Announcing

The 2026 First Book Institute

May 31-June 6, 2026

Hosted by the Center for American Literary Studies (CALS) at Pennsylvania State University

Co-Directors

Priscilla Wald, R. Florence Brinkley Distinguished Professor of English, Duke University, and Co-Editor of American Literature

Sean X. Goudie, Director of the Center for American Literary Studies and Past Winner of the MLA Prize for a First Book

Panel Title:
Transnational Black Childhood and Practices of Maronnage

Conference:
Rutgers University-Camden, Childhood Studies Department
“The Transnational Child Strikes Back: Transnational Desires and Childhoods of Empire ”
June 11-13th, 2026
Camden NJ

Organiser Contact Info:
Samira Abdur-Rahman, The College of New Jersey, abdurras@tcnj.edu

Panel Description:

This special panel to be held in the Area for Esotericism, Occultism, and Magic of the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association seeks 15-20 minute conference presentations from all disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives examining any and all aspects of the emerging trend of “reality shifting” in relation to popular culture, particularly that of Generation Z.

The Generational Studies area of the Popular Culture Association welcomes proposals for papers on any and every topic related to America’s generations including: Baby Boomers, Generation Jones, Generation X, Xennials, Millennials (Gen Y), and iGen (Gen Z). If your paper is accepted, you will be presenting at the 2026 Popular Culture Association national conference, held at the Marriott Marquis in Atlanta, April 8-1.

We invite submissions from individuals and organized panels (3 or 4 persons), focusing on topics related to:

CALL FOR PAPERS

for a joint symposium to be hosted by the

Catharine Maria Sedgwick Society and Lydia Maria Child Society

Williamsburg, Virginia

June 24-27, 2026

(Deadline for proposals: February 5, 2026)

The Catharine Maria Sedgwick Society and the Lydia Maria Child Society invite proposals for a joint symposium to be held on the campus of the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, June 24-27, 2026.

Call for Papers—DEADLINE EXTENDED!

Myth and Fairy Tales Area

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

47th Annual Conference, February 25-28, 2026

Marriott Albuquerque

Albuquerque, New Mexico

https://www.swpaca.org

EXTENDED proposal submission deadline: November 14, 2025

 Poems Invited for dec 2025 Issue of Taj Mahal Review 48th Issue

Deadline for proposals has been extended to 15 November 2025!

Call for papers – International PhD and early-career symposium 

Seeing the Other Empire: British Travel Writing and Imperial Rivalry in Europe and the Near East, 1783–1914

University of Strasbourg, 24 April 2026

Organisers: Arman Martirosyan and Suheyla-Hacer Sahin

Research group SEARCH (UR 2325)

Conference at the University of Amsterdam

Monday, 15 June 2026

Description:

The English department at Duke University is thrilled to host the 11th annual Post45 Graduate Symposium on February 20-21, 2026.

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. 

DEADLINE EXTENDED!

Call for Papers

“Horror (Literary & Cinematic)”

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

47th Annual Conference, February 25-28, 2026

Marriott Albuquerque

Albuquerque, New Mexico

https://www.southwestpca.org

NEW Submission Deadline: November 14, 2025

The esoteric, occult, and magical roots of deep ecology have become increasingly interconnected with the growing popularity of witchcraft practices, neopagan worldviews, and explicitly spiritual climate activism and environmentalism.  These developments include specific foci on particular ecological concerns and crises, but such trends are equally exemplified by transdisciplinary dialogues in which holistic scientific perspectives intersect with diverse systems of belief. This special panel seeks 15-20 conference presentations to explore these connections and their influence on, reception by, and expression through popular culture in any and all of its manifestations.  

