Oceanic Fictions in Indian Languages and Beyond

The Dickens Project is excited to announce a new week-long Victorianist Writing Retreat, held at UC Santa Cruz as part of our annual summer Dickens Universe conference. This retreat offers scholars who are not affiliated with Dickens Project consortium institutions the opportunity to attend the Universe, as well as to dedicate time during the week to writing in community.

In 2026, the Dickens Universe, including the Victorianist Writing Retreat, will take place from July 26-August 1. While the 2026 Universe will be focused on Bleak House, participants in the retreat need not be writing on Bleak House or on Dickens. Scholars working in any area of global British nineteenth-century studies are free to apply.

The ground falling from beneath your feet, the cliff’s edge barely holding you aloft, the free fall in open air. Cinematic representations of falling and nearly plummeting from great heights have long been around as an arbiter of suspense and a literal visualization of the classic “cliffhanger,” with origins to such a visual tracing back to the silent film era and actor Harold Lloyd dangling from the hands of a clock in Safety Last! (1923) Falling and dizzying heights have been featured over the years in a variety of forms and often successfully serve as a device to drive the plot forward or signify its climax. We see examples of villains and heroes alike battling on skyscrapers in DC and Marvel universe adaptations.

Call For Papers

The Erotica, Sexuality, Pornography, & Kink Area of the National Popular Culture Association (PCA) invites scholars to participate in the PCA’s annual conference. Details of the conference can be found at https://pcaaca.org/page/submissionguidelines

Unwrapping Christmas Through Arts-Based Research: A Transdisciplinary Conference

Proposal Submission Deadline: November 9, 2025

Conference Dates: December 8-9, 2025
Location: online

Fees: £100 (non-members)

Call for Papers

The 17th Annual Research, Art, Writing Conference
February 21st, 2026, Saturday, University of Texas at DallasCall For Papers: RAW 2026

Call for Papers

Food and Culture

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

47th Annual Conference, February 25-28, 2026

Marriott Albuquerque

Albuquerque, New Mexico

http://www.southwestpca.org

Proposal submission deadline: October 31, 2025

The College of Arts and Humanities at Bethune-Cookman University welcomes proposals for the annual Zora Neale Hurston Conference, which will be held virtually on February 12-13, 2026. “Their Eyes were Watching Words: Publishing, Editing, and Censorship” is a tribute to Hurston’s skilled navigation of the complex world of publishing and censorship. Our invited speakers this year are Roxane Gay and Dana Williams.

You are invited to submit scholarly, pedagogical, or creative proposals exploring any of the following:

Monstrous Bodies: From Frankenstein to the Posthuman

Saint Louis University Madrid, April 23-24, 2026

Call for Chapters: Bodies That Breathe – The Politics of Air, Health, and Survival
Volume 1 of the “Earth and Us” Book Series

Earth and Us is a twelve-volume inquiry into how environmental breakdown and social inequality intertwine, bringing together feminist, queer, and decolonial perspectives. The inaugural volume, Bodies That Breathe, explores the politics of air, health, and survival.

2nd Call for Chapter Proposals
for Essay Collection

How Scripted TV Series Portray Social Media’s Power to Shape Culture

Call for Presentations for the Annual Meeting of the Popular Culture Association

We invite presentations about War after 1945, covering any of the following general topics with special attention to popular culture:

Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan; Cold War and Global War on Terrorism; military interventions and peacekeeping missions involving Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and Europe. We particularly welcome papers that look at pop culture in light of the 25th anniversary of 9/11.

Presentations may focus on writers and artists: original fiction, poetry, memoirs, drama, art, music, film, and television.

GC Secular journal invites submissions of original fiction and non-fiction for its first edition devoted to World Cinema. The aim of this issue is to open a space for writing that responds to cinema across languages, regions, and cultures, and to highlight how film travels, transforms, and shapes public imagination. We welcome analytical, creative, and research-oriented work that engages with cinema as an artform, a cultural memory, and a global conversation.

About the Theme

DEADLINE EXTENDED!

Call for Papers

ALFRED HITCHCOCK

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

47th Annual Conference, February 25-28, 2026

Marriott Albuquerque

Albuquerque, New Mexico

https://www.southwestpca.org

NEW Submission Deadline: November 14, 2025

The Journalism & Media Culture area of the Popular Culture Association requests proposals on diverse topics, including journalism and media-related issues and subjects that can be local, regional, national, and/or international and can deal with historical or contemporary times. If your paper is accepted, you will be presenting at the 2026 Popular Culture Association national conference, held at the Marriott Marquis in Atlanta, April 8-1.

