What makes literary collaboration unexpected, difficult, or strange? How have authors transcended barriers – national, social, ideological, religious, temporal – in the collaborative production of texts?

For the upcoming EGO conference at Oxford University, we invite students to write on the prismatic theme of “strange bedfellows”. From plagiarism of unusual sources to fraught collaboration between literary “frenemies” to allyship across religious and political lines, this theme lends itself to discussions of the way literature is shaped by the collaboration of radically different perspectives and interests.

“Strange bedfellows” may also be taken literally: how have unlikely romantic encounters, queerness, and troubled domesticity shaped literature? Taking a broader view, it may even be said that literary works and literary studies are often spaces where different disciplines converse and conflict. In this spirit, we welcome papers on the relationship of texts to visual media, music, and performance, as well as the role of interdisciplinarity at this critical moment in the contemporary humanities.   

 
We welcome individual proposals for 20-minute papers, sent as a 250-word abstract alongside an additional short 100-word bio. We also encourage three-person panel proposals of 500 words with a short bio for each participant. Abstracts from all graduate students working in English and adjacent fields are invited.

Please send all submissions, and any questions you may have, to oegc2026@gmail.com by 6 March.