twentieth century and beyond

PAMLA 2026 Special Session--Exploring Life Writing as an Avenue for Activism

updated: 
Thursday, April 23, 2026 - 2:24pm
Pacific Ancient & Modern Languages Association (PAMLA)
deadline for submissions: 
Sunday, May 24, 2026

The 123rd annual conference of the Pacific Ancient & Modern Languages Association (PAMLA) will be held in Seattle at the Hyatt Regency Seattle, from Thursday, November 12, to Sunday, November 15, 2026. 

 

Entanglements: Postcolonial Horrors - International Summer School

updated: 
Tuesday, April 21, 2026 - 10:40am
University of Padua
deadline for submissions: 
Friday, May 15, 2026

At its third edition, in 2026 the Entanglements summer school is centered on Postcolonial Horrors and aims to explore horror as an aesthetic, political, and epistemological symbol through which postcolonial literatures stage the traumatic memories of colonization, identity tensions, diasporic movements, and the re-emergence of the spectral within global modernities. The goal is to interpret horror not only as a genre, but as a critical and deconstructive tool capable of destabilizing ethnocentric categories of subjectivity, body, sovereignty, and knowledge. 

CFP: General Issue of Mapping the Impossible: Journal of Fantasy Research

updated: 
Tuesday, April 21, 2026 - 9:35am
Mapping the Impossible: Journal of Fantasy Research
deadline for submissions: 
Wednesday, July 1, 2026

Mapping the Impossible: Journal for Fantasy Research is pleased to announce an open call for papers on all things fantasy and fantastic!

Mapping the Impossible: Journal for Fantasy Research is a peer-reviewed, graduate student-run, open-access publication supported by the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic at the University of Glasgow. We publishe on all types of fantasy media! Our issues have included articles on topics from Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita to the Horizon video games. We accept academic articles between 3000 and 5000 words, excluding the bibliography.

"Drama and Resistance" Focus for American Book Review

updated: 
Tuesday, April 21, 2026 - 9:35am
American Book Review
deadline for submissions: 
Monday, June 1, 2026

Call For Papers: American Book Review Focus on “Drama and Resistance” I will be guest editing and contributing an introduction that situates a collection on “Drama and Resistance” within the postmodern/post-World War II era for the literary journal American Book Review. The topic is inclusive of contemporary American drama. For this collection, I’ve been asked to solicit 8-10 short essays and book reviews on this topic that are roughly 1,500 words each (or 6/7 pages double-spaced).

Cultural History; PAMLA (November 12-15, 2026)

updated: 
Tuesday, April 21, 2026 - 9:34am
Pacific Ancient & Modern Languages Association (PAMLA)
deadline for submissions: 
Monday, May 25, 2026

The 123rd annual conference of the Pacific Ancient & Modern Languages Association (PAMLA) will be held in Seattle at the Hyatt Regency Seattle, from Thursday, November 12, to Sunday, November 15, 2026. 

 

Cultural History: 

Tolkien, Barfield, and the Inklings: Questions of Influence

updated: 
Monday, April 20, 2026 - 3:38pm
Danny Smitherman/Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association
deadline for submissions: 
Monday, May 25, 2026

AbstractThis session welcomes contributions on the topic of literary, philosophical, or intellectual influences between any of the members of the Inklings, especially between J.R.R. Tolkien and Owen Barfield, and the robustness of those claims. Verlyn Flieger’s assertion in Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World, that the languages of Middle-earth developed just as Barfield says human languages do in real life, is perhaps the model of influence, and is well known, respected, and analyzed. But Flieger's argument remains almost entirely circumstantial.

BRAIN Focus Series

updated: 
Monday, April 20, 2026 - 3:19pm
Routledge
deadline for submissions: 
Wednesday, May 15, 2030

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.

ASAP 26 - Black Breath

updated: 
Monday, April 20, 2026 - 1:16pm
Association of the Study of the Arts of the Present Annual Conference
deadline for submissions: 
Friday, April 24, 2026

https://asap17.exordo.com/panels/79/contribute/dbf84dd0cbaee432095920794...

 

In her 2018 M Archive: After the End of the World, Alexis Pauline Gumbs writes: “you can have breathing and the reality of the radical black porousness of love (aka black feminist metaphysics aka us all of us, us) or you cannot. there is only both or neither. there is no either or. there is no this or that. there is only all" (7)

Francophone and Hispanophone Fantastic Literature and the Politics of Power - The 123rd Annual PAMLA Conference

updated: 
Friday, April 17, 2026 - 1:54pm
Aurore Bissières
deadline for submissions: 
Monday, May 25, 2026

This panel explores how Francophone and Hispanophone fantastic literatures engage structures of power, hierarchy, and authority across diverse historical and cultural contexts. 

