The Northeast Popular Culture Association (NEPCA) Politics, Civic Life, and Pop Culture Area invites submissions for NEPCA’s annual conference to be held online from Thursday, October 9th, to Saturday, October 11th, 2025.

We encourage panel proposals as well as individual submissions.

Papers are generally 15–20 minutes in length. We also encourage works in progress, and informal presentations. 

This area considers the intersection of politics, civic life, and popular culture. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

• Political actions that involve pop culture, including banning or attacking elements of pop culture

Abstract

This session at the South Atlantic Modern Language Association (SAMLA 2025) annual conference explores the relationship between queer and trans cultural productions and the politics of censorship and obscenity.

Description

DEADLINE: PLEASE SUBMIT YOUR ABSTRACT BY JULY 15, 2025.

Demeter collection on Trans Parenting edited by Charlotte Beyer, Liana Cusmano, and Allie Robbins

We have had a couple of spaces open up in our collection on trans parenting. As such, we are seeking contributors who are keen to engage critically and/or creatively with this topic and invite further chapter proposals.

CONGIST’26Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Crisis 

Date:  13-15 May 2026

Venue: Istanbul University, Faculty of Letters, Istanbul, Turkey

https://congist.istanbul.edu.tr/en/content/congist-2026/call-for-papers

Call for Proposals
Beyond Boundaries: Visions of Ecological Futures
2025 PNCA Symposium
October 2–4, 2025
Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) at Willamette University
511 NW Broadway, Portland, Oregon

Songs in ShakespeareProposing a special issue of Cahiers Élisabéthains for July 2027 We are seeking abstracts to include in our proposal for a special issue of Cahiers Élisabéthains on the topic of songs in Shakespeare. If the proposal is accepted, the issue will be published in print in July 2027. Proposals on any aspect of songs in Shakespeare will be considered, but we are particularly interested in the dramatic questions, “What can songs do in Shakespeare?” and “What can singing mean to characters in Shakespeare?”. Topics might include analysis of the songs in one play or across various plays; songs and sonnets; meter and music; birdsong; singers’ voice changes; non-English songs; missing songs; performance history.

Please direct any general inquiries to Erica Tortolani at etort.phd@gmail.com.  

Call for Papers: Journal of Digital Media & Policy (JDMP)

Special Issue: ‘Metaverse Futures: Policy, Power, and the Digital Media Landscape’

#JDMPJournal

Guest Editors:

Brighton Nyagadza, York St John University, London Campus, United Kingdom

Abu Bashar, Gulf University, Kingdom of Bahrain

Eugine Tafadzwa Maziriri, University of the Western Cape, South Africa

Tamer M. Alkadash, Gulf University, Kingdom of Bahrain

View the full call here>>

 Call For Proposals AMERICAN NIGHTMARES II: RETURN TO SALEMTHE BIENNIAL SYMPOSIUM OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF THE AMERICAN GOTHIC March 19th – 21st, 2026Salem, Massachusetts Keynote Speaker: Victor LavalleKeynote Speaker: Siân Silyn Roberts Conference co-director: Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, Central Michigan UniversityConference co-director: Jennifer Schell, University of Alaska FairbanksWith the kind support of the American Literature Association  Please join the Society for the Study of the American Gothic for our second biennial symposium!

The word apocalypse contains a paradox. In common usage, it means, “a disaster resulting in drastic, irreversible damage to human society or the environment, esp. on a global scale; a cataclysm” (OED); but the word’s roots come from the ancient Greek for “unveiling." 

                  Apocalypse contains both end and beginning, annihilation and exaltation. The apocalyptic promises death and destruction, yes, but also, knowledge and transformation.  The apocalypse is above all a threshold. Thus, as an object of inquiry, apocalypse calls for the examination of perspective and perception, as much as of semiotics and the historical. 

This panel invites scholarship that explores how sound—broadly understood as an aesthetic, material, and theoretical force—functions within and shapes literature, music, performance, and visual media to riff on history and modulate experience. We seek contributions that investigate how sound operates both as a method and a site of creative invention—where dominant narratives are unsettled and histories that resist closure come into audible presence. Sonic form becomes a space where the unfinished, the fugitive, and the refused emerge through rhythm, echo, distortion, repetition, and resonance.

Conference Call for Papers

Kingston University, UK, 28th and 29th October 2025

Terminal Futures: JG Ballard In The 21st Century

Kingston School of Art, Kingston University

#Kingston2025

October 28th and 29th 2025

Call For Papers

Kingston School of Art, Kingston University, September 11th and 12th September, 2025

The 2025 Northeast Popular Culture Association (NEPCA) will host its annual conference this fall as a virtual conference from Thursday, October 9th, to Saturday, October 11th, 2025.

Virtual sessions will take place via Zoom throughout the day on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Registration will open up in mid-July. 

The Storytelling & Narrative area explores the multifaceted nature and role of storytelling and narrative. We invite submissions from all theoretical and methodological perspectives. Submissions should have a connection to how storytelling and narrative plays a role in popular culture including, but not limited to, topics such as: