Keynote Speakers: Michele Aaron (University of Warwick) and Jean-Baptiste Thoret (Université
de Poitiers)

Epistemologies and Pathways to Truth

The University of Maryland’s Graduate English Organization (GEO) invites proposals relating to the theme of “Epistemologies and Pathways to Truth” for our 19th annual graduate student conference, to be held in person on Friday, March 27, 2026 at UMD, College Park. 

12–14 March 2026

Queer Bibliography in the South:

Space, Place, Community

Athens, GA and online

Queer Bibliography invites proposals for papers considering how gender, sexuality, and textuality intersect with place in the production of queer identity.

Paper proposals are welcome on any aspect of Hardy’s life, work, and legacy for the Twenty-Seventh International Hardy Conference and Festival (Dorchester, Dorset, UK; July 25th—August 1st 2026). Significant Hardy anniversaries in 2026 include the 150th anniversary of The Hand of Ethelberta, the 140th anniversary of The Mayor of Casterbridge, the 120th anniversary of The Dynasts (Part 2), and the 110th anniversary of Selected Poems. Proposals for papers on any of these anniversary texts are especially welcome.

Papers should be planned for delivery times of a maximum of 20 minutes (approximately 2000 words).

For the occident, a surprising cultural norm in India is that of men holding hands. Seen as unconventional and in sharp contrast to the West, the phenomenon symbolic of India (in particular) and South Asia at large became a project in 2018, whereby photographer Vincent Dolman created a series depicting an organic and intimate aspect of male friendship. Appreciating such uninhibitedness in a country given to rampant homophobia and toxic masculinity, Dolman, in one of his interviews, observes how such practices hold a mirror to society and societal conventions of masculine constructions and performances. 

Duplicity/Duplicität: Betwixt intimates and strangers.

Opening Symposium of the collaborative research project Studies in Remoteness. Sensoria of Absence, Distance and Neglect.

https://userblogs.fu-berlin.de/remoteness/winter-symposium-2026/ 
https://www.nsuweb.org/circle-1-studies-in-remoteness-sensoria-of-absenc...

January 29-31 2026. 

Call for additional chapters for an edited collection (under consideration by publisher): proposals due November 16, 2025

Land of the Free, Home of the Brave?: American Children’s Literature in an Era of Heightened Censorship

In a country advocating, loudly, the rights of the individual, what about child readers? Are they granted an expansive vision of their world? What rights do children have where books are concerned?

Call for Submissions

Queering Sikh Identity and Desire through Lyrical Uprisings and the Poetics of Becoming

We invite poets from India and its diaspora to submit work that explores queerness in relation to their Sikh identity, sexuality, and the body. You do not need to identify as LGBTQIA+ to contribute—this call is open to those navigating self-discovery through poetry, as well as those who affirm and celebrate their queerness on the page.

The Journal of Popular Romance Studies is calling for papers for its Special Issue “Romancing the Posthuman” focusing on romance, critical love studies and posthumanism.

“Neurodivergent just means a brain that diverges.” – Kassiane Asasumasu, Radical Neurodivergence Speaking

The first year of Neurodivergent Studies at the PCA, in New Orleans in 2025, showed that there was marked interest in developing this field and expanding conversations. Neurodivergent Studies, a field that has long been relegated to more scientific study, is ready to move into different spaces as we start conversations about how neurodivergent approaches to popular culture, fandom, academia, and our own experiences can shape the way we approach the world.

Status Quaestionis 2026

Post-truth and populism in politics, communication and discourse

Edited by Massimiliano Demata and Donatella Montini

Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration (SPARC) Sponsored Workshop on 

Precarity and Human Life: Reflections of Artificial Intelligence in Literature and Popular Culture 2.0

Date: 15th-19th December 2025

Department of Humanities and Social Sciences

Call for Papers, Latinx Literature at CEA 2026

March 26-28, 2026 | Charlotte, NC

Hilton Charlotte University Place

The College English Association, a gathering of scholar-teachers in English studies, welcomes proposals for presentations on special topic in Latinx Literature for our 55th annual conference. Submit your proposal at www.cea-web.org

The online issue of Negotiations: An International Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies, the bi-annual journal of the Department of English, University of North Bengal,  has been published. The journal is now inviting submissions for its December, 2025 issue. The details of the journal can be found at https://negotiations.nbu.ac.in . All details regarding the submission procedure, processes of free registration, current issue, style sheet can be obtained from the journal website.

