science and culture

"I don't know what Christmas is, but Christmas time is here": Santa Claus, Christmas, and Implicit Religion in SFF 

Abstracts (250 words) are invited for papers exploring Santa Claus and/or the Christmas holiday in science fiction, speculative fiction and fantasy literature, film, and graphic novels.  Considerations of the interrelation of secular and religious themes in SFF Christmas, implicit religion, and contemporary ritual welcome. 

MLA '27 held in LA in January; for more information on the conference see https://www.mla.org/Events/2027-MLA-Convention  

Deadline:  March 25, 2026

In her introduction to Science in the Archives (2017), Lorraine Daston explores the way that scientific archives function as “repository” of scientific empiricism (10), a process through which scientists preserve scientific findings. What is occluded in this understanding, Daston explains, is that, when scientists ‘convert’ the natural world into its ‘second nature’—i.e. data—the conditions for that translation are controlled, selective, entangled, slowed, sped up, and digitized (10). Daston’s research helps us to consider how science arbitrarily constructs archivable data at an increasing rate: “more people are manipulating more information in more ways, and all at a tempo that baffles ‘what next?’ predictions” (10).

We invite chapter proposals for an edited volume titled Intergenerational Trauma, Memory, Truth, and Resilience Within Indigenous Communities. Across global contexts, Indigenous communities continue to confront the layered consequences of land dispossession, forced assimilation, cultural suppression, environmental destruction, and systemic inequities. Yet alongside trauma exists profound resilience—expressed through story, ceremony, language revitalization, artistic expression, community mobilization, and intergenerational renewal.

See for details and submission https://www.igi-global.com/publish/call-for-papers/call-details/9804

This panel seeks papers that explore the early modern relationship between loss and melancholy for the Sixteenth Century Society Conference to be held in Chicago, 29-31 October 2026. In his Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Robert Burton writes, “Now go and brag of thy present happiness… thou seest in what a brittle state thou art, how soon thou mayst be dejected… by bad diet, bad air, a small loss, a little sorrow or discontent.” Bereavement permeates the early modern landscape, appearing in paintings, prints, poems, plays, ego documents, and legal testimony, among many other sources. It may involve the loss of love, friends, honor, possessions, homeland, freedom, political stability, or even religious conviction.

CALL FOR PAPERS2026 Technology for Second Language Learning ConferenceOctober 15-16, 2026Hybrid (Online & Iowa State University)

The Constructed Agents theme provides a forum for exploring how humans develop their understanding of AI agents from their exposure to representations of agents in literature and film. The conference explores how and to what extent representations of non-human sentient agents such as Frankenstein’s creature in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel and Hal in 2001 Space Odyssey may shape views of today’s language-using AI agents including those for language learning.

Call for Papers: Contemporary Approaches to Film Noir (#MLA27)

Modern Language Association (MLA) 2027 Convention 

Los Angeles, CA

7–10 January 2027

Film noir has evolved far beyond its mid-century origins, and has become a versatile and vital site for representing and intervening into contemporary realities. In preparation for an MLA 2027 special session proposal, this panel seeks papers that investigate noir films with cutting-edge approaches. We invite papers that engage with the following topics, including, but are not limited to:

Multilingualism, Cultural Diversity, and Intercultural Communication for Sustainable Development

Scope of the Book

This cfp is for a proposed seminar at MLA 2027, to be held in Los Angeles from 7 to 10 January 2027. This seminar explores classrooms as sites of care and repair through trauma-informed and inclusive pedagogies and institutional courage, engaging embodiment, memory, and affect as approaches to trauma and learning. Submit a 200-word abstract and bio.

Deadline for submissions: Friday, March 20, 2026

Submit your abstract via email to:

Aimee Pozorski, Central Connecticut State University (pozorskia@ccsu.edu ) Aili Pettersson Peeker, University of California, Santa Barbara (aili@writing.ucsb.edu )  

Call for book chapters

This panel explores capitalism's role in accelerating human extinction. How do late-stage economic systems shape ecological collapse, biopolitical abandonment, and end-times subjectivity? We welcome interdisciplinary work confronting survival, disposability, and the limits of the human. If accepted, this Special Session panel will convene during the 2027 Modern Language Association Conference in Los Angeles, January 7-10, 2027. Please send an abstract of 200-400 words to Dr. Amit Ray at axrgsl@erit.edu no later than March 21, 2026.   

THE 25th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND CULTURAL POLICIES (LLCP)

WEATHERING CHANGE:

THE HUMANITIES IN A WARMING WORLD

to be held in Craiova, Romania

22-24 October 2026

FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS

“When shall we three meet again?
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?”

(Shakespeare, Macbeth, 1.1: 1-2)

Designed by Jean-François Vernay, the Routledge Literary BRAIN (Brain-Related Academic Investigations of Narratives) Focus Series combines the language of literary criticism with neurocognitive and health humanities methodologies or explanatory frameworks, providing an innovative way of blending literary analysis with health humanities and neurocognitive approaches.
This exciting BRAIN series is designed to convene conversations across interdisciplinary knowledges, covering all fiction and nonfiction sub-genres such as poetry, drama, novels, short-stories, memoirs, (auto)biographies, essays, etc.

Call for Chapters

Evident Tongues, Evident Bodies: Language, Sense, and Proof in the Early Modern World

Editors: Dr Mary Katherine Newman and Dr Rana Banna

What counted as evidence in the early modern world? 

How did language itself – spoken, written, translated, or performed – shape conceptions of proof? 

And how did sensory experience lend authority, or uncertainty, to what language claimed as true?

Oxford Literary Review 49.2: SETI and the Cosmic Turn in the Environmental Humanities, Edited by Timothy Clark and Philippe Lynes

OLR devotes itself to outstanding writing in deconstruction, literary theory, psychoanalytic theory, political theory and related forms of exploratory thought. OLR 49.2, to be published by Edinburgh University Press in late 2027, is planned to direct the journal’s distinctive mode of enquiry on the philosophy, culture and assumptions of SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

https://www.euppublishing.com/loi/olr