When, in September 2026, a post declaring the actress Katrina Kaif "finished" following her return to public life after childbirth accumulated lakhs of views and comments, the disproportion between judgement and object became, itself, the more legible text. A comparable structure recurred that same year for the South Korean singer Jennie, whose performances at Mad Cool Festival and Lollapalooza Chicago drew, alongside widespread acclaim, a coordinated wave of "netizen" commentary deriding her "leaner frame" — two women, two national contexts, two entirely unrelated bodily "failures" (one insufficiently youthful, the other insufficiently substantial), and yet an identical infrastructure of mass, public, collectively affirmed judgement.

https://ims14.org/index.php

KÁROLI GÁSPÁR UNIVERSITY, BUDAPEST, HUNGARY

21–25 JUNE 2027

The International Milton Symposium is the world's leading forum for scholars working on John Milton and his world. The 14th Symposium will be held in the historic city of Budapest in 2027.

Papers are invited in all areas of Milton Studies, including but not limited to: politics, religion, textual studies, reception, translation, digital humanities, animal studies, and more.

Abstract deadline:15 NOVEMBER 2026

https://ims14.org/index.php

The rise of the superhero is one of the most significant cultural developments of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Since the debut of Superman in Action Comics #1 (April 18, 1938), superheroes have evolved from colorful comic-book figures into powerful global symbols that shape conversations about politics, morality, identity, technology, gender, race, mythology, trauma, and resistance. What began with the imaginative vision of Jerry Siegel (writer) and Joe Shuster (artist) has expanded into a worldwide phenomenon spanning comics, film, television, literature, gaming, digital media, and academic discourse.

Call for Papers

Poetry and Poetics (Critical)

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

48th Annual Conference, February 17-20, 2027

Marriott Albuquerque

Albuquerque, New Mexico

https://swpaca.org

Submissions open: September 1, 2026

Proposal submission deadline: October 31, 2026

The Gothic Servant

deadline for submissions: 

September 29, 2026

full name / name of organization: 

NeMLA

contact email: 

nilawren@utica.edu

This conference will take place in person at Salve Regina University in Newport, RI, March 6-9, 2027.

Call for Proposals

Audiovisual Creation in the Age of AI

Special Issue for 2027

Extended deadline: EchoForum 2026 Conference: Disability as Radical Interdisciplinary Practice26–27 November 2026

Organised by: Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu

Submission deadline: 10 October 2026

Working languages: English, French, Romanian

CONFIRMED KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:Petra Kuppers // University of MichiganJonathan Meth // Goldsmiths University of LondonMaria Bucur // Indiana University Bloomington

EchoForum: Conceptual Framework

The Journal for the New Narratives in the History of Philosophy (JNNHP) invites submissions for its special on Derrick Bell and the History of Africana Philosophy, to be published in Fall 2028. Derrick Bell, the founder of Critical Race Theory, produced one of the most innovative, insightful, and transformative ideas in the 20th century. His philosophical insights continue to challenge how western liberal nations contend with questions of civil rights, human rights, immigration, policing, and education.

The Visual Cultures of YA Romance: Seeing Desire, Reading Relationships - The International Journal of Young Adult Literature 8/2027

Guest editors:

Dalila Forni (Università dell’Aquila - IT)
Alessandra Mazzini (Università di Bergamo - IT)
Valentina Baeli (Università di Catania - IT)

Popular Culture Association: Education & Popular Culture Area

Call for Papers

The Area of Education, Teaching, History and Popular Culture is now accepting submissions for the 2025 Popular Culture Association National Conference to be held March 24-27, 2027 in Boston, MA.

The Psychology and Popular Culture area concerns itself with the ways in which popular culture both reflects and shapes the nature of our psychology.  The area is accepting submissions for the 2027 annual conference to be held March 24-27, in Boston, MA. 

The area invites all interested persons to present papers on a broad array of topics inclusive of psychology and popular culture, such as:

psychological theory, Jungian arts-based research, depth psychology, analytical psychology, archetypal psychology, psychiatry, mindfulness, cognitive psychology, psychoanalysis, critical theory, and interpretations of literature, film, gender theory, music, politics, or religion from a psychological perspective.

