gender studies and sexuality

The process of coming out is often framed as a moment of self-realization, a turning point where individuals gain profound insight into their sexual orientation or gender identity. This panel seeks to explore how literature, film, television, and video games depict the mental, psychological, and emotional processes that LGBT individuals undergo as they recognize and articulate their identities. 

CFP: “Provocations” for American Gothic Studies

American Gothic Studies is seeking short essays for its “Provocations” section. These pieces (2,000 words) are meant to question conventional wisdom, tackle compelling issues, or advance new theses about the American Gothic as an academic field or pedagogical subject. Please note that they are not traditional essays.

Among other things, authors might:

CONRAD: Modern Language Association Conference / JAN 2026 / Toronto CAN

The Joseph Conrad Society of America is currently celebrating its half-centenary 1975-2025.

GUARANTEED MLA PANEL:

Joseph Conrad: False Truth & the Absurd

Panel on Conrad’s critique of false or misleading “truths” in a world without set meanings.  Papers considered on national/imperial truisms, or the “absurd” as a mode of actuality or critique.  Short bio, 250wd proposals.

Deadline for submissions: Sunday, 16 March 2025

Literary Infrastructure and the Precarity of Modernist Writers 

Conference online (via Zoom): 27-28 March 2025

ABOUT CONFERENCE:

CFP: In 2050, according to scientists’ expectations, 17% of world population will be people aged 65 and over. There will be twice as many elderly people as today. In the light of these predictions, it is obvious that we have to change radically our viewpoint on many aspects of life. We have to re-think our attitudes toward cultural, social, political, economic, medical, and many other dimensions of the world’s near future.

RE-CFP: ReFocus: The International Directors Series: David Cronenberg

Edinburgh University Press

Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg is widely regarded as one of the finest proprietors of the body-horror genre. Cronenberg’s filmography traverses the realm of the corporeal beyond its bare form, testing the limits of what a body can do. His films explore the intricate relations between the market, science, and desire. Cronenberg also examines disease and illness, situating their grotesque ramifications in the soma and the psyche, while many other later film narratives diverge from Cronenberg’s earlier focus on body horror to exhibit a wide spectrum of directorial capabilities.

Diasporic literature is often deeply engaged with the tensions between displacement and belonging, rupture and continuity, loss and recovery. In narratives of migration, exile, and forced displacement, family becomes both a site of longing and a contested space where histories of trauma and survival play out. Diasporic texts frequently challenge normative understandings of kinship, moving beyond biological ties to reimagine family through memory, affect, and political solidarities.

Organization: ASAP/16 (The Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present)

Deadline for Papers: March 14, 2025

We invite papers for a proposed panel “Breaking the Narrative: Creating Inclusive Space in Adaptations”, in ASAP/16: Worldmaking/Worldbreaking for its 16th annual conference to be held at the Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University in Houston, Texas on Wednesday, October 22 - Saturday, October 25, 2025.

Lost Girls & New Women: Woolf, Conrad, & the Regendering of Empire

 Comparative panel considering Conrad’s and Woolf’s female characters as challenging imperial gender norms.  Papers might range from Conrad’s often biracial colonial feminine roles to Woolf on threatening sexualities or “New Women.”  Short bio, 300wd proposals.

 Deadline for submissions: Saturday, 15 March 2025

Ben Leubner, Montana State University < leubnerb@montana.edu >

Mark Deggan, Simon Fraser University < mark_deggan@sfu.ca >

We invite abstracts for a Special Session (non-guaranteed) at the MLA Convention to be held in Toronto, Canada, from January 8-11, 2026.

In our daily lives, we frequently encounter terms like "culture," "cultured," "high-cultured," "low-cultured," and "uncultured." We often hastily label individuals based on their appearance or social status; for instance, a shabbily dressed person or a homeless individual might be instantly deemed "uncultured." Certain activities, such as traditional children's games like using a gulti (slingshot) to collect mangoes, playing hopscotch, or spinning tops, are sometimes dismissively categorized as pastimes of the chotolok or lower classes.

Literature and Taxonomy

Taxonomy is a fraught word in literary studies. As a regime of classification descended from the Euro-American scientific tradition, taxonomy encourages the organization of biological life on earth based on hard distinctions or similarities between groups. This practice appears to endorse essentialist and deterministic paradigms that scholars in literary and cultural studies typically eschew—and for good reason. Taxonomic modes of thinking are allied with racial, medical, and sexual ideologies that have fueled historical and contemporary efforts to police the categories of race, gender, ability, and desire.

C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists seeks submissions for its eighth biennial conference, which will take place March 12-14, 2026, at the Hyatt Regency in Cincinnati, Ohio. We invite individual papers and group proposals on literature and culture in the United States, the Americas and beyond during the long nineteenth century.