Conference: 4-5 December 2025

Gdańsk (Poland) and online

Peace in the Age of Forever Wars

Temple University

April 3–4, 2026

Today, the Cold War is theorized through the organizational structure of the nation state (political knowledge) and area studies (institutional knowledge). Yet, in this framework, the key role of language—in diplomacy, intelligence, interrogation, and more—is often underlooked. Indeed, the Cold War and the ongoing cold war of today as a cultural, diplomatic exchange relies fundamentally on translation. While language has been privileged within area studies, with its focus on literary translation (Okada 2002), the perforation of the concept of “language” itself as a tool and weapon during the Cold War deserves greater analysis (Martin-Nielsen 2010, Haddadian-Moghaddam & Scott-Smith 2020).

CFP: Lexicon for Animacy

In 2015, i-D magazine declared the year of the ‘sad girl’ (Thelandersson 2022: 157). In the decade since, portrayals of depressed, anxious, and mentally burdened women have scarcely abated, from the breakout success of Sally Rooney to the emergence of Sad Girl BookTok to Gen Z’s recent rediscovery of Lana Del Rey. Meanwhile, in the academy, subfields such as Affect Theory, Disability Studies, and Madness Studies represent growing areas of interest for increasing numbers of researchers and students.

The Hemingway Letters Project, under the direction of General Editor Sandra Spanier and Associate Editor Verna Kale, invites proposals for the panel "The Hemingway Letters Project: Emerging Research" to be presented at the 21st Biennial Hemingway Conference, July 20-25, 2026 in Toronto.

Edouard Glissant and Michael Wiedorn call us to “think” with or like a geography. Evolving out of cultural studies, island and archipelagic studies have spurred a conversation regarding the connection between geography and culture. While Glissant and Wiedorn were particularly preoccupied with thinking (like) an archipelago, it is possible yet to conceive of other modes of geographical thought. Transatlantic, island, and even aquatic matrices of culture and geography have been well documented and studied. This panel welcomes submissions in the field of archipelagic and island studies and is particularly interested in papers exploring methods of geographical thought, the relationship between geography and culture, in the US South.

The Western genre has been widely read within the confines of a national cinema and culture of the United States. However, the field of Film Studies has increasingly sought to emancipate the Western genre from discourses of American myth and identity, instead exploring its ongoing production, circulation, and reception beyond the borders of the United States (including Miller 2013; Higgins 2015; Mayer 2022, among many more). This body of work has significantly expanded our understanding of the Western’s transnational dimensions by highlighting the genre’s local rewritings on a global scale, and unpacking the complex transcultural negotiations involved in appropriating what is often considered an inherently American genre.

[re]frame is an online academic space that aims to amplify and foster early career scholarship as well as provide space for academic dialogue in postcolonial studies and related fields of study. Our academic blog is committed to investigating and problematising the complexities of forms of colonial, anticolonial, and decolonial patterns, phenomena, and infrastructures, as well as how they manifest in literary and cultural studies. Formed under the aegis of the GAPS (Association for Anglophone Postcolonial Studies), [re]frame encourages investigations of academia and academic practices, such as the colonial legacies of universities and the coloniality of knowledge systems that inform epistemologies.

THE LANGUAGES OF FASHION: CRITICAL REFLECTIONS ON FASHION DISCOURSESFashion Highlight Journal Call for paper Issue 7 (2026)

Guest editors Benjamin Wild and Natalia Berger

Fashion has been personified as the younger sister of Death, a daughter of Caducity. It has been portrayed as a lifelong companion and described as capitalism’s favourite child. It has been conceptualised as a belief, a system, and an empire. These varied characterisations hint at fashion’s complexity as both cultural phenomenon and global industry.