In Traditional African Festival Drama in Performance, Austine Anigala(2006)draws on the Ukpalabor festival of the Ebedei people in Southern Nigeria to argue for the performance and dramatic potential of the indigenous African festival. This provocative work is against the backdrop of polemics initiated by scholars such as Ruth Finnegan (2012) and Michael J. C. Echeruo (1973) about the dramatic limits of indigenous African festivals. Recall that Echeruo (1973) called for a re-examination of how indigenous festivals are referred to as drama.

Proposals are invited to a Special Issue of Feminist German Studies on “Intersections of Gender and Disability in German Studies”

Guest Editors: Judith Bierwolf, Hanna Bingel-Jones, Rachel MagShamhráin, Michaela Schrage-Früh

ALA 2026: The Novel of Ideas in American Fiction

ALA Annual Conference (May 20-23, Chicago, IL)

Stories of Belonging and Nostalgia: South Asian Migrants’ Narratives  

Introductory Note

THE BILLY JOEL SYMPOSIUM

A Two-Day Academic Conference Presented by the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame

Stony Brook, NY | June 6–7, 2026

OVERVIEW

American Literature Association: 37th Annual Conference
May 20-23, 2026
Chicago, IL

The San Francisco State University CINE Colloquium is proud to announce the call for papers for Chronically Online, the 27th Annual Graduate Research Conference, hosted by the San Francisco State University CINE Colloquium. Submit your work and join us April 24th and 25th, 2026 in person and online for a multidisciplinary deep-dive into all things nerd. See below for conference description and instructions to submit proposals.

DEADLINE EXTENDED: Proposals must be submitted by January 9th, 2026 to be considered.

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Midnapore College (Autonomous)
International Seminar
on
“Aestheticism in Art and Literature” (সাহিত্য ও শিল্পে নন্দনতত্ত্ব)
To be organized by
Department of Bengali & Cultural Section
in collaboration with IQAC
on 13 January 2026
Mode: Hybrid(Online & Offline)
“The purpose of art is the realization of aesthetic bliss (Ānanda)” - Abhinavagupta.

Edited Collection – Critical Perspectives on the “Flanaverse” of Mike Flanagan 

In recent decades, research on authority and trust in the US has seen a considerable increase across various disciplines (cf. Leypoldt and Berg 2021). However, in comparison, there has been much less scholarship on aspects of gender since Anette Baier dedicated her influential 1994 collection of essays Moral Prejudices on trust (and related issues)to her “women students, past, present, and future.” Our workshop addresses this lacuna, both from a theoretical perspective, and in the light of current cultural, social, and political developments in the US, and of (once again) contested definitions of gender(ed) identities, practices, performances, and ethics.

Spectral Boundaries: Gender and Sexuality in Asian Horror Cinema

Dr. Soumyarup Bhattacharjee

CALL FOR CHAPTERS

The British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies (BACLS) is pleased to announce our first graduate conference, New Work in Contemporary Literary Studies, which will take place at the University of Leeds on May 20th 2026. This will be a hybrid conference.

Participants will be invited to contribute to a special issue of the soon-to-be relaunched journal Alluvium, to be published after the symposium. 

In Traditional African Festival Drama in Performance, Austine Anigala(2006)draws on the Ukpalabor festival of the Ebedei people in Southern Nigeria to argue for the performance and dramatic potential of the indigenous African festival. This provocative work is against the backdrop of polemics initiated by scholars such as Ruth Finnegan (2012) and Michael J. C. Echeruo (1973) about the dramatic limits of indigenous African festivals. Recall that Echeruo (1973) called for a re-examination of how indigenous festivals are referred to as drama.

Wednesday 17th to Friday 19th June 2026

Falmouth University, UK

This in-person conference will launch the new International Women’s Writing Association (IWWA), offering a global celebration of women’s writing in all its forms, mediums, and expressions at the gorgeous Woodlane campus in Falmouth, Cornwall.

Mimbres School Monsoon Session 2026, Aug 10-14.Slavery’s Domestic Economy

The Mimbres School for the Humanities invites applications to participate in our first in-person Monsoon Session Symposium. This symposium takes recent historical and theoretical work on slavery in the Americas as an occasion to ask what it would mean to take the family and the household, rather than labor or industrial profits, as the primary point of departure for understanding the slave power and its various afterlifes in the present.

CFP: E. E. Cummings Sessions at the American Literature Association’s 37th Annual Conference, Chicago, Illinois, May 20-23, 2026 

The E. E. Cummings Society will sponsor a session (or two) at the 2026 American Literature Association conference in Chicago [ https://americanliteratureassociation.org/ ]. We invite proposals for papers on any aspect of Cummings’ life and/or work. Proposals that touch upon the following topics will be especially welcome: 

It is with great pleasure that we announce the opening of applications for the 2026 Feminist Decolonial Politics Workshop.

The workshop will be held in a hybrid format, with both in-person and online participation options. We are especially excited to centre this year’s workshop on reading the work of Hortense Spillers, one of the most influential theorists of our time. Spillers is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor at Vanderbilt University, and her scholarship has been foundational to feminist, Black, and decolonial thought.

Participation in the workshop is by application only, and applicants must be accepted in order to attend.

The Institute for Research on Women (IRW) at Rutgers University is seeking guest editors for the Spring 2027 issue of its online journal, Rejoinder (https://irw.rutgers.edu/rejoinder). Rejoinder features work at the intersection of scholarship and activism that reflects feminist/queer and social justice perspectives and is currently published once a year. Guest editors will be responsible for the overall shape of the issue, and Rejoinder staff will advise on the process.

Student Conference on fantasy in cooperation between the Book Lovers Among Students (BLASt) club and the DnD club (Collegium Draconum) of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań!

We invite submissions on themes of diversity, identity politics, race, gender, and queerness in fantasy. The choice of genre can include fantasy, interactive fantasy, DnD, adaptations, offshoots, and appropriations. 

Reading Spells Conference will take place on January 24th 2026, online via MsTeams. 

“WE ARE THE ECOSEXUALS. The Earth is our lover.”  — Beth Stephens & Annie Sprinkle, The Ecosex Manifesto

The Graduate Students of the Department of Comparative Thought and Literature at Johns Hopkins University are proud to announce our biennial conference, to be held on April 17–18, 2026. We are pleased to host keynote speaker Heather Davis (The New School). 

Thoreau Annual Gathering, July 8-12, 2026

Ralph Waldo Emerson Society

“Give Me Health and a Day”: Emerson and Health, Illness, and Unity

Call for Papers

Ege University
20th Cultural Studies Symposium
“AI & Cultural Production”
6–8 May 2026 | Faculty of Letters, Izmir, Türkiye

Artificial Intelligence has distinctly shifted from being a technological tool to a shaping factor in present-day cultural practices. Ranging from AI-related literature, music, and visual arts to AI-enabled storytelling, translation, and co-creative practices, AI confronts traditional concepts of authorship, creativity, agency, and responsibility. Furthermore, AI raises critical moral and political considerations with respect to power, bias, labour, and representation.

A Two-dayInternational Conference 

Plates of Memory, Palates of Change: Memory, Identity, Community, and Millennial Transformations

28–29 March 2026

Call For Papers