American Literature Association: 37th Annual Conference
May 20-23, 2026
Chicago, IL

Neurodivergence and Fandom

The Neurodivergent Studies area and the Fandom Studies area are excited to announce a joint panel on Neurodivergence in Fandom! Neurodivergence can have a big impact on the ways that people interact with popular culture, and this can be seen in the ways that neurodivergent folks approach fandom. This panel seeks to understand different approaches or experiences when it comes to neurodivergence in/and fandom!

Some possible topics include:

The 25th Vagantes Conference on Medieval Studies will be hosted by The University of Rochester in Rochester, New York, April 9-11, 2026.  Vagantes is an interdisciplinary community of junior and early career scholars that offers an ideal opportunity for sharing new research. The conference accepts submissions on any topic pertaining to the long Middle Ages. We encourage submissions from scholars across all disciplines that engage with medieval studies and welcome work that explores medieval culture, religion, philosophy, literature, art, historiography, as well as medievalisms and reception studies.

Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal is devoting a special issue to Genevieve Taggard, her career and legacy. Given the interdisciplinary nature of Women’s Studies, and the breadth and depth of Taggard’s multi-faceted artistic, cultural, and political undertakings, proposals are sought for essays that demonstrate Taggard’s wide-ranging literary and political legacy and her significance to our present moment. 

Topics may include but are not limited to:

Workshop: “From Alienation to Affinities”

Organizers: Isabel Osuna Montilla and Klara Tolic, University of Tübingen, Germany

Call for Papers

The inconclusive debates, the conflict of opinion, that this seminar aims to initiate and proliferate are about how body, culture, and plurality – three expansive and yet profound concepts – constellate, collapse and collide in varying registers that are both founded and unpredictable. The frames of our studies across disciplines are left in motion; the figures of understanding about how culture and the body and the bodies of culture in relation to plurality struggle to stay entrenched, occupy and distract us.

United Lutheran Seminary to Host “A Vision for Liberating Our Democracy” Conference, February 27–28, 2026

 Two-day gathering will explore the religious and racialized roots of American democracy and paths toward a more just future.

United Lutheran Seminary (ULS) will host A Vision for Liberating Our Democracy: Examining the Religious and Racialized Roots of American Democracy on February 27–28, 2026, at its Philadelphia campus. The interdisciplinary conference will bring together scholars, activists, educators, and faith leaders to examine how religion and race have shaped democratic life in the United States and to explore liberative visions for the future.

The Activist Author: Contemporary Forms and Historical Precedents of Activist Literature

Dates and Location:

November 9th & 10th, 2026.

UCLouvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium).

Confirmed Keynote speakers:

Sara Dimick: Northwestern University; author of Unseasonable: Climate Change in Global Literatures.

Juan Meneses: UNC Charlotte; author of Resisting Dialogue: Modern Fiction and the Future of Dissent and editor of Postpolitics and the Aesthetic Imagination.

Concept Note:

The 2026 NEXUS Interdisciplinary Conference invites current graduate students to submit abstracts for this year's conference at The University of Tennessee - Knoxville on April 17-18, 2026.

"There is not one but many silences, and they are an integral part of the strategies that underlie and permeate discourses." —Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality

"The fact that we are here and that I speak not these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immbolizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken." —Audre Lorde, "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action."

Deadline extended to December 15!

University of Arizona Graduate Literature Conference: Imagining the End(s)

Conference Dates: March 6-8, 2026, Tucson, AZ, USA

“It is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism” (Mark Fisher)

“But the plot too has its own history” (Wynter 101)

What is it we have in mind when we imagine the end of the world or the end of capitalism? 

Is it the temporal–the closing, conclusion, finale, the end of capitalism’s historical epoch?

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

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 12, 2025

Crossings: A Journal of English Studies is an annual double-blind peer-reviewed journal of scholarly articles and book reviews. The articles involve, but are not limited to, issues related to language, literature, culture, and pedagogy. It is a discursive platform to critically examine human behavior and communication, and their larger role in society as well as in knowledge production.

CROSSINGS: A JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES (ISSN 2071-1107; E-ISSN 2958-3179) is inviting scholarly articles for its Volume 17 to be published in 2026. 

Submission Deadline: March 31, 2026

Proverbs and Popular Wisdom in Early Modern Literature and Culture

An International and Interdisciplinary Conference

1-3 July 2026

School of Arts and Humanities, University of Hull

Deadline 1/1/26 

Studies in American Humor, the journal of the American Humor Studies Association, invites submissions of scholarly papers for a special issue of the journal to appear in fall 2027, edited by Wesley Scott McMasters and Todd Nathan Thompson. The topic of this special issue is “Periodicals, Period: Humor and Nineteenth-Century American Newspapers and Magazines.” This special issue will be an extension of a well-received panel on this topic (co-sponsored by the American Humor Studies Association and the Research Society for American Periodicals) at the 2025 American Literature Association conference.

Conference online: 22-23 January 2025

CFP:

Beyond the Pipe: Hydro politics, Gendered Scarcity, and Water Justice in South Asia Edited by Debapriya Ganguly and Rajni Singh Indian Institute of Technology, Dhanbad The hydro-political landscape of South Asia is arguably a defining site for examining the nexus of resource scarcity, human security, and regional conflict. While concerns over resource depletion are globally prevalent, this book aims to critique the fundamental premise of scarcity itself, asserting that in contexts like the Indo-Gangetic basin, it is rarely a natural condition. Instead, it is a socially and politically generated phenomenon—a “scare of scarcity”—instrumentalized by powerful groups to consolidate control and justify spatial domination.

EGSA ANNUAL CONFERENCE (2026): GRIEF IN CONVERSATION

Weird Genres, Weird Gender 

For MSA 2026, Loughborough UK (July 1-4)

I am interested in putting together a panel proposal with scholars working in the spaces of genre fiction in the early/mid 20th century, including romance, science fiction, westerns, horror/occult, detective fiction, historical fiction, adventure fiction, and children’s fiction, with an eye to representations of gender and sexuality. Analyses that bridge early 20th century genre study with contemporary genre narratives and adaptations are also welcome. 

Some possible topics could include

This call is for the American Literature Association Conference in Chicago, May 20-23, 2026!

The Sherwood Anderson Society is dedicated to the examination and exploration of the works of Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941).  The scholarly interests of this society are, but not exclusively, Anderson’s relationship fellow writers, author’s biography, the Midwest, expatriatism, the fiction of war, cosmopolitanism vs provincialism, urban vs rural, stylistic modernism, and pre and post-industrial United states. Please contact Doug Sheldon at sheldond@uic.edu with any inquiries.

Call For Presentations I: Sherwood Anderson at 150!

Concept Note

Chapter Proposal Abstract: Part I – Medieval Seeds

Concorde: Literary, Linguistic and Sustainability Studies Conference

Date: 22-23 April, 2026

Venue: Department of English, Netrokona University, Netrokona, Bangladesh

Keynote speakers:

Day-1: TBC

Day-2: TBC