New Paradigms, New Epistemes: Literature and Criticality in the 21st Century
Concept Note
Research Scholar’s National Conference CFP – 22nd and 23rd April 2026
New Paradigms, New Epistemes: Literature and Criticality in the 21st Century
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Concept Note
Research Scholar’s National Conference CFP – 22nd and 23rd April 2026
New Paradigms, New Epistemes: Literature and Criticality in the 21st Century
Perpetrators of genocide destroy people as well as their cultural legacies, including formal archives, libraries, privately held records, and culturally significant texts and other print objects. Colonial occupation both historically and currently consolidates power through destroying records of occupied peoples to deny their past, present, and future. Resistance, in turn, may take the form of preserving such records through smuggling, hiding, converting, memorizing, digitizing, translating, and reconstituting. Inspired by the Phoenix Library in Gaza, the MLA Forum on Book History, Print Cultures, Lexicography seeks papers on preserving books, print materials, and other textual records (broadly understood) in contexts of genocide.
Conference online (via Zoom): 16-17 April 2026
CFP:
Affects, emotions and perceptions have always been at the center of philosophical discussion. Yet the so-called “Affective turn” in social studies and humanities is a relatively new phenomenon inspired by Deleuze and Guattari´s influential works among others. Affective turn challenges the still dominant representational approach in semiotics, discourse analysis and text analyses of all kinds.
"I don't know what Christmas is, but Christmas time is here": Santa Claus, Christmas, and Implicit Religion in SFF
Abstracts (250 words) are invited for papers exploring Santa Claus and/or the Christmas holiday in science fiction, speculative fiction and fantasy literature, film, and graphic novels. Considerations of the interrelation of secular and religious themes in SFF Christmas, implicit religion, and contemporary ritual welcome.
MLA '27 held in LA in January; for more information on the conference see https://www.mla.org/Events/2027-MLA-Convention
Deadline: March 25, 2026
Special issue of the Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies
We are issuing a brief second call for papers for the special issue Motherhoods around the World in the peer-reviewed, Scopus indexed journal, the Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies.
Due to the withdrawal of one or two previously accepted contributions, additional article slots have become available.
The Ninth Annual Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference at StokerCon 2026Conference Date: Friday, June 5, 2026Conference Location: The Westin Pittsburgh1000 Penn AvenuePittsburgh, PA 1522and via HopinConference Website: https://www.stokercon.com/Stokercon 2026 will be the tenth anniversary of Stokercon, and the Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference is delighted to be a part of this banner year.
The Editorial Board of “Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis” invites submissions of scholarly articles for the peer-reviewed thematic issue “Faces of Childhood: Representations and Experiences in Art and Society.”
The Journal of Marlowe Studies, the only peer-reviewed academic journal devoted to the study of Christopher Marlowe, invites submissions for its 2027 issue. We welcome scholarly exploration of Marlowe’s works, reviews of relevant books, and reviews of productions of Marlowe’s plays from anywhere in the world. Submissions are welcome from scholars at all career stages.
The journal is co-edited by Lisa Hopkins and Andrew Duxfield. If you have any questions, please feel free to email Andrew on a.duxfield@liverpool.ac.uk.
Journal Website: https://journals.shu.ac.uk/index.php/Marlstud/index
This panel invites scholarship exploring South-Asian diasporic poetics, transnational feminist perspectives, negotiations of identities, and practices of resistance. Please submit a 250-word abstract and a brief bio to subrata-chandra.mozumder1@louisiana.edu.
Deadline for submissions: Monday, March 23, 2026
Subrata Chandra Mozumder, U of Louisiana, Lafayette (subrata-chandra.mozumder1@louisiana.edu )
In the late oughts and 2010s, critical and cultural theory across the humanities embraced the power of positive thinking. If we paid lip service to the determinations of (neo)liberal modernity, our thinking nonetheless gathered with feverish intensity around all that was said to escape or exceed its iron cage. Those of us tutored in assembling a historical ontology of ourselves turned to dreams of possible futures – or else to cultural practices and lifeways whose onto-epistemic difference enacted futurity in the midst of a seemingly endless now. This politics of utopian adjacency crystallized in a now-familiar set of keywords: affirmation, futurity, speculation, utopia, worldmaking, and (of course!) the ever-popular injunction to imagine otherwise.
