Conference: 18th International IDEA Conference: “Studies in English”.
Location and dates: Hacettepe University, Ankara, Türkiye. 13-15th May 2026.
Deadline for proposal submissions: 15 December 2025.
Venue details: Beytepe Campus, Hacettepe University, Ankara, Türkiye.
Event organised by Hacettepe University, Department of English Language and Literature, Ankara, Türkiye
Event presentation
Founded in 2005, IDEA (English Language and Literature Research Association of Türkiye) is the Turkish national association for English studies. As the only professional association in Türkiye affiliated with ESSE (The European Society for the Study of English), IDEA aims at bringing together academics working in the fields of linguistics, literature, language teaching and cultural studies. The 18th IDEA Conference will be held on the basis of in-person participation and by the Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Letters, Hacettepe University.
Scope. Our conference accepts papers in a wide range of topics from many different fields of “Studies in English.” We invite individual papers in the following general fields:
- English Literature
- Irish Studies
- Literatures in English
- Cultural and Critical Studies
- Linguistics
- English Language Teaching
- Translation Studies
Website address: 
https://idea18.hacettepe.edu.tr/en 
Contact details: idea18hacettepe@gmail.com
CFP
For further details, please check the event original call inserted below.
18th IDEA Conference, Call for Papers 03.11.2025(Posted 7 November 2025)
Conference: BAS Conference, 34th edition: “Reconfiguring Borders and Boundaries in/through the Lens of Literature, Language and Culture”.
Location and dates: West University Timișoara, Romania. 14-16 May 2026.
Deadline for proposal submissions: 15 February 2026.
Venue: West University Timișoara, Romania.
Organisers: English Department, Faculty of Letters, History, Philosophy and Theology, West University Timișoara
Presentation
Recent times have seen the creation of new borders and boundaries, such as those between humans and artificial intelligence, as well as the re-emergence of old ones, especially along nationalist, racial, ethnic, gender, class and religious divides. Such dynamics are connected to contemporary sociopolitical, cultural and technological transformations and crises, among which the wide reach of mis- and disinformation, the dissolution of trust in science and institutions, the rise of ethnonationalist populism and authoritarianism, the mainstreaming of exclusionary rhetoric, armed conflicts, environmental disasters and large movements of populations, to name but a few. At the same time, the duality of borders and boundaries, erected not only to separate, exclude or divide, but also to protect and cognitively map social reality (Tanulku & Pekelsma, 2024), prompts reflection on the potential contained therein for bridging and crossing over.
Borders are physical and territorial, while boundaries are symbolic, sociocultural and moral, productive of differentiation and hierarchization through practices of inclusion/exclusion and ordering (Lamont & Molnár, 2002; Tanulku & Pekelsma, 2024). Many scholars, however, consider them interrelated and mutually constitutive, or even use them interchangeably, depending on the context (Fischer, Achermann & Dahinden, 2020; Tanulku & Pekelsma, 2024; Yuval-Davis, Wemyss & Cassidy, 2019). The currently dominant approach to the study of borders and boundaries conceptualizes them as multiscalar, relational, processual and performative spaces and constructs, constantly made and remade, (re)produced but also challenged, in top-down and bottom-up practices, experiences and discourses, as sites of both governance and agency formation (Brambilla et al., 2015; Fischer, Achermann & Dahinden, 2020; Paasi, 2013; Tanulku & Pekelsma, 2024; Yuval-Davis, Wemyss & Cassidy, 2019). To bring these aspects into relief, the concepts of ‘bordering,’ ‘boundary making’ or ‘boundary work’ have been introduced and used alongside, and even instead of, the more static ‘borders’ and ‘boundaries.’ In a broad sense, bordering and boundary work involve, beyond nation-states and their transformation in a global world, other types of space (global cities, rural areas, frontiers, peripheries, public/private), identification practices (belonging, otherness, intersectionality), time (past/present/future), politics (ideological boundaries), disciplines, and so on.
