Date: May 23 - 25, 2025
Call for Papers | Liminal Prospects
Location: Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario & Online Submissions due: January 8, 2025

The Queen’s Graduate Conference in Literature (QGCL) seeks academic abstracts and creative pieces for its 2025 conference on the theme of “Liminal Prospects.”

The term liminal has been used in varying ways throughout history, taking on meanings in the 19th century such as “minimal” or “insignificant,” and later developing in the early 20th century as “...being on a boundary or threshold, esp. by being transitional or intermediate between two states, situations” (OED). We combine liminal with “prospect,” encompassing looking forwards, outwards, to distances, to something that has yet to come. “Liminal Prospects” therefore aims to explore the possibility of the unexpected, unexplored, and forgotten. We will be accepting both graduate papers as well as a limited amount of undergraduate papers.

Presentations will be 15-20 minutes long; topics of interest may include, but are not restricted to:

• ●  Media Form

  • ○  What is acceptable, and what is pushed to the margin? What lies in between?

  • ○  How do we interact with different forms? What is asked of us?

• ●  Reality

  • ○  How does the reality of one person differ from that of another?

  • ○  How is reality formed and presented?

  • ○  How is the digital world shaping reality?

• ●  The Archive
  ○ What do we archive? How do we decide what to include? What should be

  archived, but isn’t? Who has access to the archives?

• ●  History and Future

  ○ Speculative Futures and Reimagined Pasts
  ○ How do we receive the past? How does it inform our future? ○ What do the (digital) worlds we create say about us?

• ●  Landscapes

  • ○  Maps give shape to our world; what has been charted, and what has not?

  • ○  What about the areas you travel through but forget?

  • ○  What spaces remain inaccessible? To whom? And why?

  • ○  What possibilities do digital landscapes present us? What of the places that

    should not exist but do?

    Academic Submission Guidelines:

• ●  Submit a brief biography of no more than 100 words

• ●  Academic abstracts should be 200-300 words

• ●  Papers proposed as part of a specific panel, please fill out section four of the Google form

• ●  Do not include your name in the abstract

  Creative Works Submission Guidelines:

• ●  Creative works can come in any form: fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, fragments, audio-visual, etc.

• ●  Submit a brief biography of no more than 100 words

• ●  Submissions should be no more than 6000 words total or 15 minutes for non-textual works

• ●  Applicants must upload a complete copy of their submission, including a title, to the Google form

• ●  Do not include your name in the submission document

  Please fill out the Google form here to apply: https://forms.gle/b6quazsRFKXk4MEa8
  If you have any questions about the conference, please email queensgraduateconference@gmail.com