science and culture

A conference hosted by the Graduiertenkolleg Authority and Trust (GKAT) at the Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA), Heidelberg University

Date: May 20–22, 2026
Location: Heidelberg Center for American Studies, Heidelberg

Be(Long)ing in Planetary Space

Call for Papers

Science, Technology, and Culture

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

47th Annual Conference, February 25-28, 2026

Marriott Albuquerque

Albuquerque, New Mexico

https://www.southwestpca.org

Submissions open: September 1, 2025

Proposal submission deadline: October 31, 2025

From its origins in racialised heredity science to its violent implementation in 20th-century state policies, eugenics has shaped how modern societies imagine health, heredity, and the value of life. Literature has long played a key role in this history – at times reflecting or affirming eugenic ideals, at others exposing their violence or imagining forms of life beyond them. 

Sixteenth International Conference on Food Studies, University of Osaka, Japan, 10-12 October 2026

Founded in 2011, the Food Studies Research Network is brought together around a common interest to explore new possibilities for sustainable food production and human nutrition, and associated impacts of food systems on culture. We seek to build an epistemic community where we can make linkages across disciplinary, geographic, and cultural boundaries. As a Research Network, we are defined by our scope and concerns and motivated to build strategies for action framed by our shared themes and tensions.

The Sixteenth International Conference on Food Studies calls for research addressing the following annual themes and special focus:

This year’s conference theme invites participants to reflect on “regeneration in the sense of bringing forth… a new entity that is more powerful, vigorous, efficient, and healthier.” This selection of terms immediately evokes vitalism—a philosophy of regeneration centered on dynamism, productivity, energy, life force, creativity, and strength. Vitalism emerged in response to mechanistic and materialist accounts of life; though often dismissed by the end of the nineteenth century as a pseudo-science, vitalism has endured as a complex and influential philosophical framework from the twentieth century to the present. Authoritarian regimes in the early twentieth century appropriated vitalist ideas and imagery in support of fascism.

Hello Tech Comm Colleagues,

We, the guest editors of a special issue of Technical Communication Quarterly, invite you to submit a proposal on the topic of "Responding to the Changing Landscape of the Technical Communication Workplace in the 21st Century." For convenience, the full text of the CFP is below. It is also attached. Please feel free to distribute widely. We are happy to take questions about the special issue. Our emails are included in the CFP. Proposals are due October 1, 2025. See the CFP for submission instructions.

All our best,

Laura Vernon and Diane Martinez

Call for Proposals: A Special Issue of Technical Communication Quarterly

Every recipe has an origin story. Much like a legendary superhero, cunning villain, or even the kernel of an idea behind a compelling pop culture conference paper or book chapter, each dish carries a narrative infused with creativity, nostalgia, or transformation. Reflecting this spirit, we ask you: what recipe mirrors your own unique PopCRN origin story?

Call for Manuscripts, Study & Scrutiny, Volume 8

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: DECEMBER 15, 2025

CLIMATE, JUSTICE, AND YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE: CENTERING INTERDISCIPLINARY CLIMATE LITERACY LEARNING

The International Congress of Videogames, Virtual Environments and Interactive Creation is an event of scientific and academic dissemination whose objective is the diffusion of studies related to the field of videogames, digital art and online and virtual environments, in its wide range of topics and media: development of ludic and interactive platforms; video game studies (Game Studies); initiatives around eSports; expressions of Digital Art, Virtual and Augmented Reality, and Artificial Intelligence applied to ludic or plastic creation; projects in networked communities and mobile devices; e-learning platforms; games and digital artistic works and their imbrications with cinema, animation, music, comics, etc. 

Simon J James was a prolific scholar and a pioneer of Victorian and Edwardian studies. He passed away on 11 June 2025 and this issue is dedicated to his memory. Simon wrote on H. G. Wells, George Gissing, Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, George Du Maurier, and Sherlock Holmes. His monograph, Maps of Utopia: H. G. Wells, Modernity and the End of Culture (Oxford University Press, 2012), remains the finest and most comprehensive study of Wells’s aesthetics to date.

This edited volume seeks to collect scholarship on the treatment of political themes and world-building in the Star Wars franchise since Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2012. Scholars have thoroughly explored political topics in George Lucas’s works, but have paid less attention to how Star Wars projects under Disney have continued, changed, or challenged the franchise’s approach to politics. To advance the scholarship on this subject, we welcome proposals from a variety of disciplines and perspectives, including literary criticism, cultural history, political science, film studies, and fandom studies. 

Possible / Suggested Topics:

Adaptation is the leading international, peer-reviewed journal of adaptation studies. The journal actively contributes to the development and visibility of adaptation studies as a field of academic enquiry and seeks to advance methodological approaches to the process.

Special Issue Editor: Reto Winckler (City University of Hong Kong)

Scope