The archival collections at The Wittliff support original research, not only in literature, photography, music, and film, but also in broader scholarly disciplines such as history and various social sciences. To help facilitate connections between students, faculty, and Wittliff resources, we’ve compiled a list of calls for papers for academic conferences, edited volumes, and journal issues. These opportunities offer a way to publish, connect with peers, and contribute to the broader scholarly conversation in your field. After each call, we've offered some linked collections as starting points for exploring the topics, but the possibilities are endless! If you have any questions or need research assistance, please contact Lead Archivist, Katie Salzmann, or use our research assistance form.
Full project descriptions are available by clicking on the links
Lonesome Dove at 40: McMurtry, Mythmaking, and the Reimagining of the American Southwest
Symposium | Submission deadline: August 1, 2025
This inaugural Larry McMurtry Symposium (Southern Methodist University, November 14-15, 2025) invites scholars, critics, writers, archivists, and cultural historians to reflect on the literary and cultural afterlives of Lonesome Dove, as well as the wider legacy of Larry McMurtry as novelist, screenwriter, bibliophile, critic, and public intellectual.
Select Wittliff resources: Lonesome Dove Production Archive | Larry McMurtry Collection (multiple) | Cormac McCarthy Papers | Charles Portis Papers | Marc Simmons Archive
Portrayals of the Fourth of July in American Culture and Literature: Reimagining American Identity at USA 250
Book chapter | Submission deadline: September 1, 2025
Portrayals of the Fourth of July in American Culture and Literature: Reimagining American Identity at USA 250 seeks contributions that analyze literary texts (short stories, poems, plays, and novels), songs, commercials, films, and musicals which explore the complexities of American history, culture, politics, and society—examining both celebratory and contested aspects of the nation’s legacy. How can Americans commemorate a founding that was both revolutionary and exclusionary? What do portrayals of July 4 rituals and celebrations reveal about American dilemmas? Do they foster consensus or dissent? Do they challenge the hypocrisy of celebrating liberty in a nation that does not always sustain unalienable rights?
Select Wittliff resources: King of the Hill archive
“To Be or Not To Be…a Man: Reading Masculinities in Literature and Culture
Conference | Submission deadline: September 1, 2025
This special session of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association (Atlanta, GA, November 6-8, 2025) invites papers that analyze the construction and representations of masculinities in literature and culture. While Critical Studies on Men and Masculinities (CSMM) have offered important theoretical models—hegemonic, hybrid, queer, vulnerable, etc.—literature remains underexamined as a site for the performance and critique of gender. Similarly, literary criticism has overlooked the question of masculinity as a dynamic, often unstable category.
Select Wittliff resources: King of the Hill archive | Sergio Troncoso Papers | John Rechy Papers | Sam Shepard Papers | Ben Saenz Papers
Bloomsbury's Ecocritical Theory and Practice Book Series
Monographs | Submission deadline: September 1, 2025
Bloomsbury Academic is seeking proposals for books at the interface of literary/cultural studies and the environment. Works that explore environmental issues through literatures, oral traditions, and cultural/media practices around the world are welcome. The series features books by established ecocritics that examine the intersection of theory and practice, including both monographs and edited volumes. Contemporary and historical works are equally appropriate.
Select Wittliff resources: Charles Bowden | Marc Simmons | John Graves
Translation Studies
Panel | Submission deadline: September 30, 2025
Using examples from various national literatures, this panel at the Northeast Modern Language Association conference (Pittsburgh, PA, March 5-8, 2026) investigates the key concepts behind a “faithful translation”: what are the obligations of the translator to the source text, and what is the relationship between the original and the translation?
Select Wittliff resources: Cormac McCarthy Papers | Sandra Cisneros Papers
Lyrics as Literature: Scholarly Perspectives on Song Lyric Craft
Book chapter | Submission deadline: October 1, 2025
The song lyric occupies little space in academia, where it is less studied, less appreciated, and perceived as less-than other kinds of writing. Despite music’s ubiquitous cultural presence, the song lyric—as creative work—suffers from what renown songwriter Jimmy Webb calls a “status problem”: songwriters do not enjoy the same standing as writers of other kinds of traditionally studied literature. The most common way that song lyrics have earned scholarly attention is by conflating the form with the poem. Goldstein’s (1969) The Poetry of Rock is one of the first books to attend to lyrics as poetry.
Select Wittliff resources: Willie Nelson Papers | Jerry Jeff Walker Papers | Teri Hendrix Papers | James McMurtry Papers | Charlie Robison Papers | Marcia Ball Papers
Youth Writers and Their Worlds – International Conference on Literary Juvenilia
Conference paper | November 1, 2025
Youth Writers and Their Worlds, (Valparaiso, April 16–18, 2026) calls on scholars to explore the various ways young people have imagined, questioned, and shaped their worlds through writing. We welcome papers that engage with youth-authored texts—published or private, written or visual—and encourage approaches that foreground the material, cultural, and imaginative contexts of juvenile literary and cultural production.
Select Wittliff resources: Sandra Cisneros Papers | Rick Riordan Papers | Naomi Shihab Nye Papers
Poetry Off the Page: International Advances in Poetry Performance Research
Digital collection | Submission deadline: November 21, 2025
Poetry Off the Page: International Advances in Poetry Performance Research is an open access peer-reviewed digital collection featuring new work in poetry performance research from around the globe. It attends to diverse aspects, geographies, and constituents of contemporary poetry performance cultures and the flows between them, and showcases a range of approaches to spoken poetry.
Select Wittliff resources: Sandra Cisneros Papers | Naomi Shihab Nye Papers
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