The University of Iowa

Department of English

Graduate Student Conference 2026

Elaborating Labor 

Conference date: Friday, April 10, 2026 

Location: Richey Ballroom, Iowa Memorial Union, University of Iowa 

Abstract due date: Saturday, January 31, 2026

Please email abstracts to c3conf@uiowa.edu 

Final Call for Book Chapter Proposals/ Abstracts

Matrifocal Narratives in Indian Fiction

Co-Editors: Sushree Routray, Rashmi Gaur, and Rahul K. Gairola

Submission Deadline: December 31, 2025

International Conference (Hybrid) on Impact of Globalization on Society, Culture and Literature, January 17-18, 2026, organized by IQAC, Onda Thana Mahavidyalaya, and Antarmukh: A Bengali Research Journal.

About the Conference

Update: This year's keynote speaker is Camille Owens. Owens is assistant professor of English at McGill University. Her research focuses on the intersection of race, ableism, and childhood in the nineteenth-century United States. Her book, Like Children: Black Prodigy and the Measure of the Human in America (NYU Press, 2024), was 2025 Choice Outstanding Academic Title and received an honourable mention from the MLA in the William Sanders Scarborough Prize competition.

"There is not one but many silences, and they are an integral part of the strategies that underlie and permeate discourses." —Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality

The inconclusive debates, the conflict of opinion, that this seminar aims to initiate and proliferate are about how body, culture, and plurality – three expansive and yet profound concepts – constellate, collapse and collide in varying registers that are both founded and unpredictable. The frames of our studies across disciplines are left in motion; the figures of understanding about how culture and the body and the bodies of culture in relation to plurality struggle to stay entrenched, occupy and distract us.

CCLA – Fantastical Constellation Working Group Call for Proposals

CCLA Annual Conference / Colloque annuel de l’ACLC

The Fantastical Constellation Working Group invites proposals for a panel or round table topic, “Entangled Futures: Interstitial Fantasies from the Periphery,” as part of the Canadian Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference, 8-10 June 2026, hosted by the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at McGill University in Montréal.

SILENCE &—

What is silence? Might it be a gaping void or a buzzy medium—the absence

CFP for chapter contributions to book edited by the “VR as Empathy Machine: Media, Migration and theHumanitarian Predicament” Research Group at Utrecht University 

Book Title: Beyond the Empathy Machine: Critical Perspectives on Virtual Reality

The Cultural Studies Cell

Department of English and Cultural Studies

CHRIST (Deemed to be University) Bangalore

in collaboration with

Department of English 

Panihati Mahavidyalya

Organizes

A Symposium on 

Raymond Williams’ Keywords at 50

Dates: February 12-14, 2026

In the sociology of knowledge, some scholars argue that human memory can only function within a collective context (Halbwachs, 1968/2018). Others place the search for knowledge within the discipline of genealogy (Foucault, 2022; Mendoza, 2024). Qualitative research, on the other hand, is where sociology and philosophy intersect (Silverman, 2020; Adorno, 2022; Adorno, 1976). Genealogy, in the context of this volume, refers to the ancestry or history of a discipline, profession, or people (Haley, 1976/2021; Martin, 2016; Nietzsche, 1887/2022).  The advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution has brought about change and continuity in qualitative research (Jung, 2019; Mosweu, 2025).

“Childhood in the Meantime: Interrupting Temporalities of Youth”

American Studies Association, Chicago, Oct. 22-25, 2026

The Children and Youth Studies Caucus seek panelists for a session entitled “Childhood in the Meantime: Interrupting Temporalities of Youth” for the American Studies Association 2026 meeting. We seek papers that consider the multiple temporalities that children are expected to inhabit: normative developmental timelines, trajectories oriented toward futures that adhere to the state-sanctioned scripts for proper adult citizenship, and culturally-accepted deviations of “sideways growth” that can ultimately be assimilated into dominant narratives of childhood presents and futures.

Queer and minor audiovisual practices increasingly challenge the assumption that any form of visibility offers a reliable route to recognition or to political and evidentiary clarity. This panel asks how, rather than treating visibility or audibility as stable states, we might attend to the ways vocal fabulations, relational and spatial practices of telling, and imaginative or speculative interventions unsettle the evidentiary burdens traditionally placed on marginalized histories. In other words, we are interested in forms that make presence felt without fully disclosing it, and in the tensions that emerge when bodies, voices, images, and testimonies exceed the representational frames built to contain them.

