The journal Studies in Popular Culture publishes reviews of books in the field. If you are interested in reviewing a book submitted to the journal or would like to suggest one to review, please contact the Book Reviews Editor, Caesar Perkowski, at cperkowski@gordonstate.edu. If you have not already reviewed a book for the journal, please include either a CV or a brief description of your interests and qualifications in the email.

Members of the Popular Culture Association in the South who have published a book are encouraged to inform the Book Reviews Editor of that fact.

Welcome to Hawkins: A Special Issue on Stranger Things

Slayage plans a special issue on Stranger Things for publication in late June 2026. Slayage is an international and interdisciplinary refereed scholarly journal concerned with the “fuzzy set” with Buffy the Vampire Slayer at its center, and Stranger Things, a multi-season television series with kick-ass heroines, the irruption of the supernatural into the mundane, high-stakes action, strong characterizations, snarky humor, and an emphasis on relationships and the complexities of queerness and race, fits our definition nicely. It’s even got a Hellmouth in a library!

DEADLINE EXTENDED TO JANUARY 23RD!!

Bridges and Borders: Material Actualities

March 19-21, 2026 | Proposals Due by FRIDAY, JANUARY 23, 2026

Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA) and on Zoom 

Bridges and Borders is an annual, interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference presented by the Carnegie Mellon University Department of English in collaboration with the Department of Languages, Cultures, and Applied Linguistics.

CONTACT: bridgesandborders@andrew.cmu.edu

Graduate Students in English Interdisciplinary Conference 2026

Call for Papers on the Theme: “Transformation”

University of Arkansas at Fayetteville – March 14-15, 2026

The Graduate Students in English at University of Arkansas at Fayetteville invite proposals on the theme “Transformation,” a topic as broad as the literary and academic canons themselves. As we bear witness to changes in higher education landscapes across disciplines, we might consider how our own perceptions have evolved, what has been reliable in scholarship historically, and what needs to adapt.

CALL FOR BOOK CHAPTERS - DEADLINE EXTENDED!

 REIMAGINING FRANKENSTEIN IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Cross-Cultural Adaptations in Visual Culture

Edited by Cenk Tan & Defne Ersin Tutan

Editors’ Introduction

Studiolo is a series of essays on objects, books, and early technologies, written in the spirit of the chockablock Renaissance study from which it takes its name and published monthly at the Pittsburgh Review of Books (http://www.pghrev.com) 

The paradigmatic scene in a Western – witnessed in numerous movies, such as High Noon (1952), The Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957), or Tombstone (1993), as well as in classic western novels, such as Louis L’Amour’s The Lonesome Gods (1983) or Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove (1985) – is that of a confrontation between a sheriff and a bandit: it suggests the forces of civilization taking hold on the frontier, even if tentatively, and ultimately a triumph of the order imposed to protect those in need of protection.

Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds 

Special Issue 3/2026

“Save State: Ethics, Politics, and Poetics of Game Preservation”

Guest Editors: Paweł Frelik (University of Warsaw), Magdalena Kozyra (SWPS University), Tomasz Z. Majkowski (Jagiellonian University)  

August 3-5, 2026

Southern Utah University - Utah Shakespeare Festival

The Wooden O Symposium is a cross-disciplinary conference exploring the impact of Shakespeare's plays on culture and history, from his time to the present. This face-to-face conference aims to foster research in the field of Shakespeare Studies and to provide connections between academia and professional theatre productions through our partnership with the Utah Shakespeare Festival. The Wooden O Symposium limits participation to 25 presenters to ensure robust conversation and feedback as we strive to create a community of scholars engaged with the work of Shakespeare.

The organizers the University of South Carolina Beaufort's Interdisciplinary Studies Conference, "Balm: Binding Art, Life, Medicine," invite proposals for this year's event. This interdisciplinary conference on Narrative Medicine and Health Humanities will be held virtually on Thursday, March 26th and on the Bluffton campus on Friday, March 27th.  We are extending the submission deadline from February 1st to February 15th to allow undergraduate scholars to generate potential contributions. Topics of Interest

We welcome interdisciplinary proposals that explore, interrogate, or illuminate the central theme, including but not limited to:

Call for Papers and Workshops: “History up for Debate: Literature, Storytelling and the Imagined Past” 

1-2 July 2026, University of Salzburg, Department of English and American Studies, Unipark Nonntal 

Conference within the Framework of the Salzburg Conferences on English Literature and Culture (SEC) 

