For the Northeast Modern Language Association's 58th Annual Convention in Newport, RI March 6-9, 2027.

The panel will be Hybrid: The session will be held in-person but a few remote presentations may be included.

Global Anglophone / Cultural Studies and Media Studies

Apocalypse or Utopia: Whose End of the World?

This panel session seeks to explore the cultural fascination surrounding "The Backrooms," an internet 'creepypasta' about an abandoned office building with endless corridors that became a popular YouTube series and most recently, a blockbuster horror film. What are the Backrooms? Do they represent an artificial or alien intelligence attempting to simulate reality? Are they a glitch in the imperfect fabric of an unstable universe? Are they a metaphor for the subconscious, techno-paranoia, wasteland necrocapitalism, corporate control, or the internet itself? Or is this all just a retelling of the Greek myth of the Labyrinth for a Gen Z audience?

Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas (father as well as son), William Wordsworth, Percy B. Shelley, Friedrich Hölderlin, G.W.F. Hegel… The list of writers from the era conventionally identified as “Romantic” to have become enthusiastic about the French Revolution could keep on going indefinitely. In fact, ever since the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1765, through the French and the Haitian Revolutions throughout the 1790’s, all the way to 1848, the year that de-politicized Charles Baudelaire (according to his letter from May 5, 1852 to Narcisse Ancelle), literary production seems to have been inseparable from the process of building after and thinking social revolution.

Religion, Morality, and the American Presidency: The West Wing at 30
Edited by Ilaria W. Biano

Deadline: September 30, 2026

Premiering in 1999, The West Wing quickly became one of the most influential television portrayals of American political life. Through its depiction of the Bartlet administration, the series offered a powerful narrative of the presidency as a site of moral deliberation, civic responsibility, and public leadership. The show remains a significant reference point in discussions of political authority, democratic institutions, and the ethical responsibilities of governance.

Plant Pedagogy: Words Beyond Walls

Series Editor— Prof. Douglas Vakoch

Editors—  Dr Subhashis Banerjee, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Nagaland University, India and Dr Tanmoy Bhattacharjee, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Women’s Christian College, Kolkata, India

Prospective Publisher— Bloomsbury (Critical Plant Studies Series)

Special Issue: ‘Cowboy Carter: Reimagining the American West through Fashion, Music and Performance’

Guest editors:

Elizabeth Kealy-Morris, Manchester Fashion Institute, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK

Sonya Abrego, Fordham University, USA

Robb Hernández, Fordham University, USA

Embodied Ecologies and Sacred Landscapes: Interpreting Indian Knowledge Tradition on Island Spaces (ISOIS 2026)

December 14-15, 2026

Concept Note:

Indian knowledge traditions have long imagined land, water, and life-worlds as sacred, relational, and more-than-human, weaving together rituals, narratives, cosmologies, and practices of care that exceed modern disciplinary boundaries. Island spaces—whether riverine sandbars, coastal archipelagos, sacred groves on hill-islands, or temple-tanks experienced as spiritual islands—offer particularly rich terrains for exploring embodied ecologies, ritualised forms of dwelling, and ecological memory.

The E. E. Cummings Society and the Society’s journal, Spring, invite abstracts for 20-minute papers for the 54th annual Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900, Feb. 18-20, 2027, at the University of Louisville (https://events.louisville.edu/conferences/list-conferences/louisville-conference-literature-and-culture).

In 1996, Carl Sagan warned us of a time when people would lose their ability to question, “when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few . . . when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.” Maybe Mr Sagan was somewhat pessimistic when writing The Demon-Haunted World. But then again, in times of conspiracy theories, Ancient Aliens, Antivaxxers, and Holocaust Deniers, the Age of Information appears just as capable of spreading dangerous frauds and charlatans as it is of disseminating reliable scholarship.

How do postcolonial literatures imagine hospitality in a world shaped by colonial histories, forced migration, displacement, and contested belonging? This panel invites papers that examine the ethics and politics of hospitality through postcolonial, diasporic, and transnational literary and cultural texts. Moving beyond hospitality as a simple act of welcome, the panel seeks to explore its tensions, contradictions, and possibilities: Who is welcomed, excluded, or rendered perpetually a stranger? How do migration, exile, memory, language, and cultural difference reshape notions of home, community, and kinship?

The Text, an International Peer Reviewed Online Journal of Language, Literature and Critical Theory (ISSN: 2581-9526)invites original, unpublished research papers for January 2027 issue.

Indexed in:

1.     Google Scholar

2.     ERIH PLUS (European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences)

3.     IAMCR (International Association for Media and Communication Research)

4.     Citefactor (Directory Indexing of International Research Journals)

5.     DRJI (The Directory of Research Journal Indexing)

The IX edition of the Congress will take place on 17, 18, 19 and 20 November 2026. Sessions on 17 and 18 November will be held online, while sessions on 19 and 20 November will take place in person at the Auditorium of the Congress Centre "Ciutat d'Elx" (Elche, Spain). There are 3 participation options:

> Option 1: In this modality, the proposals submitted will follow the main thematic line of the new edition of the Congress: The origins of the fantastic genre in audiovisual culture.

