PAMLA Seattle (2026) - November 12-15, all in-person conference 

2027 is the centenary year of the birth of US American poet and Pulitzer Prize-winner, Galway Kinnell (1927-2014). This session seeks to celebrate his life and legacy while pointing to future thematic and prosodic engagement in Kinnellian studies. Papers offering approaches to any aspect of Kinnell’s work are invited and most welcome.

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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?

“Feel the Force”: The first 50 years of Star Wars

A PopCRN Conference

Join us for a free virtual conference exploring the Star Wars universe and its enduring cultural impact to be held online from 4th-5th May 2027.

As some institutions restructure academic priorities in response to various pressures in higher education, the Humanities can face contraction, marginalization, or elimination. These challenges are intensified at specialized universities, meaning institutions oriented toward fields such as STEM, health sciences, business, etc., where Humanities courses are often kept to general education requirements and could be perceived as peripheral to students’ professional training. Within such environments, Humanities faculty must navigate not only broader disciplinary challenges but also institutional cultures that may misunderstand or underappreciate the field’s contributions.

Description:

Join us for a critical examination of the intersection of artificial intelligence, language acquisition, and ethical pedagogy. We invite submissions that investigate the efficacy of AI-driven tools in language learning, highlighting both their benefits and associated challenges.

 Contribute to an informed dialogue on the responsible integration of AI in educational practice.  

Abstract:

Special Issue: ‘Veteran & Post-Military Appearance & Dress’

Guest Editor: Matt Porter, Social Redress, USA

matt@socialredress.com

Special Issue: ‘Fatness, Fashion and Profession in India’

Guest Editors

Kishan Kumar Mishra, Galgotias University, Greater Noida, India (kishan_m@hs.iitr.ac.in)

Neha Kumari, Sri Balaji University, Pune, India (nk0007788@gmail.com)

Call for Papers

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)

Dates of Conference: 4-8 November, 2026

Format: Hybrid – Online (via Zoom) & In-Person (Thessaloniki, Greece)

Note: The onsite/in-person conference will take place exclusively on 6-7 November, 2026 and be streamed live on Zoom.

Organizer: KN: F.L.A.ME.S. by Konstantina Kliagkona (www.knflames.gr)

International, interdisciplinary conference titled:

The Hidden Faces of Violence II: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Abuse, Trauma, and Resistance

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.