Conference: Versus: Conflict and Resolution in American Culture and Literature.
Location and dates: İstanbul Bilgi University. İstanbul, Turkey. 11-13 November 2026.
Deadline for proposal submissions: 31 May 2026.
Event organised by The American Studies Association of Turkey (ASAT) and hosted by Hosted by İstanbul Bilgi University, Department of English Language and Literature, İstanbul, Turkey.
Event presentation
The American Studies Association of Turkey invites scholars, researchers, and graduate students to submit proposals for the international conference entitled “Versus: Conflict and Resolution in American Culture and Literature,” to be held between November 11 and 13, 2026 in İstanbul, Turkey. This conference seeks to explore the dynamic and multifaceted ways in which conflict and resolution continue to shape American cultural and literary landscapes.
Throughout history, conflict has been an inherent aspect of American identity, whether in political struggles, social movements, racial and gender dynamics, disability rights movements, or artistic and literary expressions. Yet, American culture has also fostered narratives of consensus, reconciliation, negotiation, and peacebuilding. This conference aims to investigate the tensions, contradictions, and resolutions that define the American experience across various periods, genres, and disciplines. We invite explorations of these themes through a variety of cultural forms, including novels, films, theater productions, poetry, and digital games that depict struggles for justice, frame social and political turmoil, stage ideological confrontations, give voice to marginalized communities, and engage readers, audiences, and players in narratives of conflict and resolution. Additionally, we encourage discussions on conflicts at a personal level, such as generational gaps, peer and family misunderstandings, and individual struggles with identity, belonging, morality, and justice. By examining these artistic and literary media, we hope to foster a deeper understanding of how American society negotiates and represents its historical and contemporary challenges while highlighting the processes and possibilities of reconciliation.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- Literary representations of conflict and reconciliation in American literature
- Social and political struggles in the United States and their cultural expressions
- Race, ethnicity, sexuality, and identity politics in American cultural production
- Gender conflicts and feminist responses in American literature and media
- Indigenous resistance and reconciliation in American history and literature
- Disability as a theme of conflict and resolution American literature and history
- War narratives and their impact on American identity
- The role of dissent and protest in shaping American democracy
- Conflict resolution and peacemaking strategies in American history
- Popular culture and media portrayals of rivalry and resolution
- Environmental and ecological conflicts in American literature and culture
- Digital and cyber conflicts in contemporary American society
- American diplomacy and international conflicts in literature and film
- The role of mythology and folklore in shaping narratives of conflict and harmony
- Interpersonal conflicts in American literature and culture (such as generational gaps, family disputes, peer misunderstandings, and the like)
- U.S. vs. “them:” Cultural constructions of rivalry and otherness
- Outcasts, dissidents, rebels, and non-conformists in American cultural and literary traditions
Submission Guidelines:
We welcome individual papers, panel proposals, and roundtable discussions from a variety of disciplines with/in an American context, including literature, history, cultural studies, political science, sociology, media studies, and related fields.
- Individual abstracts should be 250-300 words and include the presenter’s name, affiliation, email address, and a short bio of 100 words in the third person.
- Panel proposals (3-4 presenters) should include a 250-word description of the panel theme, along with individual abstracts for each paper.
- The time allowance for presentations is 20 minutes. An additional 10 minutes will be provided for discussion.
- Roundtable proposals should include a 300-word description of the topic and a list of participants.
Important Dates:
- Abstract submission deadline: May 31, 2026
- Notification of acceptance: June 15, 2026
- Full paper submission for consideration for publication in JAST (optional): March 1, 2027*
* Selected papers will be included in a special issue of the Journal of American Studies of Turkey (JAST) based on the conference theme [Spring 2027 Issue]. Further details and updates will be available on our website: www.asat-jast.org.
Please submit your abstracts and inquiries to: info@asat-jast.org
(Posted 18 November 2025)
International conference: Writing about 19th Century Mid-Size Cities.
Location and dates: University of Tours, France. 19-20 November 2026.
Extended deadline for proposal submissions: 17 February 2025.
Over the course of the nineteenth century, the growth of cities led to irreversible changes in the balance of populations and power, particularly in relation to the emergence of the modern industrial state. These cities were dynamic places, structured by the social uses and practices of space, which in turn shaped the configurations of the groups that occupied them. The cities of Europe, with their own municipal governments, could operate as autonomous entities separate from central government (Weber, 1921).
The wide variety of ways in which writings on the city have been produced and used reflects various administrative, social, scientific and cultural practices. These have long been used and/or reinvented to assert the identities of mid-size towns in changing urban networks at various scales.
The production of administrative, antiquarian, archaeological, sociological, cultural and ordinary knowledges about the 19th-century city bears witness to the material forms, social organisation, cultural life and governance of these cities. It also indicates their role in the construction of the state and of memory. On a global scale, the richness and variety of national cultures in the 19th century were partly due to the tremendous growth of these mid-size towns, which had multiple facets: they were both laboratories for a municipalism that responded to economic, social and health problems, but also places conducive to the development of knowledge, political activism and the emergence of new cultural forms, (literary and artistic). The latter trend reveals new cultural practices that produced social identity: in a landscape that was radically altered by the political and civic consecration of the individual, the democratisation of new writing enabled new discursive procedures to justify speaking out –no longer in terms of predefined social groups, but in terms of an identity to be constructed and in relation to a changing community. The modern novel, for example, was above all a privileged place for the representation of individuality, which resulted from the emergence of the middle classes, economic individualism, and philosophical and technical innovations.
