Call for Papers

SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY

Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA)

47th Annual Conference, February 25-28, 2026

Marriott Albuquerque

Albuquerque, New Mexico

https://www.southwestpca.org

Submissions open: September 1, 2025

Proposal submission deadline: October 31, 2025

Proposals for papers and panels are now being accepted for the 47th annual SWPACA conference. One of the nation’s largest interdisciplinary academic conferences, SWPACA offers nearly 70 subject areas, each typically featuring multiple panels. For a full list of subject areas, area descriptions, and Area Chairs, please visit https://swpaca.org/subject-areas/.

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The Science Fiction and Fantasy (General) Area Chairs invites paper or panel proposals on any aspect of science fiction in literature, film, or other media. Any and all topics will be considered. Past presentations have covered a variety of topics – including British SFF TV, fan studies, race, gender, sexuality, socio-economic class, pedagogy, adaptation, and a variety of texts. We are interested in thematically or textually linked panels of three or four papers as well as individual submissions.

To honor the twentieth anniversary of the passing of awarding-winner Sci-Fi author, Octavia Butler, we will have a special call for papers on the works of African American SFF creators and contributors. This can include BIPOC works and history that intersect with SFF.

Follow the Science Fiction and Fantasy area on Facebook at www.facebook.com/swtxsff 

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All proposals must be submitted through the conference’s database at https://swpaca.org/app.

For details on using the submission database and on the application process in general (including submitting proposals for roundtables and preformed panels), please see the FAQS & Resources tab on https://swpaca.org/.

Individual proposals for 15-minute papers must include an abstract of approximately 200-500 words and a brief summary of 100 words or less.

For information on how to submit a proposal for a roundtable or a multi-paper panel, please view the above FAQs & Resources link.  

The deadline for submissions is October 31, 2025.  

SWPACA offers monetary awards for the best graduate student papers in a variety of categories. Submissions of accepted, full papers are due January 1, 2026. More details are here: https://swpaca.org/graduate-student-paper-awards/.  SWPACA also offers travel fellowships for undergraduate and graduate students as well as contingent faculty: https://swpaca.org/travel-awards-students-faculty/.

Registration and travel information for the conference is available at https://swpaca.org/albuquerque-conference/.  For 2026, we will be returning to the Marriott Albuquerque (2101 Louisiana Blvd NE, Albuquerque, NM 87110), which boasts free parking and close proximity to shopping and dining.

In addition, please check out the organization’s peer-reviewed, scholarly journal, Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, at https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dialogue/.

If you have any questions about the [PUT YOUR AREA NAME HERE] area, please contact its Area Chair, [PUT YOUR NAME, AFFILIATION, AND EMAIL ADDRESS HERE]. If you have general questions about the conference, please contact us at support@swpaca.org, and a member of the executive team will get back to you.

This will be a fully in-person conference. If you’re looking for an online option to present your work, keep an eye out for details about the 2026 SWPACA Summer Salon, a completely virtual conference to take place in June 2026.

We look forward to receiving your submissions!