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.

35TH ANNUAL BRITISH COMMONWEALTH AND POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES CONFERENCE
FEBRUARY 20-21, 2026
DESOTO SAVANNAH, SAVANNAH GA

Call for Submissions: Race in Fantasy- for The British Fantasy Society Journal (Summer 2026) ‘Race’—that socially constructed and contentious term and concept—has long been a part of Fantasy. As a way of narrativizing alterity, Fantasy excels (one could argue that it is its sine qua non), but like all other cultural forms it has been prone to the best and worst excesses of this. Although the largesse of Fantasy—its broad, catholic imaginary—embraces a rich spectrum of species, ethnicities, ontologies, and lifeworlds, it has been prone to all the cultural myopias, prejudices, peccadilloes, and stereotyping as any other genre. Exoticism, Orientalism, and Essentialism are only some of its many crimes.

Todd Gitlin pointed out in 1983 that ‘‘The three networks now underwrite more original movies than the studios combined” (in Stone, 2017: 616). The made-for-TV movie was a vast cultural phenomenon, commanding huge viewing figures and global, syndicated reach. Many of the most memorable and culturally resonant of these  were horror films. Despite this, the made-for-TV film, especially horror, remains largely under-explored in academic writing. If, as Pirie states, ‘Our fears are among the most revealing things about us’ (1994: 224), then what might these hugely popular films suggest about the society that produced them?

Issue 105 of the Virginia Woolf Miscellany Special Topic:

Panoramic Woolf (Fall 2026)

Guest Editors: Oliver Case, Evelyn Malinowski, Teresa Prudente

Please submit article proposals of approximately 300 words by 1st December 2025

Final article drafts (no more than 2500 words including Works Cited) will be due by 15 May 2026

Please send submissions to: panoramicwoolf@gmail.com

Call for Submissions – The Soliloquist Winter 2026 Issue 
Theme: Beneath the Surface 

Winter is a season of stillness—but beneath the frost, roots are reaching, rivers are flowing, and stories are gathering strength.  

For our Winter 2026 issue, The Soliloquist invites poets and writers to explore what lies hidden: the unspoken truths, buried memories, secret longings, submerged identities, and quiet rebellions that shape who we are. We seek work that dives below the obvious, the curated, the polished—into the depths where vulnerability, resilience, and revelation intertwine.  

Open Topic: James Fenimore Cooper, an American Novelist

The James Fenimore Cooper Society invites proposals for papers that explore James Fenimore Cooper as a novelist of national narratives, whose interests and innovations to the novel in terms of form and content achieved both literary and commercial success as well as leave an indelible mark on both American and Transatlantic writing across a broad spectrum of literary, cultural, and historical perspectives. This is an open topic panel – all proposals welcomed.

Chair: TBA

Réseaux dans les mouvements transatlantiques (XIXème-XXIème siècles)

Appel à communications

Colloque international

21-22 mai 2026

Université Bretagne Sud - Lorient (France)

L’océan atlantique occupe une place prépondérante dans l’histoire des mobilités humaines, qu’elles soient forcées – et l’on pensera à la traite négrière – ou volontaires, comme les vagues successives de colons puis de migrants qui se sont installés dans les Amériques le confirment.

Ainsi, dans le sillage des Migration Studies, nous nous intéresserons aux mouvements entre les continents qui bordent l’océan atlantique, à savoir l’Europe, les Amériques, l’Afrique.

CLiC Into Place: Literatures of the Local (University of Worcester, 5th May 2026)

“None of these things is happening here. They are all happening far away, elsewhere.
But they may as well be, Iris says. What does here mean anyway, I’d like to know. Everywhere’s a here, isn’t it?”

― Ali Smith, Winter

The 33rd Annual NINE Spring Training Conference (March 4-7, 2026) invites original unpublished papers that study all aspects of baseball, with particular emphasis on history, literature, and social policy implications. Abstracts only, not to exceed 300 words, should be submitted by November 14, 2025, to co-directors Willie Steele (wdsteele@lipscomb.edu) and David Pegram (david.pegram@paradisevalley.edu) for the abstract committee’s consideration. We ask that you please copy your submission to both of us.