Organisers: Dorothea Flothow, Julia Hartinger, Sarah Herbe, Christopher Herzog, Eva-Maria Kubin, Markus Oppolzer, and Elisabeth Schober 

***DEADLINE EXTENDED TO JAN. 15th 2026***

Medieval Engagements with Disability

This edited volume aims to explore the concept of veleno, that is poison, in its material and symbolic
dimensions, examining how it functions as a cultural construct and/or a discursive category within
Italian literature—considered in dialogue with cultural practices and discursive uses of language—
from the Middle Ages to the contemporary period.
Across Italian cultural history, poison operates on a threshold between pharmakon (in its Derridean
sense) and toxin, between language that heals or contaminates, between scientific knowledge and
moral accountability. Far from being confined to medical or chemical meanings, poison emerges as a

Call for interest (sign-up below) in a Society for the Study of Unconventional Prose Fiction from the US, 1950-2001.

 We're creating a scholarly society for studying unconventional US fiction from the era usually called "postmodern" - sign up here - https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1_n10FmXmaJ1fNmIfzTlozM7udW4RgEMZcpWu4lGWIzs/ - and see below for more details...

ALA 2026: Society for the Study of American Travel Writing CFP

CALL FOR PAPERS – Deadline, January 21, 2026

Society for the Study of American Travel Writing

American Literature Association 37th Annual Conference

May 20-23, 2026, in Chicago, IL.

Special Issue on Brutalism in the Global Novel

Guest Editors: Om Prakash Dwivedi, om_dwivedi2003@yahoo.com and Madhurima Nayak, madhurimanayak@gmail.com, both of Chandigarh University, India

Reminder: CFP due soon. Please reach out with any questions!

Special Issue, Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film Call for Papers: 

Adapting Thackeray 

Beauty and the Revival of Faith will take place on 8-10 May, 2026, at the Archbishop’s Palace, Southwell, Nottingham, U.K. 

We are pleased to announce the 5th Hawaiʻi International Conference on English Language and Literature Studies (HICELLS 2026), which will be held at the Univrsity of Hawaii at Hilo on March 13 - 14, 2026. This year's conference theme is "Teaching and Learning English Language and Literature in a Changing World: Global Trends and Transformative Practices," aims to explore the emerging global trends in English language teaching and literary studies, including curriculum innovation, assessment practices, digital integration, and multilingual education.

The Department of English and Communications at South Carolina State University invites proposals for 20-minute individual papers, panels of 3–4 presenters, roundtable discussions, and creative performances or multimedia presentations for the 2026 SC State Intersectional Studies Remote Conference (ISC), which will be held on Friday, March 27, 2026 via Zoom. In addition to proposals from faculty affiliated with higher education institutions, we welcome proposals from independent scholars, graduate students, and undergraduate students from all fields and disciplines. 

A small forest area that holds ecological, historical, cultural, religious and spiritual value, and is protected by the local community, can be understood as a ‘Sacred Grove’. The term ‘sacred’ signifies the importance of these groves as they protect different species despite depletion of forest areas around them. The prohibition to collect or remove any resources from these sacred groves conserve plants, parasites, animals, herbs, and even maintain the water and soil compositions (Khan et al, 2008). As a result, these sites serve as living records of geographical and ecological past, making them invaluable spaces for scientific research.

The Literary, Interdisciplinary, Theory, and Culture Organization (LITCO) at Purdue University invites participants for our sixth annual symposium, “Memory, Identity, and Transformation Throughout Literature, Theory, and Culture.” We are interested in scholarly projects that discuss past, present, and future intersections of memory, identity, and transformation, including readings that challenge or rearticulate these themes as conceptual categories. We welcome papers that interact with these themes within the scope of their scholarly arguments or discuss texts that deal with their various manifestations on a literary, political, social, or cultural level.

Call for Papers

Philip K. Dick at 100: Fiction, Philosophy, and Cultural Afterlives

Edited Volume (Centenary Collection)

Editor:
Ercan Gürova, Ph.D.
Ankara University, Turkey

“Under consideration for publication by a reputable international academic publisher.”

The Medieval Comics Project would like to organize a session on comics for the 46th Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum to be held at Keene State College in Keene, New Hampshire, on Friday and Saturday, 10-11 April 2026.

Presentations can be in-person or remote. 

Possible topics might include 

• “comics” of the medieval and/or Renaissance eras

• comics adaptations of medieval and/or Renaissance literary texts

• comics depictions of medieval and/or Renaissance historical events