gender studies and sexuality

Since 1975, pacificREVIEW: A West Coast Arts Review Annual (formerly Pacific Poetry and Fiction Review) has thrived as an experimental editorial cohort made up of driven, wily, undergraduates & graduate students in the department of english and Comparative Literature, san diego state university, san diego, ca 92182-6020. This year, we take on comix again! 

In recent decades, scholarship has increasingly foregrounded the intersection between literary studies and social justice. From Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s reflections on the ethical responsibility of the critic (An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization, 2012) to Martha Nussbaum’s defence of literature as a resource for democratic imagination (Poetic Justice: The Literary Imagination and Public Life, 1995), critics have shown how narrative and form can reshape political thought and civic engagement. Literature has long served as a site where inequality, resistance, and collective agency are represented, contested, and reimagined.

The Ernest Hemingway Society is sponsoring a panel at the upcoming American Literature Association Conference in Chicago, IL (May 20–23, 2026).

Given the centenary of the publication of both The Torrents of Spring and The Sun Also Rises (1926), we encourage papers focused on the early part of Hemingway’s life and career.

Please send a 250-word proposal and short CV to Dr. Ross K. Tangedal (University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point) at rtangeda@uwsp.edu by January 10, 2026, for full consideration. Your submission will be confirmed via email. 

Since 1988, The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Journal of Florida Literature has published material relevant to the life, works, and friends of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Yearling and many other widely respected and beloved works, including Cross Creek, Cross Creek Cookery, South Moon Under, and Golden Apples.

Call for Book Chapters: Mythological Motifs in German Narratives

The study of mythology transcends the boundaries of time, space, and medium. Myths have always been an integral part of human storytelling, shaping collective identities, cultural ideologies, and individual imaginations. From ancient oral traditions and epics to contemporary literature, cinema, graphic novels, and digital media, mythological motifs continue to evolve and find expression across genres and media.

CONCEPT NOTE

Call For Papers

Travel is perhaps the most enduring and evocative leitmotif of life, both in a very real and

metaphoric sense. Essentially spinning from that chequered gamut, Travel Literature records

human interactions and experiences within the diverse landscapes and cultures of the world. Its

significance lies in its ability to document encounters with differences, recording their observations

of previously unknown lands and articulating evolving perceptions of space, place, and identity.

One of the earliest examples of this is found in the works of Herodotus. His Histories blend

accounts of his journeys with observations on cultures, customs, and geographies of the ancient

The Claude McKay Society (CMKS), now  an author member society in the American Literature Association (ALA), will convene one or two panels at the ALA conference at the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago, May 20-24, 2026. Harlem Renaissance author McKay is presently enjoying a healthy resurgence.

The Bonnie Jo Campbell Society is sponsoring a panel at the upcoming American Literature Association Conference in Chicago, IL (May 20-23, 2026).

As a native Michigander, Campbell is associated strongly with the American Midwest, where much of her fiction takes place. This panel hopes to interrogate that relationship, either through analyses of the Midwest in Campbell's work, or in relationships with other Midwestern writers and their fiction.

Please send an abstract (200 words) and a brief bio to Dr. Ross Tangedal (ross.tangedal@uwsp.edu) for consideration by January 1, 2026.

Please see this Call for Proposals for an upcoming special issue of Feral Feminisms: 

 https://feralfeminisms.com/cfps/ 

This special issue, “Scrapwork: Foraging Feminist Fragments” will be guest edited by Dr. Amber Moore (University of British Columbia) and Dr. Kaye Hare (University Canada West). 

Call For Papers

The Erotica, Sexuality, Pornography, & Kink Area of the National Popular Culture Association (PCA) invites scholars to participate in the PCA’s annual conference. Details of the conference can be found at https://pcaaca.org/page/submissionguidelines

2nd Call for Chapter Proposals
for Essay Collection

How Scripted TV Series Portray Social Media’s Power to Shape Culture

This edited volume extends the project initiated by the Korean Studies 2025 special section “Feminist Korean Studies,” which deployed feminist critique across digital media, popular culture, legal discourse, public health, neoliberalism, and postcoloniality. Building on that foundation, the volume invites interdisciplinary, interregional, and bilingual feminist scholarship to address pressing global and regional developments: the rise of right-wing authoritarianism, intensified anti-feminist backlash in South Korea, and the persistent marginalization of feminist discourse in Anglophone Korean Studies. 

General Issue | Rolling Submissions

The Critical Gender Studies Journal / Revista Crítica de Estudios de Género invites submissions for its upcoming general issue. We welcome original research articles, theoretical essays, creative interventions, and reviews that explore the multifaceted dimensions of gender and sexuality across diverse contexts and disciplines.

Call for Papers: The Willa Cather Foundation seeks proposals for 1-2 panels at the 37th annual conference of the American Literature Association, held at the Palmer House in Chicago from May 20-23, 2026.

Topics could include (but are by no means limited to) race and ethnicity, indigeneity, settler colonialism, Queer histories, labor and leisure, Cather and other writers, teaching Cather, urban/rural spaces, philosophy and religion, approaches to Cather’s letters, ecological issues, and material culture.

While proposals on any topic pertaining to Cather’s life and writing are welcome, 2026 marks the centennial of the publication of My Mortal Enemy, so papers on that novel would be of particular interest.