From the nineteenth century to the present, Francophone and Hispanophone fantastic literatures have unsettled the boundaries between the real and the impossible. Emerging from interconnected histories shaped by imperial expansion, colonial violence, dictatorship, revolution, and migration, the fantastic operates not only as narrative hesitation, but as a subtle language of power. As theorists such as Tzvetan Todorov and David Roas have shown, ontological uncertainty is never merely aesthetic. It signals deeper crises of authority, perception, and legitimacy. 

En avant: Taking Stock of Modernism and its Antecedents

updated: 
Friday, April 17, 2026 - 1:52pm
American Society for Theater Research
deadline for submissions: 
Monday, May 4, 2026

1956 was a year of theatrical milestones. Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night was published posthumously while The Diary of Anne Frank won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. And, of course, the American Society for Theatre Research was founded. O’Neill’s meditation on troubled family dynamics and addiction would go on to win the Pulitzer in 1957. The previous year, the Pulitzer went to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, a Tennessee Williams play about alcoholism and (potentially) sublimated queer desire. In 1959, Lorraine Hansberry became the first Black woman to have a play produced on Broadway when A Raisin in the Sun premiered.

Philip K. Dick at 100: Fiction, Philosophy, and Cultural Afterlives Edited Volume (Centenary Collection)

updated: 
Thursday, April 16, 2026 - 1:27pm
Assoc.Prof.Dr. Ercan Gürova, Ankara University, Turkey/ Prof. dr Mladen Jakovljević, University of Priština in Kosovska Mitrovica, Serbia
deadline for submissions: 
Saturday, May 30, 2026

Call for Papers

Philip K. Dick at 100: Fiction, Philosophy, and Cultural Afterlives

Edited Volume (Centenary Collection)

Editors:
Assoc.Prof.Dr. Ercan Gürova
Ankara University, Turkey

Prof. dr Mladen Jakovljević
University of Priština in Kosovska Mitrovica, Serbia

 

“Under consideration for publication by a reputable international academic publisher.”

 

American Literature II: Lit after 1870 Permanent Section

updated: 
Tuesday, April 14, 2026 - 11:57am
Midwest Modern Language Association
deadline for submissions: 
Saturday, April 25, 2026

The American Literature II: Literature after 1870 Permanent Section of the Midwest Modern Language Association (MMLA) is seeking proposals for this year’s in-person convention in Chicago, Illinois. This year’s theme for the conference is “After the Archive”; accordingly, the Permanent Section encourages presentations that focus on the notion of the archive. Some questions to be considered in context of American literature after 1870 are:

Whither Feminism? Fascist Aesthetics and Feminine Performance

updated: 
Monday, April 13, 2026 - 4:07pm
ASAP 17
deadline for submissions: 
Monday, April 13, 2026

Though getting it together may signal a practice of spontaneous collectivity, “get it together” is also a gendered command—one which affiliates a performance of femininity with certain aesthetic expectations and demands the unbounded work of love, care, and social reproduction. How do we understand the aesthetics of femininity in a moment where feminism has been defanged of its oppositionality, when it functions as an alibi for the tide of fascism in the form of TERFs and girlbosses? Everyday injunctions toward norms of femininity appear in the form of “Get Ready With Me” videos, Planned Parenthood’s decision to offer Botox, ceaseless trend cycles, and the normalization of weight loss medication, with Serena Williams as its icon.

Taylor Swift: Showgirl, Tortured Poet, Lover, Girl Next Door, The Man, Pop Icon

updated: 
Monday, April 13, 2026 - 4:07pm
PAMLA 2026
deadline for submissions: 
Sunday, May 24, 2026

Exploring the overlapping cultural and literary impacts of Taylor Swift, this session considers her songs, legacy, political endeavors, friendships, feuds, collaborations, and fandom especially through this year's themes of culture, power, and conflict. We ask: What might lively, critical analysis of Taylor Swift offer to cultural and literary studies?

Latin Asian Entanglements: Critical and Creative Responses to Mass Deportation Today

updated: 
Monday, April 13, 2026 - 4:02pm
PAMLA
deadline for submissions: 
Monday, May 25, 2026

Latin Asian Entanglements: Critical and Creative Responses to Mass Deportation Today This is a CFP for two special sessions at the PAMLA conference in Seattle from November 12-15, 2026. Critical and creative proposals for these linked roundtables can be submitted at the links below

The State of SF and of Things to Come: Reading SF through the Clarke Award

updated: 
Monday, April 13, 2026 - 3:44pm
Science Fiction Foundation / The Arthur C. Clarke Award / University of Liverpool
deadline for submissions: 
Monday, July 27, 2026

A two-day conference to be held online by the University of Liverpool, in partnership with the Science Fiction Foundation and the Arthur C. Clarke Award, 12-13 December 2026

