The Journalism & Media Culture area of the Popular Culture Association requests proposals on diverse topics, including journalism and media-related issues and subjects that can be local, regional, national, and/or international and can deal with historical or contemporary times. If your paper is accepted, you will be presenting at the 2026 Popular Culture Association national conference, held at the Marriott Marquis in Atlanta, April 8-1.

Sessions are scheduled in 1½ hour slots, typically with four papers or speakers that do not exceed 15 minutes each. We can also accept proposals for special panels and for sessions organized around a journalism/media-related theme. 

Call for Papers—DEADLINE EXTENDED!

Myth and Fairy Tales Area

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

47th Annual Conference, February 25-28, 2026

Marriott Albuquerque

Albuquerque, New Mexico

https://www.swpaca.org

EXTENDED proposal submission deadline: November 14, 2025

 Poems Invited for dec 2025 Issue of Taj Mahal Review 48th Issue

Deadline for proposals has been extended to 15 November 2025!

Call for papers – International PhD and early-career symposium 

Seeing the Other Empire: British Travel Writing and Imperial Rivalry in Europe and the Near East, 1783–1914

University of Strasbourg, 24 April 2026

Organisers: Arman Martirosyan and Suheyla-Hacer Sahin

Research group SEARCH (UR 2325)

Conference at the University of Amsterdam

Monday, 15 June 2026

Description:

The English department at Duke University is thrilled to host the 11th annual Post45 Graduate Symposium on February 20-21, 2026.

The Post45 Graduate Symposium seeks graduate-level works-in-progress related to post-1945 media, arts, literature, textual or visual objects, digital platforms, politics, and culture. We welcome submissions that expand our conception of objects and meaning-making post-1945 or place them in comparative, transnational, or hemispheric frames. We especially welcome contributions that foreground the importance of race, gender, class, and sexuality to post-45 studies. 

DEADLINE EXTENDED!

Call for Papers

“Horror (Literary & Cinematic)”

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

47th Annual Conference, February 25-28, 2026

Marriott Albuquerque

Albuquerque, New Mexico

https://www.southwestpca.org

NEW Submission Deadline: November 14, 2025

The esoteric, occult, and magical roots of deep ecology have become increasingly interconnected with the growing popularity of witchcraft practices, neopagan worldviews, and explicitly spiritual climate activism and environmentalism.  These developments include specific foci on particular ecological concerns and crises, but such trends are equally exemplified by transdisciplinary dialogues in which holistic scientific perspectives intersect with diverse systems of belief. This special panel seeks 15-20 conference presentations to explore these connections and their influence on, reception by, and expression through popular culture in any and all of its manifestations.  

The extraordinary success of K-Pop Demon Hunters (2025) as the most-watched original title in the history of Netflix (with over 325 million views) invites the reconsideration of a surprisingly vast and multivalent “mega-trope” that has proliferated throughout popular culture in numerous variations for centuries.  Its deep roots in folklore and mythology remain to be further explored, mapped, and connected with its various historical expressions throughout indigenous worldviews, Classical cultures and civilizations into Late Antiquity and ultimately through the global Middle Ages and straight through into the interactions of Western, East/Asian, and diverse global civilizations of the contemporary period.  While this mega-trope is here identified

Call for Papers

Medievalisms Area

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: November 14, 2025

Utopian Impulses in the 2020sAn Interdisciplinary Graduate Student ConferenceUniversity of Cincinnati - Friday, February 6th, 2026 Among its political and technological predicaments, America’s 2020s have been a time of steady upheaval, crisis, and change. As we continue to wrestle our way through the agendas, regimes, and big-data systems of this historical moment as teachers, students, and researchers, we recall the utopian thinking of More and Marx, which reminds us “to keep from being blinded by what seems normal — to help us see that what is natural is constructed, not inevitable” (Elbow, p. 83).

Shakespeare is one of the inventors of the category of the human as many modern and contemporary cultures know it. Even his most monstrous and otherworldly creations have a detectable human side. The critical tradition of Shakespeare has already established that these characters are to be read as reflections of certain psychological aspects and repressed characteristics of the main characters of his plays, as allegorical representations of emotions, principles or beliefs, as codification of ethnic and sexual differences, etc. Thanks to this tradition, focusing on the human side of these characters has become the norm. It happens almost intuitively as soon as a critic or scholar starts their analysis of these characters.

