In 2025, broad legislative and cultural backlash is focused on eliminating even the idea of trans people from public space. When public space is inaccessible, online communities have, for more than the past twenty years, been a place where trans people can still find one another, self-represent, and build their own publics. Now the walled world of the app economy, organized personal attacks, discriminatory social media algorithms, ID verification laws, and government intervention are changing the internet too. At such a moment, understanding the ways that trans people navigate their digital worlds is more important than ever.

In honor of Jack London's 150th birthday anniversary in 2026, paper submissions are invited for the Jack London Society panels at the American Literature Association 37th Annual Conference, May 20-23, 2026,Palmer House 17 East Monroe Street, Chicago, IL. Papers may address any aspect of Jack London studies. Send a 250-to-300 word abstract for a twenty-minute presentation to Kenneth K. Brandt at kbrandt@scad.edu by January 26, 2026. Include a brief biographical sketch and any AV equipment needs.

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

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.

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.

The Flannery O’Connor Society
The Society for the Study of Southern Literature
March 28th-31st, 2026
Fisk University
Nashville, TN

The Flannery O’Connor Society invites abstracts (of about 300 words) to be submitted for participation in an open topics panel on Flannery O’Connor’s life and work at the biannual conference of the Society for the Study of Southern Literature.

Call for Papers

Global Indigeneities and Life Narratives: Special Issue of Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly

A Special Issue of Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly

Guest Editor: J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, 

Eric and Wendy Schmidt Professor of Indigenous Studies and Anthropology, Princeton University

Submit: 400-word abstracts to kauanui@princeton.edu by December 1, 2025

https://manoa.hawaii.edu/cbr/publications-productions/biography/calls-fo...

Call for Papers: Film International: Journal of World Cinema

Special Issue series: Diasporic Cinemas

View the full call here>>

https://www.intellectbooks.com/film-international-journal-of-world-cinema#call-for-papers

Series overview

We are excited to announce a new interdisciplinary seminar series for postgraduate students and early career researchers on the Long Middle Ages, a period covering the Late Antique, Medieval, and Early Modern Periods. This series aims to bring together scholars working across this period to establish new connectivity and inclusivity between these disciplines, and to provide a more relaxed space for new and emerging researchers to present and test out ideas.

Dear Scholars and Researchers,

We are delighted to invite original and scholarly book chapters for an upcoming edited volume titled Emerging Trends and Future Directions in Comparative Literature.

We welcome contributions on, but not limited to, the following themes:

Suggested Themes

• World Literature as a Comparative Practice

• Emerging Trends in Digital Humanities

• Future of Comparative Literature

• Digital and Cyber Literature

• Globalization and Cultural Exchange

• Cultural Hybridity, Adaptation, and Translation in a Globalized World

• Translation Studies

Representation matters – but to whom? And how?

This iteration of the Critical Approaches to Black Media Culture conference considers the ongoing significance of representational analysis as well as the critical possibilities enabled by the turn to resonance in Black media and cultural studies. Our theme, Representation and Resonance, invites original research into images and storytelling, circulation and flows, and reception practices.

While we especially invite papers on this topic, we are open to any and all critical inquiry into Black media culture, broadly defined. Our hope is to bring together any and all scholars interested and invested in Black media culture, regardless of discipline or method.

The Saul Bellow Society will host one session at the American Literature Association’s 37th Annual Conference at the Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, on May 20-23, 2026.  Proposals for papers on Saul Bellow and Chicago are particularly welcome but may address any aspect of Saul Bellow’s work or life, including comparisons with other authors. 

Proposals for presentations should include a title, your name and affiliation, e-mail address, and a short abstract.  The Saul Bellow Society welcomes proposals from established and newer scholars, including graduate students. 

The long nineteenth century was a period marked by industrial revolution, scattered religious beliefs and technological advancements. The Gothic tradition recorded these significant changes through a language of monstrosity, excess, and horror as the Industrial Revolution gained momentum, coal and steam power expanded, and as soon as the British Empire increased its extractive demands on colonized ecologies and laboring bodies. This edited volume proposes a new way of looking at Gothic figures such as vampires, parasites, doubles, and consuming machines in order to examine how such tropes adumbrated the anxieties, ethics, and violences of environmental extraction.

Call for Papers: Transitions: Journal of Transient Migration

Special Issue: 'Emotions and Emotionality: The Multi-Affects of the Global South'

View the full call here>>

https://www.intellectbooks.com/transitions-journal-of-transient-migration#call-for-papers

Special Issue co-guest editors:

CALL FOR PAPERS

Crossroads VIII: Alterity And The Comparative Imagination

University of Massachusetts Amherst, Program in Comparative Literature | Amherst, MA

April 10-11, 2026 (In-person conference)

Popular Culture Association

Animals and Popular Culture Intrest Area

April 8-11, 2026

Atlanta, Georgia, USA

https://sites.google.com/view/2026pcaconference/home

Call for Papers for an Edited Volume

Train Narratives in India: Marking 100 Years of the Electric Train in India (1925–2025)

Concept Note

2025 marks the centenary of the electric train in India, a moment that invites us to reflect on the rich and complex presence of trains in the subcontinent’s cultural imagination. From their colonial introduction as instruments of control and commerce to their transformation into symbols of progress, partition, migration, and everyday life, trains have profoundly shaped the way India moves—and tells stories.

Call for Papers

The Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS)

American Literature Association

37th Annual Conference

May 20-23, 2026

Palmer House

17 East Monroe Street

Chicago, IL 60603

Panel: Where There’s Life: Reading Liberated Futures in Multiethnic Literature

The Lasting of the Mohicans: The Leather-stocking novels and legacy

Commemorating the 200-year anniversary of James Fenimore Cooper’s second Leather-stocking novel, The Last of the Mohicans (1826) and its enduring legacy across media and culture, the JFC Society invites proposals that explore topics related to Cooper’s popular novel and/or its influence and legacy. We particularly (but not exclusively) welcome proposals that focus on The Last of the Mohicans and its iconic figures, however proposals that explore the Leather-stocking novels individually or in series, their influence, adaptations, place in the national imaginary, and/or other related concerns or themes.

Chair: TBA

Networks in transatlantic transfers and migrations (19th-21st centuries)

Call for Papers

International symposium

21-22 May 2026

University of Southern Brittany – Lorient (France)

The Atlantic Ocean holds a significant place in the history of human mobility, be it forced (in the case of the slave trade for example) or voluntary, as the successive waves of colonists and then migrants who settled in America show.

Then, within the framework of Migration studies, this two-day conference will focus on population movements between the continents which edge the Atlantic Ocean: Europe, America and Africa.

Call for PapersCyber-Intimacies: Queer and Feminist Interventions in Global Cyber Politics

Edited by Amy Lind, Stephen Bryant, and Prateek Srivastava

Abstract Submission Deadline: December 15th, 2025

In recent years, diverse fields related to literature and science studies, such as the medical humanities, critical neurodiversity studies, and the study of the haptic, have been re-evaluating the human body, its histories, and the impact of those histories today. At the same time, fields such as feminist theory, critical race theory, trans studies, and disability studies have deployed embodied perspectives to re-evaluate how we understand history and historical narratives.

In Memoir: An Introduction, Thomas Couser observes that the recent memoir boom has also
given rise to the “some body” memoir, allowing marginalized voices to enter mainstream
discourse. These accounts, he notes, often possess a performative dimension, one that enacts
the clear message: “I’m here, and I can speak for myself.” As such, life narratives by women,
racial minorities, LGBTQ writers, and individuals living with disabilities or illness extend beyond
the detailing of events; they undertake the critical work of interrogating social and cultural
concerns.