The maternal figure has long been central to literary imaginings of the nation-state, shaping narratives of belonging, exile, and inheritance. As both metaphor and material reality, motherhood is entwined with national reproduction, kinship structures, and the regulation of bodies, often reinforcing but sometimes resisting dominant ideologies. At the same time, motherhood is a site of labor—both reproductive and economic—raising questions about care work, migration, and the feminization of labor within and across borders. Maternal grief, loss, and displacement further complicate the imagined continuity between mother and motherland, exposing fractures in nationalist and colonial narratives.

December 12, 2025

Aula Baratto, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice - Dorsoduro, 3246, Venice

Conference Dates: October 22-25, 2025
Venue: Hilton Cincinnati 

This panel examines how contemporary artistic practices—including monumental, visual, and performing arts—engage with memory-making processes. By focusing on the interconnection between material experiences and memory, the panel explores how artists embody and reimagine memory while challenging traditional approaches. For instance, activist artists push the boundaries of memory work by challenging conventional notions of archives and historical narratives, positioning artists as critical contributors to understanding how societies remember and forget.

** UPCOMING DEADLINE: 28 FEBRUARY 2025 **

If you'd like to submit an abstract but cannot make the deadline, please get in touch at r.gregory-fox@kent.ac.uk to discuss an extension.

Hostile Environments and Hospitable Praxes

Literary and Cultural Responses to Racial and Migratory Politics

University of Kent

23 – 24 June 2025

 ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF DELEUZE(NESS)

International symposium

18-19 September 2025

National Gallery of Art, Konstitucijos pr. 22, Vilnius

Sibiu, Romania | 1-3.07. 2025                                    

Lucian Blaga University is pleased to announce a Call for Papers for the upcoming international conference, “Tragic Form Across Europe and Beyond,” to be held between July 1-3 in Sibiu, Romania. The conference aims to explore tragedy as it is reflected in literature, theater, and other cultural forms from antiquity to the present day, with a focus on European (semi)peripheries and non-European cultural spaces. 

For MLA 2026 - Toronto, we invite papers that examine how contemporary literature and film reimagine haunted space narratives through the lens of immigrant experiences and displaced families. Please e-mail a 250-word abstract, title, and short bio by March 16th, 2025 to Ibrahim and Laura.

Panel organizers:Ibrahim Williams, The University of Mississippi (iawillia@go.olemiss.edu )Laura Evers, Washington University in St Louis (e.laura@wustl.edu )

What does the future hold for us, as the inhabitants of a planet much burdened by a burgeoning population, whose demands for time-saving technologies and physical comfort are endless? Will there be wars over potable water? Will we give up gold and gems and treasure oxygen instead? Or will existence end with either bang or whimper?

Utopian visions carry hope and contrarily, but more importantly, dystopian ones are much-needed warnings of what is likely to happen. This latter view made us feel that cli-fi needs to urgently present unflattering futuristic scenarios of our continued apathy towards nature and climate.

CALL FOR PAPERS

MLA 2026 (Guaranteed Session)

Toronto, January 8-11, 2026

Generous Modernisms

This guaranteed panel is sponsored by the GS Children’s and Young Adult Literature Forum for the Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Convention, January 8-11, 2026, in Toronto, Canada. In conjunction with the 2026 presidential theme, ‘Familial Resemblances,’ this panel engages with forms of Indigenous literacies and epistemologies, especially from the Global South, to highlight their connections to the Land, cultural memory, and traditions.

The MLA Forum on Seventeenth-Century English Studies (LLC 17th-Century English) invites submissions for a guaranteed session on "Going Global: Questions, Challenges, Opportunities." We seek papers that critically examine the methodological and theoretical implications of global frameworks in seventeenth-century studies. Of particular interest are contributions that address: the epistemological shifts prompted by the "global turn"; the integration of non-European perspectives into traditionally Anglo-centric narratives; the material and digital infrastructures enabling globally oriented research; and the tensions between local and global methodologies.

Rocky Mountain 

Modern Language Association

78th Annual Convention
English Nineteenth-Century Panel

October 16-18, 2025

Spokane, Washington

Abstract Deadline: April 1, 2025

Deleuze notes in Negotiations that he did not have the chance to write “the book [he’d] like to have done about literature” as he had done for other artforms like cinema and painting. Following Deleuze and Guattari’s definition of great thinkers who “lay out a new plane of immanence” and “draw up a new image of thought” to “change how we think” (What Is Philosophy), this seminar takes up Deleuze’s desire for new images of thought focused explicitly on literature. This seminar invites participants to consider the relation between Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy and commentary on art (e.g., painting, cinema, and literature) and a variety of literary writers to establish new ways of thinking and navigating the margins of literature.

Conference Theme: Multiplicity

We are pleased to invite proposals for the University of Washington English Department Writing Programs’ fifth annual Praxis Conference, which will be held at the UW Seattle campus on Friday May 30th, 2025.  The theme for the conference is “Multiplicity” (understood broadly to include how to honor and support the multiplicity of our students’ identities, knowledges, modes of communication, and languages) and its possibilities as they relate to our teaching of English.