Sessions are scheduled in 1½ hour slots, typically with four papers or speakers that do not exceed 15 minutes each. We can also accept proposals for special panels and for sessions organized around a journalism/media-related theme. 

Feeling haunted by that unfinished conference proposal? We've got just the Halloween treat for you: a two-week extension -- now accepted through November 14!

Mathematics and engineering are often confined to academic settings, yet they form the foundation of life and popular culture alike. When we examine engineering marvels in movies, books, and other media, we uncover rich symbolism and deeper meanings that reveal how these disciplines shape our understanding of the world.

Panels are now forming on topics related to all aspects of mathematics and engineering and their intersection with popular culture. Possible topics may include (but are not limited to):

Mystery / Detective Fiction Area

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

47th Annual Conference, February 25-28, 2026

Marriott Albuquerque

Albuquerque, New Mexico

https://www.swpaca.org

EXTENDED proposal submission deadline: November 14, 2025

Memory, Myth, and Meaning: Cather in Dialogue with America 250

Willa Cather Spring Conference | Thursday, June 4 - Saturday, June 6, 2026 

This year marks the centennial of My Mortal Enemy, one of Cather’s least affirmative works and one not produced in the Cather Scholarly Edition (translation: much important work remains to be done!)  We invite papers on new approaches to My Mortal Enemy, including but not limited to the following considerations of style, form, provenance, and themes:

This edited volume extends the project initiated by the Korean Studies 2025 special section “Feminist Korean Studies,” which deployed feminist critique across digital media, popular culture, legal discourse, public health, neoliberalism, and postcoloniality. Building on that foundation, the volume invites interdisciplinary, interregional, and bilingual feminist scholarship to address pressing global and regional developments: the rise of right-wing authoritarianism, intensified anti-feminist backlash in South Korea, and the persistent marginalization of feminist discourse in Anglophone Korean Studies. 

In 2025, broad legislative and cultural backlash is focused on eliminating even the idea of trans people from public space. When public space is inaccessible, online communities have, for more than the past twenty years, been a place where trans people can still find one another, self-represent, and build their own publics. Now the walled world of the app economy, organized personal attacks, discriminatory social media algorithms, ID verification laws, and government intervention are changing the internet too. At such a moment, understanding the ways that trans people navigate their digital worlds is more important than ever.

In honor of Jack London's 150th birthday anniversary in 2026, paper submissions are invited for the Jack London Society panels at the American Literature Association 37th Annual Conference, May 20-23, 2026,Palmer House 17 East Monroe Street, Chicago, IL. Papers may address any aspect of Jack London studies. Send a 250-to-300 word abstract for a twenty-minute presentation to Kenneth K. Brandt at kbrandt@scad.edu by January 26, 2026. Include a brief biographical sketch and any AV equipment needs.

The English department at Duke University is thrilled to host the 11th annual Post45 Graduate Symposium on February 20-21, 2026.

The Post45 Graduate Symposium seeks graduate-level works-in-progress related to post-1945 media, arts, literature, textual or visual objects, digital platforms, politics, and culture. We welcome submissions that expand our conception of objects and meaning-making post-1945 or place them in comparative, transnational, or hemispheric frames. We especially welcome contributions that foreground the importance of race, gender, class, and sexuality to post-45 studies. 

DEADLINE EXTENDED!

Call for Papers

“Horror (Literary & Cinematic)”

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

47th Annual Conference, February 25-28, 2026

Marriott Albuquerque

Albuquerque, New Mexico

https://www.southwestpca.org

NEW Submission Deadline: November 14, 2025

The esoteric, occult, and magical roots of deep ecology have become increasingly interconnected with the growing popularity of witchcraft practices, neopagan worldviews, and explicitly spiritual climate activism and environmentalism.  These developments include specific foci on particular ecological concerns and crises, but such trends are equally exemplified by transdisciplinary dialogues in which holistic scientific perspectives intersect with diverse systems of belief. This special panel seeks 15-20 conference presentations to explore these connections and their influence on, reception by, and expression through popular culture in any and all of its manifestations.