In her 2006 book Queer Phenomenology: Objects, Orientations, Others, Sara Ahmed asks how we are oriented and how we come to find our way. Ahmed thus thinks across queer feminist theories of sexuality and traditional phenomenology, evaluating the latter’s efforts to bring what is commonplace or taken-for-granted into focus, and doing so through matrices of gender, race, and sexuality.

Odour and Order: Smell, Culture and Representation

Keynote: Jonathan Reinarz (University of Birmingham)

Call for Papers

SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

47th Annual Conference, February 25-28, 2026

Marriott Albuquerque

Albuquerque, New Mexico

https://www.southwestpca.org

Submissions open: September 1, 2025

Proposal submission deadline: October 31, 2025

The Mystery & Detective Fiction Area of the Popular Culture Association invites proposals for the 56th annual conference in Atlanta, Georgia, April 8-11, 2026, to be held at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis.

We seek proposals from researchers, academics, graduate students, and independent scholars for scholarly discussions on all aspects and periods of mystery and detective fiction. Interdisciplinary approaches are strongly encouraged.

We ask that proposals extend existing scholarship in new directions and avoid plot summary or review. Proposals should have a clear and focused argument that can be developed adequately in a 15-minute presentation.

Some possible topics for the 2026 conference:

CAIS Fall Teaching Symposium

New Directions in Italian Language and Culture Teaching: North American Perspectives

October 25, 2025

University of Guelph and Online

The Canadian Association for Italian Studies invites proposals for a one-day conference, with in-person panels to be held at the University of Guelph and online panels via Zoom, that offers an opportunity to reflect on the current state of the evolving field of Italian language pedagogy in North America.

Department of Liberal Arts
Indian Institute of Technology Bhilai

presents

Gendered Modalities of Remembering in South Asian literatures

A National Conference
15–16 January 2026

Call for Papers

Concept Note:

“And away above all with the body, that idée fixe of the senses!” Nietzsche has philosophy proclaim. For it is “infected with every error of logic there is, refuted, impossible even,” and “impudent enough to behave as if it actually existed.” The body has long been one of philosophy’s more persistent preoccupations as it’s impossible to define without distortion yet impossible to fully discard. From Plato’s call to transcend the body in search of truth to Descartes’ relegation of the body to mere extension, philosophy has long sought to escape or sanitize embodiment. Even phenomenology, which counters the Cartesian account, privileges the lived body of perception over the objective, material body and its historical conditions.

Call for Book Chapters

Portrayals of the Fourth of July in American Culture and Literature:
Reimagining American Identity at USA 250

Extension: September 15, 2025 

Dissension exists on a spectrum. It can be expressed on an individual scale—by rejecting challenges to ethical or moral beliefs—or within collectives that object to systems that harm or subjugate. Literature can be used as an act of protest and resistance, to create counter narratives that combat oppressive agendas; it can mirror the outcry of societies that wish to test the limits of oppression but lack the voice to do so. Now more than ever, it is imperative that we listen to those voices that systems continually work to silence. Authoritarianism, protest, incarceration, and revolution are interwoven themes that dominate allegorical genres such as dystopian fiction.

CERÆ: An Australasian Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies

invites submissions for hybrid panels at the Leeds International Medieval Conference 2026 (July 6-9) on the theme of

Premodern Timeliness and Timelessness

Time is a construct with notoriously blurry definitions and boundaries. The artificiality of time can evoke anything from comforting nostalgia to worrying anachronism. Ceræ invites papers that deal with the unfocused and unreal aspects of premodern temporality, including but not limited to:

Open to any languages, this roundtable explores how instructors are integrating AI tools in the context of translation—whether through small tasks, full assignments, or larger projects—and how these technologies can be leveraged to enhance students’ linguistic and cultural competencies. More specifically, how can AI support the development of students’ intercultural awareness, stylistic sensitivity, and translation skills? In what ways might it help students better understand grammar, vocabulary, idiomatic expressions, and register in both the source and target languages? What kinds of assignments can we design to foster a critical and effective use of AI without compromising learning outcomes or creative engagement?

