In a world increasingly marked by geopolitical strife, cultural polarization, and digital fragmentation, literature continues to stand as one of humanity’s most profound instruments for fostering peace, empathy, and human solidarity. From ancient oral traditions to contemporary narratives, literary expression has served as a repository of shared human experience—preserving collective memory, resisting violence, and envisioning alternative futures grounded in compassion and coexistence. The pursuit and preservation of peace have remained among the fundamental purposes and aesthetic aspirations of literature since antiquity.

Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association
English Nineteenth-Century Literature Panel
October 8-10, 2026
Ogden, Utah
Abstract Deadline: April 1, 2026

The 2026 Convention of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association welcomes abstracts related to English Nineteenth-Century Literature. Ranging from the Regency to the Victorian era, the Nineteenth Century was an eclectic time facing significant social, political, and economic changes. Considering this period of change (and perhaps even how our own time is one of change) we invite abstracts dealing with how 19th Century British Literature explored topics such as, but not limited to:

This year’s convention theme, “After the Archive,” lends itself well to the study of Religion and Literature. The cultural importance of folklore and sacred stories means that keeping an archive of them for posterity through written and oral storytelling is imperative. However, the nature of that archive is unique in that these stories are ever-changing as they are retold and adapted over the generations.

Panel Title: New Perspectives on the Federal Writers’ Project in the American West

Dates: August 26–29, 2026

Location: Eugene, Oregon

Deadline for Submissions: Friday, March 27, 2026

Contact Email: Noreen.Rivera@utrgv.edu

Panel Description

https://asap17.exordo.com/panels/79/contribute/dbf84dd0cbaee432095920794...

In her 2018 M Archive: After the End of the World, Alexis Pauline Gumbs writes: “you can have breathing and the reality of the radical black porousness of love (aka black feminist metaphysics aka us all of us, us) or you cannot. there is only both or neither. there is no either or. there is no this or that. there is only all" (7)

estrema: interdisciplinary journal of humanities, a digital and open access journal from the Centre of Comparative Studies, at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon (CEComp-FLUL), has an open call for submissions for the 1st issue of its 5th volume, until June 9th 2026. The previous issue featured reflections around the theme of Speculative Fiction. In 2026, we are launching estrema’s first call for papers specifically oriented towards the potentialities of art and images in technical contemporaneity.

shooting

1. the action of filming or photographing a scene, film, etc.

Hospitality is often understood as an act of welcome, yet it also raises complex questions about boundaries, authority, and belonging. Drawing on the philosophical framework of Jacques Derrida—who describes hospitality as a tension between openness to the stranger and the conditions that regulate entry—this panel invites proposals that explore how hospitality functions as a pedagogical framework for teaching reading, writing, and interpretation. Proposals may explore hospitality through literary analysis, composition pedagogy, rhetorical theory, cultural studies, or interdisciplinary approaches.

PAMLA 2026 Seattle: “Our Ruling Classes: Class, Power, Conflict” - https://www.pamla.org/pamla2026/

The 123rd Annual PAMLA Conference will be held November 12–15, 2026, at the Hyatt Regency Seattle,
808 Howell St., Seattle, Washington 98101.

Sacred Arts 2026:
Exploring the Spiritual Dimensions of Artistic Expression and Ritual
Conference webpage: https://labrc.co.uk/2025/12/11/sacred-arts-2026/

University of Oxford
and online

May 16-17, 2026

Registration fees (for both attendees and presenters):

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.

"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: The Subject and its Estrangements

‘The wounds of the Spirit heal, and leave no scars behind.’ Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit 

Modernist Nationalisms Conference

St John’s College, University of Oxford

Thursday 10th September 2026

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

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 International T. S. Eliot Society

The 47th Annual Meeting of the International T. S. Eliot Society

25-27 September 2026

St. Louis, Missouri, USA

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.

 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 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.

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

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

250-500 worded abstracts to be sent to the session organisers at: 

tridibmj@gmail.com 

aravind_raveendran.phd23@krea.ac.in

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.

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.”