graduate conferences

This panel examines how literary and cultural texts from diverse global traditions imagine masculinity not merely as an individual identity but as a relational and communal practice. In an era marked by migration, political polarization, social fragmentation, environmental crisis, and renewed struggles for collective empowerment, narratives of masculinity have become central sites through which communities negotiate belonging, responsibility, vulnerability, and resistance.

We are excited to announce that the Long Middle Ages, a seminar series for postgraduate students and early career researchers working on the Late Antique, Medieval, and Early Modern Periods, will be returning for a second series in Autumn 2026!

We welcome submissions of 30 minute papers from postgraduates and early career researchers working in any discipline and on any topic related to the late antique, medieval and early modern periods. Papers will be followed by time for questions and further discussion.

Seminars will commence in October 2026 and run on a fortnightly basis until mid-December.

The response to our initial Call for Papers for the PAMLA 2026 conference in Seattle, WA (November 12–15) has been absolutely incredible!

With the arrival of the New Woman at the end of the nineteenth century also came the modernist novel. The beginning of the twentieth century constitutes a period when women struggled with social expectations but decided to leave their own drawing rooms and discover the world; to be power brokers, instead of passive observers; and to gradually move from their interiority to making history. By comparing novels of women writers, both in the US and abroad, this panel attempts to find, in their similarities and differences, the real issues that women faced at the turn of the century, in novels that transitioned from realism and naturalism to modernism.

I would like to invite you to submit an abstract to the TG07 Senses and Society session, “Outside the Climatic Environmental Bubble: Sensing Climate Change at the Margins”, within the XXI International Sociological Association World Congress of Sociology, which will be held in Gwangju, Korea, from July 4th - July 10th 2027.

Session Description

UVA Wise Medieval-Renaissance Conference XXXIX
Undergraduate Sessions
The University of Virginia’s College at Wise
September 17-19, 2026

Keynote Address:  
“Arthur's Great Death in Malory and its Afterlives”
Karen Cherewatuk, Saint Olaf College

The Politics of Literary Form
Graduate Student Conference at Johns Hopkins University
Date: November 13–15, 2026
Location: Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD
Keynote Speaker: Oliver Simons, Columbia University

Abstract:This roundtable explores contemporary directions in life writing, biography, and memoir, with a particular interest in how we narrate the self amidst evolving issues of identity, culture, and power. We welcome both traditional scholarly essays and creative nonfiction/memoir submissions accompanied by a brief meta-analysis. Potential topics include, but are not limited to, autoethnography, digital self-representation, intersectional approaches to life writing, and the emerging impacts of technological shifts—such as generative AI—on authorship and equity.

About the Conference

The conference, “Narratives of the Mind: Media, Literature and Culture,” is conceived as an interdisciplinary platform for examining the complex and evolving representations of the human mind across diverse branches: literature, culture, and media . In this context, the “mind” is not regarded solely as a structural or biological entity, but as a dynamic site shaped by language, narrative, ideology, technology, and cultural practices. By foregrounding narratives, the conference aims to illuminate how mental experiences are constructed, expressed, mediated, and contested across time and space.

In-Between Wor(l)ds: Liminality, Poetry and Performance

Call for Papers – GNSD Graduate Conference, University of Minnesota
Nov. 6 - 7th, 2026 (in person)
Keynote by Adeena Karasick

CFP: MW/SWCCL, “Taking Care”

Midwest/Southwest Conference on Christianity and Literature

College of the Ozarks
Point Lookout, Missouri
September 25-26, 2026

Keynote Speaker: Jeffrey Bilbro, professor of English at Grove City College and editor-in-chief at Front Porch Republic

Welcoming submissions for a free scholarly conference on scary literature to be hosted online from October 22nd-24th, 2026 by graduate student, Anais Shelley.

Research may draw inspiration from (but is not limited to) these prompts:

• Supernatural themes

• Domestic horror

• The role of setting within scary stories

• Frightening myths and folklore

• The gothic novel and short story

• Monsters and the monstrous

• Multicultural superstition and regional ghost stories

The committee for the 49th annual UBC AHVA Graduate Symposium invites graduate students to submit abstracts that reflect upon, investigate, or challenge the theme of “perspective,” across all of its diverse meanings. We will be joined by Dr. Amy Knight Powell, Chair of the Art History Department at the University of Southern California, as our keynote speaker.

The annual graduate student conference organized by the Division of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Southern California is now accepting applications. EXTENDED submission deadline is June 15, 2026.

This year’s conference invites proposals that engage broadly with the theme, Delirium. 

It will take place on October 23–24, 2026, at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, with Professor Eugenie Brinkema joining for the Keynote. 

We welcome submissions from a wide range of disciplines and methodological approaches, including creative works.