theatre and performance studies

CFP: "Horror" at SWPACA, Albuquerque, Feb. 17-20, 2027

updated: 
Sunday, September 5, 2027 - 10:00am
Southwest Popular/American Culture Association
deadline for submissions: 
Saturday, October 31, 2026

Call for Papers

“Horror (Literary & Cinematic)”

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

 

48th Annual Conference, February 17-20, 2027

Marriott Albuquerque

Albuquerque, New Mexico

https://swpaca.org

Submissions open: September 1, 2026

Proposal submission deadline: October 31, 2026

 

Hybrid Beckettian Ecosystems in Performance. Samuel Beckett Working Group meeting at IFTR annual conference, 28 June-2 July, 2027, Nafplio, Greece

updated: 
Thursday, September 10, 2026 - 5:15pm
Samuel Beckett Working Group (International Federation for Theatre Research)
deadline for submissions: 
Monday, November 2, 2026

The Samuel Beckett Working Group is an evolving international community of researchers, which seeks to support the development of excellent research on Beckett’s drama and Beckett in performance. It meets everywhere at the annual IFTR conferences. We welcome postgraduate and early-career researchers, as well as faculty, independent researchers and artists. We value the participation of Beckett and non-Beckett experts alike, as both categories partake in the maintenance of a healthy interdisciplinary ecosystem.

Shakespeare in Pop Culture

updated: 
Saturday, August 22, 2026 - 3:00pm
Southwest Popular / American Culture Association
deadline for submissions: 
Saturday, October 31, 2026

Call for Papers

Shakespeare in Pop Culture

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

 

48th Annual Conference, February 17-20, 2027

Marriott Albuquerque

Albuquerque, New Mexico

https://swpaca.org

Submissions open: September 1, 2026

Proposal submission deadline: October 31, 2026

 

Call for Papers: ‘Konpa Dirèk: Popular Music and Social Relations in Haiti and the Haitian Diaspora’

updated: 
Wednesday, August 19, 2026 - 11:00pm
Journal of Caribbean Music & Sound Cultures
deadline for submissions: 
Sunday, November 1, 2026

Apologies for crossposting.

Call for Papers: Journal of Caribbean Music & Sound Cultures

Special Issue: ‘Konpa Dirèk: Popular Music and Social Relations in Haiti and the Haitian Diaspora’

Guest Editors

Cécile Accilien, University of Maryland, USA, cecileaccilien22@gmail.com

Sabine Lamour, University of Montréal, Canada

Alexandra Cenatus, University of Maryland, USA

Deadlines

1 November 2026: 250–300-word abstract

15 November 2026: Successful authors notified

15 February 2027: First draft of article due to editors

Cracks and Crossovers: Aesthetics of Rupture in Visual Culture, Performance and Media Practices

updated: 
Tuesday, August 18, 2026 - 5:15pm
School of Arts & Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University
deadline for submissions: 
Sunday, August 30, 2026

The graduate students of the School of Arts & Aesthetics, Jawaharlal

Nehru University, are organising an interdisciplinary conference on the theme

of Cracks & Crossovers, exploring their presence and reflection in visual

culture, performances and media practices. The theme responds to the

urgency of living in a time when systemic limits become visible through cracks.

It asks how we register the differences between categories such as crisis,

fragment and fracture. Do these terms signal a definitive rupture or an ongoing

change? Or do our times demand a new perspective that allows the cracks to

speak? Taking a cue from The Cracked Mirror (2012), the conference seeks to

Reminder — Setting the stage: a theatre and performance dissertation writing group

updated: 
Monday, August 10, 2026 - 4:15pm
Program in Theatre and Performance, Columbia University
deadline for submissions: 
Tuesday, September 1, 2026

Setting the stage: a theatre and performance dissertation writing group 

Writing a dissertation can be lonely: we want to change that. Many of us first fell in love with theater because — through exploratory rehearsals, late-night tech runs, and joyful opening nights — we found camaraderie and connection, both of which can feel distant in graduate school. If theater is best practiced with others, how can our research and writing processes be shaped by the same commitment to community-building? 

UPDATE--Football and Performance

updated: 
Thursday, August 6, 2026 - 1:30pm
Eero Laine
deadline for submissions: 
Tuesday, September 1, 2026

CFP: Football and Performance

Editors: Eero Laine, Noe Montez, and Shannon Walsh

 

We are currently seeking chapter abstracts for an edited volume on football and performance. Theatre and performance studies allow us a unique view towards the ways that sports extend into civic space, politics, and daily life. How can the disciplines of theatre, dance, and performance studies serve as an analytic for sport, generally, and American football, in particular?

