4th International Conference of the Edgar Allan Poe Spanish Association – “Poe and Popular Culture”.
Location and dates: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain. 18-20 February 2026.
Deadline for proposal submissions: 1 June 2025.
Few authors have been as decisively influential in contemporary popular culture as Edgar Allan Poe. His influx can be seen, explicitly or implicitly, in different media, such as comic, music, drama, cinema, and TV; but he is also present in amusement parks, “escape rooms,” video games, board games, and more, all of which are supported by a thriving market built around these activities. While many of these products are targeted at younger audiences, who have been captivated by Poe for decades, the appeal of his work now spans a much broader demographic in terms of age and social background. Furthermore, Poe’s presence in popular culture transcends English-speaking countries, a phenomenon that, while facilitated by the globalization characteristic of our times, is largely due to the author’s worldwide fame. Poe’s influence in our modern world offers a compelling example of multilayered cultural reception. Some Poesque adaptations strive to faithfully recreate his original works, while others engage in complex reinterpretations that aim to preserve his distinctive aesthetics and themes. These products, whether deeply developed or more loosely inspired, all share a common goal: to honor Poe’s legacy. It is evident that Poe’s Gothic sensibilities have had the most significant influence on modern adaptations—a trend already evident in Charles Baudelaire’s romanticized and idealized vision of the American poet. However, Poe’s contributions to poetry, philosophy, satire, science fiction, and detective fiction have also played a vital role in shaping his reception. These diverse appropriations of Poe not only offer an opportunity to deepen our understanding of his work but also to reflect on the aspirations and desires of contemporary society, which continues to find guidance in his oeuvre.
The 4th International Conference of the EAPSA (Edgar Allan Poe Spanish Association) aims to explore Poe’s reception in contemporary mass media. The conference will take place at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (February 18th-20th, 2026). The conference invites proposals from a wide range of academic disciplines and perspectives, including Comparative Literature, Reception Studies, Adaptation Studies, Intermediality, Film Studies, and Cultural Studies. Contributors are encouraged to submit proposals addressing, but not limited to, the following research lines:
- Poe and Reception Studies.
- Poe and cinema.
- Poe and television.
- Poe and comic.
- Poe and music.
- Poe and amusement activities.
- Poe and videogames.
- Poe and tourism.
- Poe and contemporary aesthetics.
- Poe and YA literature.
- Poe and weird fiction.
Website address
https://sites.google.com/view/eapsa2026/español
Contact details
CFP
For further details, please check the original call inserted below.
CFP ENGLISH. IV EAPSA CONFERENCE (1)(Posted 3 February 2025)
Conference: Historical Fictions Research.
Location and dates: Erlangen (Germany), 19-20 February 2026.
Deadline for proposal submission: 1 September 2025.
Venue
HFRC 2026 will be an in-person event taking place at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany). The venue is situated in the city centre of Erlangen (Kollegienhaus, Universitätsstraße 15).
Organisers
Dr. Dennis Henneböhl and Dr. Isabel Kalous, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, and Alina Aulbur, University of Siegen.
Presentation
The Historical Fictions Research Network aims to create a place for the discussion of all aspects of the construction of the historical narrative. The focus of the conference is the way we construct history, the narratives and fictions people assemble and how. We welcome both academic and practitioner presentations. The Network addresses a wide variety of disciplines, including Archaeology, Architecture, Art History, Cartography, Cultural Studies, Film Studies, Gaming, Gender, Geography, History, Larping, Linguistics, Literature, Media Studies, Memory Studies, Museum Studies, Musicology, Politics, Queer Studies, Race, Reception Studies, Re-enactment, Transformative Works.
For the 2026 conference, the HFRN will engage in scholarly discussions on the topic of feelings and emotions in historical fictions.
