|
a service provided by www.english.upenn.edu |
FAQ changelog |
all recent posts
The Editorial Team of The Scattered Pelican, the graduate journal of the Comparative Literature program at Western University, is currently seeking peer reviewers for the upcoming issue of the journal.
About the Journal
Why is close reading a particularly valuable learning strategy/professional practice at the current moment? This MLA seminar (a guaranteed session) seeks participants interested in thinking and talking through aspects of close reading with an eye towards producing pieces of public writing (e.g. an OpEd, think piece, lyric essay, call to action, etc. published in a newspaper, magazine, or periodical, in print or online). Topics for exploration may include, but are not limited to:
The Journal of the Wooden O (JWO) is a peer-reviewed academic publication focusing on Shakespeare studies. The editors invite papers on topics related to Shakespeare, including Shakespearean texts, Shakespeare in performance, the adaptation of Shakespeare works (film, fiction, and visual and performing arts), Elizabethan and Jacobean culture and history, and Shakespeare’s contemporaries.
University of Toronto Quarterly (UTQ) is currently seeking submissions. Established in 1931, UTQ publishes innovative and exemplary scholarship from all areas in the humanities. As an interdisciplinary journal, UTQ favours articles that appeal to a scholarly readership beyond the specialists of a given discipline or field.
CFP: Chinese Poetry: Institution and Life
Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association (RMMLA) Annual Convention
Conference Dates: October 8-10, 2026
Location: Marriott Courtyard in Ogden, Utah
Session 1 The Institutions of Chinese Poetry
This in-person panel invites 250-word abstracts that examine women’s narratives, (self)representations, and forms of agency within resistance movements across film and digital platforms.
Related topics are welcome to be discussed.
Call for papers for a Special Issue of Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities
Khôra
(preliminary title)
Editors: Nicholas Birns and Marina Christodoulou
For a pdf of the full Call see: https://www.academia.edu/164922361/CFP_for_a_Special_Issue_of_Angelaki_Khôra
Call for Papers: International Journal of Education Through Art
Special Issue: ‘Reimagining Place and Place-Based Art Education’
View the full call here>>
https://www.intellectbooks.com/international-journal-of-education-through-art#call-for-papers
Guest Editors:
Seminar for Modernist Studies Association Conference
How text appears on the page has been of periodic interest to poets for centuries. This interest grew in late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century poets as shown by the work of Stephane Mallarmé and by artistic movements such as Dada. Concrete poetry, a style of poetry mostly from Germany and Brazil in the 1950’s (Thomas) adhered to this interest. Other types of experimental poetry have worked on the liminal edges between text and image, where the appearance of the text supersedes its content, as in more recent work by Susan Howe. Generally speaking, as Greg Thomas argues, this poetry is “concerned with complicating or undermining linguistic sense” (Thomas 4) in its turn to the visual.
Rabindranath Tagore and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, two of the greatest thinkers of the world had, between them, a kinship and appreciation of profound depth and mutuality. Both stood for universal humanism and emancipation of the dispossessed though their paths were seminally divergent.
Multilingualism, Cultural Diversity, and Intercultural Communication for Sustainable Development
Scope of the Book
Call for Proposals
Fan Studies Network North America Conference 2026 (virtual)
October 22-25, 2026
THE BOUNDARIES OF FAN STUDIES AND FANDOM
Call for Papers:
Panel Title: Composition beyond Walls: Writing and Arguing for/in Spaces beyond the Classroom
Location: MLA National Conference, Los Angeles, California
Date: January 7-10, 2027
Panel Hosts: Dr. Jeff Birkenstein and Dr. Sharon Mitchler, Centralia College (Centralia, Washington)
Proposal Deadline: March 22, 2026
The Challenge
Hi all,
See the below CFP for a panel on Pacific early American literature for next year’s MLA. Please circulate to anyone you think might be interested!