The ongoing developments in artificial intelligence and machine learning automation announce an imminent technological revolution like nothing we have ever seen. Our relation to traditional labor markets, artistic creation, and modes of education has already been drastically disrupted and will potentially change even more. It seems that we are witnessing the dawn of a new age in which human intellectual and productive capacities are outsourced to machines and human connection is mediated by algorithms in digital spaces.
The International T. S. Eliot Society
The 47th Annual Meeting of the International T. S. Eliot Society
25-27 September 2026
St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Rising water levels in oceans and rivers, streams with high flood waves, and torrential rains that turn puddles into lakes: houses that are currently exposed to such increasingly regular water events are becoming a problematic, if not catastrophic, environment. The protective function that the house is supposed to have according to its original idea and design is being compromised. While roofs and walls are supposed to keep out wind and water—and the traditional European gabled roof is primarily designed to divert water from above—in these extreme weather scenarios, basements are flooded, roofs are torn off, entire houses stand like islands in the water or are even swept away.
Special issue of the Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies
We are issuing a brief second call for papers for the special issue Distinctly Canadian Voices in the peer-reviewed, Scopus indexed journal, the Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies.
Due to the withdrawal of one or two previously accepted contributions, additional article slots have become available.
We invite new submissions that explore the representations of Canada and Canadians in fields as diverse as literature, film, television, visual art, and other media, both in Anglophone and Francophone contexts.
How do playwrights imagine and stage ways of being, hoping, and memorializing against censorship and erasure? We invite papers that explore alternative historiographies in post-war Sri Lankan theater and performance. Please share a 300-word abstract and bio.
Contribute to a Special Issue of the Pop Culture Studies Journal on TOYS!
Volume Editor: Jonathan Alexandratos
Abstract: ~500 words due by April 25th to the editor via email at jsalexan@gmail.com.
Overview:
Paper. Film. TV screen. Sound recording. Internet. These are common ways popular culture reaches us. However, while scholarship around comics, movies, TV shows, music, and online media expands, one pop culture area too often remains under-explored: toys.
The Eco-esotericism panel invites submissions that examine the intersection of esoteric thought and ecological consciousness as expressed in literature, cultural texts, and critical theory. Eco-esotericism encompasses approaches that unite spiritual or mystical understandings of nature with ecological critique and environmental activism. Engaging with PAMLA’s 2026 theme, “Our Ruling Classes: Culture, Power, Conflict,” this panel asks: How do esoteric ecological imaginaries reinforce, negotiate, or resist ruling ideologies? How have spiritualized visions of nature shaped elite cultural production, countercultural movements, or alternative political communities?
The Literature and Religion session invites abstracts for a panel that explores the multifaceted role of religion and spirituality within literary cultures, especially as they intersect with social hierarchies, power structures, and conflict. Religion has long shaped literary expression.
Special Session Proposal for the 2027 MLA Convention (Los Angeles, 7–10 January 2027).
This MLA 2027 special session, “Unfinished Histories: Literary and Cultural Acts of Hope,” explores radical hope as an emancipatory and dynamic framework for examining how literature, film, and art cultivate creative and relational modes of remembrance. Rather than approaching the past solely through paradigms of loss, grievance, or melancholia, the panel asks how cultural narratives open generative spaces for imagining unfinished futures.
