FEMSPEC, an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal dedicated to challenging gender through speculative means in any genre, seeks volunteers to fill the following role:

Proofreader

Duties include:

Proofreading all material to be published in the journal.  This includes scholarly articles, book and media reviews, event coverage, and other material.  Note that proofreading is restricted to correcting errors of grammar, punctuation, citation, and phrasing - the Proofreader will not be reviewing or altering the content of the submitted material (this is covered in the peer review process).

Since the release of the Canadian-produced streaming TV show Heated Rivalry, the show and its actors have exploded across traditional and social media, prompting wide discussions about sexuality in sports and the female consumption of MM (male/male) romance. Based on the Game Changers novel series by Rachel Reid, Heated Rivalry follows the illicit romance between two male hockey players. In the months since, both NHL ticket and queer romance novel sales have skyrocketed; parodies of Heated Rivalry have popped up on SNL and off-Broadway stages.

CALL FOR PAPERS2026 Technology for Second Language Learning ConferenceOctober 15-16, 2026Hybrid (Online & Iowa State University)

The Constructed Agents theme provides a forum for exploring how humans develop their understanding of AI agents from their exposure to representations of agents in literature and film. The conference explores how and to what extent representations of non-human sentient agents such as Frankenstein’s creature in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel and Hal in 2001 Space Odyssey may shape views of today’s language-using AI agents including those for language learning.

International Conference

VASSALS AND LORDS. CHRISTIANS, MUSLIMS, AND JEWS

IN THE WESTERN MEDITERRANEAN (13TH-15TH CENTURIES)

October 26-28, 2026

Faculty of Geography and History, UNED

Madrid (Spain)

Building the Avant-Garde Abroad: East-Central European Artists in Paris

18–19 September, 2026, Institut Bibliothèque Polonaise de Paris 

Call for Papers: Contemporary Approaches to Film Noir (#MLA27)

Modern Language Association (MLA) 2027 Convention 

Los Angeles, CA

7–10 January 2027

Film noir has evolved far beyond its mid-century origins, and has become a versatile and vital site for representing and intervening into contemporary realities. In preparation for an MLA 2027 special session proposal, this panel seeks papers that investigate noir films with cutting-edge approaches. We invite papers that engage with the following topics, including, but are not limited to:

Dear colleagues, 

Faculty of Foreign Languages is pleased to announce two confirmed keynote speakers: Prof. Jozef Štefčik (Bratislava University of Economics and Business) and Prof. Danimir Mandić (Faculty of Education, University of Belgrade).

Our 15th International Conference on Language and Literary Studies will be held on 29 and 30 May 2026. The topic for this edition of our annual conference is

LANGUAGE, LITERATURE, AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

In the light of girl-centric third-wave feminism and critical regionalism, contemporary American and Canadian literary and cultural texts present innovative girlhoods enabling expansive and emancipatory processes. Please submit an abstract (250 words) and a short bionote.

Deadline for submissions: Friday, March 20, 2026

Mercedes Albert-Llacer, Universitat Jaume I (mllacer@uji.es)

https://mla.confex.com/mla/2027/webprogrampreliminary/Paper33899.html

On Sean Bonney: Poetic Radicalism at the Turn of the Third Millennium

A two-day international conference to take place at

Université Paris Cité

10th and 11th of December, 2026

Organising committee:

Bastien Goursaud (Université de Picardie – Jules Verne)

Andrew Hodgson (Université Paris Cité)

Abigail Lang (Université Paris Cité)

Elise Legal (Université Paris 8)

Sean Mark (Université Catholique de Lille)

This panel explores the promises and provocations of monstrous and ghostly figures in feminist and queer speculative fiction, focusing on gendered human and nonhuman bodies. We are particularly interested in how monsters articulate socially ingrained fears and anxieties about women, queer communities, and the nonhuman world, as well as the desires and apprehensions they evoke toward the impossible, the fantastic, or the supernatural. Contributors might consider how these monstrous imaginings shape, challenge, or expand the category of “us,” offering critical insights into who is included, who is excluded, and on what grounds.

 This panel invites 250-word abstracts on creative and aesthetic expressions of emancipation emerging from refugee, diasporic, and forcibly dispossessed contexts across the Global South, examining resistance, agency, and world‑making within displacement and humanitarian regimes.

