Bridges and Borders: Material Actualities

March 19-21, 2026 | Proposals Due by January 15th, 2026

Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA) and on Zoom 

Bridges and Borders is an annual, interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference presented by the Carnegie Mellon University Department of English in collaboration with the Department of Languages, Cultures, and Applied Linguistics.

CONTACT: bridgesandborders@andrew.cmu.edu

KEYNOTE SPEAKER:  TBA.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

Astrology in Focus:
Navigating Art, Psyche, and Knowledge
A Transdisciplinary Conference
January 18-20, 2026

Proposal Submission Deadline: December 1, 2025

Format: Online
Fee: 100 GBP

Call for Papers:

“Astrology represents the sum of all the psychological knowledge of antiquity”, Carl Jung

Call for Papers for a special issue of the Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry on “Concrete and Visual Poetries in Britain, Ireland, and Beyond”, edited by Colin Herd and Greg Thomas.

Send 250-300 word abstracts for 5,000-7,000-word articles to ConcreteAndVisualPoetries@gmail.com by 10 January 2026.

Call for Book Chapters

The Plant Turn: Literature, Ecology, and the Green Imagination Across Periods

“Under Strong Interest” by Bloomsbury Academic's Critical Plant Studies

Editor’s Introduction

Call for Papers

Food and Culture

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

47th Annual Conference, February 25-28, 2026

Marriott Albuquerque

Albuquerque, New Mexico

http://www.southwestpca.org

Proposal submission deadline: October 31, 2025

Special issue of Comunicazioni Sociali: Journal of Media, Performing Arts and Cultural Studies

Embodied Rhythms. Interdisciplinary Takes on the Perception of Rhythm in Reality, Arts, Cinematic and Immersive Experience

Edited by Adriano D’Aloia, Ruggero Eugeni, and Maria Alessandra Umiltà

In recent years, the study of rhythm has regained centrality across multiple disciplinary fields — from film and media theory to cognitive neuroscience, from aesthetics to performance studies. This special issue aims to explore rhythm as an embodied and perceptual structure that organizes audiovisual experience in both cinematic and immersive environments.

The College of Arts and Humanities at Bethune-Cookman University welcomes proposals for the annual Zora Neale Hurston Conference, which will be held virtually on February 12-13, 2026. “Their Eyes were Watching Words: Publishing, Editing, and Censorship” is a tribute to Hurston’s skilled navigation of the complex world of publishing and censorship. Our invited speakers this year are Roxane Gay and Dana Williams.

You are invited to submit scholarly, pedagogical, or creative proposals exploring any of the following:

Monstrous Bodies: From Frankenstein to the Posthuman

Saint Louis University Madrid, April 23-24, 2026

Call for Chapters: Bodies That Breathe – The Politics of Air, Health, and Survival
Volume 1 of the “Earth and Us” Book Series

Earth and Us is a twelve-volume inquiry into how environmental breakdown and social inequality intertwine, bringing together feminist, queer, and decolonial perspectives. The inaugural volume, Bodies That Breathe, explores the politics of air, health, and survival.

2nd Call for Chapter Proposals
for Essay Collection

How Scripted TV Series Portray Social Media’s Power to Shape Culture

Call for Presentations for the Annual Meeting of the Popular Culture Association

We invite presentations about War after 1945, covering any of the following general topics with special attention to popular culture:

Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan; Cold War and Global War on Terrorism; military interventions and peacekeeping missions involving Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and Europe. We particularly welcome papers that look at pop culture in light of the 25th anniversary of 9/11.

Presentations may focus on writers and artists: original fiction, poetry, memoirs, drama, art, music, film, and television.

GC Secular journal invites submissions of original fiction and non-fiction for its first edition devoted to World Cinema. The aim of this issue is to open a space for writing that responds to cinema across languages, regions, and cultures, and to highlight how film travels, transforms, and shapes public imagination. We welcome analytical, creative, and research-oriented work that engages with cinema as an artform, a cultural memory, and a global conversation.

About the Theme

DEADLINE EXTENDED!

