Our Victorians, Ourselves: Rethinking Victorian Texts & Contexts

An online student conference hosted by the Undergraduate and Graduate Student Victorian Association (UGSVA)

Conference on April 28th, 2026 and Abstracts due March 31st, 2026

Keynote:

Sarah Bliss, Florida State University

“Reading the Forest with the Trees: Victorian Fiction and Periodicals”

Interactive Closing Session:

Sabarno Sinha, University of Texas at Austin

“UnConferencing (v. 1860): The Black-Out Victorian Poetry Edition”

Discourse in the Age of Political Upheaval and Artificial Intelligence

Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference at UCLA

Keynote speaker: Dr. Julia Alekseyeva, University of Pennsylvania

Submission form: https://forms.gle/ynHiRZothVVkgVdp8

If you face any difficulties in the submission process or have questions about the conference,

please email: discourseconferenceucla@gmail.com

• Submission deadline: March 13th at 11:59PM PST

The Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities (LCH) is accepting submissions for the 2026 Julien Mezey Dissertation Award. This annual prize is awarded to the dissertation that most promises to enrich and advance interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersection of law, culture, and the humanities.

CFP--MLA 2027: The Melville Society

           Melville and McCarthyism

This panel invites papers reflecting on the value of Melville’s work for our authoritarian present. A pivotal revival of Melville during the nineteen-fifties by C.L.R. James and F.O. Matthiessen (both victims of McCarthyist surveillance and fear tactics) catapults Moby-Dick to attain the status of an American “classic” emblematic of a more, free democratic ethos. Moreover, Melville remains the author of the longest poem, Clarel, on Palestine in American literary history. Recent literary scholars of Melville also mobilize his writings to analyze the limits and possibilities of U.S. constitutionalism, including the First Amendment. 

Session CFP:

This online panel seeks proposals that examine how humor, irony, and formal games use linguistic misbehavior to create new emotional landscapes, construct gendered subjectivities, and challenge traditional hierarchies across global literatures.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Puns, irony, or broken syntax and a gendered “I”
• Mis-translation and playfulness in translation
• Mixing languages and subjectivity
• Post-colonial parody
• Joy as defiance
• Humor in crisis
• Games based on works of literature

Please send a 250-word abstract and a brief bio to Dr. Haihong Yang (hyang@udel.edu) by March 15th. 

CALL FOR BOOK CHAPTERS
Criminologies, Borders, and Humanities in North Africa
An Edited Volume for the Emerald Borders, Criminalisation and Society Series
Editor: Dr. Rachid Benharrousse*

*Tilburg Law School, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands

Email: rachid.benharrousse@proton.me

About the Series

This volume is proposed for the Emerald Borders, Criminalisation and Society Series: an interdisciplinary and inclusive space that examines how laws, policies, and practices shape, regulate, and contest borders and the people affected by them.