The aim of this conference is to focus on writings that take intermediate cities, which have been relatively less studied than the major capitals and the most dynamic metropolises, as their subject. The project covers a long period of the nineteenth century (from the 1780s to the eve of the First World War), with no exclusions as to geographical scope, so as to enable global and comparative approaches.
During this period, i.e., the long 19th century, these mid-size towns were multi-faceted: at once breeding grounds for new intellectual and for political currents and new cultural, literary and artistic forms, and producers of social identity. This urbanisation, which sometimes proceeded at a different pace, also raises questions about the relationship between these areas and their natural environments and the protection of their ancient architectural heritages (Geddes, 1915); the social effects of their spatial and economic transformations (Harvey, 2003); and the cultural, political and economic roles played by these intermediate towns in the national and global changes of the long nineteenth century (Osterhammel, 2017). Mid-size towns were thus able to nurture alternative projects and models to the ‘big city’ model. This conference will examine their ecological, aesthetic, social, collectivist and reformist developments.
Taking note of a rich historiography on: the writing of the city in the modern age (Histoire urbaine, 2023/1; Urban History, 2020/47, ‘Thinking spatially: new horizons for urban history”); the crossroads of the action of writing (GRIHL, 2016); the history of science and knowledge and urban history (Van Damme, 2012 ; Garnier, 2024); and cultural history (Revue d’Histoire Culturelle, XVIIIe-XXIe siècles), this interdisciplinary conference on writings about the city will endeavour to reveal the diversity of actors and modes of elaborating knowledge about mid-size towns and their mobilisation (or performativity) in the processes of (re)forming local, national, imperial and transnational identities on a global scale. The conference is open to all continents, while paying attention to colonial and comparative dynamics, in order to grasp this long 19th century in all its spatial and chronological extension.
Among the types of writing that take the intermediary city as their object, and without presupposing watertight boundaries between these different fields, proposals for papers may cover:
- administrative writings, in the broadest sense of the term (administrators’ reports, grey literature, cartographic documents, statistical tables, surveys, communal monographs, travel accounts, etc.), whether produced by administrators, scholars, craftsmen, notables, teachers or ecclesiastics, etc.;
- scholarly writings (antiquarian, archaeological, topographical, historical, etc.), at various stages of formalisation and institutionalisation;
- the writing of myths and mysteries, aimed at exalting (or toning down) local particularities, in a variety of media that were flourishing at the time (the press, travel guides, travel logs, postcards and correspondence, literary and artistic productions, etc.); and
- written documents produced by city dwellers (requests, petitions, addresses, grievances, etc.), more or less structured into groups (professional, religious, family, political, associative, artistic, literary, etc.) focused on their dealings with urban authorities, on the everyday life of the city, or as taken from the height of socio-political crises that challenged the harmony and social conventions of the established order.
Proposals of no more than 500 words, together with a one-page CV, should be sent to the following two addresses by 17 February 2025:
- Tri Tran : tri.tran@univ-tours.fr
- Stéphanie Sauget : stephanie.sauget@univ-tours.fr
All proposals will receive a response from the organising committee by 15 March 2025.
CFP
For further details, please check the original call inserted below.
CFP 17-11-24(Posted 6 January 2025. Updated 16 January 2025)
Conference: From Letters to E-mails: Epistolarity and Materiality (1500-2025)
Location and dates: Université Paris-Est Créteil, France. 26-27 November 2026.
Deadline for proposal submission: 6 January 2026.
Venue details
Université Paris-Est Créteil – Campus centre, 61 avenue du Général de Gaulle, 94000 Créteil, France
Event presentation
E-mails and instant messaging have gradually made letter writing marginal, if not obsolete. This shift in epistolary modes invites scholars to consider letters and their electronic counterparts from the viewpoint of materiality. The interdisciplinary conference organized by IMAGER (Institut des Mondes Anglophone, Germanique et Roman), at Université Paris-Est Créteil, France, will examine the intersection of letter-writing and materiality in English-, French-, German-, Italian-, and Spanish-speaking linguistic and cultural contexts.
The conference will consider 4 main topics: “From paper and ink to keyboard and screen: tools and uses”; Materiality, publication, and archiving”; “Materiality: affects, power, secrecy, and knowledge”; and “Letters and digital exchanges in literature and the arts.” Please see the call for papers for details.
Contact details
- Contact: epistolarite@sciencesconf.org
- Organizers: Ana Castelo Garrido ana.castelo@u-pec.fr;
Laure De Nervaux denervaux@u-pec.fr;
Guillaume Marche gmarche@u-pec.fr
Website and CFP
For further details, please check the event website and original call inserted below.
https://epistolarite.sciencesconf.org 
CFP Epistolarity Materiality(Posted 1 November 2025)