Call for Papers

ALFRED HITCHCOCK

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

47th Annual Conference, February 25-28, 2026

Marriott Albuquerque

Albuquerque, New Mexico

https://www.southwestpca.org

NEW Submission Deadline: November 14, 2025

The Journalism & Media Culture area of the Popular Culture Association requests proposals on diverse topics, including journalism and media-related issues and subjects that can be local, regional, national, and/or international and can deal with historical or contemporary times. If your paper is accepted, you will be presenting at the 2026 Popular Culture Association national conference, held at the Marriott Marquis in Atlanta, April 8-1.

Sessions are scheduled in 1½ hour slots, typically with four papers or speakers that do not exceed 15 minutes each. We can also accept proposals for special panels and for sessions organized around a journalism/media-related theme. 

Feeling haunted by that unfinished conference proposal? We've got just the Halloween treat for you: a two-week extension -- now accepted through November 14!

Mathematics and engineering are often confined to academic settings, yet they form the foundation of life and popular culture alike. When we examine engineering marvels in movies, books, and other media, we uncover rich symbolism and deeper meanings that reveal how these disciplines shape our understanding of the world.

Panels are now forming on topics related to all aspects of mathematics and engineering and their intersection with popular culture. Possible topics may include (but are not limited to):

Mystery / Detective Fiction Area

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

47th Annual Conference, February 25-28, 2026

Marriott Albuquerque

Albuquerque, New Mexico

https://www.swpaca.org

EXTENDED proposal submission deadline: November 14, 2025

Memory, Myth, and Meaning: Cather in Dialogue with America 250

Willa Cather Spring Conference | Thursday, June 4 - Saturday, June 6, 2026 

This year marks the centennial of My Mortal Enemy, one of Cather’s least affirmative works and one not produced in the Cather Scholarly Edition (translation: much important work remains to be done!)  We invite papers on new approaches to My Mortal Enemy, including but not limited to the following considerations of style, form, provenance, and themes:

This edited volume extends the project initiated by the Korean Studies 2025 special section “Feminist Korean Studies,” which deployed feminist critique across digital media, popular culture, legal discourse, public health, neoliberalism, and postcoloniality. Building on that foundation, the volume invites interdisciplinary, interregional, and bilingual feminist scholarship to address pressing global and regional developments: the rise of right-wing authoritarianism, intensified anti-feminist backlash in South Korea, and the persistent marginalization of feminist discourse in Anglophone Korean Studies. 

In 2025, broad legislative and cultural backlash is focused on eliminating even the idea of trans people from public space. When public space is inaccessible, online communities have, for more than the past twenty years, been a place where trans people can still find one another, self-represent, and build their own publics. Now the walled world of the app economy, organized personal attacks, discriminatory social media algorithms, ID verification laws, and government intervention are changing the internet too. At such a moment, understanding the ways that trans people navigate their digital worlds is more important than ever.

In honor of Jack London's 150th birthday anniversary in 2026, paper submissions are invited for the Jack London Society panels at the American Literature Association 37th Annual Conference, May 20-23, 2026,Palmer House 17 East Monroe Street, Chicago, IL. Papers may address any aspect of Jack London studies. Send a 250-to-300 word abstract for a twenty-minute presentation to Kenneth K. Brandt at kbrandt@scad.edu by January 26, 2026. Include a brief biographical sketch and any AV equipment needs.

The English department at Duke University is thrilled to host the 11th annual Post45 Graduate Symposium on February 20-21, 2026.

The Post45 Graduate Symposium seeks graduate-level works-in-progress related to post-1945 media, arts, literature, textual or visual objects, digital platforms, politics, and culture. We welcome submissions that expand our conception of objects and meaning-making post-1945 or place them in comparative, transnational, or hemispheric frames. We especially welcome contributions that foreground the importance of race, gender, class, and sexuality to post-45 studies. 

DEADLINE EXTENDED!

Call for Papers

“Horror (Literary & Cinematic)”

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

47th Annual Conference, February 25-28, 2026

Marriott Albuquerque

Albuquerque, New Mexico

https://www.southwestpca.org

NEW Submission Deadline: November 14, 2025

*****Deadline extension till 1 December 2025*****

(In)Secure Fictions: South Asia and 9/11

DEADLINE EXTENDED!

Call for Papers

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

Annual Conference

47th Annual Conference, February 25-28, 2026

Marriott Albuquerque

Albuquerque, New Mexico

https://swpaca.org/

NEW Submission Deadline: November 14, 2025