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The Vampire Studies Area of the Popular Culture Association welcomes papers, presentations, panels, and roundtable discussions exploring all aspects of the vampire throughout global culture.
Our theme for PCA 2027 is L.O.V.E.
L = Lust
O = Obsession
V = Vitality / Virility
E = Eternity / Exsanguination
In literary fiction, the representation of consciousness has often been understood through what might be called the thought of looking: the ways narrative cognition renders a work into a perceptive, embodied, and self-reflexive experience through language. In cinema, by contrast, cognition typically becomes the look of thought: a mental interiority suggested through framing, editing, gesture, movement, and performance. Interactive stories told in videogames complicate this distinction through their intermedial nature. Games must not only represent what characters think, but also account for the player's "will to activity", translating the audience’s intentions into feedback, movement, and action.
Sappho’s Mirror: Images of Female Desire in Literature, Music & the Visual Arts
This seminar explores representations of female desire in music, literature and the visual arts. How have the complex poetics of female desire—the desire to have something, or escape something, or punish, or know—been represented over time? What strategies have been employed to subvert literary conventions defined predominantly by male perspectives on home, love, war, victory and loss? How have female characters navigated the interplay between things done overtly and thought covertly to reveal the inner web of desires, fears and conflicts that constitute a female poetics of love and longing?
This is a virtual session.
In the present digital era, the public sphere, as defined by Jürgen Habermas—a space where citizens negotiate power through collective discussion and political participation—has shifted on digital platforms.
Mirrors of Desire: Ekphrasis & Mise en Abyme in Literature, Music & the Visual Arts
This seminar invites papers that explore the concepts of ekphrasis, the mise en abyme, and metaphorical mirrors in literature, music, and the visual arts. How are mirrors used by artists as deliberate tools to represent something else? How are metaphorical mirrors used to compare different types of reflections across mediums? How are mirrors used to suggest that the aesthetic “surface” is a distraction, and true clarity lies in understanding what the observer or listener wants to see or hear? Papers focused on one medium or interdisciplinary approaches from the Ancient, Medieval, Modern, and Postmodern periods are welcome.
ACLA 2027 Virtual Symposium: What We Are Going to Become?: Dysphoria Mundi, Weird , Excess
Contact Information
Elif Sendur, es1037@scarletmail. rutgers.edu
es1037@scarletmail.rutgers.edu
URL
https://www.acla.org/seminar/476406f6-1280-48ea-a968-33ae461c37d5
Announcement Type
Conference
Subject Fields
Call For Papers
Issue VII: Reclaiming the City: Built Environment and Social Change
Call for Papers: 19th International Connotations Symposium
Irony: Dramatic and Otherwise
Tübingen, Germany, 25-28 July 2027
Call for Papers
Communal Life, Abolition, and Space
American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting
Houston, TX
May 20-23, 2027
Shakespeare Here, Shakespeare Now 27-30 May 2027, Cape Town, South AfricaThis conference, held as part of the thirteenth triennial congress of the Shakespeare Society of Southern Africa (SSOSA), invites delegates to reflect on and utilise the axes of space and time in making new contributions to the field of Shakespeare Studies.
Keynote Speaker: Farah Karim-Cooper (Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC)
This conference, held as part of the thirteenth triennial congress of the Shakespeare Society of
American Comparative Literature Association IN-PERSON 2027 Annual Meeting (May 20-23, 2027), Houston, Texas
Organizers: Dr. Julia Chan (Lingnan University)
Fatma Betul Ciftci (Lingnan University)
One is not born a monster; the monster is produced. From Beowulf to Ruthven to Dracula to cyborgs, ‘monster’ is a cultural construction, a humanly-produced non-human. This seminar invites scholars to discuss the monster both as a literary figure and as the representation and construction of a cultural and political identity. Through this, it aims to explore the question of where, why, and how monsters are produced, and what these monsterized creatures "show" about the communities that "produce" them.
Call for Abstracts!
’00s Alternative and Philosophy: Every Thought in its Right Place
Edited by Joshua Heter and Richard Greene
This MLA just-in-time panel explores the evolving status of non-binariness in trans studies and beyond. Following Marquis Bey’s Nonbinary Life, we ask: Is non-binariness an emancipatory narrative? What are its critical potentialities and limitations? Send 150-200 word abstracts + bio to m.stekl@colostate.edu by 8/21. (The MLA will take place in Los Angeles from 7 to 10 January 2027.)
This MLA just-in-time panel explores the evolving status of non-binariness in trans studies and beyond. Following Marquis Bey’s Nonbinary Life, we ask: Is non-binariness an emancipatory narrative? What are its critical potentialities and limitations? Send 150-200 word abstracts + bio to m.stekl@colostate.edu by 8/21. (The MLA will take place in Los Angeles from 7 to 10 January 2027.)
