Over the course of the 20th century and into the 21st, cinema, television, and related media have become increasingly central both to individual lives and to the lives of peoples, groups, and nations. Cinema has become a major form of cultural expression and films both reflect and influence the attitudes and behaviour of people, representing their tensions and anxieties, hopes and desires and incarnating social and cultural determinants of the era in which they were made. 

Decay and destruction have long been sources of fascination, inspiration and contemplation in artistic and cultural contexts. From the crumbling ruins of ancient civilizations to the ravages of time on natural landscapes, from the haunting beauty of abandoned spaces to the transformative power of decay in artistic expression, this conference aims to explore the creative potential of decay and destruction across diverse disciplines and perspectives.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

The conference seeks to explore the narratives of displacement and to demonstrate the validity of a cross-disciplinary approach which brings together the historical, cultural, social and literary expertise in the handling of text. The conference will particularly focus on time and space representations and on treatment of the theme of cultural ambivalence and identity conflict. The subject of displacement will be regarded as both a migration, voluntary or forced, and a sense of being socially or culturally “out of place”.

Papers are invited on topics related, but not limited, to:

Humankind has always sought to explain its origins and the mysteries of life to map personal and collective boundaries, and to secure its sense of identity through the power of everyday events and occurrences. Exemplary accounts of imaginary happenings and supernatural creatures from a time beyond history and memory explain the genesis of the universe, the making of a living thing, the formation of an attitude or the inception of an institution. The essence of these traditional narratives reflects a certain system of values and code of self-conduct of a group of individuals bound together by social and cultural ties, and the cardinal virtues and vices of human nature captured in a conventional configuration.

The conference invites academics, researchers and professionals to critically examine the evolving concept of gender in its many forms and contexts. The conference seeks to explore the past and present dimensions of gender identity across the globe, analyse how societal structures are shaped by and shape gender and consider the role of gender in the broad spectrum of human experience.The theme, Que(e)rying Gender, highlights the importance of questioning, expanding and disrupting conventional understandings of gender. It emphasises the intersections between gender, power, identity and culture, encouraging innovative approaches to understanding how gender influences lived experiences and societal norms.

This panel seeks papers for the Renaissance Society of America’s annual meeting (February 19–21, 2026, San Franscico, California). It explores an overlooked poetic genre: the prefatory poem of the early printed book for the It considers such appendages as simultaneously occupying the niches of text and paratext: discrete units which both conform to the structural and aesthetic constraints of poetry and adorn a corresponding, substantive text. These poems are at once ubiquitous and neglected, appearing in books of nearly all genres: from the luxury atlas to the sailing manual; from the personal devotional to the folio Bible; from the illustrated epic poem to the clinical legal handbook.

XXVIII Generative Art conference.
topics: Human Culture & AI in GA worthiness. The theme of this conference focuses on how to preserve human complexity, with Generative Art and AI.
Art, poetry, music, architecture, and historical cities need generative ideas to adapt to the deep new demands of our fast-changing times.
Our field of interest is to identify these possibilities and relate the most advanced creative approaches of Generative Art and AI.
We will be happy to present your generative approach. This can be done through generative ideas that could safeguard specific identities of Art, Nature, Environments, and History.

(Im)politeness on Stage

Monday 15  – Tuesday 16  December, 2025

University of Naples L’Orientale

In chapter 4 of The Ambassadors, following a scene that few who have read could ever forget,Strether’s dinner with Maria Gostrey, “whose dress was ‘cut down,’ . . . in respect to shoulders and bosom,” “face to face over a small table on which the lighted candles had rose-colored shades,” and after attending a play in London, Strether outlines the nature of his journey to Paris to Miss Gostrey, who asks whether Mamie Pocock is Chad Newsome’s “own niece.” Strether tries to clarify: 

“Oh, you must yourself find a name for the relation. His brother-in-law’s sister. Mrs. Jim’s sister-in-law.”

It seemed to have on Miss Gostrey a certain hardening effect. “And who in the world’s Mrs. Jim?”

The Charles Olson Society will sponsor a session at the upcoming Re-Viewing Black Mountain College Conference, to be held in Asheville, NC, September 25-27, 2025. In keeping with this year’s conference theme of “Performance at Black Mountain College,” we are especially interested in abstracts that address aspects of performativity in relation to Black Mountain poetics, though more general proposals focused on broader topics within the work of Black Mountain poets, projective verse, or the New American Poetry more broadly construed will also be considered.

Submissions to VICFA 4: Embodied Spirits

Scholarly and creative proposals are welcome and are handled through the same process.

This season, Academic and Creative Proposals will submit via the same portal.

Submit your proposal here: https://form.jotform.com/251195173129154

Postcolonial Studies Association of the Global South (PSAGS)

Annual Conference 2025

“Backyard Texts and Junkyard Epistemes”

19-20 December 2025

Concept Note

The current conjuncture is marked by the clash of axioms, metaphorically represented by the

backyard/junkyard and the fore-yard. While the junkyard/ backyard relates to the obscure, the

unconscious, the leftover; the fore-yard, the screened and the hyper-projected or hyper-

narrativized stand for the accepted, the normative, the light and show, the conscious, the

progressed and the advanced. The dominant intellectual leitmotif of our time is a fore-yard

Call for Papers: Symposium at Utrecht University, 10 April 2026

Literature, Care, and the Ethics of Living in Southwest Asia and North Africa

Mediterranean Crossings: A Studia Mediterranea Conference

Location: The Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Split, Croatia

Dates: September 19-20, 2025

Abstract submission date: June 25, 2025

Keynote speaker (virtual): Anna Kornbluh (University of Illinois at Chicago)

*note: this is a hybrid conference, but there will be no recording and the conference is only open to registered participants