A non-comprehensive list of the theoretical insights that inform the study of borders and boundaries encompasses the following: the socially constructed nature of space and its embeddedness in power relations (Lefebvre, 1991; Massey, 1994; Soja, 1996) and struggles across global, regional and local scales (Brenner, 2001; Jessop, 2002; Mahler & Pessar, 2003); the fragmentation, fluidity, hybridization and performativity of identities (Bhabha, 1994; Butler, 1990; Hall, 1997); the articulation of belonging and citizenship across transnational networks and flows through physical, virtual, imaginary and affective co-presence, but also simultaneous inclusion in one space and exclusion from another (Ahmed, 2003; Baldassar, 2008; Levitt & Glick Schiller, 2004; Vertovec, 2009; Yuval-Davis, 2011); the formation of inequality and oppression across multiple, intersecting axes (Crenshaw, 1989); the global (im)mobilities of people, objects, communication technologies, information, images and money (Urry, 2007); governmentality, biopolitics (Foucault, 1977-1979) and necropolitics (Mbembe, 2006). Due to the complexity of bordering and boundary making, their research has fostered inter- and transdisciplinary dialogue, with contributions from the humanities gaining increasing weight over time (Brambilla et al., 2015; Paasi, 2013; Wilson & Hastings, 2012). Borders and boundaries are symbolically construed, (re)produced, negotiated, performed, mediated in literary and cultural discourses, in social and public imaginaries and narratives, in artistic creations and installations, in multilingual encounters, translations, linguistic change, discursive stances, positionings and interactions.
Confirmed Plenary Speakers:
- Prof. Robert Asen, University of Wisconsin-Madison: Prospects for Democracy in an Authoritarian Age – A Rhetorical Approach
- Prof. Steven Conn, Miami University: Landscapes of Loss
- Prof. Elisabetta Marino, University of Rome Tor Vergata: Crossing Borders, Defying Boundaries: Women Travel Writers in the Victorian Age
- Prof. Ruxandra Vișan, University of Bucharest: Rethinking Linguistic Boundaries: Representations of Gender-Inclusive Language
Presentations (20 min) are invited in the following sections:
- Language Studies
- Translation Studies
- Discourse and Rhetorical Studies
- British and Commonwealth Literature
- American Literature
- Cultural Studies
- Gender Studies
- English Language Teaching
ROUND TABLE: CRISIS IN THE HUMANITIES/ HUMANITIES IN CRISIS
WORKSHOP: RETHINKING TOOLS FOR QUALITY ASSESSMENT IN LEGAL TRANSLATION
Website address
British and American Studies Conference
Contact details
CFP
For further details, please check the event original call inserted below.
(Posted 4 November 2025)
5th Biennial John Dos Passos Society Conference.
Location and dates: John Dos Passos Society. 20-23 May 2026.
Deadline for submissions: 1 February 2026.
Venue details: John Dos Passos Society; Ponta do Sol, Madeira, Portugal.
Event presentation
The John Dos Passos Society hereby announces its 2026 biennial conference in Madeira, Portugal. We invite abstracts for twenty-minute presentations dealing with any aspect of Dos Passos’s life and works, including comparative approaches.
For consideration, please send an abstract of 250-300 words and a brief CV to conference organizers Bernardo de Vasconcelos and Rosa María Bautista-Cordero at givascob@staff.uma.pt and rosa.bautista@uam.es by February 1, 2026. The conference language is English. For further information, please see the full announcement at the John Dos Passos Society website.
Website address
https://johndospassossociety.org
Contact details
(Posted 14 November 2026)
Conference: Prosody at the crossroads of disciplinary pathways: Prosody and voice quality.
Location and dates: Université Grenoble Alpes, France. 21-22 May 2026.
Deadline for proposal submission: 16 February 2026.
Venue details
Université Grenoble Alpes (France), Saint-Martin-d’Hères campus, IMAG building.