The groundbreaking anthology Early American Writings (2001)edited by Carla Mulford, Angela Vietto, and Amy E. Winans, incorporated writing that represented a range of authors and texts that showcased the broad diversity of literature of the early Americas. The volume not only reflected but inspired new areas of research and teaching that have continued today. In keeping with the theme of the 2026 NeMLA conference, (Re)generation, the goal of this session will be to continue this expansive vision of the literature of the early Americas and showcase scholarship that represents innovative ways of thinking about these literatures.

Rob Nixon describes, ‘slow violence’, as “a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space”, one “that is neither spectacular nor instantaneous, but rather incremental and accretive, its calamitous repercussions playing out across a range of temporal scales” (2). This seminal work raised the critical question of the strategic difficulties of representing the impact of such violence, especially as it crossed national, ethnic, cultural, linguistic and even gendered borders.  

Call for Abstracts for an Edited Volume

                                       Tastes of Text: Food and Indian Literature

                                                                  Editors

                         Dr.Auritra Munshi, Assistant Professor, Raiganj University

                   Dr. Surabhi Jha, ICSSR Postdoctoral Researcher, Aliah University

Concept Note

After an enriching conference in 2025, Heavy Childhoods 2026 will run under the title “Curating Future Nostalgia inHeavy Times”

Note: All abstracts must be submitted through the Annual Meeting and Membership portal at  https://www.xcdsystem.com/asecs/member/

You do not need to be a member to submit an abstract through the portal; however, you must be a member of ASECS to present at the conference. The panel chair cannot submit the abstract on your behalf.

Date: November 8-9, 2025
Location: University of Oxford, UK
Online option available
Conference page: https://labrc.co.uk/2024/11/20/alchemy-2025/

Cost:  180 GBP (In person)
100 GBP (Online)
Prices exclude eventbrite fees

“Many have said of Alchemy, that it is for the making of gold and silver. For me such is not the aim, but to consider only what virtue and power may lie in medicines.” – Paracelsus

Journal of Chinese Cinemas Special Issue CFP: Before, Besides, and Beyond the Taiwanese New Cinema

Rust Belt Studies Special Issue
The Regenerative Rust Belt: Environment, EcoLogy, Ecosystems

For too long, the narrative of the Rust Belt has been one of emptiness, decay, decline, and vacancy —
and often, our stories are neglected in the national sphere or controlled by cultural outsiders.

In this issue, we will consider the following and more :

How can the humanities imagine regenerative Rust Belt futures and learn from industrial history?
How can the humanities activate the environmental movement in new ways in the Rust Belt?
How can we use art, literature, and music to teach the environmental Rust Belt in the classroom?
How can we use the humanities to reflect on ecosystems both natural and human?

Kalamazoo 2026, session #7559: Lists as Sources
Any list serves as a direct “source” for the information it contains. A grocery list tells a shopper what to buy. But it may also serve as a source in several other fields: the history of advertising, the history of culinary trends, or the history of an individual family. This panel seeks papers that consider medieval lists that serve as sources in similarly direct and tangential ways. Such lists might include inventories, mnemonics, itineraries, bede rolls, and word lists, as well as lists in literature. We especially welcome papers that take the properties of lists into account in their analyses.

From its origins in racialised heredity science to its violent implementation in 20th-century state policies, eugenics has shaped how modern societies imagine health, heredity, and the value of life. Literature has long played a key role in this history – at times reflecting or affirming eugenic ideals, at others exposing their violence or imagining forms of life beyond them. 

Call for Abstracts--Seeking abstracts for articles for the forthcoming Bloomsbury Handbook to Kurt Vonnegut, which will include 25-35 brand-new essays on Vonnegut of about 5,000-6,000 words each.  The book will be part of a new series with Bloomsbury Publishing UK, aimed at an audience of post-graduates and above.  

Books already published in the series include volumes about Toni Morrison and F. Scott Fitzgerald, among others.

Beside You in the C19:

Elizabeth Freeman’s Legacies

The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists Biennial Conference

March 12-14, 2026, Cincinnati, OH