popular culture

This year’s MCLLM theme invites exploration of how literature, language, and performance illuminate intersecting dimensions of justice. How are inherited forms, genres, and rhetorical strategies reactivated in contemporary struggles for equity? In what ways do linguistic, literary, and artistic practices navigate, resist, and respond to the abuse of power while imagining alternative futures? 

MCLLM welcomes proposals from a wide range of disciplines and expression forms. The list below provides a sense of the topics the organizers are interested in seeing, but it is not an all-inclusive list. Please submit a proposal that represents your interpretation of our theme! 

14th Annual ESPRit conference: “Periodicals and the World”

9-11 September 2026, Royal Library of Belgium (KBR), Brussels

https://events.vub.be/periodicals-and-the-world

Dear Colleagues,

The Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at The Ohio State University is pleased to announce an upcoming conference as part of our biannual celebration of Popular Culture and the Deep Past (PCDP) in 2026. We warmly invite abstracts exploring topics related to medieval and Renaissance astrology and astronomy.Call for PapersStar Gazing: Astrology and Astronomy in the Medieval and Renaissance ImaginationPopular Culture and the Deep Past 2026

 April 10-11, 2026

Online via Zoom & Ohio Union - The Ohio State University

The submission deadline for abstracts and panel proposals is December 19, 2025. 

Call for Papers for a in person panel on 21st Century Latinx Children’s Literature and Media at the 2026 Annual MELUS Conference scheduled for Thursday, April 30 - Saturday, May 2, 2026.

According to the last three U.S. Census reports, the demographic of Latinx/Hispanic children has grown. Most recently, Latinx children account for about 1 in 4 of all children in the United States.

Co-editors Heather M. Porter and Michael Starr invite proposals or completed essays for an edited collection of scholarly works that explore the ground-breaking HBO series Sex and the City(1998 -2004) along with shows that came before and after, including the divisive …And Just Like That (2022-2025) which has just finished its three-season run. Proposals should demonstrate a clear methodology and strong thesis and a familiarity with prior and current conversations and publications concerning the series, and any incorporated series. The collection seeks to showcase a range of theoretical lenses; we are hence interested in diverse disciplinary approaches concerning a wide variety of topics.

For the occident, a surprising cultural norm in India is that of men holding hands. Seen as unconventional and in sharp contrast to the West, the phenomenon symbolic of India (in particular) and South Asia at large became a project in 2018, whereby photographer Vincent Dolman created a series depicting an organic and intimate aspect of male friendship. Appreciating such uninhibitedness in a country given to rampant homophobia and toxic masculinity, Dolman, in one of his interviews, observes how such practices hold a mirror to society and societal conventions of masculine constructions and performances. 

Call for additional chapters for an edited collection (under consideration by publisher): proposals due November 16, 2025

Land of the Free, Home of the Brave?: American Children’s Literature in an Era of Heightened Censorship

In a country advocating, loudly, the rights of the individual, what about child readers? Are they granted an expansive vision of their world? What rights do children have where books are concerned?

We invite submissions for Lands of the Lost: A Field Guide to Dinosaur Parks Physical, Fictional, and for the Future, an edited collection that explores extinct animal parks real, imagined, unrealized, or yet to be. Our goal is to bring together multi-disciplinary perspectives to examine parks across time and space, across fact and fiction. We seek to understand how these projects, which reconstitute and enclose long-extinct life forms, intersect with histories of science, capitalism, imperialism, environmental change, and more.

INTERNET CULTURE

CALL FOR PAPERS: PCA 2026 National Conference (April 8-11, 2026) 

The Internet Culture Area of the Popular Culture Association invites proposals for individual papers, panels, roundtables, and alternative format presentations for the 2026 National Conference, April 8-11, 2026. Proposals should explore Internet Culture as it relates to popular culture including, but not limited to:

• Social Media

• Mobility

• Apps/Applications

• Digital Marketing

• The Internet & Social Change

Special Call for Papers, Issue 11.1 (Sprıng 2026)

For its forthcoming issue, Mise-en-scène: The Journal of Film & Visual Narration (MSJ)

ContactZone (http://www.aisff-starfiction.com/journal) Special Issue "Unruly Bodies and Astral Corporealities in Science Fiction Cinema and Television Series"

Edited by Giuseppe Balirano and Oriana Palusci

Call for Articles - The Politics of Emotion: Affect, Identity and Power

IDEA – Interdisciplinary Discourses, Education and Analysis launches its new issue on the topic The Politics of Emotion: Affect, Identity and Power.

Emotions shape the way individuals and communities navigate their personal and collective lives, influencing decisions, relationships and the structures that govern societies. They are deeply embedded in social, cultural and political contexts, acting as both a personal experience and a force that drives public action.

Editors-in-chief: Inês Fernandes and Teresa Weinholtz 

Issue 12 | Speak at Your Own Risk: The Many Faces of (Self-)Censorship