The Politics of Literary Form
Graduate Student Conference at Johns Hopkins University
Date: November 13–15, 2026
Location: Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD
Keynote Speaker: Oliver Simons, Columbia University

The 123rd Annual Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA) Conference will take place this November in Seattle, Washington, from November 12-15.

This session seeks papers that explore forms of play in American fiction from 1945 to the present. There are many conceptual genealogies of play within fields such as psychoanalytic theory, Marxist theory, structuralist and poststructuralist theory, affect theory, critical race theory, queer theory, and video game theory.

Call for Papers / Presentations

Montparnasse and its Legacies

November 13-14, 2026

Columbia Global Paris Center | Reid Hall

Paris, France

Theme: Hip Hop and Rap Conference 

Tentative date: November 19-22

Location: Houston, TX

Award for best presentation 

Scholarship for top scholars 

• Judged by artists, PhD’s, Workshop, and Peer Review. 

A small number of additional abstracts (on disability in German Literature) are currently being sought for an edited volume to be published by Metzler Publishing House (an imprint of Springer Nature). The volume adopts a comparative approach and examines representations of disability and/or addiction in German-language and Japanese literature. Interested scholars are invited to send a brief abstract or topic proposal as soon as possible to habib.tekin@hotmail.com and hayashih@kansai-u.ac.jp by 2.7.2026.

Victorians: A Journal of Culture and Literature invites article submissions on the topic of “planetary precarity” for its Winter 2027 issue. This special issue will consider how precarity is produced on both local and global scales. As we confront our own possible extinction-level threats caused by climate disaster and, supposedly, a future dominated by artificial superintelligence, we seek to investigate how the Victorians reconceived their own precarity in the face of extractive capitalism and ecological crisis.

CFP: Smell Studies Journal

General Editors: Will Tullett, University of York and Manon Raffard, University of Manchester.

Editorial board: Andrew Kettler, Chanelle Dupuis, Jayanthan Sriram, Ally Louks, Hsuan Hsu, Sandra Barré.

Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions invites submissions for a special guest-edited issue on the subject of disclosure. Since the beginning of the modern UFO phenomenon in 1947, popular discourse on the subject has always included an intense speculative interest in the secret knowledge of the state, including and perhaps especially the military and intelligence agencies, who are widely suspected of harboring hidden knowledge about UFOs, their occupants, and nothing less than humanity’s ultimate place in the cosmos.

Florentina Holzinger & Co: Performing Pleasure, Risk and Rapture 

Guest Editors 

Dr Charlotte Farrell (University of New South Wales, Sydney) 

Dr Anna Laura Wieczorek (Mozarteum University, Salzburg) 

Special Issue of Contemporary Theatre Review Call for Papers 

Following the death of Marjane Satrapi, this session examines her legacy through the lens of graphic resistance, considering questions of form, memory, politics, religion, gender, and emancipation in her comics and their afterlives.

https://mla.confex.com/mla/2027/webprogrampreliminary/Paper36481.htm

Er(r)go. Theory – Literature – Culture

Next Issue – 55 (2/2027) – game/play/idleness
submission deadline: 15 September 2026

Embodying the WPA: Advice Narratives for Writing Program Administration

Edited by Jackie Hoermann-Elliott, Juliette Holder, Jennifer Judd, & Danielle Littlefield Brady

Even among the quietest of us, there are stories to be told. Stories of how we dressed for the campus visit, whether or not we drank wine with the search committee at dinner. Stories from the first year as the WPA, remembering how we physically composed (or contorted) ourselves and our offices for comfort – our own or others’. Stories of how we hugged a bereaved teacher, toasted in celebration, or laughed a little too loud at that one department meeting.

Teaching the Young Adult Novel

American Literature Symposium – “The American Novel:  Forms, Genres, Traditions”

Nov. 5-7 Santa Fe, NM

This proposed panel for the November 2026 Tunisian Association for English Language Studies International Conference | Home-Making: Reinventing Home in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures invites papers that examine Black and African fatherhood as a site of un-homing, home-making, and reinvention across Anglophone literatures and cultures. While scholarship on families has often centered mothers and children, fathers remain understudied as agents of domestic life, memory work, and cultural transmission.

