We extend a warm invitation for you to share your contributions for our upcoming publication in 2026.

The Grove. Working Papers on English Studies (ISSN: 1137-005X, ISSNe: 2386-5431, DOI: 10.17561/grove) is a peer-reviewed, indexed periodical. Published annually and distributed both nationally and internationally, The Grove is sponsored by the research group HUM-271 of the Regional Andalusian Government, published by the University of Jaén (Spain). It is indexed by MLA, IEDCYT-CSIC, Latindex, Dialnet, MIAR, Dimensions and DICE and has been awarded the FECYT Quality Seal.

Call for Papers - Fall 2026 Issue  

The Dragon Lode Journal, a peer reviewed publication through the International Literacy Association, is now accepting submissions for the Fall 2026. The Dragon Lode is dedicated to literacy, language arts, and the teaching of reading and writing. 

We seek original, unpublished work that engages with contemporary issues and questions, genre studies, literary theory, and research related to children’s literature and reading. Submissions may address (but are not limited to): 

Literature and Global Popular Music 2027 Modern Language Association Adaptation Forum Call for Papers How does literature travel through global popular music? How do novels, poems, plays, and other literary forms resonate when translated into sound, lyrics, stage performance, music videos, and media circulation across borders?This guaranteed session invites studies of musical adaptations that illuminate the cultural, social, and political resonances of literary works. How do literary forms find new life in global popular music? In what ways do these adaptations reshape questions of identity, memory, translation, and power across national and linguistic boundaries?Possible topics include (but are not limited to): 

This panel invites papers examining Italian American engagements with Hollywood and Los Angeles as a central locus of literary production, cinematic labor, and cultural myth-making. Long understood as a global factory of images, Hollywood has also functioned as a crucial site where Italian American writers, filmmakers, performers, and cultural workers shaped—and were shaped by—the American and transnational imaginarium.

Call for Papers

MeCCSA Postgraduate Network Conference 2026

Media and Sustainability

University of Reading,

Minghella Studios, Whiteknights Campus

Reading RG6 6BT

9th September 2026

Organising committee: Babsie Keulemans, Emir Anday and Elizabeth Heaney

Any questions about the conference or the submission process can be directed to:

Babsie Keulemans – e.l.keulemans@pgr.reading.ac.uk 

Paradise Lost, but his shorter poems and treatises also contributed greatly to the political and religious conversations of the seventeenth century. The sphere of Milton’s influence was not limited to his time period, but also shaped later periods, including the Romantics, who were fascinated with what they deemed a sympathetic portrayal of Satan. This panel seeks research investigating Milton’s influences on not only his contemporary society, but the ways that he also affected later literary thought and culture.

Boccaccio Beyond Boccaccio: Reception, Adaptation, and Afterlives from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century

Panel Co-Sponsored by the Forum on 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-Century Italian Studies and the American Boccaccio Association

Call for Papers: Democracy and the Nature of Familial and Unaccompanied Mobilities in the 21st Century

Location: University of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA)
Dates: April 24–26, 2026
Submission Deadline: March 5, 2026 (accepted on rolling basis too after deadline)
Format: In-person (travel support available; honoraria provided)
Keynote: Dr. Lauren Heidbrink, author of Migranthood: Youth in a New Era of Deportation (Stanford University Press, 2020) and Migrant Youth, Transnational Families, and the State: Care and Contested Interests (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014)

Overview

Borders and Languages

 One-day Conference at the University of Kent

21 May 2026

Keynote Speaker: Prof. Anna Bernard (King’s College London)

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Call for Papers

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Richard Linklater’s Slacker (1991) is a cult classic with a crucial role in the history of American cinema. The movie is unusual in many ways. It does not have a traditional narrative; it follows 100 characters around the UT Austin area in a way that seems completely random. There is no protagonist, no story, no thread to the individual events, yet somehow it is a completely coherent and engaging movie that sparks as many reflections as the number of scenes it has.

We are looking for chapter proposals in the form of abstracts. Topics already included are work, capitalism, Buddhism, film as a dream, narrative, episodic views of life, and absurdity. Possible topics for new chapters include:

New Literaria: An International Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Humanities

CALL FOR PAPERS

Vol. 8 No.2

Special Issue on “Popular Literature: Culture, Power, and the Politics of the Popular”

Concept Note

Call for Chapters

Matricentric Futures: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Motherhood

Edited by Dr Antonia Mackay (Oxford Brookes University)
Under contract with Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract deadline: Friday 5 June 2026
Full chapter drafts due: Friday 30 July 2027

In the last fifteen years, a new generation of African female and nonbinary authors have made major interventions in the field of African Literatures, from Akwaeke Emezi to NoViolet Bulawayo, Djaïli Amadou Amal to Kopano Matlwa. In parallel, women writers from earlier generations, such as Tsitsi Dangarembga (winner of a Windham-Campbell Literature Prize in 2021), Paulina Chiziane or Ana Paula Tavares (who were both awarded with the Camões Prize in 2021 and 2025 respectively) have received major literary distinctions, celebrating their contributions to African postcolonial literatures in particular, and literature in general.

