cultural studies and historical approaches

The recent Mandarin Chinese translation of The Canterbury Tales (Linking Publishing, 2025) by Dr. Francis K. H. So offers a timely opportunity to reflect on the growing presence, vitality, and diversity of Chaucerian studies outside the Anglophone world. This significant contribution not only opens new avenues for engaging with Geoffrey Chaucer’s language and narrative art, but also foregrounds the crucial role of translation, pedagogy, and local scholarly traditions in shaping how Chaucer is read, interpreted, and taught across different linguistic and cultural contexts.

In 2016, Oxford Dictionaries named “post-truth” its Word of the Year, marking a shift towards skepticism of facts and scientific institutions alongside the rising influence of emotion and opinion in shaping public knowledge. In the decade since, we have witnessed the further erosion of consensus truth as multiple constructions of the “real” proliferate throughout divergent media ecosystems, accelerated by emerging technologies and polarizing political orientations towards race, gender, class, and sexuality. 

Our present conjuncture demands urgent engagement with the now of gender. Authoritarian resurgence, border militarization, algorithmic
governance, climate precarity, and uneven recoveries from overlapping pandemics shape how gender is lived, and resisted across diverse contexts: from settler colonial democracies to postcolonial nation-states and stateless territories. Anti-trans legislation, family policing, and reproductive surveillance intensify biopolitical control, while migration regimes, humanitarian aid economies, and asylum adjudication render certain genders and kinship forms precariously provisional.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is one of the most adapted, parodied, and referenced works of Gothic fiction. Even those who have never read the novella know the “story,” or at least the twist: Henry Jekyll becomes Edward Hyde to live a double life, disconnected from societal pressures and expectations. Many, if not all, of these media adaptations add, edit, or remove elements from the story, making it a hybrid narrative, one part Stevenson’s and one part the adapter’s. 

Circus Historical Society Convention 2026

The 2026 Circus Historical Society Convention will be held in Baraboo Wisconsin from June 10 – 13, 2026. Convention will conclude with Baraboo’s Big Top Parade. Registration and other information will be available soon. 

Call for Papers 

Proposals are now being accepted for Convention presentations on any subject related to circus history. We invite proposals for single speakers and groups. All proposals must be received using the online form by March 31, 2026. Visit https://circushistory.org/next-convention/ to submit your proposal today. 

2026 CHS Student Prize

“Unfinished Declarations: Independence, Identity, and Imagination in American Culture” 

Hosted by the Irish Association for American Studies 

Date: 24th and 25th April 2026 

Location: Ulster University, Coleraine Campus, Northern Ireland 

Dear Colleagues,

SPECIAL ISSUE of FERAL FEMINSISMS

Feral Intelligence (FI): New Queer Approaches to Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI)

// Abstract Deadline: March 15, 2026

Since Benedict Anderson’s 1983 theorization of imagined communities, the historical alliance between the novel and the nation has been a key problematic of literary studies. And yet, in the post–Cold War decades, the centrality of the nation and its ideological weight seemed to wane. The rise of neoliberalism produced an ideology of free circulation of capital and goods, which heralded a new era of weakening national borders and enhanced cultural exchanges. In literary studies, this period saw the rise of a new critical field, world literature (Moretti, Damrosch), and the theorization of a World Republic of Letters (Casanova), which held a similarly borderless aspiration.

June 3rd-5th, 2026 | Université de Montréal, Montréal, Québec

Submission URL (ConfTool): https://conftool.net/csdh-schn-2026/

Greensboro, North Carolina, the host city for this year’s joint conference, is geographically, culturally, and historically a space between. Known as “Gate City” because of its key position on the rail network, it is not only a midpoint between the state capital, Raleigh, and North Carolina’s biggest city, Charlotte, but also an entrance to the South. At once an integral part of the region and open to the broader world, it has long exemplified the solidarities as well as the divisions that have marked the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Neither ‘queer’ nor ‘beginnings’ are easy to pin down. Queerness is infamous for its ability to slip away from definition; it encompasses – but is not reducible to – sexuality, gender, race, ability, class, politics, and more. Beginnings, too, wriggle from our grasp. Choose a beginning for any historical event, movement, or narrative and there is always something which precedes it. Are beginnings focused into an inciting event, or do they reside in the feelings which precipitate such events? Who gets to decide?

Call for Articles
Quo vadis Romania Nr. 68 (QVR-2-2026)
Climate Fiction in der Romania
Koordination: Dr. Ana Carolina Torquato & Sophie Everson-Baltas, BA BA MA
Deadline for Abstracts: 15.03.2026
Deadline for Articles: 01.08.2026

CFP – Extended Deadline – May 1, 2026

Interdisciplinary Humanities invites submissions for a special double issue dedicated to exploring Gothic literature. This double issue will be divided into two areas: one focusing on creative and scholarly activity, and the other on pedagogy in K-12 and higher education.

Volume 1: Gothic Literature: Creative Activity and Research

Creative and Scholarly Activity

We seek contributions that delve into the rich and diverse world of Gothic literature. Topics may include, but are not limited to: