Don't Look Away: The Monstrous, the Gothic, and Survivance in the Worlds of Stephen Graham Jones

Organized by the Stephen Graham Jones Society

Chair: Dr. Billy J. Stratton, University of Denver

The Stephen Graham Jones Society invites proposals for a panel at the 2026 American Literature Association (ALA) meeting. We welcome submissions from emerging and established scholars investigating the vast, ever-expanding body of work by Stephen Graham Jones. This panel will focus on the recent and ongoing scholarship surrounding his horror fiction, as well as its significant pedagogical value in the contemporary classroom.

The University of Calgary English Department Graduate Association cordially invites both critical and creative proposals for our annual Free Exchange Graduate Conference, taking place from March 20-21, 2026. Going back nearly 20 years, Free Exchange is a transdisciplinary conference that aims to bring together emerging scholars from across Canada and beyond in the spirit of collaboration and knowledge creation.

Call for Papers:

Black Performing Arts: Sound, Movement, Image, Text

Submission Deadline: November 1, 2025

DEADLINE EXTENDED!

Call for Papers

Apocalypse, Dystopia, and Disaster

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 Bonnie Jo Campbell Society is sponsoring a panel at the upcoming American Literature Association Conference in Chicago, IL (May 20-23, 2026).

As a native Michigander, Campbell is associated strongly with the American Midwest, where much of her fiction takes place. This panel hopes to interrogate that relationship, either through analyses of the Midwest in Campbell's work, or in relationships with other Midwestern writers and their fiction.

Please send an abstract (200 words) and a brief bio to Dr. Ross Tangedal (ross.tangedal@uwsp.edu) for consideration by January 1, 2026.

48th Annual Comparative Drama Conference 

Conference Dates: July 9-11, 2026

Location: Madison, Wisconsin (hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Deadline for Abstract Submission: December 10, 2025

Disability Studies, Dramatic Texts, and Performance 

Call for Papers: Resistance from Within: Art as Covert Defiance | March 27, 2026

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Diana Martinez, Assistant Professor of Architecture, UC Berkeley

Graduate Student Symposium

Department of the History of Art and Architecture, Tufts University, Medford, MA

The Department of the History of Art and Architecture at Tufts University invites graduate students to submit paper proposals for the 2026 Graduate Symposium titled Resistance from Within: Art as Covert Defiance, which will be held on March 27, 2026, in Medford, MA. 

Call for Papers: Theory and Criticism Focus Group- ATHE 2026Communities of Imagination and Theoretical FuturesBaltimore, Maryland- July 22-26, 2026 Call for Complete Session Proposals and Roundtable SubmissionsSponsored by the Theory and Criticism Focus GroupComplete Session ProposalsThe Theory and Criticism focus group seeks proposals for the general conference that include a variety of approaches and inquiries into the theme “Communities of Imagination and Theoretical Futures.” We encourage multidisciplinary submissions from across the various subfields of theatre and performance studies and seek participants from a range of focus groups.Our focus group welcomes and embraces a multitude of approaches and definitions of theory, criticism

Please see this Call for Proposals for an upcoming special issue of Feral Feminisms: 

 https://feralfeminisms.com/cfps/ 

This special issue, “Scrapwork: Foraging Feminist Fragments” will be guest edited by Dr. Amber Moore (University of British Columbia) and Dr. Kaye Hare (University Canada West). 

