film and television

The Text, an International Peer Reviewed Online Journal of Language, Literature and Critical Theory (ISSN: 2581-9526)invites original, unpublished research papers for January 2027 issue.

Indexed in:

1.     Google Scholar

2.     ERIH PLUS (European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences)

3.     IAMCR (International Association for Media and Communication Research)

4.     Citefactor (Directory Indexing of International Research Journals)

5.     DRJI (The Directory of Research Journal Indexing)

2026 marks multiple milestones for the legacy of legendary Afrofuturist author Octavia E. Butler: fifty years since the publication of her first novel, Patternmaster (1976), and the twentieth anniversary of her passing, on February 24, 2006. It also marks the announcement of a film version of one of her most famous and most prophetic works, Parable of the Sower (1993), as well as the surprise republishing of her disavowed novel, Survivor (1978), for the first time since the 1980s. These anniversaries arrive at a moment when Butler’s work continues to gain public attention for its prescience and political relevance, and as she continues to amass scholarly attention across scholarly disciplines.

Contemporary philosophy and modern aesthetics have long stressed the potential of cinema to engage itself in the act of thinking and philosophical reflections through the presentation and assembly of moving images and sound. This presumed capacity to think and philosophize is realized by its spectators, who engage with the visual, auditory, and textual elements interwoven in films, resulting in a fusion that sparks novel thoughts and philosophical insights.

International Conference

Vladimir Nabokov: Contemporary Reception and Creative Legacy

April 28-30, 2027

Bordeaux Montaigne University

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Vladimir Nabokov’s passing, the French Vladimir Nabokov Society, in collaboration with the University of Bordeaux-Montaigne and the International Vladimir Nabokov Society, organizes its 10th International Conference, to be held April 28-30, 2027 in Bordeaux, France.

NeMLA2027 NORTHEAST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION 58th Annual Convention SALVE REGINA UNIVERSITY, NEWPORT, RHODE ISLAND March 6-9, 2027   

This session invites submissions addressing films that represent the construction of identity through community within a colonial or postcolonial context. Possible topics might include postcolonial legacies in contemporary urban cinema (banlieue; borderlands); comparative analysis of films across colonial and postcolonial contexts; the role of space in structuring narratives of resistance; filmic representations of assertion of and resistance to state power; film as a means of intercultural and intertextual dialogue.

Call for Papers - Enthymema Special Issue (December 2027)

Matter, Materials, and (Un)Natural Resources in Science Fiction

Guest editors: Marco Malvestio (University of Padova) and Valentina Romanzi (University of Verona)

This creative session invites scholars, writers, and hybrid practitioner-theorists to explore liminal dialogue as a form of literary creation in which unlikely, displaced, or structurally incompatible voices are brought into conversation. Drawing on the centrality of dialogue in literary and dramatic traditions, this panel reimagines conversational form as a site of constraint-based experimentation, where meaning emerges through the collision of discourses that would not ordinarily coexist. Rather than focusing on artificial intelligence as a technological subject, this session treats AI-assisted generation as a formal device for producing estranged adjacency between voices, genres, and epistemologies.

GIANT MONSTERS ALL-OUT ATTACK: Kaiju Culture in the Twenty-first Century

Edited by Alex Adams, independent scholar

As more and more women's stereotypical images are distributed via digital networks, active counter-activism via digital networks is an urgent need in a post-truth media environment. In the age of audio-visual curation, the cultural narrative has been traditionally controlled by state and corporate power, while today, opaque automated content moderation, algorithmic sorting and filtering, and platform capitalism of transnational streaming networks dominate the scene.

The New Italians session explores contemporary Italian literature, culture, media, music, and film through the lens of migration, mobility, and evolving forms of Italian identity in a globalized world. In dialogue with PAMLA 2026’s theme, “Our Ruling Classes: Culture, Power, Conflict,” the session considers how cultural production engages structures of power shaping belonging, citizenship, linguistic authority, and cultural legitimacy in Italy and its diasporic contexts.

At its most ambitious, the New Hollywood was a movement intended to cut film free of its evil twin, commerce, enabling it to fly high through the thin air of art. The filmmakers of the '70s hoped to overthrow the studio system, or at least render it irrelevant, by democratizing filmmaking, putting it into the hands of anyone with talent and determination.

While tragedy and horror are often treated as distinct genres, both traditions ask audiences to look steadily at what ordinarily repels them. From unburied corpses and undead monsters to violated kinship and failed agency, these spectacles produce fear, pity, disgust, and sorrow alongside fascination. This session explores what might be understood as a tragedy–horror continuum, examining the aesthetic, affective, and ritual overlaps between tragic and horrific representation across historical periods and media.

Still Screaming: An Online Conference Celebrating 30 Years of Scream

2026 marks the 30th anniversary of Wes Craven’s Scream (1996), which has had a profound impact on horror films and the slasher subgenre specifically. In the past three decades, Scream has become a franchise of seven films and a television series (2015-16, 2019). Scream has also expanded beyond the screen, reverberating throughout the popular culture landscape and serving as the foundation for a game, collectible figures, multiple Ghostface mask variations, and an entire collection of merchandise at Spirit Halloween (and elsewhere). 

We are pleased to announce an open call for bids to host the 2027 Post45 Graduate Symposium. The Post45 Graduate Symposium is a two-day event, typically held in Spring, which brings together graduate students and faculty members working on post-1945 arts, literature, media, and culture. Around fifteen graduate students each submit a work-in-progress and convene in a workshop-style setting along with faculty respondents to discuss each participant's work.