Call for Conference papers and contributions

Failure & Resistance

16th International Illustration Research Symposium

November 13th-14th, Arts University Plymouth, United Kingdom

Submission deadline: February 28th 2026 

Under certain circumstances failing, losing, forgetting, unmaking, undoing, unbecoming, not knowing may in fact offer more creative, more cooperative, more surprising ways of being in the world. (Jack Halberstam)

Baldur’s Gate 3 (Larian Studios, 2023) represents a milestone in the evolution of narrative gaming. As both an heir to Dungeons & Dragons and a contemporary work of interactive storytelling, the game synthesizes centuries of myth, moral inquiry, and imaginative world-building into a playable form. This edited collection seeks essays that investigate how Baldur’s Gate 3 draws upon, reinterprets, and transforms literary and philosophical traditions—from the medieval and Renaissance periods through modern fantasy and posthuman theory—to create new modes of narrative, ethics, and embodiment.

European Journal of Theatre and Performance (EJTP)

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

Mobilising Heritage: Dance, Theatre, and Performance in the Age of (In)Tangibility

Guest editors:

Timmy De Laet, Franz Anton Cramer, Vicky Kämpfe, and Dunja Njaradi

(proposal deadline: 25 January 2026)

The purpose of this issue is to understand the experiences and practices of people living in different geographical contexts. If someone believes that Christianity caused conflict and wars throughout history, this issue suggests that understanding each other's experiences and practices can promote harmony, especially in Asian and Western contexts. The integration of diverse thoughts benefits the well-being of the world. This issue will not only provide a platform to engage with such religious harmony but also serve as a valuable resource for researchers in understanding different experiences and practices.

American Literature Association

May 20-23, 2026

Palmer House, Chicago, IL 

The Richard Wright Society announces two sessions on Wright to take place at the 37th Annual American Literature Association Conference.

Rethinking Richard Wright’s Depiction and Analysis of Gender and Sexuality

Motherhood Unbound: Global Pathways of Motherhood Across Cultures and Disciplines

Cornell EGSO Conference 2026: Effervescence

Deadline for Submissions: January 5th, 2026

Conference Date: March 20th, 2026

Call for Academic and Creative Proposals

“This impulse to violence had been in her for a long time, growing, feeding, until finally she had blown up in a thousand pieces... Yes, a one-way ticket, she thought. I've had one since the day I was born. The train was on the track.”

—Ann Petry, The Street

Call for Papers for the International Conference on “Reading Disruptions, Mapping Alterities: of Australian Trans-Tendings, and India in an Age of Reimagined Plurilaterals” to be held on 03.02.26-04.02.26

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: Saturday, January 31, 2026

Please email abstracts to c3conf@uiowa.edu 

Final Call for Book Chapter Proposals/ Abstracts

Matrifocal Narratives in Indian Fiction

Co-Editors: Sushree Routray, Rashmi Gaur, and Rahul K. Gairola

Submission Deadline: December 31, 2025

International Conference (Hybrid) on Impact of Globalization on Society, Culture and Literature, January 17-18, 2026, organized by IQAC, Onda Thana Mahavidyalaya, and Antarmukh: A Bengali Research Journal.

About the Conference

Update: This year's keynote speaker is Camille Owens. Owens is assistant professor of English at McGill University. Her research focuses on the intersection of race, ableism, and childhood in the nineteenth-century United States. Her book, Like Children: Black Prodigy and the Measure of the Human in America (NYU Press, 2024), was 2025 Choice Outstanding Academic Title and received an honourable mention from the MLA in the William Sanders Scarborough Prize competition.

"There is not one but many silences, and they are an integral part of the strategies that underlie and permeate discourses." —Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality

The inconclusive debates, the conflict of opinion, that this seminar aims to initiate and proliferate are about how body, culture, and plurality – three expansive and yet profound concepts – constellate, collapse and collide in varying registers that are both founded and unpredictable. The frames of our studies across disciplines are left in motion; the figures of understanding about how culture and the body and the bodies of culture in relation to plurality struggle to stay entrenched, occupy and distract us.