Conspiracy Theories in the Wake of Disaster
Matthew N. Hannah
Associate Professor
Department of Communication Arts
University of Wisconsin—Madison
Zachary Loeb
Assistant Professor
Department of History
Purdue University
This cfp is for a proposed seminar at MLA 2027, to be held in Los Angeles from 7 to 10 January 2027. This seminar explores classrooms as sites of care and repair through trauma-informed and inclusive pedagogies and institutional courage, engaging embodiment, memory, and affect as approaches to trauma and learning. Submit a 200-word abstract and bio.
Deadline for submissions: Friday, March 20, 2026
Submit your abstract via email to:
Aimee Pozorski, Central Connecticut State University (pozorskia@ccsu.edu ) Aili Pettersson Peeker, University of California, Santa Barbara (aili@writing.ucsb.edu )
Vulnerability has become a key term in contemporary critical theory, ethics, trauma studies, gender studies, disability studies, postcolonial studies, and affect theory. But fiction has long engaged with vulnerability – not necessarily as weakness or exposure, but as a condition of relationality, openness, resistance, and change. From tragic protagonists to marginalized bodies and precarious subjectivities, literary texts have repeatedly returned to fragility, dependency, and risk.
Paraphrasing Linda Hutcheon, the neo-Victorians have a habit of adapting just about everything – and in just about every possible direction. The stories of Victorian poems, novels, plays, operas, paintings, songs, dances, and tableaux vivants are constantly being adapted from one medium to another and then back again not only on film, television, radio, and digital or social media, but also theme parks, historical enactments, and virtual reality experiments. In this meeting, we would like to explore the interactions and connections between the different ways contemporary culture engages with the traces of the Victorian past as well as how these different genres or expressions interact.
AICED-27
THE 27th ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT,
UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST
5-6 June 2026
CALL FOR PAPERS
Representations of
Crime in Literature and the Arts
University of Bucharest, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures
7-13 Pitar Moș Street, Bucharest, Romania
Beyond Human: Unruly Senses of Being, Knowing, and Feeling Existence
UCSD Literature Department Graduate Student Conference
University of California, San Diego
In-Person, May 15-16, 2026
The Function of Beauty: A Transdisciplinary Conferenc
“Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.”
— Khalil Gibran
Conference Dates: Thursday April 22-23, 2026
Location: Online
Abstract Submission Deadline: March 22, 2026
Fee: £100
Conference Webpage: https://labrc.co.uk/2026/01/26/function-of-beauty/
Call for papers: Mythical Archipelagos: Islands, Narratives, and Imaginaries Across Cultures and Media
International Interdisciplinary Seminar
University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain)
14–15 May 2026 | Hybrid format
The seminar explores islands as mythical, symbolic, and narrative spaces across cultures and media. We welcome interdisciplinary contributions from island studies, environmental humanities, anthropology, cultural studies, linguistics, media studies, and related fields.
Abstract deadline: 30 March 2026
Full CFP and details:
Guest Editors:
Prof. Om Prakash Dwivedi, Director, Faculty of Humanities and Liberal Arts, Chandigarh University Uttar Pradesh, India
Dr. Aditya Anshu, Chair, Department of Social Science, Faculty of International Relations, Abu Dhabi University, U.A.E.
Dr. Madhurima Nayak, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Humanities and Liberal Arts, Chandigarh University Uttar Pradesh, India
National Identities (Taylor and Francis), Scopus Q1
Concept Note
FEMSPEC, an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal dedicated to challenging gender through speculative means in any genre, seeks volunteers to fill the following roles:
PRODUCTION EDITOR
Duties include:
Collating and formatting content for each new issue of the journal. Liaising with the journal's editor and other volunteer collective members to make changes to the issue's content and layout until the end of each issue's production period.
FEMSPEC, an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal dedicated to challenging gender through speculative means in any genre, seeks volunteers to fill the following roles:
Website Editor
Duties include:
Updating FEMSPEC's website at the collective's request - this could include updating biographies of collective members, altering the website's layout, adding or removing content from various pages in the website, and updating the website with information about the current issue of the journal
This online panel seeks proposals that examine how humor, irony, and formal games use linguistic misbehavior to create new emotional landscapes, construct gendered subjectivities, and challenge traditional hierarchies across global literatures.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
Please send a 250-word abstract and a brief bio to Dr. Haihong Yang (hyang@udel.edu) by March 15th.
