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Call for Abstracts
K-Pop and Philosophy
Edited by Catherine M. Robb, Natasha Haddal, and Gah-Kai Leung
The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series
Navigating Youth: Experiences, Challenges, and Possibilities in Young Adult Literature
Conference Date: 18 January 2027
Time: 9am to 6pm
Location: MIC Limerick, Ireland
Abstract Submission Deadline: 16 October 2026
Submission decisions: 30 October 2026
Organiser: Mary-Kate Flanagan (Mary-Kate.Flanagan@mic.ul.ie)
Call for Papers: International Journal of Disney Studies
Special Issue: 'Mickey and Minnie at 100'
To view the full call click here>>
The Samuel Beckett Working Group is an evolving international community of researchers, which seeks to support the development of excellent research on Beckett’s drama and Beckett in performance. It meets everywhere at the annual IFTR conferences. We welcome postgraduate and early-career researchers, as well as faculty, independent researchers and artists. We value the participation of Beckett and non-Beckett experts alike, as both categories partake in the maintenance of a healthy interdisciplinary ecosystem.
The Graduate Journal of Food Studies invites submissions for a special issue exploring the theme Food as Joy.
Food is and will always be a source of pleasure, celebration, creativity, and connection. This issue seeks contributions that examine the intersections, tensions, and possibilities of food as a source of joy. We welcome interdisciplinary perspectives and encourage submissions that engage with food's social, cultural, political, environmental, and emotional dimensions.
In Asian context, the Cold War has not ended but became an ongoing structural condition that determines the social, political, and economic dimensions of everyday lives. The unresolved nature of the war has also left traces on a personal level, expressing through one's body, psyche, and their intimate relations. The Korean War (1950-present) as a proxy war between the two global superpowers, for example, has been continuing as manifested on multiple levels, and it keeps bringing back the traumatic past into the present while challenging the authoritarian interpretation of the war as "The Forgotten War". This session will discuss Cold War narratives that are written from the vantage point of those who have been living through the imperialist war violence.
From Unit Chairs:
The religious experience is of significant and acute concern among our varied African diasporic communities and is worthy of close academic exploration and study. The Black Religion & Theology Unit’s mission is to further the development of scholarly research and discussion about the black religious experience; encourage the broadening of Black religion as an academic endeavor; and engage in discourse, from the African diasporic perspective, about religious and theological expression.
Call for Papers: Explorations in Media Ecology
Special Issue: ‘Media Ecologies, Identity and Community: family, culture and discourse in the digital era’
Guest Editor
Laura Trujillo-Liñán, Universidad Panamericana —
President, Media Ecology Association. ltrujill@up.edu.mx
Abstracts due:
30 September 2026 — 300 words plus a short biographical note.
To view the full call click here>>
The Société Rencesvals, Pan-American Branch, invites proposals from scholars whose research examines Romance-language epics as sites of social discourse. Far from being merely “songs of deeds,” these texts were critical commentaries on contemporary ideologies. They thus speak profoundly to processes of self-conceptualization in far-ranging topics including –but not limited to– regional/national identity, faith, gender, and race. We are interested in the examination of how Romance-language epics use discourse to construct value systems that contribute to conceptions of the self, situating this literature in the larger study of the production of ideologies in the Middle Ages.
The Société Rencesvals, Pan-American Branch, wishes to honor Lynn T. Ramey in celebration of 25 years since the publication of her first monograph, Christian, Saracen, and Genre in Medieval French Literature. We invite proposals that engage directly with the central ideas, arguments, and/or methodologies explored by Ramey in her work, and which discuss the representation of Muslims by Romance language authors c. 1100-1500 (Italian, Old Occitan, Old French, Medieval Castilian, for instance). We are especially interested in papers that give particular attention to themes of gender and race as they relate to epic depictions of Muslim-Christian relations in chansons de geste, chivalric romances, and lyric poetry.
I want to be accepted by society…live in a world I don’t have to hide in…make choices without being in constant fear of them destroying me or the ones I care about.” (Ada, liberated TanakX5 robot, on her hopes and dreams. Alex + Ada, Book 11)
“Did I request thee, Maker?”: Contemporary Cyborgs and Androids and Their Pre-Modern Antecedents
Seminar Proposal for Conference 2027
(online: May 15th/16th, 2027)
‘Counter-Futures: Dystopia and the World-Building of Arab Fictions’
Submit your paper proposal here before September 22nd, 2026
This seminar has the dual purpose of exploring the affordances of ‘dystopia’ as a sub-genre of science fiction for writing from the Arab world, and of testing the potency of the term ‘counter-futures’ as a way to identify and explore the political valences of such writing.