Keynote Speaker: Andrew M. Butler (non-voting chair of the Arthur C. Clarke Award)

Roundtable discussion with Clarke Award-winning authors Anne Charnock, Adrian Tchaikovsky and Tade Thompson

Truth in (Contemporary) Society 2026

updated: 
Monday, April 13, 2026 - 3:26pm
University of Sheffield
deadline for submissions: 
Wednesday, April 22, 2026

Event Title:                    Truth in (Contemporary) SocietyEvent date:                    Monday, 29th & 30th June 2026
Location:                       Workroom 3, 38 Mappin St, University of Sheffield

Taking Care

updated: 
Sunday, April 12, 2026 - 11:08am
Midwest/Southwest Conference on Christianity and Literature
deadline for submissions: 
Tuesday, June 30, 2026

CFP: MW/SWCCL, “Taking Care”

Midwest/Southwest Conference on Christianity and Literature

College of the Ozarks
Point Lookout, Missouri
September 25-26, 2026

 

Literaturas modernas y estudios literarios en el primer cuarto del siglo XXI

updated: 
Wednesday, April 8, 2026 - 10:30pm
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
deadline for submissions: 
Friday, May 15, 2026

Anuario de Letras Modernas

Convocatoria

Literaturas modernas y estudios literarios en el primer cuarto del siglo XXI

 

Editores invitados:

Mario Alfonso Álvarez Domínguez

Universidad de Lille – Universidad Paris Nanterre

 

Odette de Siena Cortés London

José Alfredo Valerio Luna

Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

 

CFP: Tufts Graduate Humanities Conference 2026

updated: 
Monday, April 6, 2026 - 5:33pm
Tufts University
deadline for submissions: 
Sunday, May 31, 2026

Theme: Is it a Wonderful Life?

Wonder (n.): a feeling of surprise or awe, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable

Wonder (v.): to feel some doubt or curiosity; to be desirous to know or learn.

Wondrous (adj.): marvelous; wonderful. 

Tolkien in Popular Culture Summer Salon

updated: 
Monday, April 6, 2026 - 3:16pm
Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA) 2026 SWPACA Summer Salon
deadline for submissions: 
Monday, April 27, 2026

Call for Papers

Tolkien in Popular Culture

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

2026 SWPACA Summer Salon

 

June 25-27, 2026

Virtual Conference

https://swpaca.org/

Submissions open on March 30, 2026

Proposal submission deadline: April 27, 2026

 

Esotericism in the Comics of Alan Moore

updated: 
Monday, April 6, 2026 - 3:04pm
Nick Katsiadas / Slippery Rock University
deadline for submissions: 
Wednesday, July 1, 2026

Many notable comic book scholars highlight Alan Moore as one of the most ambitious writers in mainstream American and British comics. Along with writers like Grant Morrison and artists like Dave McKean, Moore was part of the so-called “British Invasion” of the American comic book industry in the 1980s, and artists of this period are credited as bringing an air of credibility as well as transforming the artistic standards of the medium. Greg Carpenter, for instance, likens the work of these artists to “Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Jonson, elevating the English language into a vehicle for poetic drama.

Reading in the Digital Age: R. E. Sterling Havens Writing and Reading Symposium

updated: 
Monday, April 6, 2026 - 3:02pm
Department of English/Writing and Reasoning Program, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas 75205
deadline for submissions: 
Monday, May 25, 2026

Reading in the Digital Age: R. E. Sterling Havens Writing and Reading Symposium

Call for Papers – Opens April 6, 2026

Deadline for submissions: May 25, 2026 

Sponsored by: R. E. Sterling Havens Writing and Reading Symposium, September 19, 2026

Writing and Reasoning Program, Department of English

Southern Methodist University

Dallas, Texas 75205

Reading in the Digital Age

Reading is one of the oldest academic practices, and certainly one of the most rapidly changing.

Robert Creeley at 100, A Celebration of His Life and Poetry

updated: 
Monday, April 6, 2026 - 3:01pm
The Charles Olson Society
deadline for submissions: 
Thursday, June 18, 2026

The Charles Olson Society will sponsor panels at the Re-Viewing Black Mountain College Conference, to take place in Asheville, North Carolina, October 2-4. 2026 marks the Centenary of poet Robert Creeley’s birth, and the Charles Olson Society will welcome abstracts pertaining to any aspect of Creeley’s life and work. Creeley was a central poet in the development of Black Mountain Poetry, and along with his life-long friend and companion in verse, Charles Olson, Creeley greatly influenced the development of American poetics after World War II. As he said, “I write to realize the world as one has come to live in it, thus to give testament. I write to move in words, a human delight. I write when no other act is possible.”

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