Roundtable reflecting on impacts of disabilities on work life in graduate school, pre-tenure, post-tenure, among contingent faculty, and in leadership positions. Please send CV and 300-word abstract for 8- to 10-minute contributions to: Cassandra.falke@uit.no
For the 2027 Modern Langauge Association Convention, the MLA Committee on Disability Issues in the Profession welcomes papers about:
Please submit a 300-word abstract and CV to: Cassandra.falke@uit.no
Redefining Borders in British Literature:
Global and Local Identity Before and After Brexit
Roma Tre University
Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures and Cultures
29-30 ottobre 2026
Convenors
Michela Compagnoni, michela.compagnoni@uniroma3.it
Lucia Esposito, lucia.esposito@uniroma3.it
CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
A Cultural History of the Avant-garde in East Asia
Part of: Cultural Histories of the Avant-Garde: A Companion Series (www.brill.com/CHAG)
The companion series is part of an ongoing, large-scale project launched by De Gruyter Brill (a merger of two international publishing houses) that uncovers the cultural history of the avant-garde in major regions of the world. The series on East Asia consists of four volumes, each dealing with specific decades and topics as follows:
250-500 worded abstracts to be sent to the session organisers at:
In her introduction to Science in the Archives (2017), Lorraine Daston explores the way that scientific archives function as “repository” of scientific empiricism (10), a process through which scientists preserve scientific findings. What is occluded in this understanding, Daston explains, is that, when scientists ‘convert’ the natural world into its ‘second nature’—i.e. data—the conditions for that translation are controlled, selective, entangled, slowed, sped up, and digitized (10). Daston’s research helps us to consider how science arbitrarily constructs archivable data at an increasing rate: “more people are manipulating more information in more ways, and all at a tempo that baffles ‘what next?’ predictions” (10).
Event: University of Washington English Department Writing Programs’ Praxis Conference
Theme: Writing With
Date: Fri May 29, 2026
Location: Seattle, Washington, United States (University of Washington, Seattle campus)
CFP SUBMISSION DEADLINE: March 13, 11:59pm PST (UPDATE: DEADLINE EXTENDED TO MARCH 16, 11:59pm PST)
We are pleased to invite proposals for the University of Washington English Department Writing Programs’ sixth annual Praxis Conference, which will be held at the University of Washing, Seattle campus on Friday, May 29th, 2026.
The journal Korpusgermanistik invites submissions for its June 2026 issue. The journal provides an international platform for research across the full spectrum of German Studies, including linguistics, literary studies, cultural studies, and media studies.
All submissions undergo a double-blind peer-review process.
Important Dates
Submission
Authors are kindly asked to submit their full manuscripts via the journal’s online submission system:
Please ensure that your manuscript follows the author guidelines available on the journal website.
On December 9, 2014, the release of Ezell Ford’s autopsy report inspired an 18-day protest held in
record-breaking cold in front of LAPD headquarters. The evidence confirming that Ford had been shot by
police at close range inspired a group of dance activists, led by Black Lives Matter founding member Dr.
Shamell Bell, not only to occupy space but also to move within it. The protest represented what she coined
“street dance activism” based on “radical joy” and “collecting freedom dreaming.”
The Pleasures and Problems of Pooh
The 3rd Biennial kidlit@hollins Children’s Literature Symposium
On Zoom
Friday-Sunday, July 10-12, 2026
Hollins University Graduate Programs in Children’s Literature
Chaired by Lisa Rowe Fraustino
This year’s hundredth anniversary of A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh, published in 1926, provides a springboard for reflection on the role of classic children’s literature. This online symposium seeks presentation proposals from authors, illustrators, librarians, publishers, educators, and scholars in any field. Possible topics for exploration include:
“I Put a Spell on You” @ 70: 3rd Annual Goth Music and Subculture Symposium
Theme: “Hyphenated Hauntings: Examining Proto-goth and Goth-adjacent Bands”
Submission Deadline:
June 12, 2026
Symposium Date:
August 15, 2026
Format:
Online (via Zoom, Pacific)
Abstract:
200 words
Biographical Statement, inclusive of position, institutional affiliation, previous publications, accolades, research interests, etc.