Second newsletter by end of September, and conference panel plans soon, from a new scholarly society - SSUPFUS- for studying unconventional US fiction from the era usually called "postmodern"
- sign up here - https://docs.google.com/forms/d/13ZGTYU1vgzj-WMtrtKIYkpE8I1FmYY_kZH0Sldnxbfo - and see below for more details...
Call for Papers
“War & Culture”
Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)
48th Annual Conference, February 17-20, 2027
Marriott Albuquerque
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Submissions open: September 1, 2026
Proposal submission deadline: October 31, 2026
Call for Papers | International Conference on Canadian Studies
The Centre for Canadian Studies, Jadavpur University is delighted to invite papers for its upcoming International Conference:
"Medical Humanities in the Anthropocene: Indigeneity, Borders and Justice through Indo-Canadian Perspectives"
3–4 February 2027
Deadline for abstract submissions: 15 November 2026
Panel: Precarious and Obsolete Spaces in the Novel
We form strong attachments with the spaces we inhabit, which shape us as we shape them. Spaces house our memories, provide opportunities for encounters, and alter our individual and collective identities. But what happens when these locations deteriorate, become obsolete, or disappear entirely? This panel invites papers considering representations of neglected, abandoned, or otherwise ephemeral spaces in novels from any period or location. We welcome papers on places and spaces of any scale: buildings, towns and cities, landscapes, even nations and worlds.
Conference Location: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC
The Black Sitcom: A Comprehensive Survey with Critical Essays
1950 – 2000
The relation between a theory and its so-called “object” always poses the danger of reducing an art form (in this case film) to a mere instance testifying to the validity of the theory. In this way, the theory provides the “genus” of which a given film will be a mere “species”. The application of psychoanalytic ideas or Marxist concepts to film would therefore run the risk of depriving the specificity and singularity of the object in favour of the hegemony of the theory. Here, theory would truly live up to its theological vocation (the “theo” in theory refers to God) standing transcendentally above its “object” upon which it would cast its daunting shadow.
The figure of the woman traveler has long occupied a distinctive place in the cultural imagination. At once celebrated and contested, she has been represented as explorer, observer, adventurer, ethnographer, journalist, tourist, and pilgrim—but nearly always an antidote to feminine domesticity.
We are currently seeking contributors from across the disciplines for a proposed collection of essays on “the woman traveler.” This volume will explore the enduring and evolving cultural figure across genres and media—from travel writing and photography to film, blogs, Instagram, and TikTok.
Scraps…
Reading Residuality
13-15th April 2027
Krapp: Past midnight. Never knew such silence. The earth might be uninhabited.
Pause.
Krapp: Here I end.
Krapp switches off, winds tabe back, switches on again.
“Here I end” declares Krapp, the titular protagonist of Samuel Beckett’s 1958 play Krapp’s Last Tape. Yet an ending is impossible. Why?
March 6-9, 2027
Newport, RI
Convention Site: Salve Regina University
March 6-9, 2027
Newport, RI
Convention Site: Salve Regina University
Call for Papers
THE AMERICAN WEST
Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)
48th Annual Conference, February 17-20, 2027
Marriott Albuquerque
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Submissions open: September 1, 2026
Proposal submission deadline: October 31, 2026
Procedural Poetry Now: Precedents, Tools, Goals
ACLA 2027 Annual Meeting
University of Houston: May 20–23, 2027
Proposal deadline: September 22, 2026
Classical Representations in Popular Culture
Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)
Area Chair: Benjamin S. Haller (bhaller@batten.edu)
48th Annual Conference, February 17-20, 2027
Marriott Albuquerque
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Submissions open: September 1, 2026
Proposal submission deadline: October 31, 2026
NeMLA: March 6-9, 2027
Location: Newport, RI
Session Type: Roundtable (this is a hybrid roundtable with in-person and virtual presentations allowed)
Full Call and Submission: https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/22319
Animals, Animalities, and Ecocriticisms in Hagiography
Modality: Hybrid
Sponsor: Hagiography Society, Medieval Ecocriticisms
Organizers: Julia Salkind (julia.salkind@marquette.edu) Grace K. DiModugno (gd69@fordham.edu)
With the arrival of the New Woman at the end of the nineteenth century also came the modernist novel. The beginning of the twentieth century constitutes a period when women struggled with social expectations but decided to leave their own drawing rooms and discover the world; to be power brokers, instead of passive observers; and to gradually move from their interiority to making history. By comparing novels of women writers, both in the US and abroad, this panel attempts to find, in their similarities and differences, the real issues that women faced at the turn of the century, in novels that transitioned from realism and naturalism to modernism.
