VLT 98 - Media Futures
CFP: Media Futures
The Velvet Light Trap, Issue 98 (to be published Fall 2026)
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CFP: Media Futures
The Velvet Light Trap, Issue 98 (to be published Fall 2026)
Globally, we are experiencing a moment of heightened anxiety surrounding work and discussions about sex, eroticism, bodies/pleasures, identity, and desire, among many other topics. Indeed, scholars and researchers focused on the erotic often grapple with the label and association of “dirty work,” described as “occupational tasks and jobs that were ‘physically, socially or morally’ tainted” (224). Coined by Everette Hughes (1962), this term has been applied to research on sex and sexuality, as well as other subjects that may provoke controversy. Louisa Allen (2019) utilized the term “dirty work” to address the frustrations involved in publishing images of penises in scholarship related to sex education.
Date- September 2nd to 5th, 2025
Location- Online
Call for Papers
Twenty-fourth Claflin University Conference on English and Language Arts Pedagogy in Secondary and Postsecondary Institutions (In-person on the campus of Claflin University) *
October 29-30, 2025
THEME: CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE TEACHING IN HIGHER EDUCATION AND SECONDARY SCHOOLS
Wednesday, October 29, 2025, 9:15 AM—6:15 PM Concurrent sessions
4 PM EST Plenary Session 1: “Culturally responsive teaching in higher education and secondary schools”
Discover Global Society: Call for Papers – Streaming Media: The Technology, Content, Stakeholders, and its Global Reception
Springer Nature is launching a new series of open-access journals, including the journal Discover Global Society, which was launched in 2023. Currently, Discover Global Society is indexed in DOAJ and Scopus with a CiteScore 2024 of 0.4.
Plí invites submissions for its 37th volume:Gender, Sexuality, Feminisms and Women’s Studies in the History of Philosophy
Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy invites submissions for its thirty-eighth issue, which will explore how questions of gender and sexuality (and, more broadly, Women’s Studies and Feminisms) intersect with the History of Philosophy. We welcome original research articles that engage with any philosophical and literary period or tradition, as long as they advance our understanding of the historical entanglements between intellectual thought and lived, gendered experience.
“To be or not to be”—Hamlet’s timeless question of existence—resonates with a gendered undertone that continues to echo through literature and culture. This panel asks a related question: what does it mean to be (or not to be) a man, and how do literary texts help illuminate that question across genres, periods, and geographies?
Photography / Intensity / Measure
Call for Book Chapters
South Atlantic Modern Language Association conference, November 6 - 8, 2025, Atlanta, GA.
Call for Papers: Forms of Suffering: Literary Tragedy in an Age of Political Violence
This panel seeks to explore the evolving nature of literary tragedy in response to the escalating political violence witnessed across the Globe. We invite submissions that examine how contemporary literature deals with these crises and, in turn, how the tragic genre itself is undergoing transformation.
We are looking for papers that delve into various aspects of this intersection, including but not limited to:
The representation of political violence and its human cost in contemporary tragic narratives.
Witch Studies and Translation Studies are both relatively young fields within the western academic canon. Practical and theoretical connections exist between them: for example, the ritualization of praxis, the cultural embeddedness of (re)generative act, and the tensions present within the sequence of intention, act, and consequence. The modern witch may mark time with celebrations within the Wheel of the Year, protect her home and her body with amulets and incantations, or treat her loved ones with herbal remedies. This roundtable conceptualizes witchcraft as a set of personal practices and acts, separate from organized deity worship, structured coven associations, and other markers of formal practice.
ICMS 2026, Session 7572
This session seeks to examine the misuses and misapplications of the medieval within any fictional media from 1974 forward. Sometimes, accessibility to contemporary audiences requires deviation from what is known to scholarship; sometimes, narrative demands impose changes to particular interpretations of source material. Sometimes, however, things are flatly wrong. Effects on audiences differ, but it is clear that many audiences and authors use contemporary fiction as a means to understand earlier periods. This session seeks to explore what they get right, what they get less right, and why it matters to our ongoing understanding of the belief about the medieval.
