american

We invite you to submit an abstract and bio for the panel “Yesteryear: Cultural and Literary Possibilities”. We are seeking papers that address Caro Claire Burke’s breakout debut novel Yesteryear and its implications on literature and current American culture. How does Burke address established literary conventions? How might one conceive of the evocative narrative style of this novel? How does Burke conceptualize the conscription of motherhood, suppressed queerness, and conservative Christianity? How might the work fit into literary genealogies of sanity, purity, racial prejudice, and womanhood? Proposals should include a title, abstract,  your name, and affiliation.

The 1995 film Smoke, directed by Wayne Wang, features characters who band together by frequenting a corner cigar store in Brooklyn. Paul Auster, who wrote the screenplay, once described the community his characters created as a “little universe for themselves that is not determined by blood or the past.”

Special issue on the « Contemporaneities of Indigenous Poetry in the United States »

Edited by Aurore Clavier (U. Paris Cité), Mathilde Louette (U. Paris Cité) and Baptiste Rembert (Sorbonne U.)

ARGUMENT:

In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, humans are conditioned to seek out human companionship and to despise being by themselves. Helmholtz Watson, a lecturer of Emotional Engineering, relates a story to Bernard Marx about being disciplined for sharing some of his poems with the students he was paid to indoctrinate. When asked what the poems had been about, Helmholtz tells a surprised Bernard, “They were about being alone.”

How do female characters employ their bodies to navigate, process, and challenge the cultural and socioeconomic structures of their times? Under the antagonistic system where the pursuit of “good life” is no longer plausible, how do women across different cultures, historical periods, and geopolitical contexts respond by utilizing their bodily autonomy and agency? This panel invites papers that critically investigate female bodily representation in the context of empowerment and change. In particular, this panel is interested in literary analyses that focus on the subtle yet tangible (dis)orientation of female bodies in and out of public spaces.

How does lyric address create forms of relation across difference? This panel invites papers examining the intersections of poetry, lyric address, and peacebuilding, with particular attention to coexistence, care, responsibility, witness, repair, and collective life.

Northeast Modern Language Association 58th Annual Convention, Newport, RI, March 6-9, 2027 (Salve Regina University)

Deadline for abstract submissions: September 30, 2026 

Please submit abstracts via the NeMLA portal: https://cfplist.com/nemla/User/SubmitAbstract/22533

Panel topic: "Consuming Serialized Fiction in the US, from 1800 to today.”

Venue: American Literature Association Symposium, Santa Fe, NM; Nov. 5-7, 2026

Note: as indicated here, ALA does not require presenters to be paying members of the organization

Call for Papers: Alizés 47 (2027)

Special issue edited by Talal Hochard (University of Reunion Island) and Zuzana Fonioková (Masaryk University)

Discursive Resistance in Contemporary Anglophone Literature and Public Discourse

Abstract submission deadline (400 words) and short biographical notes (150 words): September 1, 2026

Notification of acceptance: October 1, 2026

Full draft papers submission: February 15, 2027

Final papers submission: June 30, 2027

I'm seeking participants for an APPA panel on "Poets' Novels" at the upcoming ALA symposium "The American Novel: Forms, Genres, Traditions," to be held at the Drury Plaza Hotel in Santa Fe, NM, 5-7 November 2026.

Proposals on novels or experimental prose forms by writers who primarily identify or are recognized as poets will be welcome for this session. Our definition of "novel" can be as broad as your claims for it will support. 

For best consideration, please send a precis of no more than 500 words to mrh@unm.edu by Sunday, 19 July  

Panel on Bill Lawrence for SCMS 2027 Since Spin City, the shows of Bill Lawrence have navigated the complexities of workplaces, friendships, grief and family. This panel intends to explore the Bill Lawrence universe from a diverse range of angles, with the overarching aim of seeing the series as part of a collective body of work. Papers are welcomed on Scrubs, Scrubs: The Revival, Rooster, Ted Lasso, Shrinking, Spin City, Cougar Town and Ground Floor.  Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be sent, with a 100 word bio to c.wilkins@bham.ac.uk by 20th July. 

Past and present, the Pacific Northwest has functioned in literature as a dynamic space defined by transition, ecological precarity, and socio-political friction. This panel explores writers of fiction, poetry, memoir, and non-fiction whose work investigates the unique sense of place, history, and culture defining the region. We welcome papers that engage with the tensions between industry and preservation, indigenous sovereignty, labor movements, and the mythologies of the western wilderness.

The 98th annual SAMLA Conference is taking place Thursday, November, 5, through Saturday, November, 7, 2026, at the Wyndham Atlanta Buckhead Hotel & Conference Center in Atlanta, GA.  For more information, see https://southatlanticmla.org/.

The Robert Lowell Society invites papers on the musical engagements of Confessional and late-Confessional poets with a view to sponsoring a panel at the ALA Symposium "Music and the American Literary Imagination" (January 28-30, 2027, Nashville, TN). Such papers could include inquiries into: 

• The musical forms of Confessional poets' verse—e.g., Sylvia Plath’s stark meters and her refrains, or John Berryman’s jazz-like syncopation, or Adrienne Rich’s and Frank Bidart’s use of musical metaphors and structures;

This CFP seeks submissions for a Just-in-Time session proposed for the 2027 MLA conference.  If accepted, this panel will analyze the recent slew of literary and genre fiction about "trad wives." Caro Claire Burke's Yesteryear, Saratoga Sch