The Forum Section invites scholars to reflect on the different ways that their research and/or pedagogy has intertwined with their lives in relation to the theme of the Volume. It is a more immediate exploration of how one’s research is shaped out of one’s personal experiences and positionalities. This section was introduced in 2023, encouraging contributors to experiment with styles outside academic writing to tease out the intricacies of pedagogy, research, and lived experience. Forum pieces can be more personal and self-reflective, and can include open ended enquiries. There are aspects of research that never make it to the research paper.

Throughout the history of political thought and cultural production, multitudes and mobs that stir up disturbance across the nation, whether revolutionary or reactionary, have frequently been portrayed by the images and metaphors of monstrosity. From the many-headed hydra which was adapted into a political discourse in the early modern age and later revisited by historians such as Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, to contemptuous terms toward the insurrectionists such as swarms or locusts described in Samuel Dolbee’s Locusts of Power, monstrosity and various of dehumanizing terms have long been employed as a signifier through which fears of insurrections are expressed.

Mediapolis – A Journal of Cities and Culture is an interdisciplinary open access online journal, drawing a connection between culture and the built environment – understood in the broadest sense. We publish research in different forms, from research articles to Q&A interviews and readings list, and across different academic fields, including but not limited to media studies, urban studies, geography, architecture and art history as well as digital humanities. 

Keynote speaker: Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock (Central Michigan University)

May 20-21st 2027, University of Zadar (Zadar, Croatia)

CONFERENCE

2026 PAMLA Conference, taking place November 12–15 at the Hyatt Regency Seattle

SESSION/PANEL ABSTRACT

The British Women Writers Association (BWWA) seeks organizers for our
2028 conference and beyond, both in the United States and abroad. The
BWWA’s mission is to bring women from the margins to the center of
literary history by promoting scholarship on and the teaching of long
18th-and 19th-century British women writers in diverse global and
cultural contexts. In practice, the conference invites papers
addressing women’s writing as early as 1660 and as late as 1920,
inclusive of the work of transatlantic and Anglophone authors.

5th Annual UC Irvine Global Asias International Conference

February 18–19, 2027
UC Irvine

Keynote Speaker:
Paul Nadal, Princeton University

Early Career Publishing Workshop:
Tina Chen, Penn State

CFP: https://sites.uci.edu/globalasias/ga27/
Proposal Form: https://bit.ly/ga27cfp/

CALL FOR PAPERS

‘The pluralism of a postcolonial or decolonial philosophy of religion should be “on both ends” of the discipline; that is, both the phenomena and subjects considered and contemplated by the discipline should be diverse, but also the people, perspectives, and methods engaged in this project should come from diverse backgrounds—not only in terms of race, class, gender, geography, etc. but also in terms of ritual practice, training (both academic and otherwise), initiation or membership in tribes, societies, or “religious” traditions.’

—Oludamini Ogunnaike, “Expanding the Menu or Seats at the Table? Grotesque Pluralism in the (Post)Colonial Philosophy of Religion.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 89, no. 2 (2021): 734.

Fantasy has long explored lifeworlds and paradigms outside of societal norms. Orlando, Virginia Woolf’s gender-fluid protagonist, declares, ‘I'm sick to death of this particular self. I want another.’ World myths, legends, folk tales, and fairy tales are early promoters of gender-fluidity, populated by the likes of Inanna/Ishtar; Hermaphroditus, the offspring of Hermes and Aphrodite; androgynous Dionysus; Ardhanarishvara; Ometeotl; Guanyin; cross-dressing thunder and trickster gods; heartsick seafaring maidens disguised as sailors; and the mercurial ontologies of the Fae. In this issue we will explore how gender is portrayed and explored in Fantasy.

An interdisciplinary space for critical reflectionThe Social Contract in Dispute: Discourse, Legitimacy and Transformation  

Living in a context of intense political tensions and polarisations that threaten how society is organised and the fundamentals of democratic legitimacy, the 28th International Meeting of Research and Investigation (EIRI) is dedicated to reflecting on the social contract and its contemporary transformations.

The 123rd Annual Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) Conference will take place this November in Seattle, Washington, from November 12-15, 2026.

Call for Papers and Artworks

Queer Ecology and the Supernatural 

A Two-day Symposium and Exhibition at Loughborough University 18th-19th September 2026

CALL FOR PAPERS
Queering Professional and Technical Communication: Intersectional Approaches to Theory and Practice

Editor: Trent M. Kays, PhD

Conference Dates - Nov. 12th to 15th 2026

Location: Seattle, Washington (USA) - The Hyatt Regency Seattle

Call for Papers: Dramatherapy

Special Issue: ‘Dramatherapy with Children and Young People’

Guest Editor

Meabh Ivers, independent dramatherapist

meabhivers@yahoo.co.uk

Deadline

Full papers: 20 July 2026

View the full call here>>

[EXTENDED DEADLINE] CALL FOR PAPERS FOR DIALOG JOURNAL

Special Issue No. 47

Theme: Creative Afterlives of Texts

Note from the Editor: Owing to technical difficulties, the journal website has not yet been updated to display the revised and extended submission deadline (12th June, 2026). Please consider the extended deadline communicated through this announcement as official and valid.

Industrial Modernity: Energy, Labor, and Media in 20th Asia

CFP: MW/SWCCL, “Taking Care”

Midwest/Southwest Conference on Christianity and Literature

College of the Ozarks
Point Lookout, Missouri
September 25-26, 2026

Keynote Speaker: Jeffrey Bilbro, professor of English at Grove City College and editor-in-chief at Front Porch Republic

The tenth annual Brandeis Novel Symposium (BNS), which will take place on Friday, October 23, 2026, invites proposals for papers on Han Kang’s 2014 novel Human Acts (original title: 소년이 온다, or A Boy Comes; English translation by Deborah Smith). The Brandeis Novel Symposium is a one-day conference that chooses a single novel as a point of focus for salient theoretical, historical, political, and narratological questions about the novel as a genre. (See the 2025 BNS websiteand this archive for more information about the BNS.)

Call for Proposals: Star Trek and the CourtroomAn Edited Collection on Justice, Law, and the Trial in Star Trek

We invite proposals for an edited volume examining trial and courtroom episodes across the Star Trek franchise. From “Court Martial” (TOS) to “Ad Astra per Aspera” (SNW), Star Trek has used the trial format to explore questions of personhood, justice, military law, civil rights, ethical responsibility, and the limits of legal systems. These episodes serve as philosophical laboratories, testing the boundaries of law when confronted with, for example, artificial intelligence, alien cultures, time travel, and evolving definitions of sentience and citizenship.

Conference online: 20-21 August 2026

ABOUT THE CONFERENCE: 

Theme: Is it a Wonderful Life?

Wonder (n.): a feeling of surprise or awe, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable

Wonder (v.): to feel some doubt or curiosity; to be desirous to know or learn.

Wondrous (adj.): marvelous; wonderful. 

PAMLA 2026 is pleased to present Pacific Northwest Literatures (https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/Home/S/20023)!

Past and present, the Pacific Northwest has functioned in literature as a dynamic space defined by transition, ecological precarity, and socio-political friction. This panel explores writers of fiction, poetry, memoir, and non-fiction whose work investigates the unique sense of place, history, and culture defining the region. We welcome papers that engage with the tensions between industry and preservation, indigenous sovereignty, labor movements, and the mythologies of the western wilderness.

PAMLA 2026 is pleased to present New Directions in Mark Twain Studies (co-sponsored by the Mark Twain Circle) (https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/Home/S/20184)!