ICMS 2026, Session 7569
While the pop culture landscape of books and films often borrow from and are inspired by "the medieval period"–as well as frequently disseminated, propagated, and influenced by neo-medievalist works such as those by Martin, Jordan, Sanderson, and Hobb–relatively little discourse focuses on how other types of contemporary works pull from the same and/or similar influences. With the increasing popularity of medievalism in games, music, etc., this paper panel seeks to prompt, deepen, and explore the study and discussion of the less commonly talked about–yet no less consumed–works and how they look to and use popular mis/understandings of the medieval.
ICMS 2026, Session 7564
This roundtable explores enduring medieval influences in adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien's works across various media, including films and television, table-top and video games, and other transmedial texts. Roundtable panelists will examine how Tolkien's deep engagement with medieval literature, history, and mythology continues to shape modern interpretations, from the visual aesthetics and world-building in cinematic adaptations to the narrative structures and mechanics in interactive games and other media. Through interdisciplinary perspectives, the discussion will address ways medieval motifs are preserved, altered, or reimagined in these adaptations, considering both creative intentions and audience reception.
Northeast Modern Language Association 57th Annual Convention 2026
March 5-8, 2026 Pittsburgh, PA
"Voices in Constraint, Languages in Confinement"
This panel explores how language restrictions operate across spatial, social, and systemic boundaries, and defines who can speak, what can be spoken, and where. It invites abstracts that examine the forms and consequences of such restrictions. Submissions may address suppressed or minoritized languages, restricted expressions, and the reception of silenced voices in public and private life.
This session is sponsored by the Mark Twain Circle of America.
American author Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1935-1910) achieved lasting fame as Mark Twain, an identity that served as both his pen name and the persona he cultivated for the public. Twain’s writings and his distinctive character have dispersed across time and space, and the resulting Twainian tradition incorporates these elements in many ways.
SAMLA 97: Knowledges
Atlanta, GA | November 6th - 8th, 2025 | Atlanta Buckhead Hotel & Conference Center
Knowledge from the cracks
Call for Chapters: Critical Sociocultural Examinations of Gender Discrimination and Persecution
The history of gender discrimination and persecution is as ancient as human civilization itself, rooted in societal structures, cultural norms, and institutional practices that have perpetuated inequality. This critical examination seeks to uncover the deeply entrenched dynamics of gender-based oppression, its evolution across epochs, and the persistent struggle for equality.
See for details and submission https://www.igi-global.com/publish/call-for-papers/call-details/9088
CfP: BROLLY. Journal of Social Sciences
(London Academic Publishing, UK)
Vol. 6, No. 2, August 2025 (General Topic)
Submission Deadline: August 20, 2025
No processing or publication fees. Peer-reviewed.
#OpenAccess
ISSN 2516-869X (Print)
ISSN 2516-8703 (Online)
Web: https://www.journals.lapub.co.uk/index.php/Brolly
Email: brolly@journals.lapub.co.uk
Located at the juncture of philosophy and the arts, mimesis is one of the most ancient concepts of literary theory and may not initially appear new, let alone original. It was indeed marginalized and forgotten in the Romantic and modernist periods haunted by the myth of originality. Yet, in recent years, scholars across the humanities, social sciences, and even the neurosciences, have returned to the ancient, yet strikingly contemporary, realization that humans are an imitative species, or homo mimeticus (www.homomimeticus.eu).
Psychoanalysis in Transition: New Queer Approaches in 21st-Century France2026 NeMLA ConventionMarch 5-8, 2026, Pittsburgh, PA Since the 1970s, LGBTQ+ Francophone authors and scholars have produced an expansive critique of psychoanalytic practices and thought. Despite their differing views, Guy Hocquenghem, Michel Foucault, Monique Wittig, Didier Eribon, Sam Bourcier, and Paul B.
Conference online (via Zoom): 11-12 August 2025
Scientific Committee:
Professor Wojciech Owczarski – University of Gdańsk, Poland
Professor Polina Golovátina-Mora – NTNU, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Professor Ryan Habermeyer - Salisbury University, USA
CFP:
In light of this year’s conference theme of regeneration—with its emphasis on engagement, collaboration, and the creation of powerful new entities—this roundtable explores how the humanities might regenerate through human–AI collaboration. As generative AI becomes increasingly integrated into writing studies and classroom practices, human–AI teaming models (Gupta & Shivers-McNair; McKee & Porter; Knowles & Pedersen; Beddington et al.) have shown potential for positive outcomes in writing pedagogy. At the same time, they raise critical questions about voice (Tan et al.; Grey), the complexity of teacher labor (Ghafouri et al.), and agency issue (Yang), prompting us to reflect on what it truly means to co-generate/create with a machine.