Why is close reading a particularly valuable learning strategy/professional practice at the current moment? This MLA seminar (a guaranteed session) seeks participants interested in thinking and talking through aspects of close reading with an eye towards producing pieces of public writing (e.g. an OpEd, think piece, lyric essay, call to action, etc. published in a newspaper, magazine, or periodical, in print or online). Topics for exploration may include, but are not limited to:

University of Toronto Quarterly (UTQ) is currently seeking submissions. Established in 1931, UTQ publishes innovative and exemplary scholarship from all areas in the humanities. As an interdisciplinary journal, UTQ favours articles that appeal to a scholarly readership beyond the specialists of a given discipline or field.

This in-person panel invites 250-word abstracts that examine women’s narratives, (self)representations, and forms of agency within resistance movements across film and digital platforms.

Related topics are welcome to be discussed.

Call for Papers: International Journal of Education Through Art

Special Issue: ‘Reimagining Place and Place-Based Art Education’

View the full call here>>

https://www.intellectbooks.com/international-journal-of-education-through-art#call-for-papers

Guest Editors:

Rabindranath Tagore and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, two of the greatest thinkers of the world had, between them, a kinship and appreciation of profound depth and mutuality. Both stood for universal humanism and emancipation of the dispossessed though their paths were seminally divergent.

Call for Proposals

Fan Studies Network North America Conference 2026 (virtual)

October 22-25, 2026

THE BOUNDARIES OF FAN STUDIES AND FANDOM

Hi all,

See the below CFP for a panel on Pacific early American literature for next year’s MLA. Please circulate to anyone you think might be interested!

This cfp is for a proposed seminar at MLA 2027, to be held in Los Angeles from 7 to 10 January 2027. This seminar explores classrooms as sites of care and repair through trauma-informed and inclusive pedagogies and institutional courage, engaging embodiment, memory, and affect as approaches to trauma and learning. Submit a 200-word abstract and bio.

Deadline for submissions: Friday, March 20, 2026

Submit your abstract via email to:

Aimee Pozorski, Central Connecticut State University (pozorskia@ccsu.edu ) Aili Pettersson Peeker, University of California, Santa Barbara (aili@writing.ucsb.edu )  

Paraphrasing Linda Hutcheon, the neo-Victorians have a habit of adapting just about everything – and in just about every possible direction. The stories of Victorian poems, novels, plays, operas, paintings, songs, dances, and tableaux vivants are constantly being adapted from one medium to another and then back again not only on film, television, radio, and digital or social media, but also theme parks, historical enactments, and virtual reality experiments. In this meeting, we would like to explore the interactions and connections between the different ways contemporary culture engages with the traces of the Victorian past as well as how these different genres or expressions interact.

Beyond Human: Unruly Senses of Being, Knowing, and Feeling Existence

UCSD Literature Department Graduate Student Conference  

University of California, San Diego 

In-Person, May 15-16, 2026

Call for papers: Mythical Archipelagos: Islands, Narratives, and Imaginaries Across Cultures and Media

International Interdisciplinary Seminar

University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain)

14–15 May 2026 | Hybrid format

The seminar explores islands as mythical, symbolic, and narrative spaces across cultures and media. We welcome interdisciplinary contributions from island studies, environmental humanities, anthropology, cultural studies, linguistics, media studies, and related fields.

Abstract deadline: 30 March 2026

Full CFP and details:

FEMSPEC, an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal dedicated to challenging gender through speculative means in any genre, seeks volunteers to fill the following roles:

PRODUCTION EDITOR

Duties include:

Collating and formatting content for each new issue of the journal.  Liaising with the journal's editor and other volunteer collective members to make changes to the issue's content and layout until the end of each issue's production period.

This online panel seeks proposals that examine how humor, irony, and formal games use linguistic misbehavior to create new emotional landscapes, construct gendered subjectivities, and challenge traditional hierarchies across global literatures.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Puns, irony, or broken syntax and a gendered “I”
• Mis-translation and playfulness in translation
• Mixing languages and subjectivity
• Post-colonial parody
• Joy as defiance
• Humor in crisis
• Games based on works of literature

Please send a 250-word abstract and a brief bio to Dr. Haihong Yang (hyang@udel.edu) by March 15th.