Call for Papers

SHONDALAND

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

2026 SWPACA Summer Salon

June 25-27, 2026

Virtual Conference

https://swpaca.org/

Submissions open on March 30, 2026

Proposal submission deadline: April 27, 2026

CALL FOR PAPERS

Eco-Bordering and Green Nationalism: Spatial Transformations in the South Asian Diaspora

Guest Editors:

Dr. Mansi Bose, Assistant Professor, Chandigarh University, India 

&

Dr. Pratyusha Pramanik, Assistant Professor, Chandigarh University, India 

Rationale

This call seeks proposals for 18-minute talks to be presented at the annual meeting of the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) in Seattle, Nov. 12-15, 2026.

The Spanish and Portuguese (Latin American) session is open to all papers exploring some aspects of Latin American Spanish and Portuguese literature and cultures. It is a dynamic forum for scholarly exchange, collaboration, and engagement with these interconnected regions' rich cultural heritage and diverse perspectives.

We are particularly interested in papers that touch on:

• Contemporary Literature and Culture

• Cultural Studies

• History and Culture

• Literature, Arts, and other Media

• Visual and Performing Arts

• The conference theme, "Our Ruling Classes"

The 21st century has been defined by large-scale global change driven by migration, exile, border reconfigurations, political upheaval, and shifting power dynamics – all of which have profoundly shaped debates surrounding human rights, identity, culture, and belonging. Furthermore, as digital platforms collapse geographic distance and intensify new forms of surveillance, nationalism, and exclusion, diasporic subjects must navigate complex landscapes of memory, language, race, gender, and political belonging.

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the players come with their own requests (“Write me a prologue”, Botttom asks), in a hilarious example of group-working. In Hamlet, as the Prince of Denmark gets ready to take action, one of his first decisions is to appoint himself as co-writer of The Murder of Gonzago: “You could, for a need, study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines which I would set down and insert in’t, could you not?” (2.2.5.528-30). Both examples show the nuts and bolts of early modern stage practice, in which co-writing was commonplace. 

Call for Papers Ecofeminist Drama: Theatre, Performance, and Ecological Futures

Edited by Douglas A. Vakoch and Işıl Şahin Gülter
Under review with the University of Illinois Press

Global Cinema Symposium

Organized by the Harry W. Bass Jr. School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology

 
Nov. 13-14, 2026

In-person at the University of Texas at Dallas

Keynote Speakers:

Professor Katarzyna Marciniak, Occidental College

Professor Meta Mazaj, University of Pennsylvania

Call for Papers

Abstract

This session invites papers exploring the role of affect and emotion in contemporary world literature. Recent developments in affect theory—particularly the work of Sara Ahmed and Lauren Berlant—have emphasized how emotions circulate across individuals, communities, and cultural contexts. Literary texts offer a powerful site for examining how affect shapes narratives of identity, belonging, and social transformation within global and transnational frameworks.

Call for Papers

dialog, No. 46, Autumn 2025

dialog, a Peer-reviewed, Bi-annual International Journal of the Department of English and Cultural Studies, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India is open to submissions for its next issue, No. 46, Autumn 2025 (ISSN: 0975 - 4881) (final stages of publication). dialog provides a forum for interdisciplinary research on diverse aspects of culture, society and literature. For its 46th issue, Department of English and Cultural Studies, Panjab University specifically invites:

this is for an in-personal panel for the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) conference (in-person only), which is taking place in Seattle, WA November 12-15, 2025. 

Abstract

To be published in the world of contemporary creative writing likely means passing through one exclusive gate or another—even writers once able to make it through are losing access. What are these publishing gates, and who are their keepers? What are they trying to keep in—and out? Perhaps more productively, how might those of us who are passionate about creating a progressive, inclusive, and radical body of literature break down—or go around—or ignore those gates of exclusivity and begin to build new, ungated communities?

Description

Prosperity Fashion 
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE 
9-12 February 2027
Università degli Studi di Firenze
Florence, Italy

Dowload the call for papers here https://riviste.fupress.net/index.php/fh/prosperity-fashion-2027 

The theme of beyond archives is an interesting one for a discipline that relies heavily on existing sometimes still only physical collections. This panel invites papers that explore any aspect of the archive in Old and Middle English literature.

International conference co-organized

with the French School of Athens

From imagination to remains, from remains to imagination: literary representations of ancient Greece in its materiality (14th-19th centuries)

February 25-26, 2027 at the French School of Athens

This special session invites papers on zombies and the undead as figures through which literature, film, television, games, and popular culture imagine power, hierarchy, and social conflict. In keeping with PAMLA 2026’s theme, “Our Ruling Classes: Culture, Power, Conflict,” this panel explores how zombie narratives dramatize the fragility of social order, the failures of ruling elites, and the tensions between collective survival and unequal power.

The volume Women's Autobiographies and Memoirs 1920-2025: Precarity, Resistance and Selfhood attempts to look into the dialectics of identity and writing - the compulsion to respond to the other inhabiting the self, which provokes in her something peculiar and singular - a text of one's own. The self-authenticated narratives are often haunted by many an unsubduable voice that breaks open the self-centred finitude of living and dying.

Call for Papers

ATHE Theory & Criticism Graduate Student Essay Contest 

The ATHE Theory & Criticism Focus Group seeks papers for its annual Graduate Student Essay Contest. The contest presents an exciting opportunity for an emergent theatre and performance studies scholar. It introduces the winning writer to the ATHE conference and provides them with a venue in which to showcase their work. 

The contest prizes are intended to support the development of the student’s academic work, ease financial challenges related to conference attendance, and connect the student with appropriate scholarly resources for the paper’s development and impact. 

Translational Research and Teaching: Bridging Knowledge, Practice, and Community October 29-November 1, 2026 Panama City, Florida 

Hosted in partnership by Florida State University, Florida A&M University, and the University of Mississippi 

The Association for Interdisciplinary Studies (AIS) is pleased to invite proposals for our 48th annual conference. AIS 2026 focuses on the theme of Translational Research and Teaching, exploring interdisciplinary work that bridges the gap between researchers, educators, practitioners, and community partners.

Call for Chapter Proposals: Tana French and Ireland Deadline for abstract submissions:May 1, 2026 Deadline for paper submissions:November 1, 2026 contact email:escheible@bridgew.edu Popular genre fiction offers an influential platform for the critique of Irish cultural containment and the victimization of women. Despite commercial dominance, genre fiction holds a complicated position in the literary marketplace, which carries over to scholarly appraisals.

The Call for Papers of the academic journal The Grove. Working Papers on English Studies for its following volume is open until May 31, 2026. Volume 33 will be published in December 2026.

The 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).

The primary scope of The Grove is literatures in English, critical theory, English language and linguistics, translation, English as a foreign language and cultural studies.

Queer Heroes and Queer Villains

54th Annual Conference on South Asia, October 28-31, 2026

“Literary texts are not, of course, merely passive conduits. They actively shape what the technologies mean and what the scientific theories signify in cultural contexts […] culture circulates through science no less than science circulates through culture.” (Hayles How We Became Posthuman 21) We can expand this view beyond science and technology. All aspects of human cultures circulate in artistic productions, most notably in prose fiction, and in return, fiction has the potential to influence cultures and to inspire innovations.