Cornell EGSO Conference 2026: Effervescence

Deadline for Submissions: January 5th, 2026

Conference Date: March 20th, 2026

Call for Academic and Creative Proposals

“This impulse to violence had been in her for a long time, growing, feeding, until finally she had blown up in a thousand pieces... Yes, a one-way ticket, she thought. I've had one since the day I was born. The train was on the track.”

—Ann Petry, The Street

In Ann Petry’s The Street, the protagonist, Lutie Johnson, figures violence as a percolating gradation until its dramatic explosion. This year, the English Graduate Student Organization (EGSO) at Cornell’s conference theme “Effervescence” – the action of boiling up – asks us to consider not just the explosive moment, but the simmering that precedes it. Less and more than spontaneity, effervescence anticipates the leaping from one state to another while, at the same time, drawing attention to the infinitesimal and illegible actions that feed it. We invite proposals for fifteen-minute papers exploring the nature of the unpredictable, yet inevitable: moments where repetitions yield difference; historical arcs that culminate in revolutions; when sounds become speech; strokes of color form an image. Participants might ask: is there a politics, aesthetics, ethics, practice or poetics of effervescence? does effervescence only occur in bursts? or, do we inevitably lose sight of its occurrence? Is it a crisis or a breakthrough – destructive or creative? We encourage applicants to translate this image to their field of study and foreground the unique set of questions it generates. We are especially interested in papers engaging with the following topics: 

• Modernism
• Marxist theory
• Black Radical Tradition
• Queer & Trans Resistance
• Utopias 
• Decolonization and National Liberation
• Spectacle and performance
• Aesthetics & Poetics 
• Sound Studies
• History and Historicity

We invite submissions of original research papers from a range of disciplines, including but not limited to: Literary Studies, Black Studies, Performance and Media Studies, Indigenous Studies, Film and Visual Studies, Cultural Studies, Queer and Gender Studies, Africana Studies, History, Affect Studies, Disability Studies, Art History, Medieval Studies, Political Science, Conflict and Peace Studies, Ecocriticism and Environmental Studies, Postcoloniality/Decoloniality, Creative Nonfiction, Poetry, and Short Form Fiction. We will consider any submissions from graduate students in any discipline focused on the conference theme. Please note that we do not consider submissions from postdocs, early career, or independent scholars.

For academic papers, please submit a 250-300 word abstract. For creative works, please submit either (1) a 250 word synopsis/rationale of the work or (2) an excerpt of the work. For fiction and creative nonfiction, 300-500 words; for poetry or multi-image, no more than three pages. Other mediums and formats acceptable.

Please include your institutional affiliation and a short biography (50-100 words) with your submission. All submissions and inquiries should be sent as a .docx or .pdf file to CornellEGSOConference@gmail.com by January 5th, 2026.