CfP- Speculative Fiction and Criticism in Precarious Times

‘Speculative Fiction and Criticism in Precarious Times’ is a conference celebrating a rich network of postgraduate research students working with speculative fiction and criticism across the United Kingdom. Taking place on Friday 18th September at Lancaster University, the conference will feature an array of diverse papers along with a plenary lecture (tbc) and a roundtable discussion from world-leading academics including Dr. Anna McFarlane and Dr. Oliver Langmead. This event is proudly funded by the NWCDTP Cohort Development Fund.

"Eastern Thought in the Americas"
RIAS Vol. 21, Fall-Winter (1/2028)

This issue of RIAS invites contributions on the theme of “Making Trouble: Subversions and Reclamations in American Imaginaries.” Engaging ongoing debates in global American Studies on power, representation, dissent, and cultural transformation, the issue seeks contributions that examine how American cultural, political, and social imaginaries are challenged, reworked, and reclaimed across diverse historical and geographical contexts. It invites interdisciplinary perspectives from the global field of American Studies and welcomes submissions from scholars worldwide.

Innovating for Sustainable Futures

The On Sustainability Research Network invites proposals for the Twenty-Third International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability, to be hosted from 20 to 22 January 2027 by the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, with integrated online participation via CGScholar Event (KX).

As its title indicates, this seminar will take a broad geographic and temporal view of the Harlem or New Negro Renaissance to invite considerations of the historicity and historiography of Black writing at the turn of the twentieth century. Seminar participants will be invited to consider how history shaped and was shaped by Black art, literature, and thought in the period stretching from approximately the end of Reconstruction through the Civil Rights era. How did Black writers, artists, and thinkers use historical concepts, forms, narratives, figures, events, philosophies, discourses, and other materials to craft original works of art and literature?

European Journal of Media, Art & Photography

ejmap.sk | Indexed in WoS Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) | Q1 in art journals category

Edited by Juliana Luna Freire (Universidade Federal da Paraíba UFPB), Rong Huang (Peking University), Lucy Blaney-Liable (University of Stuttgart) 

Confirmed publisher Editora UFPB (Brazil)

Following Guan and Scott (2025), there is a need to rethink pedagogical practices in language teaching and their real impact on health students and their future work in the medical field. 

We propose, as discussed by Ferguson (2025), a deeper discussion on the contexts of English for Medical Purposes (EMP), as well as the prevalent use of English in this field. 

Queer as Method:

Transdisciplinary Approaches to Art, Research and Resistance

an online transdisciplinary conference

September 11-12, 2026

Online, Via Zoom

Conference Webpage: https://labrc.co.uk/2026/06/15/queer-as-method/

Proposal deadline: August 1, 2026

"Making Trouble: Subversions and Reclamations in American Imaginaries"
RIAS Vol. 21, Fall-Winter (2/2028)

This issue of RIAS invites contributions on the theme of “Making Trouble: Subversions and Reclamations in American Imaginaries.” Engaging ongoing debates in global American Studies on power, representation, dissent, and cultural transformation, the issue seeks contributions that examine how American cultural, political, and social imaginaries are challenged, reworked, and reclaimed across diverse historical and geographical contexts. It invites interdisciplinary perspectives from the global field of American Studies and welcomes submissions from scholars worldwide.

"Archipelagic Imaginaries and the Americas: Islands - Narratives - Mythologies"
RIAS Vol. 20, Fall-Winter (2/2027)

"Imaginarios Archipelágicos y las Américas: Islas – Narrativas – Mitologías"
RIAS Vol. 20, Otoño–Invierno (2/2027)

This panel invites proposals that examine acts of remembrance and care of an individual’s or a collective’s past that lead to empowerment and change. Papers may address historical or contemporary works in art, architecture, film, recordings, and literature, and may engage theoretical, critical, pedagogical, or archival practices. Drawing from Valérie Perrin’s novels Forgotten on Sundays (2015) and Fresh Water for Flowers (2019), soon to be on the screen by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, memory work enables individuals to feel visible, situate themselves in a collective, and solve piece puzzles through inquiry. Such work is often relegated to women’s labor, caregivers, and hired help who go beyond roles and job duties to make personal connections.