WRITING THE MIDWEST: A Symposium of Scholars and Creative Writers

The Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature (SSML)

May 28-29, 2026. Kellogg Hotel and Convention Center, East Lansing, Michigan

About SSML and The Writing the Midwest Symposium: The Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature (SSML), founded in 1971, exists to support the study and dissemination of work in Midwestern literature, art, film, and scholarly study. 

Come join academics and working professionals at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis, April 8-11 2026!

We are considering proposals for sessions organized around a theme, special panels, and/or individual papers.  Sessions are scheduled in 1½ hour slots, typically with four papers or speakers per standard session.  Presentations should not exceed 15 minutes. Working professionals, scholars, educators, and graduate students are all encouraged to submit.

Proposals within animation studies in relation to popular culture are welcomed. Possible themes for papers/panels include but are not restricted to:

General Issue | Rolling Submissions

The Critical Gender Studies Journal / Revista Crítica de Estudios de Género invites submissions for its upcoming general issue. We welcome original research articles, theoretical essays, creative interventions, and reviews that explore the multifaceted dimensions of gender and sexuality across diverse contexts and disciplines.

The Flannery O’Connor Society
The Society for the Study of Southern Literature
March 28th-31st, 2026
Fisk University
Nashville, TN

The Flannery O’Connor Society invites abstracts (of about 300 words) to be submitted for participation in an open topics panel on Flannery O’Connor’s life and work at the biannual conference of the Society for the Study of Southern Literature.

Call for Papers

Global Indigeneities and Life Narratives: Special Issue of Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly

A Special Issue of Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly

Guest Editor: J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, 

Eric and Wendy Schmidt Professor of Indigenous Studies and Anthropology, Princeton University

Submit: 400-word abstracts to kauanui@princeton.edu by December 1, 2025

https://manoa.hawaii.edu/cbr/publications-productions/biography/calls-fo...

Call for Papers: Film International: Journal of World Cinema

Special Issue series: Diasporic Cinemas

View the full call here>>

https://www.intellectbooks.com/film-international-journal-of-world-cinema#call-for-papers

Series overview

We are excited to announce a new interdisciplinary seminar series for postgraduate students and early career researchers on the Long Middle Ages, a period covering the Late Antique, Medieval, and Early Modern Periods. This series aims to bring together scholars working across this period to establish new connectivity and inclusivity between these disciplines, and to provide a more relaxed space for new and emerging researchers to present and test out ideas.

Dear Scholars and Researchers,

We are delighted to invite original and scholarly book chapters for an upcoming edited volume titled Emerging Trends and Future Directions in Comparative Literature.

We welcome contributions on, but not limited to, the following themes:

Suggested Themes

• World Literature as a Comparative Practice

• Emerging Trends in Digital Humanities

• Future of Comparative Literature

• Digital and Cyber Literature

• Globalization and Cultural Exchange

• Cultural Hybridity, Adaptation, and Translation in a Globalized World

• Translation Studies

Representation matters – but to whom? And how?

This iteration of the Critical Approaches to Black Media Culture conference considers the ongoing significance of representational analysis as well as the critical possibilities enabled by the turn to resonance in Black media and cultural studies. Our theme, Representation and Resonance, invites original research into images and storytelling, circulation and flows, and reception practices.

While we especially invite papers on this topic, we are open to any and all critical inquiry into Black media culture, broadly defined. Our hope is to bring together any and all scholars interested and invested in Black media culture, regardless of discipline or method.

The Saul Bellow Society will host one session at the American Literature Association’s 37th Annual Conference at the Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, on May 20-23, 2026.  Proposals for papers on Saul Bellow and Chicago are particularly welcome but may address any aspect of Saul Bellow’s work or life, including comparisons with other authors. 

Proposals for presentations should include a title, your name and affiliation, e-mail address, and a short abstract.  The Saul Bellow Society welcomes proposals from established and newer scholars, including graduate students. 

Call for Panelists – Rachel Carson Center Conference 2026 (“Beyond Dualism—Thinking Creatively Across Worlds”)

In an era of climate crisis and ecological anxiety, the boundaries between humans, nature, and technology are becoming increasingly blurred.
This panel—Sensing and Repair—invites researchers and practitioners to explore how art, science, and education can work together to restore our connections with the living world.

35TH ANNUAL BRITISH COMMONWEALTH AND POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES CONFERENCE
FEBRUARY 20-21, 2026
DESOTO SAVANNAH, SAVANNAH GA

Call for Submissions: Race in Fantasy- for The British Fantasy Society Journal (Summer 2026) ‘Race’—that socially constructed and contentious term and concept—has long been a part of Fantasy. As a way of narrativizing alterity, Fantasy excels (one could argue that it is its sine qua non), but like all other cultural forms it has been prone to the best and worst excesses of this. Although the largesse of Fantasy—its broad, catholic imaginary—embraces a rich spectrum of species, ethnicities, ontologies, and lifeworlds, it has been prone to all the cultural myopias, prejudices, peccadilloes, and stereotyping as any other genre. Exoticism, Orientalism, and Essentialism are only some of its many crimes.

