Researchers at Northumbria University and the Open University invite contributions for a peer-reviewed edited collection of essays on Culture and Offence.

Our current ‘age of offence’ demands that we reflect critically on debates about trigger warnings, ‘cancel culture’, ‘anti-wokeness’, and free speech, to ask:

• How do we perform, edit, or teach literary texts (past and present) or other forms of culture which provoke offence or use potentially offensive terms, imagery, and language?
• How might we define, historicise, or theorise ‘offence’, philosophically, linguistically, legally, and morally?
• How do ideas of ‘offence’ challenge concepts of the ‘canon’, or create new forms of cultural value?
• How can we account for the ways literary or cultural treatments of race, class, sexuality, gender, disability or religion become more or less offensive in different contexts?

We encourage submissions from established, early career, and emerging scholars, in any relevant discipline, covering any period, mode, or genre of literary and cultural production.  We especially welcome submissions from ‘global majority’ communities, and from those beyond the Anglo-American academy or from under-represented backgrounds.

Please submit 300-word abstracts to Dr Adam Hansen by 30 May 2025, with final 7000-9000-word chapters due by 30 January 2026.