Sapphic Echoes: Representations of Female Love and Desire in Global Literatures

This panel asks questions and invites responses that explore representations of female love and desire in global literatures. How have the complex poetics of female love and desire—the desire to have something, or escape something, or punish, or know—been represented over time? What strategies have been employed to subvert literary conventions defined predominantly by male perspectives on home, love, war, victory and loss? How have female characters navigated the interplay between things done (overtly) and thought (covertly) to reveal the inner web of desires, fears and conflicts that constitute a female poetics of love and longing? 

Over the course of the 20th century and into the 21st, cinema, television, and related media have become increasingly central both to individual lives and to the lives of peoples, groups, and nations. Cinema has become a major form of cultural expression and films both reflect and influence the attitudes and behaviour of people, representing their tensions and anxieties, hopes and desires and incarnating social and cultural determinants of the era in which they were made. 

Decay and destruction have long been sources of fascination, inspiration and contemplation in artistic and cultural contexts. From the crumbling ruins of ancient civilizations to the ravages of time on natural landscapes, from the haunting beauty of abandoned spaces to the transformative power of decay in artistic expression, this conference aims to explore the creative potential of decay and destruction across diverse disciplines and perspectives.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

The conference seeks to explore the narratives of displacement and to demonstrate the validity of a cross-disciplinary approach which brings together the historical, cultural, social and literary expertise in the handling of text. The conference will particularly focus on time and space representations and on treatment of the theme of cultural ambivalence and identity conflict. The subject of displacement will be regarded as both a migration, voluntary or forced, and a sense of being socially or culturally “out of place”.

Papers are invited on topics related, but not limited, to:

Humankind has always sought to explain its origins and the mysteries of life to map personal and collective boundaries, and to secure its sense of identity through the power of everyday events and occurrences. Exemplary accounts of imaginary happenings and supernatural creatures from a time beyond history and memory explain the genesis of the universe, the making of a living thing, the formation of an attitude or the inception of an institution. The essence of these traditional narratives reflects a certain system of values and code of self-conduct of a group of individuals bound together by social and cultural ties, and the cardinal virtues and vices of human nature captured in a conventional configuration.

The conference invites academics, researchers and professionals to critically examine the evolving concept of gender in its many forms and contexts. The conference seeks to explore the past and present dimensions of gender identity across the globe, analyse how societal structures are shaped by and shape gender and consider the role of gender in the broad spectrum of human experience.The theme, Que(e)rying Gender, highlights the importance of questioning, expanding and disrupting conventional understandings of gender. It emphasises the intersections between gender, power, identity and culture, encouraging innovative approaches to understanding how gender influences lived experiences and societal norms.

(Call for Paper & Podcast ) - Peter Lang

Victorian literature is being fundamentally reimagined. What was once read through the lens of industrial realism, imperial narration, and bourgeois decorum is now being reassessed through new critical modes such as Animal Studies, Environmental Humanities, Food history, Ecocriticism, and Postcolonial re-readings. The aim of Rewriting the Victorian Imagination: Fables, Flesh, and Fluidity in Nineteenth-Century Literature is to consolidate and advance these reconfigurations by drawing together new research that unsettles the stable categories through which the “Victorian” has traditionally been understood.

This panel seeks papers for the Renaissance Society of America’s annual meeting (February 19–21, 2026, San Franscico, California). It explores an overlooked poetic genre: the prefatory poem of the early printed book for the It considers such appendages as simultaneously occupying the niches of text and paratext: discrete units which both conform to the structural and aesthetic constraints of poetry and adorn a corresponding, substantive text. These poems are at once ubiquitous and neglected, appearing in books of nearly all genres: from the luxury atlas to the sailing manual; from the personal devotional to the folio Bible; from the illustrated epic poem to the clinical legal handbook.

2025 Dress and Body Association Conference

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Dress and Body Association invites submissions for the organization’s sixth annual conference, which will be held on November 1-2, 2025. Consistent with our long-term goals for inclusivity and sustainability, all activities will be 100% online.

Join our Google Group to learn about opportunities and converse with members of the DBA year-round! Email to request membership: dress.body.assoc@gmail.com.

Comfort and Joy: Locating Hope in Dress and the Body

This virtual global symposium invites presentations that explore all aspects of pregnancy loss: abortion—elective, forced, spontaneous, and therapeutic—as well as stillbirth, highlighting its complexity and diversity.Pregnancy loss is a complex and contentious issue that is garnering increasing public and political scrutiny. Access to abortion—whether available or restricted—entails numerous personal, medical, legal, and ethical considerations related to reproductive justice, women’s autonomy, health, human rights, feminism, and motherhood.

Global K-Culture Conference

August 28 (Thu) ~ August 29 (Fri), 2025 (2 days)

Chungbuk National University, Korea

https://kculture.chungbuk.ac.kr/

The Department of Global Korean Culture at Chungbuk National University is pleased to invite submissions for the upcoming Global K-Culture Conference, which brings together Korean language educators and Korean Studies scholars from around the world. This conference aims to foster meaningful dialogue and the exchange of ideas among instructors and researchers working across diverse educational and cultural settings.

Prospective Essay Volume

Call for Book Chapters

The Leon Edel Prize is awarded annually for the best essay on Henry James by a beginning scholar.  The prize carries with it an award of $300, and the prize-winning essay will be published in HJR.

The competition is open to applicants who have not held a full-time academic appointment for more than four years. Independent scholars and graduate students are encouraged to apply.

Essays should be 20-30 pages (including notes), original, and not under submission elsewhere or previously published.  Please send electronic submssions in Microsoft Word format and a current CV to hjamesr@creighton.edu.

The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, published since 1988, is an interdisciplinary journal devoted to the study of the fantastic in Literature, Art, Drama, Film, and Popular Media. It is published three times a year by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts.

For Authors – Submissions2025 Article SubmissionWindow will open Monday, March 24, 2025,and will close Monday, June 30, 2025.