This hybrid panel will consider interdisciplinary work in the slowly expanding field of critical intersex studies.
In recent years, publishers and children’s book professionals have registered a new enthusiasm for comic and graphic narrative forms. Graphic narratives as children’s literature offer an exciting new type of text for children and youth, providing important insights into the interests and capabilities of these youngsters as readers and as potential agents of change. Curiously, children’s literature criticism has tended to ignore or, at best, marginalize comics and graphic narratives for young people. This “blind spot” in children’s literature and comics criticism, as Charles Hatfield has called it on a number of occasions, is now being addressed.
Panel for the 2026 Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) Convention
March 5–8, 2026 | Pittsburgh, PA
Wyndham Grand Downtown, at the Point
More information: https://www.nemla.org/convention/future.html
Kate Chopin in the Classroom
The editors of this essay collection invite 250-word proposals for essays of 5,000 to 7,000 words that address an aspect of or strategy for teaching the fiction, poetry, nonfiction or life of nineteenth-century American author Kate Chopin in the contemporary classroom. What are effective strategies for high school and/or college-level students? How have you incorporated technology into your teaching of Chopin? What changes have you seen in the reception of your students over the years? For example, do they praise or condemn Edna Pontellier? What might this say about students today?
Proposals should include a title, your name and affiliation, and should be no longer than 250 words.
Convocatoria POLIFONIA, Revista de estudios hispánicos Volumen XV, Año 2025Representaciones de la resistencia en la literatura y el cine (el mundo hispanohablante)
El consejo editorial de Polifonía se complace en hacer pública su nueva convocatoria para su decimoquinto volumen, “Representaciones de la resistencia en la literatura y el cine,” que se publicará de forma electrónica e impresa en el 2025.
Este volumen consta de dos partes: la primera aborda la resistencia en la literatura y el cine en el mundo hispanohablante (ver abajo), mientras la segunda es de tema misceláneo - es decir, abierto.
Imaginations of the Womb – Uterine Imaginaries
Graduate Student Workshop
Princeton University, November 20–21, 2025
Organized by Marie-Louise James and Erica Passoni (German Department)
Conference online (via Zoom): 28-29 July 2025
CFP:
It is widely known that ideologies of racism, nationalism, and xenophobia are dangerous and spread all over the world. We want to examine these terms as much as possible, from many perspectives and variable aspects: in politics, society, psychology, culture, and many more. We also want to devote considerable attention to how the phenomena of racism, nationalism and xenophobia are represented in artistic practices: in literature, film, theatre or visual arts.
Call for Chapters
Edited Volume on Can I Believe?: Postcolonial Religiosity in the Post-Truth Era
Edited by Fardun Ali Middya & Md Ujan Ahmad
This in-person roundtable invites creative writing instructors to reflect on current challenges and opportunities in teaching the art and craft of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and drama.
At a time when the humanities face increasing scrutiny, creative writing courses remain spaces where students actively engage in imaginative thinking, narrative experimentation, and the articulation of personal and collective experiences. But how do we design workshops and other course structures that are inclusive, innovative, and responsive to our students' needs and voices?
The 57th Annual Northeast Modern Language Association Convention will be held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.
Conference Dates - March 5-8, 2026
Topic - Reclaiming History: Trauma, Memory and Resilience in the Narratives from Africa
Deadline for Abstract Submission - September 30th 2025
Modality - hybrid (in-person but accepting remote presentations)
Overview -
Since his debut inFantastic Four #48, the Silver Surfer has become an integral part of Marvel Comic’s sprawlinguniverse. In his six-decade existence, the character has been featured in merchandise and Marvel’s transmedia properties, including cartoons, movies, video games, and podcasts.
While there exists a smattering of academic research on the Silver Surfer, this edited collection welcomes differing perspectives on thischaracter. We welcome contributions from different disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives, including comics studies, film and media studies, communication, theology, literary criticism, and so on.
