We invite abstracts for a Special Session (non-guaranteed) at the MLA Convention to be held in Toronto, Canada, from January 8-11, 2026.

Titlle: Storied Seas, Blue Humanities and the Mediterranean Imagination

This special session invites proposals that explore the field of blue humanities through a Mediterranean lens. Proposals investigating the multifaceted dimensions of water and waterscapes  in literary texts, films, television series, comics, theatrical performances are welcome.

A 250-word abstract along with a 100-word bio.

In our daily lives, we frequently encounter terms like "culture," "cultured," "high-cultured," "low-cultured," and "uncultured." We often hastily label individuals based on their appearance or social status; for instance, a shabbily dressed person or a homeless individual might be instantly deemed "uncultured." Certain activities, such as traditional children's games like using a gulti (slingshot) to collect mangoes, playing hopscotch, or spinning tops, are sometimes dismissively categorized as pastimes of the chotolok or lower classes.

“The desire for transcendence is the longing for something that breaks this cycle of means and ends and enables us to escape the everydayness of the everyday.”

— John Lachs, “Transcendence in Philosophy and in Everyday Life” (1997) 

Please note: This is a proposed, not a guaranteed, session, co-sponsored by the forum on Comics & Graphic Narratives and Adaptation Studies for MLA 2026 in Toronto (Jan. 8-11). It is contingent on approval by the MLA Program Committee. All prospective presenters must be current MLA members by April 1, 2025.

We are excited to announce the call for proposals for Volume 32 of The Grove: Working Papers on English Studies, which will be published by the end of 2025. The Grove is an international, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to research in the English language, literature, and culture.

We welcome original research articles, reviews, and literary contributions on a wide range of topics within English Studies, including but not limited to:

Postcolonial Interventions invites scholarly articles for an OPEN ISSUE to be published in June 2025. As this call is being circulated, older territorial imperial aggression is threatening to bare its fangs across the world, right-wing forces of xenophobia, discrimination and intolerance continue to gather momentum across the world, inequality and ecological crisis continue to escalate and new forms of precarity are being constantly negotiated. The next issue of Postcolonial Interventions seeks to explore such issues and more based on postcolonial experiences across the world.

Submission Guidelines:

Money Talks: Futures for the Economic Humanities

University of Edinburgh, 28–29 May 2025

Keynote Speakers:

Dr Devin Singh (Dartmouth College)

Dr Rachel O’Dwyer (National College of Art and Design, Dublin)

Over the past decade, growing numbers of researchers in the arts and humanities have turned their attention to questions of money, finance, and the economy. At the same time, social scientists have increasingly drawn on humanities-based methodologies in their analyses of economic phenomena. “Money Talks: Futures for the Economic Humanities” is a landmark conference dedicated to mapping this emerging interdisciplinary space and charting its multiple potential futures.

The issue 27 of Al-Kīmiyā, the Journal of the Faculty of Languages and Translation of Saint Joseph University of Beirut will receive, under the sign of diversity, articles covering various fields of research in translation and in language. Proposals can deal with issues that currently concern research in translation studies and language sciences. The choice of themes is left to researchers who will thus reflect in their articles the diversity of approaches and perspectives paving the way to dismantle the barriers among the disciplines.

Submission Guidelines

Literature and Taxonomy

Taxonomy is a fraught word in literary studies. As a regime of classification descended from the Euro-American scientific tradition, taxonomy encourages the organization of biological life on earth based on hard distinctions or similarities between groups. This practice appears to endorse essentialist and deterministic paradigms that scholars in literary and cultural studies typically eschew—and for good reason. Taxonomic modes of thinking are allied with racial, medical, and sexual ideologies that have fueled historical and contemporary efforts to police the categories of race, gender, ability, and desire.

Edited Collection: Haunted by Hydrocarbons: Petrogothic and Petrohorror in the Contemporary Imagination

Deadline for proposal submission: August 31, 2025

Editors: Madalynn L. Madigar (Cherokee Nation, University of Oregon), Jennifer Schell (University of Alaska, Fairbanks)

Contact Email: mmadigar@uoregon.edu, jschell5@alaska.edu

For this edited collection, we invite proposals for essays that focus on and engage with petrogothic and petrohorror, emerging fields that examine the textual artifacts of hydrocarbon cultures through the lens of gothic and horror studies.

Call for Papers: Edited Volume on “Writing under Duress in Anglophone Arab Literature in the Diaspora: The Articulation of a Coerced Imagination”

Editors: Dr. Hamida Riahi, Prof. Mounir Triki, and Dr. Saud Enazi
Publisher: This volume is being prepared for submission to Palgrave Macmillan for consideration.

Overview

Call for Papers: Engaging the Local Public Humanities in St. Louis Colloquium & Workshop
Colloquium Date: April 18, 2025
Location: Washington University in St. Louis
Deadline for Submissions: March 18, 2025

XXVIII AISNA Biennial Conference

“Facing West: Thinking, Living, Outliving the American West”

(Bergamo, Italy, 11-13 September 2025) Deadline: February 28 2025

Panel 5

Coordinators: Tadeusz Pióro (University of Warsaw), t.t.pioro@uw.edu.pl Daniela Daniele (University of Udine), daniela.daniele@uniud.it

Avant-garde Poets of the San Francisco Bay Area. Their Lives, Works, and Film Portraits