 

'Ugly Feelings': Hope and Anger in Contemporary Theatre

updated: 
Monday, July 27, 2026 - 1:34am
German Society for Contemporary Theatre and Drama in English (CDE)
deadline for submissions: 
Wednesday, September 30, 2026

35th Annual CDE Conference, Frankfurt/Bad Homburg, 27-29 May 2027

 

The German Society for Contemporary Theatre and Drama in English (CDE) is pleased to announce its 35th Annual Conference (27-29 May 2027). It is organized by the Institute of English and American Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt with the assistance of the University of Bamberg and will be held as a residential conference at Goethe University’s Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften in Bad Homburg.

‘Ugly Feelings’: Hope and Anger in Contemporary Theatre

"Second only to Shakespeare"? Middleton 400

updated: 
Monday, July 20, 2026 - 10:52am
University of Naples “L’Orientale” – ARGO Research Centre (Interuniversity Research Centre for the Study of Argumentation, Pragmatics and Stylistics)
deadline for submissions: 
Thursday, December 31, 2026

Title: “Second only to Shakespeare”? Middleton 400

Dates (provisional): 28-29 October 2027

Place: University of Naples “L’Orientale” – ARGO Research Centre (Interuniversity Research Centre for the Study of Argumentation, Pragmatics and Stylistics)

Organisers: Daniela Guardamagna and Tommaso Continisio 

Deadline for abstract submission: 31 December 2026.

Send to:

guardamagna@lettere.uniroma2.it

continisio@lettere.uniroma2.it

 

Dalit Theatre of Haryana

updated: 
Sunday, July 19, 2026 - 7:19am
Mahatma Gandhi Central Univeristy
deadline for submissions: 
Wednesday, September 30, 2026

Haryanvi Dalit theatre occupies a highly marginalised position within the broader landscape of Indian theatre. It may aptly be described as “the marginalised among the marginalised,” as it has remained largely excluded from both mainstream theatre studies and Dalit cultural historiography. Haryanvi Dalit Swang theatre was active long before the Dalit Panther Movement, but it received little attention due to its lack of publication and translation into English. This book seeks to recover, document, and critically examine the neglected legacy of Haryanvi Swang, with particular emphasis on its Dalit traditions and practitioners, thereby contributing to a more inclusive understanding of Indian theatrical heritage.

Musical Commemorations and Contestations in Postcolonial Contexts

updated: 
Friday, July 17, 2026 - 6:13am
Public Humanities - Cambridge University Press
deadline for submissions: 
Monday, February 1, 2027

Public Humanities is an international open-access, cross-disciplinary, peer-reviewed journal at the intersection of humanities scholarship and public life.

The journal invites submissions for the upcoming issue, Musical Commemorations and Contestations in Postcolonial Contexts, which will be guest edited by Bart Paul Vanspauwen, Ana-María Alarcón-Jiménez, and Livia Jiménez Sedano.

Deadline for submissions: 1 February 2027

Description

CFP: The Text Vol.9, No.1 - January 2027 Issue

updated: 
Tuesday, July 14, 2026 - 12:29pm
The Text (ISSN: 2581-9526)
deadline for submissions: 
Thursday, October 15, 2026

The Text, an International Peer Reviewed Online Journal of Language, Literature and Critical Theory (ISSN: 2581-9526)invites original, unpublished research papers for January 2027 issue.

Indexed in:

1.     Google Scholar

2.     ERIH PLUS (European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences)

3.     IAMCR (International Association for Media and Communication Research)

4.     Citefactor (Directory Indexing of International Research Journals)

5.     DRJI (The Directory of Research Journal Indexing)

 

CFP Tom Stoppard conference

updated: 
Saturday, July 11, 2026 - 5:00pm
Sorbonne Université
deadline for submissions: 
Wednesday, September 30, 2026

Tom Stoppard Conference – 28-29 January 2027 – Sorbonne Université

Co-organisers: EMMA (Université de Montpellier Paul-Valéry) and VALE (Sorbonne Université)

 

Sixty years after the premiere of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at London’s Old Vic Theatre (1967), and just over a year after the death of Sir Tom Stoppard on 29 November 2025, this international conference seeks to pay tribute to one of the playwrights who most profoundly shaped British theatre in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

