CFP: The Imposter
The Velvet Light Trap, Issue 99 (to be published Spring 2027)
Imposter is a loaded term that has invaded and fascinated media including accusations of
illegitimacy, fraud, and fakery. The imposter unsettles understandings of our media’s
truth, authority, and belonging. More than ever, the imposter feels unavoidable in our
lives: generative AI challenges the very idea of creativity, algorithms create debates
around curation and manipulation, and the evolving labor landscapes make us question
who is recognized as a legitimate media worker. Beyond technology, this figure is
political, social, and juridical. The imposter makes us think about precarity; precarity for

How do we mark transitions, generate transformational visions, and model alternate ways of being in a world imploding around us? How do we find joy while surrounded by brokenness? How do we heal when systems are structured against us? What rituals or practices can restore us, even speak to our souls? The next issue of Rejoinder explores the theme of ritual, healing, and world-making. Submissions (including essays, commentary, criticism, fiction, poetry, and artwork) should address this theme from feminist, queer, and social justice-inspired perspectives. We particularly welcome contributions at the intersection of scholarship and activism.

The John Dos Passos Society is proud to announce its 2026 biennial conference in Ponta do Sol, Madeira Island, Portugal. The conference will be held at the John Dos Passos Cultural Center in the municipality of Ponta do Sol, the home of the author's Portuguese ancestors.

We invite abstracts for twenty-minute presentations dealing with any aspect of John Dos Passos’s life, works, and/or professional relationships. Comparative approaches are also welcome.

Memory, Myth, and Meaning: Cather in Dialogue with America 250

Willa Cather Spring Conference | Thursday, June 4 - Saturday, June 6, 2026 

This year marks the centennial of My Mortal Enemy, one of Cather’s least affirmative works and one not produced in the Cather Scholarly Edition (translation: much important work remains to be done!)  We invite papers on new approaches to My Mortal Enemy, including but not limited to the following considerations of style, form, provenance, and themes:

Call for book chapters: Reading as Habitation. In Memoriam Ana-Karina Schneider

THE THIRD ANNUAL WOMEN, GENDER, AND SEXUALITY STUDIES GRADUATE SYMPOSIUM

A Century of Black History Commemorations

“The Impact and Meaning of Black History and Life Commemorations in Transforming the Status of

Black Peoples in the Modern World”

Morgan State University, April 2, 2026

Translating Modernities: Language, Selfhood, and Literary Futures in Asia

This proposed panel explores how modernities across Asia have been shaped not only through contact with the West but through acts of translation-linguistic, cultural, and epistemic-within and across Asian languages. It asks how writers and thinkers, negotiating between vernaculars and global idioms, forged new vocabularies of selfhood and community that redefined what it meant to be "modern."