This conference explores decay as a transformative, liminal state that bridges the physical, the political, and the conceptual. During the process of decomposition, systems and objects start to break down, existing in a precarious limbo that simultaneously signals contamination to the surrounding environment. As theorized by Julia Kristeva in Powers of Horror, the abject corpse and the decaying material remind us of the fragility of our own boundaries, confronting us with what must be cast off to constitute a stable self. This fear of bodily disintegration and abjection mirrors the anxieties we project onto broader cultural and institutional structures.
Call for Papers for III TFO International Seminar Titled "Thinking Beyond Species: Cinema in the Anthropocene" in Collaboration with Alliance University, Bengaluru on 30-31 October, 2026
Environmental racism predates its own name. The term entered public discourse in 1982, but the conditions behind it, namely exposure to hazard and unequal claim to safety, go back to slavery itself. Historian Carl Zimring traces this to a basic split in American thought: white meant clean, Black meant dirty. That split decided who did the dirtiest, most dangerous work, and who lived closest to pollution, for generations. In 1968, Memphis sanitation workers went on strike over exactly that: unsafe, degrading labour shaped by the same racial split. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis while there in support of the very strike. That split still operates today.
TIDEL Scholarly Symposium Faith, Ethics, and Digital Transformation
Join TIDEL for a two-day convening exploring the ethical, theological, social, and institutional implications of technological change in an era of rapid innovation and profound social transformation.
Founded in 2022, TIDEL is a Union Theological Seminary–based initiative that brings together faith leaders, scholars, technologists, nonprofit practitioners, and public leaders to explore ethical, justice-centered, and collaborative approaches to technology, innovation, and digital engagement.
Thursday, October 1, 2026 Union Theological Seminary
1:45 PM -- 5:45 PM Boxed lunch available at 12:45 PM
$100 until September 1 $150 after
Although internet culture may have brought about the hashtag #WeirdGirlLit,” women authors have long used writing to explore taboo and forbidden topics deemed beyond the purview of polite/patriarchal society. While Heather Colley of Writers Digest has noted that “Women in literary fiction are becoming murderers, cannibals, psychopaths, and stalkers,” we contend that female protagonists have long been unhinged both across time and space. Historically, freaky (anti)heroines have served as a release through which women readers could escape the restrictive confines of ideal femininity and instead probe hidden desires and other illicit aspects of their identities.
The term “transgressive fiction” was coined in 1993 by LA Times columnist Michael Silverblatt to describe a loosely related coterie of authors in the ‘80s and ‘90s whose writing has “violation at its core: violation of norms, of humanistic enterprise, of the body.” Silverblatt’s preliminary “sketch” of the genre’s leading voices was primarily American, almost entirely Anglophone, and exclusively white.
Open Call for Papers
On the occasion of the 135th birth anniversary of Pearl S. Buck, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1938), this international symposium seeks to revisit her life and writings from the perspective of exchanges and mutual learning among civilizations. Hailed as “the most influential Westerner to write about China since the 13th century’s Marco Polo”, Pearl S. Buck not only introduced Chinese literature and culture to global readers through her literary writings, but also participated actively in transnational cultural dialogue, humanitarian engagement, and the shaping of international understandings of China.
Folklore is having a moment in South Asian writing, and it isn't a nostalgic one. Novelists, poets, memoirists, playwrights, and graphic novelists across the region and its diaspora keep returning to myth, oral narrative, legend, and vernacular ritual, not to decorate their work with the past, but to think through the pressures of the present: ecological collapse, historical trauma, gendered violence, migration, and a digital, algorithmic world the old tales never anticipated and somehow still speak to.
Call for Papers
Shakespeare in Pop Culture
Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)
48th Annual Conference, February 17-20, 2027
Marriott Albuquerque
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Submissions open: September 1, 2026
Proposal submission deadline: October 31, 2026
In an era characterized by unprecedented technological advancements and escalating ecological crises, the fundamental assumptions of what it means to be human are undergoing a radical reassessment. The traditional framework of humanism, predicated on a singular, anthropocentric worldview, is increasingly challenged by the rise of artificial intelligence, biotechnologies, and global ecological interdependence. This interdisciplinary conference aims to explore how various forms of cultural production, including literature, film, and digital media, function not merely as reflections of the posthuman turn but as active agents in shaping and articulating it.