Todd Gitlin pointed out in 1983 that ‘‘The three networks now underwrite more original movies than the studios combined” (in Stone, 2017: 616). The made-for-TV movie was a vast cultural phenomenon, commanding huge viewing figures and global, syndicated reach. Many of the most memorable and culturally resonant of these  were horror films. Despite this, the made-for-TV film, especially horror, remains largely under-explored in academic writing. If, as Pirie states, ‘Our fears are among the most revealing things about us’ (1994: 224), then what might these hugely popular films suggest about the society that produced them?

Issue 105 of the Virginia Woolf Miscellany Special Topic:

Panoramic Woolf (Fall 2026)

Guest Editors: Oliver Case, Evelyn Malinowski, Teresa Prudente

Please submit article proposals of approximately 300 words by 1st December 2025

Final article drafts (no more than 2500 words including Works Cited) will be due by 15 May 2026

Please send submissions to: panoramicwoolf@gmail.com

Call for Submissions – The Soliloquist Winter 2026 Issue 
Theme: Beneath the Surface 

Winter is a season of stillness—but beneath the frost, roots are reaching, rivers are flowing, and stories are gathering strength.  

For our Winter 2026 issue, The Soliloquist invites poets and writers to explore what lies hidden: the unspoken truths, buried memories, secret longings, submerged identities, and quiet rebellions that shape who we are. We seek work that dives below the obvious, the curated, the polished—into the depths where vulnerability, resilience, and revelation intertwine.  

Open Topic: James Fenimore Cooper, an American Novelist

The James Fenimore Cooper Society invites proposals for papers that explore James Fenimore Cooper as a novelist of national narratives, whose interests and innovations to the novel in terms of form and content achieved both literary and commercial success as well as leave an indelible mark on both American and Transatlantic writing across a broad spectrum of literary, cultural, and historical perspectives. This is an open topic panel – all proposals welcomed.

Chair: TBA

Réseaux dans les mouvements transatlantiques (XIXème-XXIème siècles)

Appel à communications

Colloque international

21-22 mai 2026

Université Bretagne Sud - Lorient (France)

L’océan atlantique occupe une place prépondérante dans l’histoire des mobilités humaines, qu’elles soient forcées – et l’on pensera à la traite négrière – ou volontaires, comme les vagues successives de colons puis de migrants qui se sont installés dans les Amériques le confirment.

Ainsi, dans le sillage des Migration Studies, nous nous intéresserons aux mouvements entre les continents qui bordent l’océan atlantique, à savoir l’Europe, les Amériques, l’Afrique.

CLiC Into Place: Literatures of the Local (University of Worcester, 5th May 2026)

“None of these things is happening here. They are all happening far away, elsewhere.
But they may as well be, Iris says. What does here mean anyway, I’d like to know. Everywhere’s a here, isn’t it?”

― Ali Smith, Winter

The 33rd Annual NINE Spring Training Conference (March 4-7, 2026) invites original unpublished papers that study all aspects of baseball, with particular emphasis on history, literature, and social policy implications. Abstracts only, not to exceed 300 words, should be submitted by November 14, 2025, to co-directors Willie Steele (wdsteele@lipscomb.edu) and David Pegram (david.pegram@paradisevalley.edu) for the abstract committee’s consideration. We ask that you please copy your submission to both of us.

Call for Papers: Companion to International Comics Studies (Intellect Books)

Edited by Julia Round, Shambhavi Singh and Eszter Szép 

Deadline for chapter proposals: 31 January 2026 

Deadline for first draft chapters: 1 April 2027 

Call for Book Chapters: “Japa-ing” to Freedom or/and Slavery
Back in 2001, Simon Gikandi in “Globalization and the Claims of Postcoloniality” discussed the unfortunate case of two dead Guinean boys whose bodies were found in the cargo hold of a plane, stowed away in the bowels of slave ships. The unnamed boys were desperate to go to Europe. The on-going mass exodus of young people from Nigeria (called “japa”) can be read as a contemporary re-enactment of the ideas that drove those Guinea boys to “choose” a deadly migration journey.

The Evelyn Scott Society
The Society for the Study of Southern Literature
March 28th-31st, 2026
Fisk University
Nashville, TN

The Evelyn Scott Society invites abstracts of about 300 words to participate in a proposed panel focused on the writer Evelyn Scott’s life and work at the Society for the Study of Southern Literature’s biannual conference, which will be held at Fisk University from March 28th-31st, 2026.

Call for Papers:

Tolkien in Popular Culture Area

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

47th Annual Conference, February 25-28, 2026

Marriott Albuquerque

Albuquerque, New Mexico

https://www.southwestpca.org

Submissions open: September 1, 2025

Proposal submission deadline: October 31, 2025