Chapters for The Handbook of Ecofeminism
deadline for submissions: March 7, 2026
full name / name of organization: Nicole C. Dittmer, PhD
contact email: ncdittmer@gmail.com
In 1974, Françoise d’Eaubonne coined the term ecofeminism in Le féminisme ou la mort, foregrounding the intertwined domination of women and nature and calling for the liberation of both from systems of exploitation. Since its emergence, ecofeminism has inspired scholars and activists across disciplines and global contexts.
The 2026 International Postgraduate Comparative Literature Conference (IPCLC 2026), hosted by the Master of Arts in Literary and Cultural Studies (MALCS) at The University of Hong Kong (HKU), brings together postgraduate students and emerging scholars from Hong Kong and beyond for a day of cross-cultural conversation. Taking place in person at HKU on May 26, 2026, the conference offers a supportive forum for sharing work in progress, building scholarly networks, and testing new comparative methods across literary, cultural, and media studies. Featuring themed panels, a keynote lecture, and Best Paper Award(s), IPCLC 2026 invites participants to consider how comparison can sharpen our understanding of urgent questions in the humanities.
The Journal of Popular Romance Studies is calling for papers for its special issue on Sport Romance.
If literature has long played a central role in defining what it means to be human, posthumanist thought urges us to reconsider that definition in the face of unprecedented technological, ecological, and cultural transformations. Rather than announcing the ‘end’ of the human, posthumanism interrogates the category itself, foregrounding humanity’s entanglements with other species, material environments, and technological systems. In doing so, it challenges human exceptionalism and exposes the historical contingency and political implications of the ‘human’ as a normative construct.
CALL FOR PAPERS
Edited Volume
Island Studies in South Asia: Gender, Culture and Islandness
At its third edition, in 2026 the Entanglements summer school is centered on Postcolonial Horrors and aims to explore horror as an aesthetic, political, and epistemological symbol through which postcolonial literatures stage the traumatic memories of colonization, identity tensions, diasporic movements, and the re-emergence of the spectral within global modernities. The goal is to interpret horror not only as a genre, but as a critical and deconstructive tool capable of destabilizing ethnocentric categories of subjectivity, body, sovereignty, and knowledge.
We're excited to announce that the DIY Methods Conference is back for another year! Pitches are due by April 20th, 2026. Please don't hesitate to email us (annepasek@trentu.ca and trentwintermeier@utexas.edu) if you have any questions.
Translating Resistance:
Literary Activism in Conflict and Solidarity
Funded in part by The International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS) Regional Workshop Fund
Scholars, researchers, and practitioners are invited to submit papers for this two-day workshop, hosted by Binghamton University (SUNY), to be held in New York on October 3–4, 2026.
Call for Paper
The Politics of Ableism: Gender, Sexuality, and Disability in Literature and Media
Edited by Habib Tekin & Nizara Hazarika
Call for book chapters
Call for Papers
In the Introduction to In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination, Margaret Atwood makes a clear distinction between science fiction and speculative fiction: the former concerns events that could not happen; the latter draws on developments that could happen or that have already occurred in some historical form. The distinction was publicly contested, including in an exchange with Ursula K. Le Guin, and Atwood insists her terminology was descriptive rather than hierarchical. She places The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) within the speculative category on the grounds that nothing in the novel exceeds documented historical precedent (Atwood 5–6). This conference takes Atwood at her word.
Theme: Intimate Empires
Call for Contributions - New Voices in Postcolonial Studies Magazine
Title: Witness, Voice, and Agency: Chinese Poetry as Emancipatory Narrative
This panel explores how Chinese poetry, from classical to contemporary, functions as emancipatory narrative across historical periods, aesthetic forms, and sociopolitical contexts.
We welcome papers that examine how poets articulate conditions of constraint while imagining, inhabiting, or enacting liberatory possibilities. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
Call for Contributions
Comics and (Eco)Social Justice - Graphic Narratives for Transformation
VII Jornadas ALCES XXI. Valencia. July 14-17, 2026
Comics and (Eco)Social Justice - Graphic Narratives for Transformation is a research seminar within the ALCES XXI Conference (Valencia, July 14–17, 2026) dedicated to exploring Spanish graphic narratives as a space for critical intervention and reflection on ecological and social justice. The seminar will be conducted in Spanish.