[NEMLA 2027] Liminal Dialogues: AI, Voice, and Impossible Conversations in Literary Creation

updated: 
Thursday, July 9, 2026 - 2:17pm
Scott Ennis / NEMLA
deadline for submissions: 
Wednesday, September 30, 2026

This creative session invites scholars, writers, and hybrid practitioner-theorists to explore liminal dialogue as a form of literary creation in which unlikely, displaced, or structurally incompatible voices are brought into conversation. Drawing on the centrality of dialogue in literary and dramatic traditions, this panel reimagines conversational form as a site of constraint-based experimentation, where meaning emerges through the collision of discourses that would not ordinarily coexist. Rather than focusing on artificial intelligence as a technological subject, this session treats AI-assisted generation as a formal device for producing estranged adjacency between voices, genres, and epistemologies.

Theatre and Anthropology. Theoretical Approaches to Text, Performance, and Theatrical Practices

updated: 
Thursday, July 9, 2026 - 10:33am
Alessandro Grilli (Università di Pisa)
deadline for submissions: 
Tuesday, September 15, 2026

 

Skenè Research Centre
Interdisciplinary Theatre and Drama Studies
Università di Verona

as part of the agreement with

 

Dipartimento di Filologia, Letteratura e Linguistica
Università di Pisa

 

Theatre and Anthropology

Theoretical Approaches to Text, Performance,

and Theatrical Practices

Verona (IT), November 19-20, 2026

 

Conference venue  
Dipartimento di Lingue e letterature straniere,
Polo Zanotto, Aula Co-Working
via S. Francesco 22,
Verona, Italy

Before the Renaissance: Hollywood Art Cinema Under the Studio System

updated: 
Wednesday, July 8, 2026 - 9:39am
Mark McKenna / University of Sheffield
deadline for submissions: 
Tuesday, September 1, 2026

At its most ambitious, the New Hollywood was a movement intended to cut film free of its evil twin, commerce, enabling it to fly high through the thin air of art. The filmmakers of the '70s hoped to overthrow the studio system, or at least render it irrelevant, by democratizing filmmaking, putting it into the hands of anyone with talent and determination.

Horror in Tragedy / Tragedy in Horror

updated: 
Tuesday, July 7, 2026 - 1:49pm
NeMLA
deadline for submissions: 
Wednesday, September 30, 2026

While tragedy and horror are often treated as distinct genres, both traditions ask audiences to look steadily at what ordinarily repels them. From unburied corpses and undead monsters to violated kinship and failed agency, these spectacles produce fear, pity, disgust, and sorrow alongside fascination. This session explores what might be understood as a tragedy–horror continuum, examining the aesthetic, affective, and ritual overlaps between tragic and horrific representation across historical periods and media.

Call for Panelists at AAS 2027 (March 18-21 in Boston): Rethinking the Early Modern/Modern in South Asia: Genres, Affects, and Boundaries

updated: 
Tuesday, July 7, 2026 - 12:32pm
Sthira Bhattacharya and Jaideep Pandey
deadline for submissions: 
Thursday, July 30, 2026

This panel proposes a revaluation of boundary-making between early modern and modern generic and affective registers in South Asia. While there is a consensus that genres of composition and cultural sensibilities did not change radically with the coming of print—“print did not so much produce new books as more old books” (Blackburn, 2002)—the precise sites of continuity/rupture differed widely based on the region and language in question.

CFP/Reminder: 2026 Dress and Body Association Conference (Deadline 15 July)

updated: 
Sunday, July 5, 2026 - 10:38am
Dress and Body Association
deadline for submissions: 
Wednesday, July 15, 2026

2026 Dress and Body Association Conference

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Dress and Body Association invites submissions for the organization’s seventh annual conference, which will be held on November 7-8, 2026. Consistent with our long-term goals for inclusivity and sustainability, all activities will be 100% online.

Join our Google Group to learn about opportunities and converse with members of the DBA year-round! Email to request membership: dress.body.assoc@gmail.com.