The Politics of Love: Recognition, Belonging, and Intimate Life
Co-edited by Arzu Opçin-Kıdal and Süleyman Bölükbaş
Conference Call for Papers
The Star Wars 50 Years academic conference will be held by the University of Leicester and the Leverhulme Centre for Humanity and Space at Space Park Leicester on 21-22 May 2027 in anticipation of the 50th anniversary of the original release of the film on 25 May 1977 in the U.S. We are now inviting proposals for conference presentations.
Conference Organisers:
Neurodivergent Studies – Popular Culture Association 2027
“Neurodivergent just means a brain that diverges.” – Kassiane Asasumasu, Radical Neurodivergence Speaking
Call for Papers: Dime Novels and Juvenile Series Books, PCA 2027
The PCA Dime Novels and Juvenile Series Books Area is accepting proposals for presentations at the next PCA/ACA annual conference, to be held in Boston, MA from March 24-27, 2027. See the PCA website for more information on the conference and submission guidelines.
Wear: Indexing the Human Body
52nd Annual Cleveland Symposium
Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio
Friday, November 13, 2026
Despite possessing intersecting histories and languages, Latin American studies and Latinx studies have historically been treated as separate fields of study. This panel seeks to spark a dialogue between fields by exploring themes of transhemispheric and archipelagic solidarity in Latinx and Latin American literature and media. Throughout the past and present century, how have Latinx and Latin American media—literature, film, art, or other forms—constructed expressions of community in dialogue with each other? How do works from Latin America reverberate in Latinx cultural productions, and how do Latinx cultural productions influence Latin American media?
Call for Abstracts / Papers for a Special Issue of MatLit (Materialities of Literature / Materialidades da Literatura), vol. 12, 2027, edited by Fabio Durao and Tim Lanzendörfer
https://impactum-journals.uc.pt/matlit/announcement/view/359
The "Forms" of Academic Work
Editors: Fabio Durão (UNICAMP) and Tim Lanzendörfer (Frankfurt University)
How was the concept of “hospitality” and “leisure” conceived by early American writers? Travelogues, whether from William Bartram, Sara Kemble Knight, or others, served as a major genre type during the period. Topics may include stays at early American hotels, the way that leisure was/is linked to social class, and the Caribbean and European vacation in the early American imagination. What regional places of leisure figured heavily in the early American cultural imaginary? How did Black writers and Native American writers conceive of entertainment and visitation? This panel seeks contributors who can speak to leisure and travel from writings that span the early part of American culture and history into the nineteenth century.
CALL FOR PAPERS FOR THE ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL DYNAREL CONFERENCE 2027
"Neighboring Textual and Intellectual Traditions: Dialogues, Polemics, and Translations"
Call for Papers
A Golden Age? Global Historical Fictions and Political Nostalgia
One-Day Online Workshop of the Historical Fictions Research Network
28 November 2026 (online in Zoom) ca 8 am to 5 pm (GMT)
15 min talks
The Historical Fictions Research Network, an interdisciplinary and international network of scholars examining historical fictions, i.e. narratives of the past in a variety of popular media, is happy to organise its 2026 one-day workshop on the topic of
“A Golden Age? Global Historical Fictions and Political Nostalgia”.
CALL FOR PAPERS — NeMLA 2027 Seminar
Salve Regina University, Newport, RI | March 6–9, 2027
Untameable Texts: The Eternal Return of Indigenous Cosmogonies and Their Myths
National Advanced Writing Symposium (NAWS) 2027 - January 29, 2027
Please use the link, below, to find a full description of our CFP for "Evolving Possibiilities: Futures of Advanced Writing."
The event is entirely ONLINE and FREE to both speakers and attendees.
Proposals are due Friday, September 25, 2026.
Call For Papers
The Popular Culture Association (PCA) annual conference will be held March 24-27, 2027 at the Boston Marriott Copley Place in Boston, Massachusetts. Scholars from a wide variety of disciplines will meet to share their Popular Culture research and interests. The Libraries, Archives & Museums area invites proposals dealing with any aspect of Popular Culture as it pertains to libraries, archives, museums, or related areas.
CALL FOR PAPERS — NeMLA 2027 Seminar
Salve Regina University, Newport, RI | March 6–9, 2027
Can Literary Criticism Break Free of the Silos Trap — and Carry Literature Along?
