Canada and Beyond: A Journal of Canadian Literary and Cultural Studies. Volume 16, 2027: Children’s and Young Adult Literature from Canada / Turtle Island: New Perspectives and Emerging Conversations.
Deadline for contributions: 15 October 2026.
Edited by: Ana Mª Fraile-Marcos
Publication presentation
Over the past century, Canadian children’s literature has transformed from an extension of British imperial ideology into a complex and contested site of cultural production. Rooted in settler-colonial narratives and shaped by the influences of British and American markets, early children’s books promoted nationalist, moralistic, and often exclusionary ideals. However, the rise of Canadian cultural nationalism in the 1970s, alongside institutional support and academic recognition, fostered a distinct national literature. Since then, the field has diversified, with Indigenous, racialized, and queer authors challenging dominant narratives and reimagining belonging, identity, and childhood itself. Today, Canadian children’s and YA literature presents a rich terrain for examining how stories for young readers negotiate the tensions between ideology and imagination, market forces and cultural sovereignty, colonial legacies and transformative futures.
This special issue of Canada and Beyond aims to expand the scholarly conversation on youth literature and its global relevance. We invite original, critical contributions that explore Canadian children’s and YA literature in all its forms and from any critical or theoretical perspective, including but not limited to: ecocriticism, Indigenous literatures and methodologies, gender and queer theory, critical race studies, diaspora and migration, memory studies, disability studies, postcolonialism, speculative fiction, graphic narratives, and pedagogy. We are particularly interested in contributions that highlight underrepresented voices, examine how literature for young readers engages with aesthetic, cultural, political, and historical concerns, and how it participates in shaping young readers’ sense of the world, as well as the past, present, and future of Canadian cultural life through their formal choices, thematic concerns, and institutional contexts.
Contributions may address, but are not limited to, the exploration of the following topics in Canadian children’s or YA fiction:
- Representations of childhood and adolescence as political or contested categories
- Indigenous storytelling, resurgence, and child-centered futures
- Historical fiction and nation-building narratives
- Memory, trauma, and intergenerational storytelling
- Migration, displacement, and belonging
- Transnational and diasporic voices
- Representations of multiculturalism, race, and belonging
- Place and environmental justice
- Ecological awareness and climate crisis
- Gender fluidity, queerness, and identity formation
- National mythologies and their deconstruction
- Graphic narratives, picture books, and multimodal storytelling
- Horror, dystopia, and speculative futures in youth narratives
- Translation and bilingualism in Canadian children’s books
- Popular culture, media adaptations, and fandom
- Pedagogical approaches to teaching children’s literature
Timeline
- Article submissions: 15 October 2026
- Publication: 2027
Website address
https://revistas.usal.es/index.php/2254-1179/index 
Contact details
CFP
For further details, please check the original call inserted below.
C&B _CFP vol.16, 2027(Posted 18 August 2026)
The Politics of Light in Neo-Victorian Fictions.
Deadline for contributions: 15 October 2026 (abstracts).
Edited by: Carlo Comanducci, Anna Gutowska
Publication presentation
This edited volume seeks to explore how neo-Victorian fictions (not only novels, but also films, videogames etc.) address the materiality of light, illumination, and visibility and how they re-deploy and re-interpret the Victorian politics of light in relation to the present.
The Victorian period saw the introduction of a multiplicity of overlapping technologies and cultural practices of lighting, which radically transformed labour and the medical sciences, reinvented the night and connected ideas of leisure and security, refashioned the domestic interior as well as the perception of public appearance, and greatly impacted architecture and urban planning, policing, warfare and, not least, philosophy and the arts.
Thinking about light in material terms rather than only as metaphor or as disembodied and disembodying vision, can be seen as part of a methodological shift toward new materialism and ecocriticism in the humanities. Like water in the blue humanities (see Mentz, 2024), the materiality of light challenges clear-cut spatial distributions and delimitations, as well as constructions of bodily boundaries and binary attributions of agency and passivity through the look. Light, as Mieke Bal suggested, “actively contributes to the modification and the transformation of […] experience” (2007).