36th Annual Mardi Gras Conference

Postcolonial Environments: Re-Grounding the Discipline in the State of Emergency

Date: February 12-13, 2026

Location: Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge

Memory, Myth, and Meaning: Cather in Dialogue with America 250

Willa Cather Spring Conference | Thursday, June 4 - Saturday, June 6, 2026 

This year marks the centennial of My Mortal Enemy, one of Cather’s least affirmative works and one not produced in the Cather Scholarly Edition (translation: much important work remains to be done!)  We invite papers on new approaches to My Mortal Enemy, including but not limited to the following considerations of style, form, provenance, and themes:

Call for Abstracts

Edited Book: Small Museums and Art Galleries in Canada

Editor: Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD

After an enriching interdisciplinary conference in 2025, Heavy Childhoods 2026 will run under the title “Curating Future Nostalgia in Heavy Times”

Irish-American(s and) Periodicals

Kirsten McLeod and Tim Lanzendörfer

Sponsored by the Research Society for American Periodicals

Volume 2, Issue 1 (Open Issue, January 2026) Call for Papers

Extended Manuscript Submission Deadline: 30.11.2025

CFP Link: https://www.entanglements.in/call-for-papers-docs/CFP_Entanglements%202.1_Jan%202026.pdf

(Note: Kindly ignore the old deadline in the link. Follow the revised extended deadline.)

Oceanic Fictions in Indian Languages and Beyond

The Dickens Project is excited to announce a new week-long Victorianist Writing Retreat, held at UC Santa Cruz as part of our annual summer Dickens Universe conference. This retreat offers scholars who are not affiliated with Dickens Project consortium institutions the opportunity to attend the Universe, as well as to dedicate time during the week to writing in community.

In 2026, the Dickens Universe, including the Victorianist Writing Retreat, will take place from July 26-August 1. While the 2026 Universe will be focused on Bleak House, participants in the retreat need not be writing on Bleak House or on Dickens. Scholars working in any area of global British nineteenth-century studies are free to apply.

The ground falling from beneath your feet, the cliff’s edge barely holding you aloft, the free fall in open air. Cinematic representations of falling and nearly plummeting from great heights have long been around as an arbiter of suspense and a literal visualization of the classic “cliffhanger,” with origins to such a visual tracing back to the silent film era and actor Harold Lloyd dangling from the hands of a clock in Safety Last! (1923) Falling and dizzying heights have been featured over the years in a variety of forms and often successfully serve as a device to drive the plot forward or signify its climax. We see examples of villains and heroes alike battling on skyscrapers in DC and Marvel universe adaptations.

Call For Papers

The Erotica, Sexuality, Pornography, & Kink Area of the National Popular Culture Association (PCA) invites scholars to participate in the PCA’s annual conference. Details of the conference can be found at https://pcaaca.org/page/submissionguidelines

Call for Papers for a special issue of the Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry on “Concrete and Visual Poetries in Britain, Ireland, and Beyond”, edited by Colin Herd and Greg Thomas.

Send 250-300 word abstracts for 5,000-7,000-word articles to ConcreteAndVisualPoetries@gmail.com by 10 January 2026.

Call for Papers

Food and Culture

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

47th Annual Conference, February 25-28, 2026

Marriott Albuquerque

Albuquerque, New Mexico

http://www.southwestpca.org

Proposal submission deadline: October 31, 2025

Special issue of Comunicazioni Sociali: Journal of Media, Performing Arts and Cultural Studies

Embodied Rhythms. Interdisciplinary Takes on the Perception of Rhythm in Reality, Arts, Cinematic and Immersive Experience

Edited by Adriano D’Aloia, Ruggero Eugeni, and Maria Alessandra Umiltà

In recent years, the study of rhythm has regained centrality across multiple disciplinary fields — from film and media theory to cognitive neuroscience, from aesthetics to performance studies. This special issue aims to explore rhythm as an embodied and perceptual structure that organizes audiovisual experience in both cinematic and immersive environments.

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. 

Call for Abstracts
Tracks and Practices: Rethinking Artist Residencies
Symposium, part of OULU 2026 – European Capital of Culture
21–22 August 2026 | Oulu & Varjakka, Finland

As part of the project Tiny Spaces – Deep Connections, we invite proposals for participation in the upcoming symposium Tracks and Practices: Rethinking Artist Residencies, taking place between Oulu and Varjakka on Friday 21st and Saturday 22nd August 2026.