Event presentation
This conference seeks to offer an interdisciplinary perspective on prosody, traditionally defined as encompassing intonation, rhythm, and accentuation. We also intend to include voice quality in the program alongside the established categories of stress and intonation so as to encourage discussion on the nature of prosodic features.
The aim of this project is to foster collaboration between researchers to address prosodic models, assessment methods and the interfaces between prosody and other linguistic domains.
Keynote speakers
- Eugenia San Segundo, Materials Science Institute of Madrid – CSIC
- Felix Schaeffler, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh
- Radek Skarnitzl, Charles University, Prague
- Jane Stuart-Smith, University of Glasgow
Submissions
Submissions must include a title and a one-page anonymous abstract (excluding references), and be submitted through SciencesConf at: https://ugaprosody2026.sciencesconf.org/submission/submit, by February 6, 2026.
Oral Presentations will consist of 30-minute presentations followed by 10-minute question and discussion sessions. Posters should be prepared in Portrait format with a maximum size of A0.
Instructions for submission can be found here: Make a new submission – documentation.
Website address
Prosody at the crossroads of disciplinary pathways – Sciencesconf.org
Contact details
- Stephan WILHELM (stephan.wilhelm@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr) and
- Dan FROST (daniel.frost@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr), Université Grenoble Alpes
CFP
For further details, please check the original call inserted below.
(Posted 23 April 2025)
Conference: The circulation of textile designs, patterns, skills and representations in early modern Europe.
Location and dates: Université de Haute-Alsace, Mulhouse (France), 21-23 May 2026.
Deadline for proposal submission: 15 September 2025
Event presentation
This interdisciplinary conference is part of a joint project initiated by the Università L’Orientale, Naples (Italy), and the Université de Haute-Alsace, Mulhouse (France), and entitled “Textiles and the texture of ideas in early modern Europe (1589-1801): How the craft and its products interacted with philosophy, literature and the visual arts”. It will be held at the Université de Haute-Alsace from 21st to 23rd May 2026″. It follows up on a conference hosted by the Unviversità L’Orientale in September 2025. We invite papers with a focus on the interaction between the material and the immaterial aspects of the craft of weaving, approached from various angles, in the early modern period. The aim is to explore aspects of the interactions between textile manufacturing and its products and the individual or collective imagination, intellectual life as well as the ‘world picture’ and mental representations in the early modern period. We welcome interdisciplinary papers at the crossroads of, but not limited to, any ones of the following: cultural history, social history, microhistory, history of ideas or intellectual history, the history of technology, philosophy, linguistics, literary studies, material studies, visual arts studies, crafts, aesthetics, memorial studies, intermedial studies.
Submissions
Please send your paper proposals in English (300 words approximately) as well as a short biography to
- Anna Maria Cimitile (amcimitile@unior.it) and
- Laurent Curelly (laurent.curelly@uha.fr)
by 15 September 2025.
Responses to paper proposals will be given by 15 October 2025.
Contact details
Laurent Curelly, Université de Haute-Alsace, laurent.curelly@uha.fr
CFP
For further details, please check the original call inserted below.
(Posted 13 July 2025)
Interdisciplinary Conference: “Disaster Nationalism” and Present-day Europe.
Location and dates: Charles University, Faculty of Arts, Prague. 22 and 23 May 2026.
Deadline for proposal submission: 31 January 2026.
Event presentation
By the late twentieth century, nationalisms across much of the West seemed in abeyance. The demise of the bipolar world order in 1989-1991 heralded new arrangements of political and social identity to such an extent that Francis Fukyama was to propose, somewhat prematurely, that “the end-point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government” (4) was within view. In Europe, the Yugoslav wars notwithstanding, the European Union promised a cosmopolitan supranationalism which while intermittently contested, has altered how the peoples of the nations within the bloc experience everyday life, mobility, culture and bureaucracy. The EU seemed to mitigate the potential of violent nationalist conflicts, and produce spaces for compromise and co-operation as was most evident in the case of the Peace Process in Northern Ireland.