The Victorian era’s “relentless drive toward spectacular radiance” (Otter, 2008) set some of the conditions of the transition to modernity and its glare and glitter are, in many ways, still with us. Especially given the ongoing popularity of neo-Victorian fictions, and in the context of a constant expansion of the boundaries of the Victorian and the neo-Victorian as academic categories, a focus on material light also becomes an occasion for tracing the afterglow of Victorian visualities as they still influence the present politics of visibility and aesthetics of perception.
Timeline (of the publication process)
- 15 October 2026: deadline for expressions of interest (abstracts of approx. 500 words accompanied by the authors’ short biographical notes of up to 150 words).
- 15 November 2026: notifications of acceptance
- 15 December 2026: book proposal sent to publisher
- March/April 2027 (TBC): deadline for chapters (chapter length approx. 6000 words)
Contact details
Anna Gutowska (SWPS University, Warsaw, at agutowska1@swps.edu.pl) - Carlo Comanducci (Vistula University, Warsaw, at c.comanducci@vistula.edu.pl)
(Posted 9 September 2026)
Lexis – Journal in English Lexicology. N°29 – Lexical Strangeness – Creativity, Deviance and Innovation in Neology.
Deadline for contributions: 30 October 2026.
Issue edited by: Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3
Publication presentation
Lexis – Journal in English Lexicology – will publish its 29th issue in 2027. It will be edited by Cécile Poix (Lumière Lyon 2 University, France) and Gordana Lalić-Krstin (University of Novi Sad, Serbia) and will deal with the topic “Lexical Strangeness – Creativity, Deviance and Innovation in Neology”.
Lexical Strangeness – Creativity, Deviance and Innovation in Neology
This issue of Lexis invites contributions that explore lexical strangeness in English – a variety of phenomena characterized by morphological creativity, deviance, and innovation that lies beyond conventional criteria of well-formedness. We welcome papers that investigate how speakers playfully subvert or extend lexicogenic norms to create novel lexical or phraseological items that demand attention, serve social functions, or push the boundaries of conventional lexical innovation.
While research on lexical creativity (Munat [2007], [2016]; Lalić-Krstin, Silaški & Renner [2025]) and extra-grammatical word-formation processes (Dressler [2000]; Mattiello [2013], [2017]) has provided frameworks for understanding non-standard word-formation, this issue of Lexis aims to open new discussions around the interface of morphological innovation and rhetorical strategies. We are particularly interested in diverse phenomena ranging from coded speech to punning, from internet innovations to anti-languages as “special forms of language generated by some kind of anti-society” (Halliday [1976]), and from playful formations to emergent morphological patterns. We welcome investigations of what Dressler [1981] has called “poetic audacity” and what, following Haspelmath [1999], Schmid [2020], and Eitelmann & Haumann [2022] describe as “linguistic extravagance”. Through their departure from expected patterns, these formations can serve as devices to seek attention (Lipka [1987]), or can result in salience, foregrounding or expressivity (Schmid [2020]).
Full CFP : https://journals.openedition.org/lexis/10458
Timeline of the publication process
- March 2026: Call for papers
- October 30 2026: Deadline for submitting abstracts to Lexis via the journal’s submission platform
- January 2027: Evaluation Committee’s decisions notified to authors
- May 30 2027: Deadline for submitting papers via the journal’s submission platform
(Guidelines for submitting articles: https://journals.openedition.org/lexis/1000 - June and July 2027: Proofreading of papers by the Evaluation committee
- August 1 to September 2027: Authors’ corrections
- September 30 2027: Deadline for sending in final versions of papers
Website address
N°29 – Lexical Strangeness – Creativity, Deviance and Innovation in Neology
Contact details
(Posted 4 March 2026)
Lexis – Journal in English Lexicology: Words about… #3: Words about Olfaction.
Deadline for contributions: 15 November 2026.
Issue edited by:
• Raghad Al Dirani (Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3, France),
• Rémi Digonnet (Université Jean Monnet de Saint-Étienne, France),
• Romina Leonor Toranzos (Universidade Estadual de Londrina, Brazil) and
• Konrad Szcześniak (University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland).
Publication presentation
The third issue of the “Words about…” series hosted by Lexis – Journal in English Lexicology focuses on “Words about Olfaction”.
