Recent reports about Neil Gaiman’s alleged decades of sexual abuse have led to renewed discussions about how to approach popular and award-winning works by authors and illustrators who draw rebuke in their personal lives.  Censorship over a range of complaints is increasing globally. Social media callouts over content have resulted in withdrawn publications, canceled book contracts, and altered reputations of authors, illustrators, and publishers. 

Proposals are invited for a session at MLA 2026 in Toronto (session sponsor, The Conference on Christianity and Literature). The contemporary political and cultural scene in the United States is fraught with religion. Religion is fraught with politics, whether thinking about the ascendancy of the forms of Christian Nationalism in the discourses and halls of power, the continued political relevance and concern of the Black Church, the rhetorical and theological interventions of leaders like Bishop Marianne Budde (ECUSA), Pope Francis, or Billy and Franklin Graham, or the difficult political and cultural engagements across national divides in the clashing of cultures influenced by versions of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.

The 2026 MLA Convention will take place in Toronto from January 8 to 11 2026. I am organizing this panel on any aspect of racial passing. This panel seeks abstracts that explore racial passing in literature & film. Topics can explore any aspect of racial passing in literature and/or film from any time period. Submit a 300-word abstract and brief bio by March 25 for full consideration.

Call for Submissions: "Hello Godot" – A One-Minute Existential Play Anthology

Website: https://sites.google.com/view/freshwordsmagazine/home 

Email: dramaanthologyfreshwords@gmail.com 

Last date of submission: May 5, 2025

Editors: 

Dr. Manzur Alam and Dr. Tanja Stampfl 

Contact Emails: malam@uiwtx.edu; stampfl@uiwtx.edu

Important Dates:

• Deadline for Abstract Submission: May 31st, 2025
• Notification of Acceptance: June 15th, 2025
• Submission deadline for the full articles and case studies: January 10th, 2026

Overview:

International T. S. Eliot Society Annual Meeting

Registration for the Society’s 2025 meeting is now open! We invite you to join us at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, on July 2–5 for the 46th annual gathering of the International T. S. Eliot Society.

We invite contributions for a special issue titled Cutting Across Borders: Contemporary Gibraltarian Writing, which seeks to explore the evolving literary landscape of Gibraltar.

We are seeking submissions for a special issue (titled: Queer Cripping, Art, and Resistance) for the peer-reviewed journal, Canadian Journal of Disability Studies.  
  
As disability scholar Tobin Siebers states, “Disability is properly speaking an aesthetic value, which is to say, it participates in a system of knowledge that provides materials for and increases critical consciousness about the way that some bodies make other bodies feel.” (1)   

Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower: Visions of Yesterday and Tomorrow

Special Issue of African and Black Diaspora: an International Journal

The editors invite research articles examining Octavia Butler’s seminal and prophetic novels Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents for a special issue of African and Black Diaspora: an International Journal. In addition, the editors are accepting short creative works inspired by Butler’s Parable series. 

The MLA Forum on Seventeenth-Century English Studies (LLC 17th-Century English) invites submissions for a guaranteed session on “Eco-criticism in an Age of Emergency.” Eco-critical approaches to early modern literature have flourished since the turn of the twenty-first century. As the climate crisis continually becomes more urgent, however, the need for us as scholars to re-assess our history and culture through an ecological lens also steadily increases. Where is seventeenth-century ecocriticism now, and where is it going?

Call for Papers: (Re)Reading Encyclopedic Narratives in the Digital Age

RSAJournal - Special Issue no. 37 (September 2026)

Guest editors: Giorgio Mariani (Sapienza University of Rome), Ali Dehdarirad (Sapienza University of Rome), Sascha Pöhlmann (TU Dortmund University)

Call for Papers: Catalan Journal of Communication & Cultural Studies Issue 17.2

Special Issue: 'Ludomythologies: the Creation, Circulation & Transformation of Imaginaries in Games'

View the full call here>>

The MLA Drama and Performance Forum is currently accepting proposals for the two panels it is sponsoring for the 2026 conference in Toronto: https://www.mla.org/Events/2026-MLA-Convention.

Crowd Work: Audiences in Drama and Performance

How do drama and performance engage audiences as spectators and participants? What work does the audience do and how is it negotiated across local, transnational, economic, generic, or mediatized performance and reception contexts?

Please submit brief bios and 200-word proposals.

Deadline for submissions: Friday, 21 March 2025

Call for Chapters in an Edited Volume

Soundscapes in Indian Art, Literature and Culture