Thresholds: Liminality, Performance, and Cultural Reconfiguration

Cultural Studies Association (CSA) 2027 Annual Conference

June 3-5, 2027

Fully Online

Deadline for Submissions: Friday, November 20, 2026

Registration

The Dark Lord Sauron, the titular Lord of the Rings in Tolkien’s magnum opus, plays many roles and takes many forms throughout The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and the rest of Tolkien’s Legendarium, and even more in the various adaptations and reimaginings that have since emerged. Over years of varying interpretations, Sauron has evolved into a figure of vast significance. From his early depictions as a looming, disembodied threat to his more recent portrayals as a visually captivating "sexy" villain in contemporary pop culture, Sauron’s image has undergone a transformation, revealing much about changing attitudes toward power, corruption, and desire.  

Dislocated Bodies: Noises, Opacities, and Irreverences

Guest editors:  Alicia Fernández Gallego-Casilda, Julio Ferrandis Buzón and Constanza Ternicier Espinosa (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)

Call for Book Chapters: The Handbook of Witchcraft and Sorcery

Volume Editors:

Assoc. Prof. Cenk Tan (Pamukkale University, Türkiye)

Assoc. Prof. Milena Škobo (Sinergija University, Serbia)

Assoc. Prof. Nazan Yıldız Çiçekçi (Karadeniz Technical University, Türkiye)

Assoc. Prof. Oya Bayıltmış Öğütcü (Adıyaman University, Türkiye)

Submission Deadline for Abstracts:  February 1, 2027

International Conference, 16-18 August, 2027, Vaxjö, Sweden

Nostalgia has become one of the defining cultural affects of the twenty-first century. It permeates politics, popular culture, social media, environmental discourse, memory practices, heritage industries, and everyday life. While nostalgia is often discussed as a feeling directed towards a lost past, it is always encountered through acts of mediation. Memories, desires, identities, and imagined pasts are shaped, transformed, communicated, circulated, and shared through media technologies, aesthetic forms, communicative practices, and intermedial relations.

April 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 Latinx Literature for our 57th annual conference. Submit your proposal at www.cea-web.org

Call for Seminar Participants

Performance Forms in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries: Commercial Drama, Performance Practices and Theatrical Spaces in Early Modern England

(ESRA 2027, Bangor University, 27-30 July 2027)

Convenors: 

Aurélie Griffin, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, France 

Simon Smith, Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, UK 

Deadline: October 31, 2026

At this stage, while proposals across all areas remain welcome, we are particularly interested in submissions that broaden the range of topics covered so far. Especially encouraged are proposals focusing on religious pluralism and faith traditions beyond Catholicism; Islam and the post-9/11 context; religion and the culture wars; members of the White House staff and other political actors; the later seasons; and the cultural legacy of The West Wing and its place in changing representations of American political leadership.

The original call for papers appears below.

In 1892, when authorities arrested Lizzie Borden for the brutal axe-murders of her father and stepmother, America, and specifically Massachusetts, stood at the forefront of the Women's Suffrage Movement. Several of the first conventions, halls, and clubs in support of the movement took place in Lizzie’s home state of Massachusetts. In this paper I will examine how the gender roles and socioeconomic factors of Victorian Massachusetts contributed to Lizzie Borden’s acquittal despite the abundance of circumstantial evidence. I will not argue for Lizzie’s innocence, as I believe she committed the crime, but instead I will present how the gender norms and socioeconomic factors of this era shaped perceptions of criminality and public opinion.

CALL FOR CHAPTER PROPOSAL

The Ghost in the Machine Learns to Speak for the Dead:

AI, Rhetorical Resurrection, the Injustice of Synthetic Voice

An edited Collection, edited by Shiva Hari Mainaly, PhD, University of Memphis

Abstracts due December 15, 2026

The Dead are Speaking. Who Gave Them Their Words?

The Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University is thrilled to host the 12th annual Post45 Graduate Symposium on March 4-6, 2027.

The Post45 Graduate Symposium seeks graduate-level works-in-progress related to post-1945 media, arts, literature, textual or visual objects, digital platforms, politics, and culture. We welcome submissions that expand our conception of objects and meaning-making post-1945 or place them in comparative, transnational, or hemispheric frames. We especially welcome contributions that foreground the importance of race, gender, class, and sexuality to post-45 studies. 

 Call for Proposals - Acting Out: Theatre Training Outside the Theatre Classroom 

Learning Stages is seeking contributions to a new anthology promoting the use of theatre training and educational strategies for application across post-secondary disciplines outside of the theatre classroom. 

Staging Myth: Performance, Adaptation, and Cultural Memory

Deadline for Abstract Submissions: 30th October 2026

“The true purpose of the theater is to create Myths, to express life in its immense, universal aspect.” (Artaud, 1958, p. 116)

This roundtable will engage with African American literary works (or other works of art) that create spaces for ancestors and other departed characters, frequently portraying such characters as active participants who shape the present of the living. We will consider in what ways such depictions offer and build communities for both the living and those whom they have lost. Special attention will be paid to how such works often serve as acts of historical preservation and memorialization outside official archives. All literary or artistic genres are welcome; interdisciplinary approaches welcome.

https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/CFP

Guest Editor: Nidhi Shrivastava, Sacred Heart University, shrivastavan@sacredheart.edu

‘Green Religions, Divine Immanence, and Ecospirituality’

Call for Papers:

The Ernest Hemingway Society https://www.hemingwaysociety.org/ is sponsoringone panel andone roundtableat the 38th Annual Conference of the American Literature Association https://americanliteratureassociation.org/ to be held at The Westin Copley Place in Boston, MA, May 26-29, 2027.

Sexualities Special Issue Call for Papers:
Transitions: Examining Changing Regimes of Sexuality in Post-Soviet Muslim Republics

Participants are sought for a virtual roundtable at the Law and Society Association Global Meeting (Hong Kong) on June 26, 2027 examining how law is interpreted, translated, and given practical effect within universities—and how institutional actors may extend, reshape, or selectively invoke legal mandates in governing academic knowledge.

How can practice-based approaches to research and teaching contribute to the creation of alternative democratic spaces within universities?

Special Issue website: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/literature/special_issues/B781Q58SAM

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue of Literature will collect essays addressing the reception, influence, adaptation, or incorporation of literature from the Greco–Roman world into later theatre, film, and television. The Greeks and Romans pioneered a wide range of performed literary styles like tragic and comic drama, or epic and lyric poetry, as well as developing extensive mythic story networks and what we now recognize as formal histories, etc. Some of these works remain among the most influential and beloved writings ever produced by humanity.

The 35th Annual 18th- and 19th-Century British Women Writers Conference: Palm Springs, CA, March 24-27, 2027“Design”

Call for Papers

Mystery / Detective Fiction Area

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

48th Annual Conference, February 17-20, 2027

Marriott Albuquerque

Albuquerque, New Mexico

https://swpaca.org

Submissions open: September 1, 2026

Proposal submission deadline: October 31, 2026

¡AfroLatinxs Presente!, AfroLatinx Pasados

Special Issue of Pasados: Recovering History, Imagining Latinidad

Deadline for article submissions: January 5, 2027