CALL FOR PRESENTATIONS
The Superhero Project: 10th Global Meeting
SUPERVILLAINS & ANTI-HEROES
Friday 4th to Sunday 6th September 2026
The View Hotel, Eastbourne, East Sussex, United Kingdom
“I don’t want to kill you! What would I do without you? Go back to ripping off mob dealers? No, no, no! No. You… you… complete… me.” – The Joker (The Dark Knight, 2008)
One Hundred Years of Gabriel García Márquez
Proposed Dates: 1-2 May 2026
Proposed Venue: SRM University, Sikkim
Organized by: MELOW (The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the World)
Gabriel García Márquez, born in Columbia in the year 1927, is acknowledged as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. As we head towards his birth centenary, it is time to look back at this literary giant, reassess his contribution and its impact on literary history.
The D H Lawrence Society of North America and the Joseph Conrad Society of America are seeking panel papers on the themes of exile and emancipation in the works of both Lawrence and Conrad. Proposals specialized on either author will be considered for inclusion, but we are especially interested in papers that address both of these important writers in a comparative or interdisciplinary manner. In either case, early for Conrad and later for Lawrence, the author left his home country in the interests of a less constrained existence elsewhere, thereby raising the possibilities of exilic nostalgia and regret. At the same time, both equally sought spaces of freedom and movement in expatriat
The UC Davis English Graduate Student Association (EGSA) is hosting its fourth annual student-led Connections Conference under the wide-ranging theme of “Time.” This year’s conference considers “Time” in its broadest sense. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “time” is defined as “A finite extent or stretch of continued existence.” Time has also been conceptualized in other terms.
This panel will foreground how Muslim minorities acculturate cooperative networks of solidarity, acceptance, creativity and affect beyond rigid notions of nation, region and sovereignties. In this context we will look at ruptures which persist due to the rigid and restrictive processes of neocolonial and neoliberal regimes and how it continues to shape the lived and material realities of South Asian Muslims across national and diasporic contexts. In particular we will discuss the historical contexts and enduring consequences of the rigid and restrictive processes of colonisation, partition, migration, trade, caste, legalities, and majoritarianism as it intersects with the inter-nation and cross-border movements of Muslims within and beyond South Asia.
Title: Unsettled Englishes: Migration, Displacement, and the Anzaldúan Borderland
Sponsoring Entity: MLA LSL Global English Forum
Description: In alignment with the 2027 Presidential Theme, "Emancipatory Narratives," this session interrogates the linguistic borders that define the migrant experience. Grounded in Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of the "linguistic borderland," we explore the space where identity, displacement, and Global English collide.
Title: Algorithm or Ally? AI, Global English, and the Future of Language Learning
Sponsoring Entity: MLA LSL Global English Forum
Convention: MLA 2027 (Los Angeles, Jan 7–10)
Description: The future of Global English is now inextricably linked to the rise of Artificial Intelligence. This session investigates a fundamental tension: Is AI democratizing language access, or is it a new, automated iteration of "Linguistic Imperialism"?
This session ignites conversation about teaching feminist and queer studies amid moral panic, exploring how desire, rage, and care become radical tools—keeping classrooms alive, embodied, and defiantly political in the face of ideological chill. (Virtual Session)
Deadline: Monday, March 23, 2026
Send proposals of 200-words with a shot bio to Ryan Calabretta-Sajder (rcalabretta@gmail.com) and Victoria Muñoz (vmunoz@adelphi.edu)
Present-day cultural and political shifts are producing seismic impacts upon Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies programs and curricula across geopolitical contexts. This session explores new currents, approaches and strategies for teaching WGS in the classroom. (In-Person Session)
Deadline: Sunday, March 15, 2026
Send proposals of 200-words with a shot bio to Ryan Calabretta-Sajder (rcalabretta@gmail.com) and Victoria Muñoz (vmunoz@adelphi.edu)