The paradigmatic scene in a Western – witnessed in numerous movies, such as High Noon (1952), The Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957), or Tombstone (1993), as well as in classic western novels, such as Louis L’Amour’s The Lonesome Gods (1983) or Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove (1985) – is that of a confrontation between a sheriff and a bandit: it suggests the forces of civilization taking hold on the frontier, even if tentatively, and ultimately a triumph of the order imposed to protect those in need of protection.

Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds 

Special Issue 3/2026

“Save State: Ethics, Politics, and Poetics of Game Preservation”

Guest Editors: Paweł Frelik (University of Warsaw), Magdalena Kozyra (SWPS University), Tomasz Z. Majkowski (Jagiellonian University)  

Latina/o/x Literature and Culture Society, ALA, Chicago, Illinois, May 20-23, 2026

This year, the Latina/o/x Literature & Culture Society welcomes submissions focusing on diverse topics, including literary genre, single authors, children’s literature, speculative fiction, comparative analyses, as well as cultural studies approaches. The society also encourages a variety of theoretical and interdisciplinary prisms, and a variety of panel types, including traditional paper sessions, roundtable discussions, and sessions dedicated to the teaching of Latina/o/x literature and culture.

February, 26-28, 2026 at Freed-Hardeman University

The Tennessee Philological Association (TPA) is now accepting submissions for the 2026 Conference to be held at Freed-Hardeman University February 26-28, 2026.

Joyce Studies Annual Call for Papers.     

JAMES JOYCE; OR, THE IMITATION MACHINE

The development of Large Language Models (LLM) that can output language resembling human-made work have reinvigorated questions regarding the machine in literary production and scholarship.

Call for Papers and Workshops: “History up for Debate: Literature, Storytelling and the Imagined Past” 

1-2 July 2026, University of Salzburg, Department of English and American Studies, Unipark Nonntal 

Conference within the Framework of the Salzburg Conferences on English Literature and Culture (SEC) 

Organisers: Dorothea Flothow, Julia Hartinger, Sarah Herbe, Christopher Herzog, Eva-Maria Kubin, Markus Oppolzer, and Elisabeth Schober 

***DEADLINE EXTENDED TO JAN. 15th 2026***

Medieval Engagements with Disability

This edited volume aims to explore the concept of veleno, that is poison, in its material and symbolic
dimensions, examining how it functions as a cultural construct and/or a discursive category within
Italian literature—considered in dialogue with cultural practices and discursive uses of language—
from the Middle Ages to the contemporary period.
Across Italian cultural history, poison operates on a threshold between pharmakon (in its Derridean
sense) and toxin, between language that heals or contaminates, between scientific knowledge and
moral accountability. Far from being confined to medical or chemical meanings, poison emerges as a

Call for interest (sign-up below) in a Society for the Study of Unconventional Prose Fiction from the US, 1950-2001.

 We're creating a scholarly society for studying unconventional US fiction from the era usually called "postmodern" - sign up here - https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1_n10FmXmaJ1fNmIfzTlozM7udW4RgEMZcpWu4lGWIzs/ - and see below for more details...

ALA 2026: Society for the Study of American Travel Writing CFP

CALL FOR PAPERS – Deadline, January 21, 2026

Society for the Study of American Travel Writing

American Literature Association 37th Annual Conference

May 20-23, 2026, in Chicago, IL.

Special Issue on Brutalism in the Global Novel

Guest Editors: Om Prakash Dwivedi, om_dwivedi2003@yahoo.com and Madhurima Nayak, madhurimanayak@gmail.com, both of Chandigarh University, India

Reminder: CFP due soon. Please reach out with any questions!

Special Issue, Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film Call for Papers: 

Adapting Thackeray 

Beauty and the Revival of Faith will take place on 8-10 May, 2026, at the Archbishop’s Palace, Southwell, Nottingham, U.K. 

We are pleased to announce the 5th Hawaiʻi International Conference on English Language and Literature Studies (HICELLS 2026), which will be held at the Univrsity of Hawaii at Hilo on March 13 - 14, 2026. This year's conference theme is "Teaching and Learning English Language and Literature in a Changing World: Global Trends and Transformative Practices," aims to explore the emerging global trends in English language teaching and literary studies, including curriculum innovation, assessment practices, digital integration, and multilingual education.

The Department of English and Communications at South Carolina State University invites proposals for 20-minute individual papers, panels of 3–4 presenters, roundtable discussions, and creative performances or multimedia presentations for the 2026 SC State Intersectional Studies Remote Conference (ISC), which will be held on Friday, March 27, 2026 via Zoom. In addition to proposals from faculty affiliated with higher education institutions, we welcome proposals from independent scholars, graduate students, and undergraduate students from all fields and disciplines. 

A small forest area that holds ecological, historical, cultural, religious and spiritual value, and is protected by the local community, can be understood as a ‘Sacred Grove’. The term ‘sacred’ signifies the importance of these groves as they protect different species despite depletion of forest areas around them. The prohibition to collect or remove any resources from these sacred groves conserve plants, parasites, animals, herbs, and even maintain the water and soil compositions (Khan et al, 2008). As a result, these sites serve as living records of geographical and ecological past, making them invaluable spaces for scientific research.

The Literary, Interdisciplinary, Theory, and Culture Organization (LITCO) at Purdue University invites participants for our sixth annual symposium, “Memory, Identity, and Transformation Throughout Literature, Theory, and Culture.” We are interested in scholarly projects that discuss past, present, and future intersections of memory, identity, and transformation, including readings that challenge or rearticulate these themes as conceptual categories. We welcome papers that interact with these themes within the scope of their scholarly arguments or discuss texts that deal with their various manifestations on a literary, political, social, or cultural level.

Call for Papers

Philip K. Dick at 100: Fiction, Philosophy, and Cultural Afterlives

Edited Volume (Centenary Collection)

Editor:
Ercan Gürova, Ph.D.
Ankara University, Turkey

“Under consideration for publication by a reputable international academic publisher.”

The Medieval Comics Project would like to organize a session on comics for the 46th Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum to be held at Keene State College in Keene, New Hampshire, on Friday and Saturday, 10-11 April 2026.

Presentations can be in-person or remote. 

Possible topics might include 

• “comics” of the medieval and/or Renaissance eras

• comics adaptations of medieval and/or Renaissance literary texts

• comics depictions of medieval and/or Renaissance historical events

Call for Proposals –- Oxford Handbook of the Harlem Renaissance

Text and Texture: Rethinking Materiality in Adaptation Studies

[Edited Collection]

Concept Note

The Margaret Fuller Society invites proposals for a panel at ALA 2026 about teaching in difficult times. As we head into the spring 2026 semester—the mid-point in an academic year when students and educators read U.S. literature amidst rising book bans, closing degree programs and DEI offices, and even the dismantling of the Department of Education—many of us are facing existential crises about how to do what matters to us most. How to support our students? How to sustain our disciplines? How to teach in ways that do justice to our subjects? The most basic day-to-day parts of our teaching lives have never felt more vulnerable—or more urgent.

The Media Mapper project is accepting proposals for the Spring Semester Symposium, which will be held on April 17, 2026, at the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC) at the Annenberg School of Communication, University of Pennsylvania. Please submit your proposals to Ennuri Jo (ennuri.jo@asc.upenn.edu) by Monday, January 12, 2026 11:59pm EST. 

CARGC invites early-career film and media scholars, doctoral candidates, and multimodal media practitioners to try out a new digital humanities tool, Media Mapper, and present their creation to the Annenberg and the UPenn community in CARGC’s Spring Semester Symposium.