Digital Projections and Screened Identities in US American Culture Virtual Conference | September 4–5, 2025 

Call for Papers for an Edited Volume

Gothic in Bengal: Literature and Culture

Call for Papers // Victorians: A Journal of Culture and Literature // Winter 2026 Special Issue: Reading Victorian Religion// Guest Editor, Amanda Vernon 

Aims and Scope of the Journal

Sapphic Echoes: Representations of Female Desire in Litererature and the Visual Arts

This panel asks questions and invites responses that explore representations of female love and desire in literature and the visual arts. How have the complex poetics of female love and 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? 

CFP From the European South, 19, Fall 2026

Special Issue: Dark Tourism in Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Contexts: Topographies of Suffering, Narrative Constructions and the Consumption of Place(s) 

Guest Editors: Eleonora Federici (University of Ferrara) and Marilena Parlati (University of Padova)

In the fictional world of ‘Cvstodia’, a nameless ‘penitent’ traverses a world in which the ‘miracle’ - a divine entity - is worshipped through physical torment and suffering in a gloomy body horror style. In doing so, ‘Blasphemous’ transforms the established conventions of the ‘souls-like’ genre: the difficulty typical of the genre and the cyclical approach to failure are theologically charged. The progress made by defeating boss enemies is enhanced by sacred weapons and rituals, while the level design is recontextualised as a spiritual pilgrimage. These elements are embedded in an elaborate ecclesiastical infrastructure and open up multiple levels of analysis, e.g:

This call for papers seeks to explore the rich and complex intersection of philosophical inquiry and narrative accounts of trauma and exile. Moving beyond disciplinary boundaries, it aims to investigate how philosophical concepts – such as subjectivity, time, memory, ethics, and belonging – are challenged, reshaped, and illuminated through the lived experiences and narrative expressions of those who have endured trauma and/or forced displacement.

Edited Collection: Teaching Twenty First Century Literature

The 17th Annual Louisiana Studies Conference will be held September 13, 2025, at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana. The conference committee is now accepting presentation proposals for the upcoming conference. Presentation proposals on any aspect of the 2025 conference theme “Louisiana Dramas,” as well as creative texts by, about, and/or for Louisiana and Louisianans, are sought for this year’s conference.

Call for Papers

Trans Joy in Latin American Cinema

Joy is a fundamental element of human life, yet its depiction in media and academic discourse— especially in relation to marginalized communities—remains limited. Representations of the trans* community, in particular, often center narratives of exclusion, violence, and trauma. As Shuster and Westbrook (2022) note, this tendency reflects a broader “joy deficit” in the sociological study of marginalized people, overshadowing the transformative power of joy and solidarity.

The family is often conceived in terms of exclusivity, closeness and intimacy. The word ‘intimate’ – intimus, or ‘most interior’, in the Latin – suggests that this relationship touches our innermost part, that which is deepest and hidden from view. Familial ties are further corporealized in terms of blood, or the physical proximity of shared space, resources, and memories, and acts of care. Broader ethnic, linguistic, cultural and national communities may be framed as extensions of this familial ‘inner circle’, as the concept of the body politic suggests; the family, for Rousseau, is ‘the first model of political societies’ (The Social Contract).

We are pleased to announce below CFP:

Ekphrasis and the Music of Literature: Music, Literature, and the Visual Arts 

This roundtable invites proposals that explore the intersection of visual, aural, and verbal frontiers.  Although ekphrasis and musical form mirror words, they directly affect the emotions at a primordial level not available to verbal articulation. Ekphrasis translates words into visual images, whereas musical form translates them into sounds and rhythms. What are the differences between these modes of expression and how they affect their audiences? Papers that focus on the relationship of music to literature, the visual arts to literature, or on the interrelations of all three art forms are invited.