gender studies and sexuality

FEMSPEC, an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal dedicated to challenging gender through speculative means in any genre, seeks volunteers to fill the following roles:

PRODUCTION EDITOR

Duties include:

Collating and formatting content for each new issue of the journal.  Liaising with the journal's editor and other volunteer collective members to make changes to the issue's content and layout until the end of each issue's production period.

This online panel seeks proposals that examine how humor, irony, and formal games use linguistic misbehavior to create new emotional landscapes, construct gendered subjectivities, and challenge traditional hierarchies across global literatures.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Puns, irony, or broken syntax and a gendered “I”
• Mis-translation and playfulness in translation
• Mixing languages and subjectivity
• Post-colonial parody
• Joy as defiance
• Humor in crisis
• Games based on works of literature

Please send a 250-word abstract and a brief bio to Dr. Haihong Yang (hyang@udel.edu) by March 15th. 

CALL FOR PAPERS

Edited Volume

Island Studies in South Asia: Gender, Culture and Islandness

CALL FOR PRESENTATIONS

The Superhero Project: 10th Global Meeting

SUPERVILLAINS & ANTI-HEROES

Friday 4th to Sunday 6th September 2026

The View Hotel, Eastbourne, East Sussex, United Kingdom

“I don’t want to kill you! What would I do without you? Go back to ripping off mob dealers? No, no, no! No. You… you… complete… me.” – The Joker (The Dark Knight, 2008)

Title: Unsettled Englishes: Migration, Displacement, and the Anzaldúan Borderland

Sponsoring Entity: MLA LSL Global English Forum

Description: In alignment with the 2027 Presidential Theme, "Emancipatory Narratives," this session interrogates the linguistic borders that define the migrant experience. Grounded in Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of the "linguistic borderland," we explore the space where identity, displacement, and Global English collide.

Present-day cultural and political shifts are producing seismic impacts upon Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies programs and curricula across geopolitical contexts. This session explores new currents, approaches and strategies for teaching WGS in the classroom. (In-Person Session)

Deadline: Sunday, March 15, 2026

Send proposals of 200-words with a shot bio to Ryan Calabretta-Sajder (rcalabretta@gmail.com) and Victoria Muñoz (vmunoz@adelphi.edu)

Call for Submissions

Yeshe: A Journal of Tibetan Literature, Arts and Humanities is an international open-access and peer-reviewed annual e-journal, which provides an outstanding platform for Tibetan writers, translators and all research scholars in the area of Tibet Studies to publish their works. 

Yeshe is currently open to submissions of academic articles, reviews, and interviews related to Tibet, as well as poetry, performance, prose, art, and fiction written in English or translated into English) for its sixth annual issue to be published in October 2026. Please check our submission page for the guidelines.

Seeking 250-word proposals examining feeding and nourishment as maternal practices that shape care, embodiment, and power, through literary, cultural, and medical humanities approaches in contemporary Hispanic and Lusophone contexts. Deadline: March 2

How might Black fatherhood be understood as an improvisational practice? Across histories of racial capitalism, displacement, surveillance, and social constraint, Black paternal life has often unfolded beyond the frames of patriarchal authority and normative domesticity. In these conditions, fatherhood may be enacted through adaptive, creative, and relational practices that exceed dominant frameworks of masculinity and family.

What does it mean to do Black queer/trans studies now? Amidst intensifying state violence both in and outside of the academy, this graduate conference is an invitation to explore the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and power through a global lens. The conference will be a space for inter- and cross-disciplinary dialogue amongst scholars of Black queer and trans life and politics, capaciously defined. 

Call for Papers — ASA 2026 (Chicago)

Black Feminist Book Cultures and Experimental Methodologies

We seek papers for a panel on Black feminist book cultures and experimental methodologies for the American Studies Association's annual convention (theme: improvisation) in Chicago in October 2026. Please send an abstract (max. 1200 characters), title, and bio to kwitaszek@mta.ca.

Deadline for submissions: February 27, 2026

Richard Linklater’s Slacker (1991) is a cult classic with a crucial role in the history of American cinema. The movie is unusual in many ways. It does not have a traditional narrative; it follows 100 characters around the UT Austin area in a way that seems completely random. There is no protagonist, no story, no thread to the individual events, yet somehow it is a completely coherent and engaging movie that sparks as many reflections as the number of scenes it has.

We are looking for chapter proposals in the form of abstracts. Topics already included are work, capitalism, Buddhism, film as a dream, narrative, episodic views of life, and absurdity. Possible topics for new chapters include:

In the last fifteen years, a new generation of African female and nonbinary authors have made major interventions in the field of African Literatures, from Akwaeke Emezi to NoViolet Bulawayo, Djaïli Amadou Amal to Kopano Matlwa. In parallel, women writers from earlier generations, such as Tsitsi Dangarembga (winner of a Windham-Campbell Literature Prize in 2021), Paulina Chiziane or Ana Paula Tavares (who were both awarded with the Camões Prize in 2021 and 2025 respectively) have received major literary distinctions, celebrating their contributions to African postcolonial literatures in particular, and literature in general.

The Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities (LCH) is accepting submissions for the 2026 Julien Mezey Dissertation Award. This annual prize is awarded to the dissertation that most promises to enrich and advance interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersection of law, culture, and the humanities.