AATI 2027 University of Puerto Rico, March 5-7, 2027

This panel explores the island as both a place and a figure for thinking about borders, mobility, and belonging. Islands are shaped by movements of arrival and departure,
connection and separation, exchange and exclusion. Linguistic islands, diasporic communities, and bodies marked as other all take shape through this double movement of separation and connection. Islands also name a condition: being set apart, forming a world at the edge of another, connected outward by water rather than enclosed by land.

The 2027 LSU Mardi Gras Conference

Geography of Liminality: Interdisciplinary Folk

“It’s a difficult thing to separate legend from story from memory from fact.”

Session for NeMLA 58th Conference Seeking Papers

We often think of community through a positive lens, but is community always a force for good? How might “community” be simulated, commodified, branded, weaponized, or made into a technology for compliance? Why does the vulnerability to authentic communities matter now in a world where technology has made connection more accessible than ever?

Edited volume proposed for Manchester University Press's French Film Directors series

I am seeking two additional contributors for an edited volume devoted to the work of French filmmaker Nicole Garcia, currently in preparation for submission to Manchester University Press's French Film Directors series. The series editors have already expressed strong interest in the project.

INAUGURAL INTER-HUMANITIES SYMPOSIUM AT FSU 

“Borderless World: Text, Image, and Sound” 

Florida State University, Tallahassee 

April 1-2, 2027 

Call for Chapters

Architectures of Deceit: Fraud, Imposture, and Deception in Contemporary Screen Culture

(under consideration byEdinburgh University Press)

Call For Papers

The Game Studies area of the National Popular Culture Association and the American Culture Association Conference invites proposals for papers and panels on games and game studies for the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association National Conference to be held on March 24-27, in Boston. The deadline for proposals is October 31. Please note this is earlier than previous years.

I. Topics of Interest

The organizers seek proposals and papers covering all aspects of gaming, gaming culture and game studies. Proposals can address any game medium (computer, social, console, tabletop, etc.) and all theoretical and methodological approaches are welcome.

 Resources for American Literary Study (Penn State UP), a peer-reviewed journal of archival and bibliographical scholarship in American literature, invites submissions for our upcoming 2027 issues. Covering all periods and genres of American literature, RALS welcomes both traditional and digital approaches to archival and bibliographical analysis. We also welcome proposals for our "Prospects" series in which scholars forecast future developments (and identify scholarly gaps) in the study of major authors.

Instructions for submissions may be found @ http://www.psupress.org/Journals/jnls_rals.html. 

Art and/as Knowledge in American Contexts
Special Issue of the Polish Journal for American Studies

This special issue asks what American art knows – and how that knowledge is produced.

We would like to invite you to join and contribute to the 2nd Shapeshifters Symposium: Plasticity – Here, There, and Everywhere. This symposium brings together people interested in plasticity from a broad range of perspectives, from the natural and formal sciences to the social sciences, humanities, and art. During the symposium, we hope to further expand the concept of plasticity across disciplines.

Who are we? We are a group of interdisciplinary researchers working on the concept of plasticity, sponsored by the DutchCentre for Unusual Collaborations.

Date & Venue

19th – 21st November 2026, Utrecht, The Netherlands

A Writer’s Palette: Colour in Late Modernist Literature 

Special Issue CfP for Textual Practice 

In the 2000s and 2010s, social networking facilitated citizen-based activism of enormous significance like #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo. But in the 2020s, corporate enshittification and government surveillance have restricted the reach of social networking tools. For example, Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter meant that many users left X rather than adapt their activist practices to the restrictive corporate environment (Tenbarge & Collier 2024). Instances such as the Trump administration’s use of social media posts to target international students during the Gaza protests caused many users to avoid social media altogether (Lonas Cochran 2025).

Third Culture: Studies in Global Childhoods and Cosmopolitan Identities is a new peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the study of cultural and social issues related to complex cosmopolitan identities arising from mobile global childhoods which transcend conventional categories of migrancy and diaspora.