Call for Papers for Western Literature Association’s guaranteed panel at the 2026 American Literature Association Meeting (Chicago, May 20-23)

This year’s general call seeks proposals related to any aspect of the study of literature of the American West.  Papers on single texts or single authors are welcome, though comparative, transnational, and/or multiethnic approaches are especially encouraged. Graduate students are encouraged to apply.

Call for Submissions! The Lamp is seeking submissions for its 2026 issue (Volume 16)!

The Lamp is an international literary journal dedicated to showcasing the creative writing of graduate and professional students. If you write poetry, short fiction, scripts, creative nonfiction, or any other form of textual art, please submit your work to The Lamp at thelampeditor@gmail.com. The deadline is Sunday, 11 January 2026. Please follow our submission guidelines below.

Submission Guidelines:

Reinventing Borderlines in a Transnational World
April 10-11, 2026
Higher Institute of Human Sciences of Tunis- University Tunis El Manar

CALL FOR PAPERS:

Since 1975, pacificREVIEW: A West Coast Arts Review Annual (formerly Pacific Poetry and Fiction Review) has thrived as an experimental editorial cohort made up of driven, wily, undergraduates & graduate students in the department of english and Comparative Literature, san diego state university, san diego, ca 92182-6020. This year, we take on comix again! 

Bloomsbury - Trans Studies Book Series

CALL FOR CHAPTERS

Transgender Entanglements: The shape and limits of transgender 

Edited by Levi C. R. Hord and Wendy Gay Pearson

CFP: The Medieval Comic

MEST Symposium, Indiana University Bloomington

March 6-8

Keynote from Dr. Albrecht Classen: "Laughter on the Stage, Laughter at Court, and Laughter in Public Spaces During the Middle Ages and Early Modern Time."

The Comic is a multivalent concept, which can pull or push scholarship in many directions. It  has been at times described as a social balm, binding agent, and lubricant. This call for papers asks for submissions considering the various ways in which the Comic manifests in the medieval and medievalism, its implications, and importance.

Potential panels might consider:

"Speculative Cultures and the Metamodern Turn"
AmLit: American Literature Special Issue (October 2027)

Guest Editors
Vasileios N. Delioglanis (deliogla@enl.auth.gr)
Aylin D. Walder (aylin-dilek.walder@tu-braunschweig.de)

Society for the Study of Southern Literature Conference 2026

“Building Spaces of Freedom,” March 28th-31st at Fisk University, Nashville, TN

Panel: The Future of Southern Studies

Building on the 2026 theme, Building Spaces of Freedom, this panel seeks work that imagines where southern studies is going and who will help carry it forward. The Emerging Scholars Organization (ESO) invites papers from emerging scholars for an open-call panel that looks ahead toward the next questions, methods, and interventions shaping southern studies. 

“When Humans are On the Menu: Cannibalism and Modernity”

BAMS/MSA 2026

Loughborough, UK, 1-4 July 2026

I’m seeking abstracts for papers exploring representations of cannibalism in global modernist literature and culture for BAMS/MSA 2026. I’m planning this as an entirely virtual panel, but I am open to an in-person panel if that is everyone’s preference!

The representation of fatness in media has long been a subject of scrutiny, often intertwined with discourses of desirability, stigma, humor, and social control. Whether in films, advertisements, cartoons, or social media, fat bodies are frequently portrayed through the lens of excess, deviance, or comic relief, shaping cultural perceptions and reinforcing existing hierarchies of appearance and worth. This issue seeks to explore the multiple ways in which fatness is constructed and negotiated across various media forms, interrogating its intersections with gender, sexuality, class, power, and social anxieties.

CFP | Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins Society (PEHS) session 

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

Hopkins’s America, Then & Now

The Society for the History of Women in the Americas (SHAW) welcomes proposals for its annual conference, hosted by the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès, France.

This year's conference invites papers on any topic relating to histories of women and gender non-conforming people in the Americas, but encourages proposals for papers, panels or roundtables that explore the subject of confinement.