Call for Papers: Companion to International Comics Studies (Intellect Books)

Edited by Julia Round, Shambhavi Singh and Eszter Szép 

Deadline for chapter proposals: 31 January 2026 

Deadline for first draft chapters: 1 April 2027 

Call for Book Chapters: “Japa-ing” to Freedom or/and Slavery
Back in 2001, Simon Gikandi in “Globalization and the Claims of Postcoloniality” discussed the unfortunate case of two dead Guinean boys whose bodies were found in the cargo hold of a plane, stowed away in the bowels of slave ships. The unnamed boys were desperate to go to Europe. The on-going mass exodus of young people from Nigeria (called “japa”) can be read as a contemporary re-enactment of the ideas that drove those Guinea boys to “choose” a deadly migration journey.

Music Area

Popular Culture Association

Annual Conference

Atlanta, GA

April 8-11, 2026

The Music Area in the Popular Culture Association invites submissions from individuals or organized panels (3 or preferably 4 persons) focusing on any topic relating to any genre of music. Topics can include but are not limited to individual artists, albums, CDs, genres, scenes, trends, periods, performances, critics, magazines, music and art, music on radio, television, and on stage and in academia. Abstracts on any topic of music will be considered.

Fleeting Moments and Wonderful Weirdness in Welty

Panel at Society for the Study of Southern Literature Conference (March 28-31, 2026 at Fisk University in Nashville, TN)

Chaired by Laura Wilson

Welty's Dissident Spaces

Panel at Conference of the Society for the Study of Southern Literature (March 28-31, 2026 at Fisk University in Nashville, TN)

Co-coordinated by Sarah Gilbreath Ford, Mae Miller Claxton, & Rebecca L. Harrison

Call for Papers
Beauty and the Sublime in Gestation and Coming into Being:
Art and the Aesthetics of Pregnancy and Birth
2026 Virtual Symposium of the Society for the Study of Pregnancy and Birth 
June 4-5, 2026​
Co-Keynote Speakers: Lauren Bice, DNP, CRNA and Sheila Lintott, PhD  The Society for the Study of Pregnancy and Birth (SSPRB) is pleased to announce the Call for Papers for its second international virtual symposium, Beauty and the Sublime in Gestation and Coming into Being: Art and the Aesthetics of Pregnancy and Birth, a virtual event that will take place online across two half day sessions on June 4th and June 5th, 2026 (to facilitate participation across time zones).

Lisez l'appel à propositions en français sur le site du CLC: https://www.ualberta.ca/en/literatures-in-canada/2026-conference/index.html

ALECC and CLC 2026 20th Anniversary Conference: Cross-Pollinations

16-20 June, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta

We are now accepting research articles, scholarly papers, creative writing, artwork, photography, and reviews for our 2025 issue of

1890: A Journal of Undergraduate Research.

1890 provides undergraduate students the opportunity to demonstrate their interests and abilities in various disciplines by accepting works of research, creative writing, poetry, reviews, and art.

GENDER AND SOUTH ASIAN VISUAL CULTURES IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Deadline for 250-word proposals: November 2, 2025 Association for Art History Annual Conference, April 2026Cambridge, UK This panel aims to explore the relationships between women and visual culture in twentieth century South Asia, challenging the oppressive structures that inform postcolonial subjectivities and engaging with practices that inaugurate new visual grammars.

The Area of Education, Teaching, History and Popular Culture is now accepting submissions for the 2025 Popular Culture Association National Conference to be held April 8-11, 2026 in Atlanta, GA.

Educators, librarians, archivists, scholars, independent researchers and graduate students are encouraged to apply.  Undergraduates are reminded that there is an entire area devoted to undergraduate presentations in which they should submit.  Undergraduates who wish to present a paper, panel or round table must do so under the supervision of a faculty sponsor, who must be included in the proposal submission.

3rd ICCPA
East Asia on/as  the Global Stage
5-7 Desember 2025
Universitas Padjadjaran, Bandung, Indonesia

Concept Note