The historical relationship between Muslims and Christians dates back to the seventh century C.E., when Islam began to spread throughout the Middle East, Africa, and the Indian subcontinent; by the early eighth century, parts of Europe were under Muslim control. Consequently, this Special Issue seeks to understand Christian–Muslim interactions over the centuries. Recent studies of Syriac texts reveal early interactions between Christians and Muslims, the beginning of centuries of Christian–Muslim dialogues, debates, and perspectives that continue into the present day.

CALL FOR PAPERS

The First Transdisciplinary Forum on Art, Culture, History, and Theory

May 2026, Online 

The Global Forum on Art, Culture, History, and Theory (ACHT) hosted by Kaarnamaa Institute of Art and Visual Culture invites submissions.  

Call for Proposals for Vol. 4, Issue 1–Jackson & Animality [deadline extended: Feb. 1, 2026]

The Washington Irving Society (washingtonirvingsociety.org) invites papers discussing innovative ways to teach and/or research Washington Irving and his texts, for the American Literature Association Conference in Chicago, May 20-23, 2026. We welcome papers offering new insight into “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” and also encourage insightful studies into other Irving texts. Please send an abstract of approximately 250 words plus a brief bio to Dr.

INTERNATIONAL PSYCHOHISTORICAL ASSOCIATION’S 49th ANNUAL CONFERENCE

 MAY 29-31, 2026, VIRTUALLY ON ZOOM

THEME: Breaking Cycles of Violence: Psychohistorical Perspectives on Individual and Collective Healing

What Is This Conference About?

How do we break the cycles of violence — within ourselves, our families, and our societies — that perpetuate suffering across generations? What can psychohistory contribute to understanding and transforming these deep patterns? The 2026 IPhA Annual Conference invites scholars, clinicians, educators, and activists to explore these vital questions from both individual and collective perspectives.

American Literature Association

May 20-23, 2026

Chicago, IL

Thoreau, Place, and Travel

In his delineation of the moral commitment of thinkers, Edward Said notes that “the proliferation of intellectuals has expanded into the very large number of fields in which intellectuals have become the object of study.” This self-reflexivity drives Said and other prominent scholars to grapple with the ever-changing global dynamics. The public role of the intellectual is therefore to critically engage in political life, rejecting moral detachment as ethical bankruptcy, emphasizing the responsibility of the intelligentsia, and cultivating anti-parochial modes of thought. They stand as a counterforce to the global corporate economic and political agendas that marginalize the human being and attempts to overwhelm human agency.

This panel presents a historical account of the aesthetic and political resistance movements that proliferated across Asia in the 1970s, a decade marked by the legacies of post–World War II decolonization in South and Southeast Asia, as well as by pan-Asian militancy inspired by the 1949 Chinese Revolution. During this period, Asia emerged as a global center of radical politics, with revolutionary energies circulating transnationally and influencing militant movements in the United States, Europe, and beyond.

School of Humanities and Performing Arts

Department of English and Cultural Studies

Central Campus

CHRIST (Deemed to be University) Bangalore

Organizes

Mélange

An MA in English with Communication Studies Initiative

&

A Student Led - Postgraduate International Conference on

I seek submissions for a Critical Insights anthology, under contract with Salem Press. The volume will explore quite possibly the greatest female American novelist of the mid-twentieth century, Shirley Jackson. Known and renown for her gothic horrors and suspenseful mysteries, Jackson (1916-1965) may be best remembered for her shorter works such as “The Lottery,” “The Summer People,” and We Have Always Lived in the Castle as well as her landmark and frequently adapted novel The Haunting of Hill House.

The Ralph Waldo Emerson Society invites proposals for one panel at the American Literature Association 37th Annual Conference, May 20-23, 2026, in Chicago. Any topic related to Ralph Waldo Emerson, transcendentalism, or related figures is welcome. Please send 300-word abstracts by email to Bill Scalia (bscalia@alumni.lsu.edu) and John Min (john.min@csn.edu). The deadline for proposals is Wednesday, 15 January 2026.

2026 WAR AND MEDIA STUDIES GRADUATE STUDENT WRITING AWARD 

The War and Media Studies SIG is holding its annual graduate student writing award competition to showcase innovative work in the field by our graduate student members. We will again be partnering with the Sage journal Media, War & Conflictand the winning author will have the opportunity to be published in the journal.