The E. E. Cummings Society and the Society’s journal, Spring, invite abstracts for 20-minute papers for the 54th annual Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900, Feb. 18-20, 2027, at the University of Louisville (https://events.louisville.edu/conferences/list-conferences/louisville-conference-literature-and-culture).

In 1996, Carl Sagan warned us of a time when people would lose their ability to question, “when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few . . . when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.” Maybe Mr Sagan was somewhat pessimistic when writing The Demon-Haunted World. But then again, in times of conspiracy theories, Ancient Aliens, Antivaxxers, and Holocaust Deniers, the Age of Information appears just as capable of spreading dangerous frauds and charlatans as it is of disseminating reliable scholarship.

Public Humanities is a new international open access, cross-disciplinary, peer-reviewed journal at the intersection of humanities scholarship and public life. The journal invites proposals for themed issues that pose urgent questions on contemporary public issues that require rigorous and relevant humanities knowledge. 

The journal invites submissions to its upcoming Themed Issue ‘The How-To Issue’, which will be edited by Jeffrey R. Wilson. 

The deadline for submissions is 1 January 2025. 

Call for Papers
NeMLA’s 58th Annual Convention – “Empowering Communities”
March 6–9, 2027 | Salve Regina University, Newport, Rhode Island (Hybrid Conference)

Panel Title: Tracing Female Body, Art & Economy in the Global South

Primary Area / Secondary Area: Women’s and Gender Studies / Interdisciplinary Humanities
Modality: Hybrid
Chair: Maryam Raza (University of Auckland, New Zealand)

English Studies in the Twenty-First Century: Language, Literature, Digital Innovation, and Cultural Transformations

  Subthemes

Creativity and Praxis:

The Politics of Aesthetics in an Age of Polycrisis

An International Interdisciplinary Symposium, 1-2 October 2026

J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice

Adelaide University

North Terrace, Adelaide, South Australia, 5000, Australia

Keynote Readings and Lectures by: 

J.M. Coetzee 

Anna Funder

Nam Le

Amy Villarejo

CfP: Death and Desire in Devotional Literature

International Congress on Medieval Studies 2027, Kalamazoo MI May 13-15, 2027

International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo13-15 May 2027

Special Session (Hybrid)

2026 marks multiple milestones for the legacy of legendary Afrofuturist author Octavia E. Butler: fifty years since the publication of her first novel, Patternmaster (1976), and the twentieth anniversary of her passing, on February 24, 2006. It also marks the announcement of a film version of one of her most famous and most prophetic works, Parable of the Sower (1993), as well as the surprise republishing of her disavowed novel, Survivor (1978), for the first time since the 1980s. These anniversaries arrive at a moment when Butler’s work continues to gain public attention for its prescience and political relevance, and as she continues to amass scholarly attention across scholarly disciplines.

We are excited to announce that the Long Middle Ages, a seminar series for postgraduate students and early career researchers working on the Late Antique, Medieval, and Early Modern Periods, will be returning for a second series in Autumn 2026!

We welcome submissions of 30 minute papers from postgraduates and early career researchers working in any discipline and on any topic related to the late antique, medieval and early modern periods. Papers will be followed by time for questions and further discussion.

Seminars will commence in October 2026 and run on a fortnightly basis until mid-December.

Call for Papers | Society of Early Americanists

American Literature Association | “The American Novel: Forms, Genres, and Traditions”

November 5–7, 2026 | Santa Fe, NM

The Novel in/and Early America

For this upcoming ALA Symposium, the SEA invites papers and presentations that deal with any aspect of “The American Novel: Forms, Genres, and Traditions” prior to (approximately) 1830. Topics might include (but are not limited to):

This CfP contains two individual sessions grouped under the rubric 'Rethinking Ecotheory' for the 62nd International Congress on Medieval Studies. Please see information for both sessions and separate links to apply below! Both sessions are sponsored by Medieval Ecocriticisms. Abstracts for both sessions are due by September 15th, 2026. Please contact the organizers Hunter (hap48@cornell.edu) and Basil (basil.price@oneonta.edu) with any questions.