CCLA – Fantastical Constellation Working Group Call for Proposals

CCLA Annual Conference / Colloque annuel de l’ACLC

The Fantastical Constellation Working Group invites proposals for a panel or round table topic, “Entangled Futures: Interstitial Fantasies from the Periphery,” as part of the Canadian Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference, 8-10 June 2026, hosted by the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at McGill University in Montréal.

SILENCE &—

What is silence? Might it be a gaping void or a buzzy medium—the absence

CFP for chapter contributions to book edited by the “VR as Empathy Machine: Media, Migration and theHumanitarian Predicament” Research Group at Utrecht University 

Book Title: Beyond the Empathy Machine: Critical Perspectives on Virtual Reality

The Cultural Studies Cell

Department of English and Cultural Studies

CHRIST (Deemed to be University) Bangalore

in collaboration with

Department of English 

Panihati Mahavidyalya

Organizes

A Symposium on 

Raymond Williams’ Keywords at 50

Dates: February 12-14, 2026

In the sociology of knowledge, some scholars argue that human memory can only function within a collective context (Halbwachs, 1968/2018). Others place the search for knowledge within the discipline of genealogy (Foucault, 2022; Mendoza, 2024). Qualitative research, on the other hand, is where sociology and philosophy intersect (Silverman, 2020; Adorno, 2022; Adorno, 1976). Genealogy, in the context of this volume, refers to the ancestry or history of a discipline, profession, or people (Haley, 1976/2021; Martin, 2016; Nietzsche, 1887/2022).  The advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution has brought about change and continuity in qualitative research (Jung, 2019; Mosweu, 2025).

“Childhood in the Meantime: Interrupting Temporalities of Youth”

American Studies Association, Chicago, Oct. 22-25, 2026

The Children and Youth Studies Caucus seek panelists for a session entitled “Childhood in the Meantime: Interrupting Temporalities of Youth” for the American Studies Association 2026 meeting. We seek papers that consider the multiple temporalities that children are expected to inhabit: normative developmental timelines, trajectories oriented toward futures that adhere to the state-sanctioned scripts for proper adult citizenship, and culturally-accepted deviations of “sideways growth” that can ultimately be assimilated into dominant narratives of childhood presents and futures.

Queer and minor audiovisual practices increasingly challenge the assumption that any form of visibility offers a reliable route to recognition or to political and evidentiary clarity. This panel asks how, rather than treating visibility or audibility as stable states, we might attend to the ways vocal fabulations, relational and spatial practices of telling, and imaginative or speculative interventions unsettle the evidentiary burdens traditionally placed on marginalized histories. In other words, we are interested in forms that make presence felt without fully disclosing it, and in the tensions that emerge when bodies, voices, images, and testimonies exceed the representational frames built to contain them.

The historical relationship between Muslims and Christians dates back to the seventh century C.E., when Islam began to spread throughout the Middle East, Africa, and the Indian subcontinent; by the early eighth century, parts of Europe were under Muslim control. Consequently, this Special Issue seeks to understand Christian–Muslim interactions over the centuries. Recent studies of Syriac texts reveal early interactions between Christians and Muslims, the beginning of centuries of Christian–Muslim dialogues, debates, and perspectives that continue into the present day.

CALL FOR PAPERS

The First Transdisciplinary Forum on Art, Culture, History, and Theory

May 2026, Online 

The Global Forum on Art, Culture, History, and Theory (ACHT) hosted by Kaarnamaa Institute of Art and Visual Culture invites submissions.  

Call for Proposals for Vol. 4, Issue 1–Jackson & Animality [deadline extended: Feb. 1, 2026]

The Washington Irving Society (washingtonirvingsociety.org) invites papers discussing innovative ways to teach and/or research Washington Irving and his texts, for the American Literature Association Conference in Chicago, May 20-23, 2026. We welcome papers offering new insight into “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” and also encourage insightful studies into other Irving texts. Please send an abstract of approximately 250 words plus a brief bio to Dr.