More generally, nationalisms, whether cultural or political, by the end of the twentieth century were impacted by the burgeoning force of globalization and in this zone new pressures, challenges and antagonisms surfaced. Dani Rodrik argues in The Globalization Paradox, that this led to “the fundamental political trilemma of the world economy: we cannot simultaneously pursue democracy, national determination, and economic globalization” (xviii). Only two of these elements, he suggests, fully function at any given time, resulting in frictions in the concept and consequences of globalization.
It is in this context that we are now witnessing the spectacular return of nationalism(s) to global politics and public discourse. Stuart Hall and Doreen Massey describe a “conjuncture” as “a period during which the different social, political, economic and ideological contradictions that are at work in society come together to give it a specific and distinctive shape” (57). The factors contributing to this conjuncture are complex and multiple. Following the global recession of 2008/9, it has become increasingly clear that, despite small-scale revivals of traditional forms of ethnic nationalism, the resurgent nationalism significantly differs from its nineteenth- and twentieth-century precursors. This is not only caused by the rapid development of mass communication (especially Internet advertising, social networks and profiling of their clients) that has opened democracy to manipulations by marketing strategies and disinformation, but chiefly by the transformation of nationalism itself. Instead of its former ethnic, racial, cultural or even civic forms, the contemporary version, prominent in the U.S. or U.K., as well as India, Brazil or the Philippines, is a fluid and ever-mobile convocation of contrarian views that have been provocatively called “disaster nationalism” by Richard Seymour.
Seymour maps how “disaster nationalism” originates in deepening feelings of crisis and precarity, ecological, economic and political, which spreads at speed through social and virtual networks. To the expanding number of people across different classes it offers
“compensation in superiority” and fictions of renewed social unity in the return to equally fictional homogeneous ethnic national communities. Integrating catastrophic and post catastrophic narratives, it represents the downfall of democratic civilization as a thrilling and hopeful moment of social history, presented as a promise of new stability and order. Understanding nationalism in the 21st century demands a new analytic framework that recognizes diverse forms of nationalism, as well as the harnessing of nationalism for imperial aims by Putin’s Russia. The conference will attempt to initiate an interdisciplinary dialogue comparing the impact of “disaster nationalism” on different European regions and their recent transformations, with a particular focus on cultural and artistic responses to nationalist discourse. The suggested areas of interest are:
- Devolution of the U.K. and Brexit
- Expansion of populism in Western and Central Europe
- Opposition to sub-state nationalism in the EU countries (e.g., Catalonia, Flanders)
- Putin’s dictatorship and its effort to redraw the political map of Europe – Disasters as opportunities: political strategy, opportunism, and myth-making – Conduits of new nationalisms: digital media and political discourse – Solidarity practices in cultural spaces
- Gender, sexuality, and new nationalist agendas
- Resonances of identity conflicts fomented by new forms of nationalism in literature, theatre, visual arts and the new media
Contributions are welcome focusing on identity conflicts fomented by new forms of nationalism and their resonances in literature, theatre, visual arts and new media. Apart from identity conflicts, the preferred focus of contributions are diverse sources and practices of resilience, chiefly against the apocalyptic, violent and retaliatory tendencies of what Seymour labels “disaster nationalism.”
Keynote speakers:
- Professor Luba Jurgenson (Université Paris-Sorbonne, Department of Slavic Studies)
- Professor Murray Pittock (University of Glasgow)
Abstracts of presentations (300 words, 20 min. maximum) and round table proposals (90 minutes, containing the names and affiliations of speakers, and their topics) should be submitted by 31 January 2026 at martin.prochazka@ff.cuni.cz. Registration will open on 1 March 2026.
CFP
For further details, please check the original call inserted below.
(Posted 10 July 2025)