This panel examines how literary and cultural texts from diverse global traditions imagine masculinity not merely as an individual identity but as a relational and communal practice. In an era marked by migration, political polarization, social fragmentation, environmental crisis, and renewed struggles for collective empowerment, narratives of masculinity have become central sites through which communities negotiate belonging, responsibility, vulnerability, and resistance.

Creativity and Praxis:

The Politics of Aesthetics in an Age of Polycrisis

An International Interdisciplinary Symposium, 1-2 October 2026

J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice

Adelaide University

North Terrace, Adelaide, South Australia, 5000, Australia

Keynote Readings and Lectures by: 

J.M. Coetzee 

Anna Funder

Nam Le

Amy Villarejo

CfP: Death and Desire in Devotional Literature

International Congress on Medieval Studies 2027, Kalamazoo MI May 13-15, 2027

International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo13-15 May 2027

Special Session (Hybrid)

2026 marks multiple milestones for the legacy of legendary Afrofuturist author Octavia E. Butler: fifty years since the publication of her first novel, Patternmaster (1976), and the twentieth anniversary of her passing, on February 24, 2006. It also marks the announcement of a film version of one of her most famous and most prophetic works, Parable of the Sower (1993), as well as the surprise republishing of her disavowed novel, Survivor (1978), for the first time since the 1980s. These anniversaries arrive at a moment when Butler’s work continues to gain public attention for its prescience and political relevance, and as she continues to amass scholarly attention across scholarly disciplines.

We are excited to announce that the Long Middle Ages, a seminar series for postgraduate students and early career researchers working on the Late Antique, Medieval, and Early Modern Periods, will be returning for a second series in Autumn 2026!

We welcome submissions of 30 minute papers from postgraduates and early career researchers working in any discipline and on any topic related to the late antique, medieval and early modern periods. Papers will be followed by time for questions and further discussion.

Seminars will commence in October 2026 and run on a fortnightly basis until mid-December.

Call for Papers | Society of Early Americanists

American Literature Association | “The American Novel: Forms, Genres, and Traditions”

November 5–7, 2026 | Santa Fe, NM

The Novel in/and Early America

For this upcoming ALA Symposium, the SEA invites papers and presentations that deal with any aspect of “The American Novel: Forms, Genres, and Traditions” prior to (approximately) 1830. Topics might include (but are not limited to):

This CfP contains two individual sessions grouped under the rubric 'Rethinking Ecotheory' for the 62nd International Congress on Medieval Studies. Please see information for both sessions and separate links to apply below! Both sessions are sponsored by Medieval Ecocriticisms. Abstracts for both sessions are due by September 15th, 2026. Please contact the organizers Hunter (hap48@cornell.edu) and Basil (basil.price@oneonta.edu) with any questions.

Overview

Tom Stoppard Conference – 28-29 January 2027 – Sorbonne Université

Co-organisers: EMMA (Université de Montpellier Paul-Valéry) and VALE (Sorbonne Université)

Sixty years after the premiere of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at London’s Old Vic Theatre (1967), and just over a year after the death of Sir Tom Stoppard on 29 November 2025, this international conference seeks to pay tribute to one of the playwrights who most profoundly shaped British theatre in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

In the summer of 2026, Elizabeth and Ines Soto were sentenced to fifty years in prison for their participation in the anti-ICE protests at Prairieland, including a charge of “providing material support to terrorists.” In the trial that led to these exorbitant sentences, the Sotos’ production and distribution of zines, including literature on protest strategy, anti-ICE arguments, gay and trans issues, and plant propagation, were used as evidence in their conviction. Their printing press (a home office printer) was confiscated by the FBI. At the same time, Daniel Sanchez Estrada, who was not present at the protest, was sentenced to thirty years for “concealing documents,” including zines labeled as “political literature.”

The year 2027 will mark the 50th anniversary of the controversial publication of Robert Coover’s The Public Burning. Both to celebrate the event and question its legacy, an international symposium will take place on 10-11 June 2027 in Paris, at Campus Condorcet. The call for papers is available here: https://publicburning50.sciencesconf.org/

Abstracts (300 to 350 words) together with a short biographical note should be sent by October 1st 2026 to the following address: publicburning50@sciencesconf.org

Keynote speakers: Alexandra Kleeman and Mark Doten

International Conference

Vladimir Nabokov: Contemporary Reception and Creative Legacy

April 28-30, 2027

Bordeaux Montaigne University

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Vladimir Nabokov’s passing, the French Vladimir Nabokov Society, in collaboration with the University of Bordeaux-Montaigne and the International Vladimir Nabokov Society, organizes its 10th International Conference, to be held April 28-30, 2027 in Bordeaux, France.