WRITING THE MIDWEST: A Symposium of Scholars and Creative Writers

The Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature (SSML)

May 28-29, 2026. Kellogg Hotel and Convention Center, East Lansing, Michigan

About SSML and The Writing the Midwest Symposium: The Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature (SSML), founded in 1971, exists to support the study and dissemination of work in Midwestern literature, art, film, and scholarly study. 

Come join academics and working professionals at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis, April 8-11 2026!

We are considering proposals for sessions organized around a theme, special panels, and/or individual papers.  Sessions are scheduled in 1½ hour slots, typically with four papers or speakers per standard session.  Presentations should not exceed 15 minutes. Working professionals, scholars, educators, and graduate students are all encouraged to submit.

Proposals within animation studies in relation to popular culture are welcomed. Possible themes for papers/panels include but are not restricted to:

General Issue | Rolling Submissions

The Critical Gender Studies Journal / Revista Crítica de Estudios de Género invites submissions for its upcoming general issue. We welcome original research articles, theoretical essays, creative interventions, and reviews that explore the multifaceted dimensions of gender and sexuality across diverse contexts and disciplines.

The Flannery O’Connor Society
The Society for the Study of Southern Literature
March 28th-31st, 2026
Fisk University
Nashville, TN

The Flannery O’Connor Society invites abstracts (of about 300 words) to be submitted for participation in an open topics panel on Flannery O’Connor’s life and work at the biannual conference of the Society for the Study of Southern Literature.

Call for Papers

Global Indigeneities and Life Narratives: Special Issue of Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly

A Special Issue of Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly

Guest Editor: J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, 

Eric and Wendy Schmidt Professor of Indigenous Studies and Anthropology, Princeton University

Submit: 400-word abstracts to kauanui@princeton.edu by December 1, 2025

https://manoa.hawaii.edu/cbr/publications-productions/biography/calls-fo...

Call for Papers: Film International: Journal of World Cinema

Special Issue series: Diasporic Cinemas

View the full call here>>

https://www.intellectbooks.com/film-international-journal-of-world-cinema#call-for-papers

Series overview

We are excited to announce a new interdisciplinary seminar series for postgraduate students and early career researchers on the Long Middle Ages, a period covering the Late Antique, Medieval, and Early Modern Periods. This series aims to bring together scholars working across this period to establish new connectivity and inclusivity between these disciplines, and to provide a more relaxed space for new and emerging researchers to present and test out ideas.

Dear Scholars and Researchers,

We are delighted to invite original and scholarly book chapters for an upcoming edited volume titled Emerging Trends and Future Directions in Comparative Literature.

We welcome contributions on, but not limited to, the following themes:

Suggested Themes

• World Literature as a Comparative Practice

• Emerging Trends in Digital Humanities

• Future of Comparative Literature

• Digital and Cyber Literature

• Globalization and Cultural Exchange

• Cultural Hybridity, Adaptation, and Translation in a Globalized World

• Translation Studies

Representation matters – but to whom? And how?

This iteration of the Critical Approaches to Black Media Culture conference considers the ongoing significance of representational analysis as well as the critical possibilities enabled by the turn to resonance in Black media and cultural studies. Our theme, Representation and Resonance, invites original research into images and storytelling, circulation and flows, and reception practices.

While we especially invite papers on this topic, we are open to any and all critical inquiry into Black media culture, broadly defined. Our hope is to bring together any and all scholars interested and invested in Black media culture, regardless of discipline or method.

The Saul Bellow Society will host one session at the American Literature Association’s 37th Annual Conference at the Palmer House Hilton, Chicago, on May 20-23, 2026.  Proposals for papers on Saul Bellow and Chicago are particularly welcome but may address any aspect of Saul Bellow’s work or life, including comparisons with other authors. 

Proposals for presentations should include a title, your name and affiliation, e-mail address, and a short abstract.  The Saul Bellow Society welcomes proposals from established and newer scholars, including graduate students. 

Call for Panelists – Rachel Carson Center Conference 2026 (“Beyond Dualism—Thinking Creatively Across Worlds”)

In an era of climate crisis and ecological anxiety, the boundaries between humans, nature, and technology are becoming increasingly blurred.
This panel—Sensing and Repair—invites researchers and practitioners to explore how art, science, and education can work together to restore our connections with the living world.