american

As the section editor for The Queer Experience, I invite you to submit a chapter proposal for consideration to be included in The American Research Handbook on Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, an edited scholarly volume that examines the evolving role of diversity, equity, and inclusion within American democracy and educational institutions.

The Queer Experience section seeks rigorous, thoughtful, and evidence-based analyses that examine gender identity, sexuality, intersectionality, and the evolving role(s) of queer people in society at the present moment.

1956 was a year of theatrical milestones. Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night was published posthumously while The Diary of Anne Frank won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. And, of course, the American Society for Theatre Research was founded. O’Neill’s meditation on troubled family dynamics and addiction would go on to win the Pulitzer in 1957. The previous year, the Pulitzer went to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, a Tennessee Williams play about alcoholism and (potentially) sublimated queer desire. In 1959, Lorraine Hansberry became the first Black woman to have a play produced on Broadway when A Raisin in the Sun premiered.

The American Literature II: Literature after 1870 Permanent Section of the Midwest Modern Language Association (MMLA) is seeking proposals for this year’s in-person convention in Chicago, Illinois. This year’s theme for the conference is “After the Archive”; accordingly, the Permanent Section encourages presentations that focus on the notion of the archive. Some questions to be considered in context of American literature after 1870 are:

Call for Papers // Society of Early Americanists // 2027

“Queer Humors”

The T. S. Eliot Studies Annual, Call for Papers for Volume 9

The T. S. Eliot Studies Annual is the leading venue for the critical reassessment of Eliot’s life and work in light of the ongoing publication of his letters, critical volumes of his complete prose, the 2015 edition of his complete poems, and the forthcoming critical edition of his plays.

All critical approaches are welcome, as are essays pertaining to any aspect of Eliot’s work as a poet, critic, playwright, editor, foremost exemplar of modernism, or his influence on twentieth-century and contemporary literature and culture.

Please consider submitting abstracts for a guaranteed stream of panels on Early American Environments to be held at next year’s Society of Early Americanists conference (March 18-20, 2027, Chicago; https://www.societyofearlyamericanists.org/conferences/upcoming). We are interested in scholarship that considers questions of environment and ecology in the early Americas, broadly defined to include the transatlantic, Caribbean, and Pacific worlds. How are concerns such as climate change, extractivism, and environmental justice or methodologies such as ecocriticism shaping our reading of early American texts and materials?

CALL FOR FINAL CHAPTERS TO COMPLETE COLLECTION

We are now looking for chapters specifically on the work of Madeleine Miller, Pat Barker, and Jennifer Saint. Please see the full CFP below. Please send all abstracts (no more than 500 words) and short biographies to the editors by Friday 8th May 2026.  The editors are: Isabelle Berrow (isabelle.berrow1@yorksj.ac.uk) Zoe Enstone (Z.Enstone@yorksj.ac.uk) and Anne-Marie Evans (A.Evans@yorksj.ac.uk)

Time, Memory and Forgetting in the Western

Two-Day Symposium | 10–11 September 2026 | University of Essex, UK

Deadline for submissions: 30th April 2026

To submit: 250 word outlines for all submission types via email to richard.parker@uc.cl

“There will come a time when you believe everything is finished; that will be the beginning.”— Louis L’Amour, Lonely on the Mountain.

The session “Women in Literature” includes papers dealing with any aspect of women in literature or literature by women. The session may contain essays on a wide variety of topics related to literature by and about women, including essays engaging with a wide variety of critical or theoretical approaches. Presentations might include consideration of women/women writers in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, and geographical region. Papers may engage with the conference theme, “Our Ruling Classes: Culture, Power, Conflict," but doing so is not required. Additional topics might include:

The Ralph Waldo Emerson Society is pleased to announce the following awards: Research AwardProvides $500 towards the completion of outstanding scholarly work on Emerson and the influence of his ideas. The award supports archival research, costs associated with publishing an article, book, or other project-related expenses. We welcome applications from junior scholars and independent scholars as well as established scholars. Please submit a confidential letter of recommendation, and a carefully crafted 1-2 page single-spaced project description, including, where relevant, a summary of project expenses.

Call for Papers

Biography, Autobiography, Memoir, and Personal Narrative

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

48th Annual Conference, February 17-20, 2027

Marriott Albuquerque

Albuquerque, New Mexico

https://swpaca.org

Submissions open: September 1, 2026

Proposal submission deadline: October 31, 2026

‘It seemed to him that the wharf was floating away into the night; but it was Nostromo, who was already pushing against a pile with one of the heavy sweeps. Decoud did not move; the effect was that of being launched into space.’
Joseph Conrad, Nostromo (1904)

‘This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off.’
Alien (1979)

Date: 2 April 2027 (Online)

The American Literature Association will hold a symposium on “Music and the American Literary Imagination” in Nashville, TN (January 28-30, 2027), and the Robert Frost Society seeks proposals for papers on Frost and music. Topics might include 

-new readings of Frost poems explicitly about music

-Frost’s interest in musical notation, meter, intonation, voice, pitch, timbre

-Frost's uses of musical forms

-Frost’s poems about thrushes, ovenbirds, brooks, and other musicians of the nonhuman world 

-Frost’s references to (e.g. metaphors drawing on) music, sound, or voice

-Frost and sound studies, recitation, performance, audio recordings

-musical settings of or responses to Frost’s poems

Texas Association for Asian American Diaspora Studies (TAAADS) contact email: taaadscollab@gmail.com 

The Call for Papers for the Texas Association for Asian American Diaspora Studies (TAAADS) 2027 conference, taking place February 19-20 2027 at the University of Texas, Austin, is now live!

The full CFP is available at https://tinyurl.com/TAAADS-2027.