Time Zone
Submit to:
Children’s accounts of violence occupy a paradoxical space in public discourse: they are framed as both essential, unquestionable evidence, and, sometimes at the same time, as unreliable and prone to outside influence. Both framings rely on cultural constructions of the child’s “innocence.” This panel invites papers examining narratives of violence told by children, with a particular interest in experiences of institutional or state violence. How do these narratives complicate familiar tropes of children as voiceless victims in need of saving, or of certain topics as exclusively “adult” or “childish”? How do child narrators themselves exploit, resist, and play with or into these tropes?
Session CFP:
Seeking presentations addressing multilingualism and linguistic rights in South Asian literature and culture for a guaranteed panel of the MLA-allied South Asian Literary Association. 300-word abstract and short CV.
Deadline for submissions: Sunday, March 15, 2026
Hans-Georg Erney, Georgia Southern U (herney@georgiasouthern.edu )
Special note for the contributors:
Please focus on the text that represents migration from the Global South to the Global North.
The text under consideration should be published after 2000, though it can focus on migration that happened at any time in history.
Please take a minimum of one and a maximum of two migration/refugee narratives for analysis.
Please mention within the abstract the theoretical background clearly that one wants to apply.
The text under consideration should be either written in English or translated into English.
Video Game and Memory
Call for Book Chapters
"To live an age, yet remember so little…
Perhaps I should be thankful?”
Quirrel, NPC in Hollow Knight (2017)
BABEL AFIAL journal. Dept of English, French and German, University of Vigo, Spain. Call for Papers for No. 35, Special Issue: “BABEL/S IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: LINGUISTIC AND LITERARY NEGOTIATIONS, CULTURAL (MIS)ENCOUNTERS AND TEXTUAL VARIATIONS IN THE ANGLOPHONE WORLD”. Deadline: 31 March 2026. Contact info: babelafial@uvigo.gal. Journal info (both English & Spanish versions) at: https://revistas.uvigo.es/index.php/AFIAL/announcement/view/38
Recent archival initiatives have made accessible significant bodies of media work by writers associated with the Black Arts Movement, including projects in film, radio, and television. These rediscoveries invite renewed attention to the movement’s engagement with broadcast and screen media and challenge the longstanding emphasis on poetry, theater, and print culture in scholarship on the period.
“The poetry of witness reclaims the social from the political and in so doing defends the individual against illegitimate forms of coercion.”- Carolyn Forché
“But is it enough that a poem “remembers” when we are now entrenched in an era of total recall?”– Cathy Park Hong, “Against Witness“
Unearthed invites submissions for an upcoming issue devoted to witnessing in a time of social and ecological rupture. We welcome work that refuses to look away from injustice and chronicles radical resilience.
CALL FOR PAPERS
October 23–24, 2026
Children, Literature, and the Christian Imagination
An International Conference
Keynote Speaker: Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Screenwriter, Novelist, and Children’s Laureate (UK)
The University of St. Michael’s College invites proposals of individual papers or panels for a conference on the theme of Children, Literature, and the Christian Imagination. The keynote will take place on the evening of October 23 and the conference will take place the following day, October 24, 2026.
We invite chapter proposals for an edited volume titled Intergenerational Trauma, Memory, Truth, and Resilience Within Indigenous Communities. Across global contexts, Indigenous communities continue to confront the layered consequences of land dispossession, forced assimilation, cultural suppression, environmental destruction, and systemic inequities. Yet alongside trauma exists profound resilience—expressed through story, ceremony, language revitalization, artistic expression, community mobilization, and intergenerational renewal.
See for details and submission https://www.igi-global.com/publish/call-for-papers/call-details/9804
Call for ProposalsEthos in Contemporary Contexts: Authority, Identity, and Trust in Contemporary RhetoricEdited, Academic Collection
Natures in Translation: AI, Ethics and Environmental Conservation
Lancaster University, UK
1-2 October 2026
Conference funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and BRAID
Abstract submission deadline: 20 April 2026
Confirmed keynote speakers: Prof. Ursula K. Heise (UCLA), Prof. Şebnem Susam-Saraeva (Edinburgh University).