Our Victorians, Ourselves: Rethinking Victorian Texts & Contexts

An online student conference hosted by the Undergraduate and Graduate Student Victorian Association (UGSVA)

Conference on April 28th, 2026 and Abstracts due March 31st, 2026

Keynote:

Sarah Bliss, Florida State University

“Reading the Forest with the Trees: Victorian Fiction and Periodicals”

Interactive Closing Session:

Sabarno Sinha, University of Texas at Austin

“UnConferencing (v. 1860): The Black-Out Victorian Poetry Edition”

Discourse in the Age of Political Upheaval and Artificial Intelligence

Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference at UCLA

Keynote speaker: Dr. Julia Alekseyeva, University of Pennsylvania

Submission form: https://forms.gle/ynHiRZothVVkgVdp8

If you face any difficulties in the submission process or have questions about the conference,

please email: discourseconferenceucla@gmail.com

• Submission deadline: March 13th at 11:59PM PST

New (and Old) Experiments in Translation (and Writing)

International Conference, Brock University (St. Catharines, ON, Canada) October 22nd to 24th, 2026

Organized by Dr. Nicholas Hauck, Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures, Brock University (nhauck@brocku.ca) and Dante Ognibene, Brock University

Dates: October 22, 23 and 24, 2026

Location: Brock University, St. Catharines, ON, Canada

MLA 2027: The Melville Society CFP: Melville and Hawthorne Revisited

Affective Shakespeare and the Early Modern Imagination:

Empathy, Voice, and Spectatorship

The Seventeenth IASEMS Conference

University of Naples Federico II, Naples, 28–30 May 2026
Convenors: Michele Stanco, Angela Leonardi, and the IASEMS Executive Board

Call for Book Proposals: Secrecy in Literature and Culture Secrecy in Literature and Culture (Edinburgh University Press) Series Editors: Simon Cooke (University of Edinburgh) and Natalie Ferris (University of Bristol) We invite proposals for critical studies exploring the pivotal role of secrecy in literature and culture, with interdisciplinary, international and transhistorical scopeThe ‘secret’ is a concept of pivotal importance across a range of disciplines – from political studies of espionage and the ethics of intelligence work to law, psychoanalysis, philosophy, and literary and cultural studies – inflected by diverse cultural and historical contexts, and in terms of gender, sexuality, race and cla

Special Session Title: Anglophone Ottoman/Turkish Writers from the Ottoman Empire to Contemporary Turkey (Online Session)

The Patrick Leary Resource Development Grant is named for long-time RSVP supporter, Board member and former President, Patrick Leary. It is intended to support one scholar or a team of researchers in creating resources that will facilitate the work of other scholars in their studies of British newspapers and periodicals from the long nineteenth century. The grant was created with funds from a generous bequest to RSVP by the late Eileen Curran, pioneering researcher and Emerita Professor of English at Colby College.

Microgrants are seed grants designed to support new research projects and/or explore ideas in the field of periodical studies.

The Microgrants scheme was established in response to the 2025 survey of RSVP’s members, who informed us that they would benefit greatly from access to smaller pockets of funding for existing or exploratory projects. (For our full list of awards, please see the Eligibility chart). The funding for these grants is made possible through the generosity of the late Eileen Curran, Professor Emerita of English, Colby College, and inspired by her pioneering research on Victorian periodicals.

Call for Abstracts!Elvis and Philosophy: Essays Concerning the King

Edited by Joshua Heter and Richard Greene

Abstracts are sought for a collection of essays on any philosophical topic related to Elvis Aaron Presley to be published with Wallace & Jacobs Press. We hope to receive a number of submissions concerning his music and movies as well as his persona, life, relationships, cultural impact, legacy, mythos, etc.

The image of California as the Golden State—a land of promise, risk, reinvention, and imagined abundance—has long shaped literary and cultural narratives of aspiration and freedom. Yet “golden states” are not bound to geography: they materialize wherever communities imagine possibility, long for deliverance, or chart pathways beyond constraint.