The extraordinary success of K-Pop Demon Hunters (2025) as the most-watched original title in the history of Netflix (with over 325 million views) invites the reconsideration of a surprisingly vast and multivalent “mega-trope” that has proliferated throughout popular culture in numerous variations for centuries.  Its deep roots in folklore and mythology remain to be further explored, mapped, and connected with its various historical expressions throughout indigenous worldviews, Classical cultures and civilizations into Late Antiquity and ultimately through the global Middle Ages and straight through into the interactions of Western, East/Asian, and diverse global civilizations of the contemporary period.  While this mega-trope is here identified

Call for Papers

Medievalisms Area

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

47th Annual Conference, February 25-28, 2026

Marriott Albuquerque

Albuquerque, New Mexico

https://www.southwestpca.org

Submissions open: September 1, 2025

Proposal submission deadline: November 14, 2025

Utopian Impulses in the 2020sAn Interdisciplinary Graduate Student ConferenceUniversity of Cincinnati - Friday, February 6th, 2026 Among its political and technological predicaments, America’s 2020s have been a time of steady upheaval, crisis, and change. As we continue to wrestle our way through the agendas, regimes, and big-data systems of this historical moment as teachers, students, and researchers, we recall the utopian thinking of More and Marx, which reminds us “to keep from being blinded by what seems normal — to help us see that what is natural is constructed, not inevitable” (Elbow, p. 83).

Shakespeare is one of the inventors of the category of the human as many modern and contemporary cultures know it. Even his most monstrous and otherworldly creations have a detectable human side. The critical tradition of Shakespeare has already established that these characters are to be read as reflections of certain psychological aspects and repressed characteristics of the main characters of his plays, as allegorical representations of emotions, principles or beliefs, as codification of ethnic and sexual differences, etc. Thanks to this tradition, focusing on the human side of these characters has become the norm. It happens almost intuitively as soon as a critic or scholar starts their analysis of these characters.

WRITING THE MIDWEST: A Symposium of Scholars and Creative Writers

The Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature (SSML)

May 28-29, 2026. Kellogg Hotel and Convention Center, East Lansing, Michigan

About SSML and The Writing the Midwest Symposium: The Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature (SSML), founded in 1971, exists to support the study and dissemination of work in Midwestern literature, art, film, and scholarly study. 

Come join academics and working professionals at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis, April 8-11 2026!

We are considering proposals for sessions organized around a theme, special panels, and/or individual papers.  Sessions are scheduled in 1½ hour slots, typically with four papers or speakers per standard session.  Presentations should not exceed 15 minutes. Working professionals, scholars, educators, and graduate students are all encouraged to submit.

Proposals within animation studies in relation to popular culture are welcomed. Possible themes for papers/panels include but are not restricted to:

General Issue | Rolling Submissions

The Critical Gender Studies Journal / Revista Crítica de Estudios de Género invites submissions for its upcoming general issue. We welcome original research articles, theoretical essays, creative interventions, and reviews that explore the multifaceted dimensions of gender and sexuality across diverse contexts and disciplines.

Creative Editor 

FEMSPEC, an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal dedicated to challenging gender through speculative means in any genre, seeks a volunteer editorial collective member starting for 26.1 no later than January 1.

Duties include:

Attending collective meetings on a regular basis (now Friday 10:30 AM EST)

Receiving creative submissions to screen and coordinate peer-review 

Seeking creative submissions and reviewers through professional channels and personal networks, and by distribution of brochures at appropriate conferences and to Creative Writing programs

“Teaching Annie Baker”

Comparative Drama Conference

Madison, WI, July 9-11, 2026

Deadline: December 12, 2025

“It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”

George Orwell, 1984

Call for Papers: The Willa Cather Foundation seeks proposals for 1-2 panels at the 37th annual conference of the American Literature Association, held at the Palmer House in Chicago from May 20-23, 2026.

Topics could include (but are by no means limited to) race and ethnicity, indigeneity, settler colonialism, Queer histories, labor and leisure, Cather and other writers, teaching Cather, urban/rural spaces, philosophy and religion, approaches to Cather’s letters, ecological issues, and material culture.

While proposals on any topic pertaining to Cather’s life and writing are welcome, 2026 marks the centennial of the publication of My Mortal Enemy, so papers on that novel would be of particular interest.