In the early 1950s, Lacan admonished psychoanalysts for operating within Newtonian epistemology fifty years after Einstein and Heisenberg had dismantled it. It may be worth asking ourselves whether we, literary critics, 125 years later, have adjusted our analytical machine — or, at least, whether it is necessary that we do.
Call for Papers
Title of the book: Necrocapitalism and Neoliberal Politics: Contemporary Literary and Cultural Responses in India Publisher: The contract has been signed with Springer Nature
Deadline for submission of full paper: 10 October, 2026
Volume editors:
Abhijit Maity
Assistant Professor, Lady Shri Ram College for Women
University of Delhi, India
Dr. Joydev Maity,
Faculty,
Department of English, Ravenshaw University, India
“A mind all logic is like a knife all blade.
It makes the hand bleed that uses it.”
Rabindranath Tagore
Stray Birds (1916)
Generative AI, LLMs, and NLP are transforming the humanities by reshaping meaning, interpretation, and representation. However, humanities scholars face a widening skills gap due to limited structured access. To address this, Department of English is organising a first-of-its-kind workshop at Visva-Bharati. The programme offers research scholars, faculty, and postgraduate students a useful and rigorous introduction to Digital Humanities and AI tools.
Maps, Mechanics and Mobilities: Landscape & the Geographic Imagination in Video Games27th & 28th May 2027 (In-Person, Newcastle University, UK) Since their inception, video games have been defined by, and grounded in, space and place: from the maze in The Temple of Rom (1982) to the Hyrulian depths in Tears of the Kingdom (2023), from the Holy Land of the Crusades in Assassin’s Creed (2007) to the noirish city of Detroit: Become Human (2018), and from the farms of Stardew Valley (2016) to the depths of Hell in Hades (2020), video games have been concerned with the relationship between the player-character, place, mobility, an
Urgent chapters are required for an upcoming collection, contracted to Peter Lang, Oxford. From existing chapters, this edited collection already clearly represents the areas of fact, fiction, and “inspired by”, with specific consideration to (fictional) serial killers, mass murderers, and their real-life counterparts.
At present, there are one or two areas of the collection that still require chapters – these will need to be delivered by 30 November 2026. Finished chapters should be approximately 2,500 words. I am welcoming abstracts of 250 words in the first instance, with no set deadline for abstract submissions – abstracts will be considered on a rolling basis until the chapter spaces are filled.
The Mystery & Detective Fiction Area of the Popular Culture Association invites proposals for the annual conference in Boston, Massachusetts, March 24-27, 2027, to be held at the Boston Marriott Copley Place (110 Huntington Ave., Boston, MA). The deadline for submission is October 31, 2026.
European Historical Game Studies
call for papers – ‘‘Exploring Kingdom Come: Deliverance’’
This panel invites papers on the topic of (re)vision—retelling, translating, adapting, re-seeing—literature in ways that engender community empowerment. There are myriad ways to revisit literary texts through new iterations, and it is often through the act of retelling and recrafting that subversive narratives are formed and new communities forged. This panel will explore how retelling a narrative shapes understandings of an original text, the community from which it was created, and the community into which it is being called forth. How can translation produce new entry points for readers into “foreign” texts, cultures, and languages? How might the adaptation of literature foster community across disciplines, ages, cultures, genders, and species?
Call for Book Chapters:
Heritage Meets Modernity:Memory, Identity, Community, and Millennial Transformations
An Edited Volume under the ICSSR Major Research Project
(2024-2025): Heritage Meets Modernity: Millennial Interventions in Redefining Kolkata's Culinary Topography
Jadavpur University, Kolkata
The Call for Papers for the TAAADS 2027 conference, taking place February 19-20 2027 at the University of Texas, Austin, is now live! The full CFP is available at https://tinyurl.com/TAAADS-2027. We're happy to have spent the past two years building this conference around Asian American studies in the South, and our CFP aims to continue this place-based scholarship through our conference theme, Circuits: Transpacific Technologies and Speculative Futures in the Asian American South.
CALL FOR PAPERS / Mid-twentieth-century American Women’s Crime Writing
(theme issue of Clues: A Journal of Detection)
Guest editors: Erin A. Smith (University of Texas at Dallas) and Clare Rolens (Palomar College)
This issue’s oxymoronic title, “Inconspicuously Fabulous,” calls attention to the generative tensions, limitations, and potentials of visuality as they pertain to minoritarian subjects. What does it mean to present oneself in and as excess while remaining unseen or unnoticed? Like madison moore, who offers a critical queer-of-color reiteration of economist Thorstein Veblen’s concept of “conspicuous consumption” as grotesque public display of economic power and prestige, we think through negotiated visibility as a survival strategy, or a pleasurable and simultaneously risky method of living as a spectacle in the margins.
