theatre and performance studies

Call for Papers 2026

Deadline: February 28th 2026

Theme: Gender and Supernatural

“You should be women, And yet your beards forbid me to interpret That you are so.” Macbeth 1.3.46-47

Legacies of Performance: Inheriting Pasts & Imagining Futures

Graduate Student Symposium

Sponsored by the Department of Theater and Dance

University of California, Santa Barbara

April 18, 2026

“Every image of the past that is not recognised by the present as one of its own threatens to disappear irretrievably.” – Walter Benjamin, 1942

“I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.” – Audre Lorde, 1978

Call for Proposals for a special issue of Studies in Musical Theatre on the films Wicked and Wicked: For Good.

View the full call here>>

https://www.intellectbooks.com/studies-in-musical-theatre#call-for-papers

Abstract 

The “end of the world” names a methodological problem before it names an apocalypse: how do humanities scholars and artist-researchers think, make, and teach when climate disruption, extinction, extractive infrastructures, forced displacement, and slow violence reformat what counts as evidence, what counts as futurity, and what counts as responsibility? This conference convenes research and practice across film, theatre, performance, and allied arts to ask how (post)Anthropocene conditions are not only represented but produced, felt, and negotiated through aesthetic forms, production systems, embodied publics, and more-than-human milieus. 

Reminder: CFP due soon. Please reach out with any questions!

Special Issue, Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film Call for Papers: 

Adapting Thackeray 

Re-thinking Trauma: Cinema, Performance, and Mediation - International Conference
Ekphrasis Center for Transdisciplinary, Liberal Arts and Creative Technologies Research

 Department of Theatre and Film, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
2nd to 4th of September 2026

Trauma theory emerged within a historical and conceptual framework that assumed relatively stable relations between experience, representation, and witnessing (as an ethical and narrative position). Questions of testimony, narrative rupture, belatedness (the delayed emergence of traumatic meaning), and symbolic mediation shaped the field’s core vocabulary and continue to frame contemporary trauma research.

Call for Papers.

Theatre and Performance Notes and Counternotes seeks short articles or extended essays (1,500-3,000 words) on American (US) theatre at the United States semiquincentennial (250th anniversary). 2-3 sentence abstracts should be submitted by February 2, 2026 and essays/articles before April 6, 2026 to Harvey Young (issue editor) at cfadean[at]bu.edu. 

We are pleased to announce the CFP for a special 2026 issue of Academic Labor: Research and Artistry (ALRA) on Art & Engagement as Critical Response (300 word proposal deadline: 1/16/26).  In the spirit of recognizing the ongoing precarities of higher education–both internal (neoliberalism, systemic institutional inequities) and external (crisis of public confidence in U.S. universities/colleges, threats to academic freedom), we invite proposals for a special issue of ALRA on art and engagement as critical response  to the invisibility, illegibility, and silencing faced by much of the academic labor force.

Paper proposals invited for papers of 15-20 minutes. Please note corrected deadline of Friday, December 19, 2025 for submission of abstracts.

African and Caribbean Theatre and Performance Working Group
IFTR 2026 World Congress 6-10 July 2026 
The University of Melbourne
Melbourne, Australia 

Working Group Theme: 

“What Theatre Does” – African and Caribbean Perspectives on Performance, History, and Identity

ATHE 2026

“ACTIVATING IMAGINATION IN/AND COMMUNITY”
July 22–26, 2026  |  Baltimore, Maryland

This year’s conference theme, "Activating Imagination in/and Community," asks us to think deeply and courageously about the role of theatre and performance in shaping our shared presents and collective futures. It challenges us to contemplate not just what we do, but how and with whom we do it, while recognizing that, in the face of growing political repression and institutional instability, our collaborations—across disciplines, communities, and identities—are simultaneously more vulnerable and vital than ever.

The Journal of Research in Contemporary World Literature (indexed in Scopus) invites original, unpublished research articles for a special issue dedicated to Contemporary African and Arabic Literature. This issue seeks contributions that explore literary production, cross-cultural encounters, postcolonial and decolonial aesthetics, migration and diaspora, oral and performance traditions, and new media literatures within African and Arabic-speaking contexts. The journal is a peer-reviewed, open-access quarterly that publishes in English.

Themes and Topics

Special Call for Prearranged American Theatre and Drama Society (ATDS) Panels at the Comparative Drama Conference (CDC), Madison, Wisconsin, July 9-11, 2026

Special extended deadline for these prearranged ATDS panels (only): January 10, 2026 

The 2026 NEXUS Interdisciplinary Conference invites current graduate students to submit abstracts for this year's conference at The University of Tennessee - Knoxville on April 17-18, 2026.

Call for Papers from the Carson McCullers Society

American Literature Association Annual Convention, May 20-23, 2026, Chicago, IL

The Short Fiction of Carson McCullers: New Directions in Scholarship