Abstracts are invited on, but not limited to, the following sub-themes:

• Digital Transformations in Literary Studies
• Artificial Intelligence and Literary Criticism
• Hybrid Genres, Graphic Narratives, and New Media
• Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature
• Trauma, Memory, and Narrative Representation
• Identity, Intersectionality, and Representation
• Postcolonialism, Neocolonialism, and Cultural Identity
• Tribal Literatures, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, and Forest Ecologies
• Dalit Literatures and Narratives of Marginality
• Language, Multilingualism, and Cultural Diversity
• Translation, Transculturation, and Cross-Cultural Mediation

Call for papers – Series of Workshops on Sacred Writing Traditions

The HaZen (Handschriftenzentrum) project, based at the Institute for Jewish Studies at Freie Universität Berlin, would like to invite international researchers to three workshops in Berlin.

Drama and theatre have long served as dynamic mediums through which societies narrate their myths, record their histories, and preserve traditions. The interplay of myth, history, and tradition shapes the content and form of dramatic expression, influencing storytelling techniques, character archetypes, and performance styles across different cultures and time periods.

Plenary Lecture: Professor Daniel Cook (University of Dundee)

Artist’s Talk: Martin Rowson (in conversation with Brigitte Friant-Kessler)

Venue: St. Bride Library (London, U.K.)

Dates: 23–25 September 2026

Guest editor: Maxime Fecteau

Primordial and born of Chaos, Gaia wears many faces. In Hesiod’s Theogony she is a fertile, earth-bodied mother; she is also an insurgent force—ally to the Titans and to violent births. This constitutive ambivalence—nourishing ground and upheaval, regeneration and revolt—guides the 15th issue of MuseMedusa. We follow the figure to probe the regimes of time and action it exceeds, while noting how modern representational devices have narrowed its plurality of faces (Latour, 1991; 2015). In short, understanding Gaia today means holding Greek myth together with attention to planetary change.

Miloš Forman: Between Europe and Hollywood

Symposium organized by the Department of Theatre and Film Studies, Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic
Friday, April 24, 2026
Univerzitní 3, Olomouc, Czech Republic

Explorations: A Journal of Language and Literature is a peer-refereed online journal published by the University of Opole, Poland (for more information and the current issue see http://www.explorations.uni.opole.pl). 

Call for Chapters

Feminine Rage: A Companion

I have a thing about feminine rage. I get a lot of [scripts of] men doing really terrible things and women sitting silently whilst one tear slowly falls. I’m like, ‘No, no, no, no, no. We get mad. And we get angry. – Anya Taylor-Joy

The Medievalism in Popular Culture Area (including Early to Later Middle Ages, Robin Hood, Arthurian Legend, Chaucer, Norse, and other materials connected to medieval studies) accepts papers on all topics that explore either popular culture during the Middle Ages or transcribe some aspect of the Middle Ages into the popular culture of later periods. These representations can occur in any genre, including film, television, novels, graphic novels, gaming, advertising, art, etc. For this year’s conference, I would like to encourage submissions on some of the following topics:

Today, all countries that were colonized by France have gained their independence, yet discussions about its legacy continue. Many films, documentaries, literary works, speeches, and critical writings contribute to the ongoing conversation about liberty and justice in relation to independence. A 2024 documentary produced by Wandrille Lanos, titled Haïti, la rançon de l'indépendance, explores how liberty and justice were interpreted during Haiti’s struggle for independence. From September 22 to 26, 2025, during the United Nations General Debate at the 80th Session, the current president of Ghana, John Dramani Mahama, argued that colonization should be recognized as one of the greatest crimes against humanity.

Today, Bollywood is not merely an industry of Indian films representing the national cinema but also a global cultural phenomenon. From the singsong dance sequences on YouTube to its widespread circulation on Netflix, Amazon Prime, and regional streaming platforms, Bollywood redefines South Asian identities and how they are consumed, contested, and celebrated globally. Moreover, the intertwining of questions on cultural appropriation, culturalized representation, caste, gender, and diasporic negotiations emerges with renewed urgency and visibility.

Epistemologies and Pathways to Truth