Confirmed keynote performance: Khairani Barokka
Panel on the rewards, risks, and ethics of public humanities approaches in the undergraduate classroom. Some possible topics: public project assignments, public writing, community-engaged learning, university/humanities in current political climate, faculty-student collaboration.
Deadline for submissions: Friday, March 20, 2026
Please send 250-500-word abstracts & CVs to Roya Biggie, Knox College (royabiggie@gmail.com ) and Danica Savonick, SUNY Cortland (danicasavonick@gmail.com ).
This is a guaranteed panel for the MLA's Teaching of Literature Forum. This roundtable discusses experiences and pedagogical approaches to teaching literature under authoritarianism and state violence widely conceived. Panelists discuss whitewashing and erasing literary histories, global efforts at repressing liberatory literacy, heightened classroom surveillance, teaching anti-fascist literature, and more.
Deadline for submissions: Friday, March 27, 2026
Please send 250-500-word abstracts and CVs to Danica Savonick (danicasavonick@gmail.com ) and Brandi Locke (blocke@udel.edu).
Humanities Bulletin - Call for papers
Submission Deadline: April 25, 2026
Vol. 9, No. 1 - May, 2026
ISSN 2517-4266
Humanities Bulletin is a multidisciplinary peer-reviewed Journal which features original studies and reviews in the various branches of Humanities, including History, Literature, Philosophy, Arts.
This journal is not allied with any specific school of thinking or cultural tradition; instead, it encourages dialogue between ideas and people with different points of view. Our aim is to bring together different international scholars, in order to promote the dialogue between cultures, ideas and new academic researches.
The Journal is hosted by London Academic Publishing, London, UK.
Speaking of the agency of nature is now common practice. The biosphere is recognised as being life sustaining and its vitality essential to human existence. Following thinkers such as Felix Guattari, nature has also been recognised has having subjective qualities, inseparable from the meaning and values humans attribute to life and the visions we conjure of what constitutes a just and habitable future. The philosophical legacy of Immanuel Kant looms large over this aesthetic terrain, notably his work on the beautiful and the sublime, which still compels us to consider the complex relationship between humans and life-world systems.
This panel seeks papers that explore the early modern relationship between loss and melancholy for the Sixteenth Century Society Conference to be held in Chicago, 29-31 October 2026. In his Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Robert Burton writes, “Now go and brag of thy present happiness… thou seest in what a brittle state thou art, how soon thou mayst be dejected… by bad diet, bad air, a small loss, a little sorrow or discontent.” Bereavement permeates the early modern landscape, appearing in paintings, prints, poems, plays, ego documents, and legal testimony, among many other sources. It may involve the loss of love, friends, honor, possessions, homeland, freedom, political stability, or even religious conviction.
Call for Papers: Journal of Fandom Studies
Special Issue: ‘Heated Rivalry: Queering Sports in Popular Culture’
Guest Editors:
Yvonne Gonzales, University of Southern California
Kirsten Crowe, University of Southern California
View the full call here>>
https://www.intellectbooks.com/journal-of-fandom-studies#call-for-papers
Call for Papers: Temporalities: The Sixth Annual Critical Femininities Conference
The Critical Femininities Network invites abstracts from scholars, researchers, activists, and artists for the sixth annual Critical Femininities Conference on the theme of ‘Temporalities.’ The conference will take place virtually on August 7 - 9, 2026.
Coming of Age on Screen: Youthful Subjectivities in Contemporary Indian Media
Guest Editors:
Dr. Shreyansh Jain, Department of English and Cultural Studies, Christ (Deemed-to-be-University), Delhi-NCR, Ghaziabad, India.
Dr. Ruchi, School of Business, University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun, India.
Link to the Journal: https://cinej.pitt.edu/ojs/cinej/announcement/view/6