The 2025 First Book Institute

June 1-7, 2025

Hosted by the Center for American Literary Studies (CALS) at Pennsylvania State University

Co-Directors

Priscilla Wald, R. Florence Brinkley Distinguished Professor of English, Duke University, and Co-Editor of American Literature

John Marsh, Professor of English and Director of the Center for American Literary Studies

UPDATE: Submission deadline extended to March 1, 2025

The Board of Board Game Academics (BGA) is pleased to announce our call for papers for the 2025 journal. BGA is dedicated to the exploration of critical issues within the distinct yet overlapping communities of tabletop board and role-playing games.

While these communities are expanding, players, creators, and scholars of tabletop board and role-playing games have traditionally been late to addressing and including diverse representations and perspectives.

For instance, production companies such as Wizards of the Coast (best known for Dungeons & Dragons) have been criticized for their continued celebration of oppressive ideological perspectives, systems, and governments.

The Victorian era (1837–1901) was a period marked by industrial revolution, scattered religious beliefs and technological advancements. In the midst of everything, the ocean played a central role in shaping the cultural, economic, and ecological landscapes of the time. The British Empire’s reliance on maritime trade routes and naval power made the ocean a key site of economic and political activity. The expansion of global trade, driven by steamships and colonial ventures, brought the ocean into the everyday lives of Victorians.

Since the release of Jordan Peele’s landmark 2017 film Get Out, Black horror has been catapulted to the fore of the American cultural imagination. From Lovecraft Country to Antebellum to adaptations of Candyman and Interview With the Vampire, contemporary depictions of the Black horrific continue to revise and reorient the horror genre. Black horror distinguishes itself by turning the horror genre away from white anxieties about an ominous and ephemeral Other and towards an examination of the horrifying qualities of everyday Black Life.

This call for papers seeks contributions examining the relationship between narratives and ecological issues, focusing on the ways storytelling addresses ecological challenges. Narratives – whether literary, cinematic, or multimodal – have the potential to critique environmental exploitation, envision sustainable futures, and explore human and non-human interconnections. The intersection of ecocriticism and storytelling offers fertile ground for discussions about the role of culture in shaping ecological consciousness and practices.

Martineau Society Conference 2025 in Tynemouth, England    06/22/2025-06/25/2025; deadline 04/30/2025

Politics and Leadership, Leadership Studies and Politics

Politics and leadership: two subjects that are commonly known, yet also deeply misunderstood. Politics is not merely the activities of official decision-makers and the ideas (and people) that give rise to them, but also, more broadly, how human groups determine who gets what (and under what circumstances—by consent or coercion). What if leadership is not entirely a person or position? Perhaps, leadership is a negotiation— a complex moral relationship between people that is predicated on role agreement. We might say, then, that leadership is a dynamic process that cannot be separated from the politics of human groups. Leadership, in this way, is very fundamentally political.

Calling all authors: The Texas Woman's University book series is an interdisciplinary book series that explores innovative knowledge, creativity, and discoveries shaped by women and women's experiences in fields such as the arts, sciences, spirituality, religion, politics, business, education, the military, health sciences, and community services.

The Modernist Long Poem: Looking Back from the 21st Century

Saturday 25 October 2025

Northeastern University, London

Just over a century after the publication of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922), the modernist long poem continues to be the focus of critical response and varied definitions. Recent work on the genre in its historical context by Oliver Tearle (2019), Sean Pryor (2021) and others, as well as a recent conference (Paris, 2024) on the topic, indicates fresh attention to the modernist long poem, on which we aim to build at this event.

The conference will take place from October 22 to 24, 2025, at Université Jean Monnet, in Saint-Étienne (France). The junior laboratory GRAPHÉ (Research Group on Philological and Human Action through an Epistemological Prism) was founded at Université Jean Monnet in Saint-Étienne in 2024. It aims at conducting an incipient, interdisciplinary study of the ways in which languages influence and are influenced by human actions. After an initial symposium in October 2024 dedicated to the interpenetration of language and politics, we now wish to organize a conference focusing on language in all its newest forms, by confronting it with the latest analytical prisms and methods of study.

CALL FOR PAPERS / APPEL À CONTRIBUTIONS

Please note that the French version of the CFP is available after the English one.
Veuillez noter que la version française de l’appel à contributions est disponible après celle en anglais.

Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui (SBT/A) Special issue

The Samuel Beckett Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR), in collaboration with the refereed bilingual journal, Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui (SBT/A), invites abstract submissions for a special issue on Samuel Beckett and the Tragic.

Taiwan in the Anthropocene Network

Call for papers

Taiwan in the Anthropocene: Essays from the Edge of a Planetary Epoch

Abstract Deadline: March 1, 2025

Edited by Hannes Bergthaller, Jean-Yves Heurtebise,
Kuang-chi Hong, and Li-hsin Hsu

Keynote speaker: Dr. Nick Davis - Northwestern University 

Submission form: https://forms.gle/NseVDG44o6pggdao7

If you face any difficulties in the submission process or have questions about the conference, please email aberrations@tft.ucla.edu 

Twenty-Third International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities 25-26 June 2025, University of Hawaii, Hilo, USA.

Founded in 2003, the New Directions in the Humanities Research Network is brought together by a common interest in established traditions in the humanities while at the same time developing innovative practices and setting a renewed agenda for their future. We seek to build an epistemic community where we can make linkages across disciplinary, geographic, and cultural boundaries.

The Twenty-Third International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities features research addressing the following annual themes and special focus: