasporic rearticulation.

John Steinbeck once remarked that fellow-Californian Robinson Jeffers wrote some the “greatest poetry since Whitman.” Steinbeck kept a significant collection of Jeffers work both in his personal library and Ed Ricketts’ Lab, where Jeffers was an influential topic in their endlessly varied conversations. When asked about possibility of meeting the poet, Steinbeck declined with a telling degree of reverence: “His poetry is perfect to me, and I don’t think one should get the man mixed up with his work.” Although they did eventually meet—notably when Steinbeck lived in Monterey in 1944—their relationship was one of distant, though friendly, mutual respect.

This seminar is seeking like-minded presenters for a productive discussion focused on noise as a concept and an approach to exploring the intersection of sound studies and literature! The 2027 ACLA conference will take place in Houston, Texas (the University of Houston) on May 20-23, 2027. Please submit an abstract (around 250 words) with title to the seminar via the ACLA online portal by September 22, 2026. Please feel free to reach out to the seminar organizer Dr. Yiren Zheng (yiren.zheng@dartmouth.edu) with any questions!

Neighborhood Modernisms

Modernism/modernity Print Plus Cluster Pitch

Anushka Sen, Loyola University Chicago (asen2@luc.edu)

Ria Banerjee, CUNY Guttman Community College and the Graduate Center (sbanerjee@gc.cuny.edu)

The editors of a volume under contract with Routledge’s Environmental Literature, Culture and Media series are seeking a 7,000-word essay on Monique Roffey’s The Mermaid of Black Conch. The volume focuses on rewritten water myths in English and situates itself in current debates in the blue and environmental humanities. It grows out of an international conference on the topic that the editors held at Lund University in June 2026.