popular culture

The International Vladimir Nabokov Society seeks paper proposals for presentations on the following themes for the Modern Language Association’s Annual Convention (January 7-10, 2027, Los Angeles):  

 Nabokov in the ‘70s / Nabokov’s Afterlife

The Margaret Atwood Society invites paper proposals for an online panel on testimony and resistance in Margaret Atwood’s work. In keeping with the MLA 2027 presidential theme, this panel welcomes papers that examine how Atwood’s narratives represent coercion and constraint while also tracing the risk and agency at stake in claiming liberatory space. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• Testimony, witnessing, and the politics of voice

• Surveillance, secrecy, confession, and the archive

• Gendered power, reproductive politics, and bodily autonomy

• Critical reception and adaptation

Wilde West Coast

The Oscar Wilde Society invites abstracts for a special session at the 2027 MLA (Modern Language Association) Convention in Los Angeles, January 7–10 2027.

The song lyric occupies little space in academia, where it is less studied, less appreciated, and perceived as less-than other kinds of writing. Despite music’s ubiquitous cultural presence, the song lyric—as creative work—suffers from what renown songwriter Jimmy Webb calls a “status problem”: songwriters do not enjoy the same standing as writers of other kinds of traditionally studied literature. The most common way that song lyrics have earned scholarly attention is by conflating the form with the poem. Goldstein’s (1969) The Poetry of Rock is one of the first books to attend to lyrics as poetry.

Call for Papers: Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds

Special Issue: ‘Video Games & Horror’

Abstract deadline: 1 April 2026
Full article draft deadline: 28 July 2026

View the full call here>>

https://www.intellectbooks.com/journal-of-gaming-virtual-worlds#call-for-papers

The Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds is excited to announce a call of content for an upcoming Special Issue focused on horror in video games. 

‘A breeze in God’: The Spirituality of Music and Song

International Conference.

September 10th-11th 2026.

Parthenope University, Naples, Italy

Organised by Raffaella Antinucci (Parthenope), Adrian Grafe (Textes & Cultures research lab, Université d’Artois, France)

Event Date & Location: October 16th – 18th, 2026, at the Hilton Peachtree City, 2443 HWY 54 West, Peachtree City, Georgia, 30269

Deadline for Submissions: Friday, May 1, 2026

Name of Organization: Multiverse Convention

Organization Website: https://www.multiversecon.org

Contact Email: Kenneth Broome, Jr., Learn@Multiversecon.org

CONVENTION THEME:

On November 26, 1976, the Sex Pistols released “Anarchy in the UK” in Great Britain, the first single from what would become Never Mind the Bollocks, Here Comes the Sex Pistols the following year. This conference – part of a larger project involving a series of events in Bordeaux and a collaboration with the Lycée Magendie (Magendie high school) – takes as it starting point the 50th anniversary of the release, on November 26, 2026, while seeking to investigate the meaning of such a celebration.

@font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-469750017 -1040178053 9 0 511 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin-top:0cm; margin-right:0cm; margin-bottom:8.0pt; margin-left:0cm; line-height:107%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri

Call for papers

Sensation: The Sounds, Visions, and Words of David Bowie

Academic conference, University of Agder, Norway

29. – 30. September 2026

The LLC 19th-Century American Forum welcomes proposals for papers exploring the vibrant landscape of pop culture in the nineteenth-century USA, from vaudeville to sheet music to moving pictures. How have these examples contributed to Hollywood's legacy? Send 250-word abstracts and 100-word bios to DeLisa Hawkes (ddhawk@wm.edu) by Friday, March 20, 2026.

CALL FOR PAPERS
Impregnable: Mediated Meanings of the Body in Resistance

Impregnability has many strong meanings - not becoming pregnant but also capable of withstanding assault. It's a term that lives in connotative alignment with infertility, of non- and un-reproducibility, but it also carries presence over absence, power over victimization. Think protesters who link arms to create an impregnable wall of resistance. Think castles that cannot be stormed. Indeed, the word literally means “unable to be defeated or destroyed; unassailable.”

ESSE 2026 conference, Santiago de Compostela (SPAIN)

31st August - 4st September 2026

Seminar 61.- Violence in Early Modern English Drama: From Stage to Screen

From the brutality of Titus Andronicus to the psychological torment of The Duchess of Malfi, early modern English drama is saturated with violence—performed or described, symbolic or spectacular. This seminar will explore how violence has functioned as a dramatic, cultural, and ideological force in early modern English theatre, and how its representations have evolved across time, including contemporary screen adaptations and TV series that borrow early modern tropes of violence, such as House of Cards or Game of Thrones.

Instructions for Authors

International Conference on Innovations in Technology for Humanity (IIHTC 2026)  invites original research contribution from different fields as mentioned in topics provided that the context of the work is clearly explained. Papers must be submitted on or before the last date of paper submission. After this deadline, you will not be able to register new papers, however you will be able to edit the information of existing submitted papers. 

​