As the genre’s original name ‘historical romance’ suggests, emotions have been central to historical fiction since its inception. Thus, the study of historical fictions makes significant contributions to the history of emotions, which, as Ute Frevert puts it, is primarily concerned with analysing “what emotions do in and to history” (31). Hilary Mantel, for instance, remarked that working as a historical novelist requires her to “unfreeze antique feeling, unlock the emotion stored and packed tight in paper, brick and stone”. Instead of straightforwardly recording or giving an account of past feelings, historical fictions are also significantly influenced by present emotions, both on the side of its producers and consumers. Analysing feelings and emotions in historical fictions thus involves focussing both on the aesthetic modes and emotional repertoires that are employed in representing the past as well as on the potential effects they produce in the reception process, for instance with regards to feelings of pleasure, anger, nostalgia, or empathy.
The political dimensions of emotions are equally significant, as they “shape the ‘surfaces’ of individual and collective bodies” (Ahmed 1), impacting power relations and social identities. Emotions function strategically in political contexts – they are deployed to unify or divide, to legitimise authority or contest injustice, and to construct narratives of belonging or otherness. Historical fictions, by engaging with these affective dynamics, open a critical space to interrogate how emotions operate within and across nations, communities, and temporalities. In addressing themes such as colonialism and racism, historical fictions reveal how feelings like nostalgia can both obscure and challenge histories of domination and displacement, while also enabling postcolonial reflections on memory and identity. Similarly, grief and mourning, increasingly recognised in environmental humanities, resonate in historical narratives that engage with ecological emergencies and invite reflections on loss and responsibility that bridge past and present. Encompassing a broad spectrum of cultural texts, historical fictions mediate the interplay of personal and collective emotions, exploring how they shape political discourses, influence public opinion, and inform responses to crises, both historical and contemporary.
A further highly relevant aspect of historical fiction’s engagement with emotions is the question of mediality, even intermediality. A fruitful field of research in connection with historical fictions in general, this bears special attention when focusing on emotions. The type of emotions evoked and the way in which they are created and/or enhanced can depend heavily on media-specific methods and conventions. Vincent M. Gaine points to the inherent potential of historical film for working with emotions to create a closer engagement with the past: “Emotion connects viewers to individuals, and films direct the viewer’s attention through narrative, cinematography, editing, performance, and indeed the presence of certain performers” (56). The varying shapes historical fictions can take, the emotions different types of media work with, and the different levels of ambiguity between emotions of the past and present thus open up important discussions on the interplay between history and emotions.
Papers are invited on topics related but not limited to:
- evoking feelings/emotions on the level of content (depictions of significant historical events/periods, or figures, use of emotional tropes)
- evoking feelings/emotions on an aesthetic/stylistic level (narrative situation, stylistic and filmic devices, mise-en-scène, music)
- evoking feelings/emotions on the level of characters (emotions of characters, audience’s/readers’ engagement with characters for instance in terms of sympathy or antipathy)
- historical fiction and the politics of emotion (affective polarisation/culture wars, political instrumentalisation of the past, the reparative potential of emotions)
- emotions and questions of (inter-)mediality/genre (heritage/costume drama, historical romance, etc.)
- repertoires of emotions (including nostalgia, mourning, love, happiness, pleasure, etc.)
- theoretical and conceptual approaches (affect studies, sentimentality, postcolonial melancholia, grievability)
- perspectives/approaches from audience and reception studies, adaptation studies, re-enactment studies, public history
- the history of emotions
- emotions and identities (gender/sexuality, race/ethnicity, class, age, etc.)
- ambiguity of emotions
Keynote Speakers:
- Heike Paul, Professor of American Studies, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
- Christine Lehnen, Lecturer in English and Creative Writing, University of Exeter, and author
Proposals
Proposals (max. 250 words) for 20-minute papers with a short bio note (max. 150 words) are due 1st September 2025. Papers must be presented in English.
Contact
CFP
For further details, please check the original call inserted below.
CfP Erlangen 2026(Posted 23 May 2025)