Overview

Tom Stoppard Conference – 28-29 January 2027 – Sorbonne Université

Co-organisers: EMMA (Université de Montpellier Paul-Valéry) and VALE (Sorbonne Université)

Sixty years after the premiere of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at London’s Old Vic Theatre (1967), and just over a year after the death of Sir Tom Stoppard on 29 November 2025, this international conference seeks to pay tribute to one of the playwrights who most profoundly shaped British theatre in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

In the summer of 2026, Elizabeth and Ines Soto were sentenced to fifty years in prison for their participation in the anti-ICE protests at Prairieland, including a charge of “providing material support to terrorists.” In the trial that led to these exorbitant sentences, the Sotos’ production and distribution of zines, including literature on protest strategy, anti-ICE arguments, gay and trans issues, and plant propagation, were used as evidence in their conviction. Their printing press (a home office printer) was confiscated by the FBI. At the same time, Daniel Sanchez Estrada, who was not present at the protest, was sentenced to thirty years for “concealing documents,” including zines labeled as “political literature.”

The year 2027 will mark the 50th anniversary of the controversial publication of Robert Coover’s The Public Burning. Both to celebrate the event and question its legacy, an international symposium will take place on 10-11 June 2027 in Paris, at Campus Condorcet. The call for papers is available here: https://publicburning50.sciencesconf.org/

Abstracts (300 to 350 words) together with a short biographical note should be sent by October 1st 2026 to the following address: publicburning50@sciencesconf.org

Keynote speakers: Alexandra Kleeman and Mark Doten

International Conference

Vladimir Nabokov: Contemporary Reception and Creative Legacy

April 28-30, 2027

Bordeaux Montaigne University

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Vladimir Nabokov’s passing, the French Vladimir Nabokov Society, in collaboration with the University of Bordeaux-Montaigne and the International Vladimir Nabokov Society, organizes its 10th International Conference, to be held April 28-30, 2027 in Bordeaux, France.

NeMLA2027 NORTHEAST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION 58th Annual Convention SALVE REGINA UNIVERSITY, NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND March 6-9, 2027   

This session invites submissions addressing films that represent the construction of identity through community within a colonial or postcolonial context. Possible topics might include postcolonial legacies in contemporary urban cinema (banlieue; borderlands); comparative analysis of films across colonial and postcolonial contexts; the role of space in structuring narratives of resistance; filmic representations of assertion of and resistance to state power; film as a means of intercultural and intertextual dialogue.

The Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center at Tel Aviv University and the Bud Shorstein Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Florida announce a call for papers for an upcoming international conference: After the Holocaust: Jewish Communities, Identities, and Intimacies in a Global Perspective

We welcome proposals from scholars working in history, sociology, anthropology, literary studies, religious studies, memory studies, and related fields. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Family formation, marriage, and kinship after the Holocaust

• Emotional lives of survivors: grief, hope, resilience, and belonging

7th International Conference (Online Mode)

on

Sustainability in Practice: Re-(Thinking) Literature, Society, and Culture

Date: 15th and 16th October, 2026 (Thursday & Friday)

To be Organized by

New Literaria- An International Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities

In Collaboration with

Department of History, Humanities and Society, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Italy

In her foundational text Immigrant Acts, cultural theorist Lisa Lowe argues that the Asian immigrant exists as a “perpetual foreigner within the body politic,” a figure through whom the nation-state defines its own boundaries and citizenship. For Lowe, Asian American cultural production emerges precisely from this “distance from the national culture,” serving as a site that critiques the state’s false promises of universal inclusion.

The Odyssey by Homer is one of the foundational texts of Western culture and has, since antiquity, served as a narrative and symbolic model of the human journey. Odysseus’ long nostos—his return to Ithaca after the Trojan War—is not merely a sequence of mythical adventures but rather a complex process of knowledge, transformation, and the recovery of identity. Already in the ancient world, the poem was interpreted on multiple levels—epic, ethical, and symbolic—and this layering of meanings has contributed to its extraordinary reception in the modern era.

This session extends scholarly conversations on how violence operates in the corpus of poetic and prose Brut texts. We welcome papers exploring violence as a mechanism for securing and projecting political power, as both a destructive force and a tool for empowerment. We also welcome investigations of poetic and rhetorical violence—including on how the translation and redaction of historical texts function as symbolic conquests—and intersections of violence and gender. Suggested topics include: the aesthetics and rhetoric of warfare, conquest, and displacement; gendered dynamics of violence, captivity, and resistance; and the role of environmental devastation (fire, plague) in historiography.

Submission Link: https://tinyurl.com/cwsc26cfp

"How come we can’t be together and think together in a way that feels good, the way it should feel good?"

- Fred Moten in The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study (117) cited in Emilio Carrero’s 2025 CWSC talk “The Creative Writer’s Unpayable Debts”

EBSN 14TH Annual Conference (Online)

The conference organizers invite proposals for papers, panels, roundtables, and creative performances for the14th Annual Conference of the European Beat Studies Network, which will take place via the online Google Meet platform, November 12-14, 2026.