Call for papers: NeMLA 2026
This panel seeks to investigate the intersection of postmodernism and horror cinema in the 21st century, highlighting shifts in themes, the rise of new filmmakers, innovative production techniques, and the ways in which the genre has absorbed and requalified postmodernist conventions. Comparative studies among American, European, and/or non-Western cinema are encouraged.
Recovering late-colonial Malay(si)a:
Histories and Legacies of Resettlement
Dates: March 17–18, 2026
Imperial War Museum London, Lambeth Road, London SE1 6HX, UK
Overview
All papers submitted to this symposium must be related to results and research in or about English language; comparative, dissemination, multidisciplinary, etc. papers will also be accepted.
The proposed topics cover a variety of lines of work, including:
Call for Book Chapters
African Literature and the Resilience of Love: Indigenous Intimacies as Resistance in Historical and Global Contexts
Submission Email: africanliteratureandlovebook@gmail.com
Editor: Azzeddine Tajjiou
2026 NeMLA Annual Convention
March 5-8, 2026
Wyndham Grand Hotel, Pittsburgh, PA
Call for Papers for in-person panel:
On the eve of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the formation of the United States of America, this panel seeks papers that examine US national identity as it is represented in textual form. Specifically, we seek papers that analyze literary texts—novels, stories, poems, and plays—that speak to the characteristics of American identity and ultimately offer an answer to the question, “What does it mean to be ‘American’?”
Folk Songs in 21st Century: Ritual, Ceremony, and Euphoria
Deadline for Submissions:
4th August 2025
full name / name of organization:
Prof Shuchi Sharma
(Professor, Department of English, USHSS, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University)
Ms. Shubhangi Srivastava
(Research Scholar, Department of English, USHSS, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University)
Ms. Mitali Bhattacharya
(Research Scholar, Department of English, USHSS, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University)
contact email:
folk.songs.2026@gmail.com
This session seeks to explore the intersections of embodiment and environment in the Middle Ages, considering how bodies—organic and inorganic, human and non-human, material and immaterial—constitute, shape, and envelop one another. By “naturing” bodies, we seek to erode neat divisions between humans and the natural world to uncover the earthy entanglements linking humans to the environments they shape and are shaped by. Attuning to John Scotus Eriugena’s claim that nature is the name “for all things, for those that are, and those that are not,” we invite papers that reflect on the fundamentally relational ontology of humans, non-humans, and environments.
The International Toy Research Association (ITRA) invites proposals for the 10th ITRA World Conference to be held in Augsburg Germany 5-7 August, 2026. The overarching conference theme is The Zeitgeist in Toys & Games.
Proposal Submission Deadline: 31 December, 2025
Throughout recorded history, toys and games have shaped and reflected who we are. They inspire our play and fuel our development, both as individuals and members of society. As both carriers and changemakers of culture, toys represent and influence the collective spirit of their times – the Zeitgeist.
Call for papers: Women’s Studies: An Inter-disciplinary Journal (A&HCI)
Special Issue: Quilting and Women's Storytelling
Guest Editor: Hairong Chen
CALL FOR PAPERS
Cinema’s First Epics in Focus: Silent Epic Film from Literary Adaptation to Contemporary Epic Narratives
(Edited Volume)
“What’s the name of the game?” ABBA, Northernness and Pop Culture
19-20th March 2026, Université de Lorraine, Nancy
This session seeks papers that examine points of contact between different languages in Layamon’s Brut and in other prose and verse Bruts. Papers that focus on instances within the text where speakers of different languages interact are welcome, as are papers that take examine Layamon’s and other Brut authors’ methods of translating sections of source texts and/or incorporating other languages into their text. The session hopes to advance critical understanding of relationships between language and cultural or ethnic identity, language as a source of power or prestige, and translation as a way of conveying history to different audiences. What do perceptions of language tell us about the writers and readers of historical texts
This session seeks papers that examine points of contact between different languages in Layamon’s Brut and in other prose and verse Bruts. Papers that focus on instances within the text where speakers of different languages interact are welcome, as are papers that take examine Layamon’s and other Brut authors’ methods of translating sections of source texts and/or incorporating other languages into their text. The session hopes to advance critical understanding of relationships between language and cultural or ethnic identity, language as a source of power or prestige, and translation as a way of conveying history to different audiences. What do perceptions of language tell us about the writers and readers of historical texts
Concept Note: