Utopian Impulses in the 2020sAn Interdisciplinary Graduate Student ConferenceUniversity of Cincinnati - Friday, February 6th, 2026 Among its political and technological predicaments, America’s 2020s have been a time of steady upheaval, crisis, and change. As we continue to wrestle our way through the agendas, regimes, and big-data systems of this historical moment as teachers, students, and researchers, we recall the utopian thinking of More and Marx, which reminds us “to keep from being blinded by what seems normal — to help us see that what is natural is constructed, not inevitable” (Elbow, p. 83).

Shakespeare is one of the inventors of the category of the human as many modern and contemporary cultures know it. Even his most monstrous and otherworldly creations have a detectable human side. The critical tradition of Shakespeare has already established that these characters are to be read as reflections of certain psychological aspects and repressed characteristics of the main characters of his plays, as allegorical representations of emotions, principles or beliefs, as codification of ethnic and sexual differences, etc. Thanks to this tradition, focusing on the human side of these characters has become the norm. It happens almost intuitively as soon as a critic or scholar starts their analysis of these characters.

American Literature Association
37th Annual Conference
May 20-23, 2026
Chicago, IL

What happens when the present becomes historical to itself and the contemporary turns into a categorizable literary-historical formation? Is that even possible, that is: can the contemporary ever become historical (to) itself? This special issue seeks to examine the conditions that would allow us to understand the contemporary as a distinct literary period which began in the 1990s—with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the rise of neoliberalism, and the growing sense that postmodern irony had outlived itself—and has now arguably come to an end. Not coincidentally, this was a period of almost uncontested, unipolar US political hegemony on a global scale.

Focus- Intra-European colonial histories/linguistic nationalism, the Nordic colonial legacies and the Sámi/de-centering dominant narratives of North-South polarity. Further to explore points of convergence between the North-South, South- South, paving way for transversal exchanges.

Framing Question– To what extent can multilingual interactions in the Nordic regions disrupt linguistic hierarchies rooted in colonial legacies and reshape dominant language ideologies? How do these disruptions inter-act with the multilingual societies elsewhere such as South Asia, South Africa, Chile and Colombia,  and processes of vernacularisation set in motion with respect to colonisation in some cases. 

General Issue | Rolling Submissions

The Critical Gender Studies Journal / Revista Crítica de Estudios de Género invites submissions for its upcoming general issue. We welcome original research articles, theoretical essays, creative interventions, and reviews that explore the multifaceted dimensions of gender and sexuality across diverse contexts and disciplines.

Creative Editor 

FEMSPEC, an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal dedicated to challenging gender through speculative means in any genre, seeks a volunteer editorial collective member starting for 26.1 no later than January 1.

Duties include:

Attending collective meetings on a regular basis (now Friday 10:30 AM EST)

Receiving creative submissions to screen and coordinate peer-review 

Seeking creative submissions and reviewers through professional channels and personal networks, and by distribution of brochures at appropriate conferences and to Creative Writing programs

“Teaching Annie Baker”

Comparative Drama Conference

Madison, WI, July 9-11, 2026

Deadline: December 12, 2025

“It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”

George Orwell, 1984

Call for Papers: Film International: Journal of World Cinema

Special Issue series: Diasporic Cinemas

View the full call here>>

https://www.intellectbooks.com/film-international-journal-of-world-cinema#call-for-papers

Series overview

We are excited to announce a new interdisciplinary seminar series for postgraduate students and early career researchers on the Long Middle Ages, a period covering the Late Antique, Medieval, and Early Modern Periods. This series aims to bring together scholars working across this period to establish new connectivity and inclusivity between these disciplines, and to provide a more relaxed space for new and emerging researchers to present and test out ideas.

Dear Scholars and Researchers,

We are delighted to invite original and scholarly book chapters for an upcoming edited volume titled Emerging Trends and Future Directions in Comparative Literature.

We welcome contributions on, but not limited to, the following themes:

Suggested Themes

• World Literature as a Comparative Practice

• Emerging Trends in Digital Humanities

• Future of Comparative Literature

• Digital and Cyber Literature

• Globalization and Cultural Exchange

• Cultural Hybridity, Adaptation, and Translation in a Globalized World

• Translation Studies

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 Abstracts: 12th World Conference on Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, and Education

Dates: May 18 - 19, 2026

Venue: ARCOTEL Wimberger Wien, Neubaugürte, 34-36, 1070, Vienna, Austria

CPD Accreditation

As a Certified CPD Accredited Provider (Provider Number #785414), this conference offers 18 CPD credit hours, providing attendees with valuable recognition for their professional development. Verification is available at https://thecpdregister.com/view/eurasia-conferences-816429.

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.

The long nineteenth century was a period marked by industrial revolution, scattered religious beliefs and technological advancements. The Gothic tradition recorded these significant changes through a language of monstrosity, excess, and horror as the Industrial Revolution gained momentum, coal and steam power expanded, and as soon as the British Empire increased its extractive demands on colonized ecologies and laboring bodies. This edited volume proposes a new way of looking at Gothic figures such as vampires, parasites, doubles, and consuming machines in order to examine how such tropes adumbrated the anxieties, ethics, and violences of environmental extraction.

The University of Iowa

Department of English

Graduate Student Conference 2026

Elaborating Labor 

Conference date: Friday, April 10, 2026 

Location: Richey Ballroom, Iowa Memorial Union, University of Iowa 

Abstract due date: Wednesday, December 31, 2025

Please email abstracts to c3conf@uiowa.edu 

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.  

Call for Papers

The Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS)

American Literature Association

37th Annual Conference

May 20-23, 2026

Palmer House

17 East Monroe Street

Chicago, IL 60603

Panel: Where There’s Life: Reading Liberated Futures in Multiethnic Literature

The Lasting of the Mohicans: The Leather-stocking novels and legacy

Commemorating the 200-year anniversary of James Fenimore Cooper’s second Leather-stocking novel, The Last of the Mohicans (1826) and its enduring legacy across media and culture, the JFC Society invites proposals that explore topics related to Cooper’s popular novel and/or its influence and legacy. We particularly (but not exclusively) welcome proposals that focus on The Last of the Mohicans and its iconic figures, however proposals that explore the Leather-stocking novels individually or in series, their influence, adaptations, place in the national imaginary, and/or other related concerns or themes.

Chair: TBA