Opening the Archives of Dress and the Body

Workshop: ‘The Cultural Imaginary of the Cambridge Spies’

updated: 
Saturday, July 4, 2026 - 4:14am
‘The Afterlives of the Cambridge Spies’ AHRC project
deadline for submissions: 
Tuesday, July 21, 2026

 

Workshop: ‘The Cultural Imaginary of the Cambridge Spies’

 

18 September 2026

The National Archives, Kew, London, UK

 

As part of the AHRC project ‘The Afterlives of the Cambridge Spies’ (2026-8), we will be holding a one-day workshop exploring the extensive cultural impacts of the Cambridge Spies. This will be an in-person event hosted by The National Archives, in Kew, London, on the day of 18th September 2026.

 

Resurgens/GSU Fall 2026 Conference—“Shakespeare’s Apocrypha Now”

updated: 
Wednesday, July 1, 2026 - 10:00am
Resurgens Theatre Company / Georgia State University
deadline for submissions: 
Monday, August 17, 2026

Resurgens Theatre Company, along with the Georgia State University Department of English, is pleased to announce our fourth biennial conference on early modern verse drama by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, “Shakespeare’s Apocrypha Now.” We’re calling for papers that examine some aspect of Shakespeare’s non-canonical plays, i.e., those dramatic works that have been or are currently attributed to Shakespeare (as a whole or in part) that have yet to receive widespread scholarly and/or theatrical recognition. We particularly welcome topics on canonicity, collaboration, and performance-oriented concerns regarding Renaissance drama and/or early modern print culture.

The Winter's Tale: From Page to Stage

updated: 
Saturday, June 27, 2026 - 12:41pm
University of Padua, Italy, in collaboration with IASEMS
deadline for submissions: 
Sunday, February 28, 2027

The Winter's Tale: From Page to Stage

 IASEMS Tempera Seminar 2027

 University of Padova, Dipartimento di Studi Linguistici e Letterari

 7-9 June 2027

 

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS-UMBRELLAS FOR FISH An International Journal of Absurd & Existential Drama

updated: 
Saturday, June 27, 2026 - 9:57am
UMBRELLAS FOR FISH: An International Journal of Absurd & Existential Drama
deadline for submissions: 
Tuesday, August 25, 2026

UMBRELLAS FOR FISH

An International Journal of Absurd & Existential Drama

 

We are now accepting submissions for our September 2026 Issue.

 

Submission Deadline: August 25, 2026Website: https://ufjournal.wixsite.com/umbrellas-for-fish/submissions

Email: ufjournal@aol.com

 

Reproductive (Un)silencing: Empowering Communities Through Creative Writing

updated: 
Thursday, June 25, 2026 - 11:22am
Laura Lazzari (Georgetown University)
deadline for submissions: 
Wednesday, September 30, 2026

In the definition given by Podnieks, matrifocal literatures are written and narrated by mothers in the first-person or limited third-person voice, rendering maternal identity and experience from subjective perspectives. Such narratives (re)value the significance and meaning of maternal figures in cultural, social, and national arenas, and often contest or negotiate traditional ideologies of the “good” mother as self-sacrificing, nurturing, and sexless with her antithesis, the “bad” mother. In the last few years, we have seen the rise of matrifocal writings published to break taboos about previously silenced reproductive experiences, create a sense of community, support, and care, and, overall, empower people.

Jokes in Dark Times: Humor, Crisis, and the Postdigital Public Sphere

updated: 
Wednesday, June 24, 2026 - 3:56pm
NeMLA 2027 (North East Modern Language Association)
deadline for submissions: 
Wednesday, September 30, 2026

NeMLA

58th Annual Convention, Newport, RI March 6-9 2027

CALL FOR PAPERS

Jokes in Dark Times: Humor, Crisis, and the Postdigital Public Sphere

Panel Chair: Ana León-Távora

Virtual session

The 36th annual international conference on Virginia Woolf

updated: 
Tuesday, June 23, 2026 - 12:43pm
Oslo National Academy of The Arts / Univeristy of Oslo
deadline for submissions: 
Thursday, October 15, 2026

Between the Arts, the 36th annual international conference on Virginia Woolf, invites contributions across the fields of academic and artistic research that emphasize artistic expression, and draws on the inspiration of the Bloomsbury group, Woolf’s circle of artists, writers, critics, and public intellectuals.

Theatre Topics Special Issue: Dramaturgy as Inquiry

updated: 
Monday, June 22, 2026 - 3:06pm
Daniel Smith/Michigan State Univesity and Karen Jean Martinson/Arizona State University
deadline for submissions: 
Monday, October 5, 2026

Theatre Topics Special Issue (July 2027): Dramaturgy as Inquiry

 

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