A Two-day Symposium and Exhibition at Loughborough University 18th-19th September 2026
The American Humor Studies Association (AHSA) invites submissions for a proposed panel for the American Literature Association (ALA) 2027 symposium “Music and the American Literary Imagination,” to be held January 28-30, 2027, in Nashville, TN.
27th & 28th May 2027 (In-Person, Newcastle University, UK) Since their inception, video games have been defined by, and grounded in, space and place: from the maze in The Temple of Rom (1982) to the Hyrulian depths in Tears of the Kingdom (2023), from the Holy Land of the Crusades in Assassin’s Creed (2007) to the noirish city of Detroit: Become Human (2018), and from the farms of Stardew Valley (2016) to the depths of Hell in Hades (2020), video games have been concerned with the relationship between the player-character, place, mobility, and game-play mechanics. This conference asks how place and space have been represented in and mobilised in video games: we are interested in spaces of imagina
Every act of communication, interpretation, and representation is an act of framing. In literary analysis, a “frame” might define genre, direct narrative perspective, or position a text within a historical moment. In linguistics, frames organize semantic understanding, govern pragmatic interaction, and underpin metaphor. In translation and interpreting, frames are negotiated, shifted, and sometimes shattered in the movement between languages and cultures. They are the selective filters that highlight certain elements while relegating others to the background, the conceptual structures that allow us to categorize, interpret, and communicate complex realities.
The structure of Joan of Arc's early phase invites comparison to archetypal heroic narrative: reluctant departure, rejected petitioner, gatekeepers to persuade or evade, and the acquisition of skills and resolve before the great undertaking. Whether such comparisons illuminate Joan’s experience, distort it, or reveal more about her interpreters than Joan herself is the question this panel opens. What do we actually know about Joan before she became Joan? How have scholars, hagiographers, filmmakers, and popular adapters handled the silence and ambiguity of her early life? When Joan is made to fit a pattern, which Joan gets left out?
Thirty-Fourth International Conference on Learning, Aristotle University of Thessalonki, Thessaloniki, Greece, 7-9 July 2027
Founded in 1989, The Learner Research Network is brought together around a common concern for learning in all its sites, formal and informal, and at all levels, from early childhood, to schools, colleges and universities, and adult, community and workplace education. We seek to build an epistemic community where we can make linkages across disciplinary, geographic, and cultural boundaries. As a Research Network, we are defined by our scope and concerns and motivated to build strategies for action framed by our shared themes and tensions.
Seventeenth International Conference on The Constructed Environment, Queens University Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK, 14-15 April 2027
Founded in 2010, the Constructed Environment Research Network is brought together by a common shared interest in human configurations of the environment and the interactions among the constructed, social and natural environments. As a Research Network, we are defined by our scope and concerns and motivated to build strategies for action framed by our shared themes and tensions.
Seventeenth International Conference on The Constructed Environment will address the following annual themes and special focus:
Twenty-Third International Conference on Technology, Knowledge, and Society, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Scotland, 8-9 April 2027
Founded in 2005, the Technology, Knowledge & Society Research Network is brought together by a shared interest in the complex and subtle relationships between technology, knowledge and society.
Twenty-Third International Conference on Technology, Knowledge, and Societyfor research addressing the following annual themes and special focus:
2027 Special Focus—THE CYBER-SOCIAL CONDITION: Knowledge, Learning, and Human Futures
Theme 1: Histories of Technology
Theme 2: Knowledge Makers
Theme 3: Social Realities
American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting
University of Houston | May 20–23, 2027
Paper proposal deadline: September 22, 2026
What kinds of responses do encounters with nonhuman life, elemental forces, and damaged environments demand? How might environmental damage implicate us in debts that cannot be settled, repaid, or made good?
The digital infrastructure in today’s world mirrors the colonial administrative structure with its control over data, policing user’s behavior, and pushing narratives for the majoritarian political power. The global tech giants have as much sway in geopolitics as the global leaders themselves. Previously the conditions of colonization created an unequal economic infrastructure that marginalizes the local communities, and even after independence from the colonial power, the trade relations remain that of a colonial appendage. Similarly, the upkeep of the digital sphere is not without its economic and environmental hazards.
Call for Abstracts / Papers for a Special Issue of MatLit (Materialities of Literature / Materialidades da Literatura), vol. 12, 2027, edited by Fabio Durao and Tim Lanzendörfer
https://impactum-journals.uc.pt/matlit/announcement/view/359
The "Forms" of Academic Work
Editors: Fabio Durão (UNICAMP) and Tim Lanzendörfer (Frankfurt University)