The 2027 CLA Online Research Conference is a forum for researchers of children’s literature to share their work and exchange ideas. The conference is supported by the Children’s Literature Assembly of NCTE’s Endowment Fund and will be held on Friday, February 19th, 2027.
The CLA Online Research Conference seeks proposals that explore this year's conference theme of Children’s Literature in a Changing World: Research in Theory & Praxis.
A variety of theoretical and methodological approaches, presented by established and emerging scholars, are welcomed and encouraged.
Potential topics could explore:
Reading, Writing and Translating Early Modern Women’s Fiction: Imagined Communities
Guest editors: Line Cottegnies (Sorbonne Université) and Sonia Villegas-López (University of Huelva)
Apologies for crossposting.
Call for Papers: Journal of Caribbean Music & Sound Cultures
Special Issue: ‘Konpa Dirèk: Popular Music and Social Relations in Haiti and the Haitian Diaspora’
Guest Editors
Cécile Accilien, University of Maryland, USA, cecileaccilien22@gmail.com
Sabine Lamour, University of Montréal, Canada
Alexandra Cenatus, University of Maryland, USA
Deadlines
1 November 2026: 250–300-word abstract
15 November 2026: Successful authors notified
15 February 2027: First draft of article due to editors
Dear Fellow Writers and Thinkers,
The Windhover Writers' Festival (February 18-19, 2027) promises to be a vibrant gathering to explore the intersection of faith and creativity, with a central theme of Narrative Beauty.
The Windhover Writers' Festival has long been a cherished space for writers, scholars, and readers to connect, share their work, and delve into the power of words. We invite you to be a part of this exciting event by submitting a proposal for an individual or a panel discussion.
Proposals:
We are seeking proposals for engaging and thought-provoking discussions that explore the theme. Here are some potential areas of focus:
Submission linkhttps://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=fidn26Submission deadlineSeptember 19, 2026Notification of AcceptanceOctober 3, 2026Presentation SubmissionOctober 31, 2026 The interdisciplinary field of Interactive Digital Narratives (IDNs) combines immersive technologies with the timeless art of storytelling. IDN offers transformative ways to engage audiences, preserve cultural heritage and address social and educational challenges. From branching narratives in video games, to immersive virtual reality experiences and interactive installations, IDNs push the boundaries of how stories can be created and experienced.
James Baldwin and the Work of Witnessing, Teaching, and Public Intellectualism
I am seeking James Baldwin scholars and contributors to a forthcoming/newly completed Baldwin anthology who are interested in participating as virtual guest lecturers in my Fall 2026 course, ENG 393: Special Topics: James Baldwin, at Philander Smith University, an HBCU in Little Rock, Arkansas.
The graduate students of the School of Arts & Aesthetics, Jawaharlal
Nehru University, are organising an interdisciplinary conference on the theme
of Cracks & Crossovers, exploring their presence and reflection in visual
culture, performances and media practices. The theme responds to the
urgency of living in a time when systemic limits become visible through cracks.
It asks how we register the differences between categories such as crisis,
fragment and fracture. Do these terms signal a definitive rupture or an ongoing
change? Or do our times demand a new perspective that allows the cracks to
speak? Taking a cue from The Cracked Mirror (2012), the conference seeks to
The Institute for Medieval Studies at the University of New Mexico invites proposals for three
sponsored sessions for ICMS 2027. Proposals must be submitted through the ICMS Confex
Portal (https://shorturl.at/d05So) by 15 September 2026, including title, 300 word abstract and
50 word description.
Medieval Ruins from Old English Motif to Modern Archaeology:
Past, Present and Future
The 2027 Conference of the Popular Culture Association (PCA) will host a special topic area on UFOs, Cryptids, Conspiracies, and the Paranormal.
CALL FOR PAPERS
In Brightest Day: Race, Justice, and the Speculative in HBO's Lanterns and the Green Lantern Mythos
Proposed for New Suns: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Speculative -- The Ohio State University Press
Edited by Julian C. Chambliss, Ritesh Khandelwal, and Harry M. Foster (Michigan State University)
ABSTRACT DEADLINE: October 15, 2026
Send abstracts (300-500 words) and a bio (approx. 100 words) to greenlanternbookproject@gmail.com with the subject line "Lanterns CFP -- [your surname]."
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