Triangulations between language, perception, and the language of perception have been discussed continuously since antiquity in fields ranging from philosophy to biology. This issue of “Words about…” tackles the topic of the language of olfaction given the relatively low number of studies dedicated to this sensory modality compared to the other four Aristotelian sensory modalities, i.e. sight, hearing, touch, and taste (Lorig [1999], Winter [2019]). Linguists studying the expression of sensory modalities typically prioritize senses that are considered codable, i.e. legible in a normative system (see Berlin & Kay [1969] on color classification), on the grounds of the feasibility and reproducibility of experiments if data were available and attainable. For instance, in English, it is “easier to linguistically code colors than (non-musical) sounds, than tastes, than smells” according to Levinson & Majid [2014: 415]; similarly, “it is generally thought that sight is the most codable sensory modality, with linguists having suggested that there is more lexical differentiation for visual concepts in the world’s languages than for the other senses” according to Winter [2019: 33]. The English language facilitates the linguistic codability of colors while curbing that of odors (Viberg [1984]; Levinson & Majid [2014]), simply due to the greater number of lexemes referring to vision than those referring to smell. For instance, Lievers & Winter [2018: 20] retrieved data from multiple studies on English sensory modalities, and across their various quantitative datasets they found that about 27 to 57% of sensory lexemes are visual, while only about 4 to 10% of sensory lexemes are olfactory. Their calculations show that vision is always ranked first in terms of the number of lexemes, whereas olfaction is always ranked last.
Based on the observations regarding the scarcity of lexical means to refer to olfaction in English or French, olfaction has received little attention (Buck [1949]; Classen, Howes & Synnott [1994]; Majid [2001]; Kleiber & Vuillaume [2011]; Majid & Burenhult [2014]; Digonnet [2016]). This poverty in codability is articulated as ineffability and defined as the inability or difficulty in finding words to describe a particular experience (Lorig [1999]; Levinson & Majid [2014]). This linguistic codability differs from one language to another: the Jahai people, an indigenous group of the Semang population in Malaysia and parts of Thailand, have no difficulty naming olfactory experiences in Maniq (Levinson & Majid [2014]). In addition, the Chachi (or Capaya) people of Ecuador who speak Cha Apalache use a lexicon of the olfactory domain to speak about animals, plants, human activities and time, as perfumes play a key role for these people in traditional rituals and folk tales (Floyd, Roque & Majid [2018]).
Timeline
- June 2026: Call for papers
- November 15 2026: Deadline for submitting abstracts to Lexis via the journal’s submission platform
- January 2027: Evaluation Committee’s decisions notified to authors
- May 30 2027: Deadline for submitting papers via the journal’s submission platform
(Guidelines for submitting articles: https://journals.openedition.org/lexis/1000) - June and July 2027: Proofreading of papers by the Evaluation committee
- September to October 2027: Authors’ corrections
- November 1st 2027: Deadline for sending in final versions of papers
Website addresses
- https://journals.openedition.org/lexis/ (journal)
- https://journals.openedition.org/lexis/10669 (issue)
- https://ojs.openedition.org/index.php/lexis (submission of abstract and/or article)
Contact detailsProf. Denis Jamet-Coupé: lexis@univ-lyon3.fr
(Posted 10 June 2026)
Siri Hustvedt, Gender, and the Critical Medical Humanities.
Deadline for contributions (abstracts): 30 November 2026.
Edited by: Isabel Durán Giménez-Rico and Francisco José Cortés Vieco, Complutense University of Madrid
Publication presentation
Siri Hustvedt is one of the most important contemporary American writers working at the intersection of literature, science, medicine, philosophy, and feminist thought. Internationally acclaimed for works such as What I Loved, The Sorrows of an American, The Summer Without Men, Memories of the Future, and The Blazing World, as well as for her influential essays and memoirs, including The Shaking Woman; or, A History of My Nerves, A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women, The Delusions of Certainty, and, most recently, Ghost Stories: A Memoir of Love & Grief (2026), Hustvedt has consistently explored questions of embodiment, illness, memory, trauma, gender, care, and the complex relationships among artistic, scientific, and medical ways of knowing. Over the past two decades, Hustvedt’s work has generated a substantial and increasingly interdisciplinary body of scholarship. Monographs and edited collections have examined, among other topics, relationality, visuality, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, gender, neuroscience, and aesthetics. Particularly noteworthy is the influential collection Zones of Focused Ambiguity in Siri Hustvedt’s Works: Interdisciplinary Essays (2016), which demonstrated the richness and diversity of contemporary Hustvedt scholarship. However, despite the centrality of illness, embodiment, neuroscience, trauma, gender, and care throughout her oeuvre, relatively little attention has been devoted to Hustvedt’s work from the perspective of Medical Humanities and, more specifically, Critical Medical Humanities.
This edited volume does not seek to provide a comprehensive overview of Hustvedt’s entire oeuvre. Instead, it focuses specifically on those dimensions of her fiction, essays, memoirs, and interdisciplinary work that speak most directly to contemporary debates in Medical and Critical Medical Humanities: illness, embodiment, trauma, grief, care, neuroscience, gender, patient agency, medical epistemology, and the entanglement of scientific, social and humanistic forms of knowledge.
Suggested Topics and Approaches
Contributors are invited to explore any aspect of Siri Hustvedt’s fiction, essays, memoirs, and interdisciplinary work through the lens of Medical Humanities and Critical Medical Humanities. We welcome contributions that examine the ways in which Hustvedt’s writing interrogates the relationships among illness, embodiment, gender, trauma, grief, care, memory, and scientific knowledge.
Possible areas of inquiry include, but are not limited to:
- illness narratives, autobiography, and autopathography, particularly in relation to The Shaking Woman and other autobiographical texts;
- representations of neurological disorders, mental illness, trauma, psychosomatic experience, and psychological suffering;
- grief, bereavement, caregiving, memory, and the embodied experience of mourning in Ghost Stories;
- embodiment, feminist theory, and the critique of the medical gaze;
- gender bias, medical sexism, and the medicalization of women’s bodies;
- psychiatry, psychoanalysis, neuroscience, and cognitive science in Hustvedt’s fiction and essays;
- mind-body dualism, phenomenology, and philosophical approaches to medicine;
- narrative medicine, narrative psychiatry, and storytelling as forms of knowledge, healing, and care;
- patient agency, epistemic injustice, disability studies, and critiques of medical authority;
- ethics of care, vulnerability, dependency, and relationality;
- trauma theory, affect theory, and theories of embodiment;
- intersections between art, science, and medicine;
- comparative, transnational, and contextual approaches to Hustvedt’s engagement with illness, health, and embodiment;
- dialogues between Hustvedt and other writers, philosophers, clinicians, scientists, or theorists working at the intersections of literature, medicine, and culture.
We particularly welcome proposals that engage with Hustvedt’s recent work Ghost Stories and contributions that bring together literary criticism with approaches from medicine, psychology, philosophy, gender studies, disability studies, neuroscience, sociology, or related disciplines.
Timeline (of the publication process)
- Abstracts of approximately 300 words, together with a short biographical note (100–150 words), should be submitted by 30 November 2026
- Abstracts should clearly identify the primary text(s) to be discussed, the chapter’s central argument, and its theoretical or methodological approach.
- Contributors will be notified of acceptance by 12 January 2027
- Full essays of approximately 6,000 words will be due by 31 May 2027
- All submissions must be original, unpublished work and written in English.
- Following acceptance of their abstracts, contributors will submit full chapters for peer review and revise them as necessary in response to editorial and reviewers’ feedback. Acceptance of an abstract does not guarantee final acceptance of the chapter, which will depend on the outcome of the peer-review process and editorial approval.
- Citation style will be confirmed upon acceptance.
Contact details
The editors are currently developing the collection for submission to a leading international academic press in Medical Humanities and related fields.
Editors:
- Dr. Isabel Durán Giménez-Rico
Professor of American Studies
Universidad Complutense de Madrid - Dr. Francisco J. Cortés Vieco
Associate Professor of English Literature and Gender Studies
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Contact
Please send abstracts and inquiries to: idurangi@ucm.es and francort@ucm.es
Please use the subject line:
“Hustvedt CFP Submission – [Surname]”
We look forward to receiving proposals for a collection intended to offer the first sustained collective study devoted specifically to Siri Hustvedt’s contribution to the Medical and Critical Medical Humanities.
CFP
For further details, please check the original call inserted below.
(Posted 19 September 2026)