Publishing and Presenting Opportunities

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.

Active Calls for Papers

Full project descriptions are available by clicking on the links

The Cormac McCarthy Journal
Articles | Submission deadline: open

The Cormac McCarthy Journal welcomes article-length manuscripts, no longer than 9,000 words, on themes and issues pertinent to the writings and literary environment of Cormac McCarthy.

Select Wittliff resources: Cormac McCarthy Papers (plus many ancillary collections)

American Gothic Studies Journal
Articles | Submission deadline: open

The Society for the Study of the American Gothic (SSAG) was established in 2023 to promote and advance the study of the American Gothic through research, teaching, and publication. It is the goal of the Society to strengthen relations among persons and institutions both in the United States and internationally who are undertaking such studies, and to broaden knowledge among the general public about the American Gothic in its many forms.

Select Wittliff resources: Joe Lansdale Papers | Cormac McCarthy Papers

The Future is Past: Rethinking Dystopia in Contemporary Film and Literature
Paper | Submission deadline: October 2, 2025

For the its annual meeting (Montréal, February 2-March 1, 2026) the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) is interested in papers for the panel: The Future is Past: Rethinking Dystopia in Contemporary Film and Literature that explore: What does recent dystopic fiction and cinema tell us about our existence today and in the near future? If dystopia does not work as a warning but functions merely as a mourning, what is its new telos? What is represented in this new bad space, and what is silenced or excluded?

Select Wittliff resources: Cormac McCarthy Papers (The Road)

Uses and Abuses of History in Literary Narratives
Panel | Submission deadline: October 2, 2025

This American Comparative Literature (ACLA) panel (February 26-March 1, 2026, Montreal) is interested in papers viewing historical narratives as what Hayden White has called “verbal fictions”. It is also interested in suspending the theoretical knot predominant in well-rehearsed debates on the relationship between history and literature by inviting reflections on how history itself becomes a narrative object. Some of the questions that we ask are: How do writers construct history within literary texts? What kind of tropes do they deploy when representing narratives of the past? What pressures do the conditions of postcoloniality put on the writing of history? How do those pressures manifest at the level of narrative form and aesthetics? What are some narrative objects through which history is mediated in a text (such as museums, monuments, archaeological ruins, ghosts, maps, radios, or photographs)?

Select Wittliff resources: Cormac McCarthy Papers | Celeste Bedford Walker Papers | Stephen Harrigan Papers | Elizabeth Crook Papers

Psychoanalyzing the Post-Apocalypse
Book Chapter | Submission deadline: October 15, 2025

Psychoanalyzing the Post-Apocalypse: Psychoanalytic Approaches to 21st Century Fiction and Film will apply psychoanalytic theory to a range of post-apocalyptic narratives, examining themes of survival, trauma, identity, desire, repression, and the unconscious as they manifest in worlds marked by environmental, societal, or technological collapse. Scholars are encouraged to explore these topics through the lenses of Freudian, Jungian, Lacanian, and contemporary psychoanalytic frameworks. Interdisciplinary approaches are welcome, especially those incorporating critical theory, film studies, literary studies, and cultural studies.

Select Wittliff resources: Cormac McCarthy Papers (The Road)

Fashion, Style, Identity & Popular Culture
Paper | Submission deadline: October 31, 2025

Fashion, Style, Identity & Popular Culture as a content area is specifically dedicated to the area of fashion scholarship as it interfaces with popular culture. This area of the Southwest Popular / American Culture Association (SWPACA) conference ( Albuquerque, February 25-28 2026) offers an interdisciplinary environment for scholars from a range of disciplines including communication studies, fashion, textiles, photography, performance art, art history, sociology, human geography, anthropology, political science, environment studies, and business to present innovative scholarship in all aspects of fashion and popular culture relating to design, textiles, production, promotion, consumption and appearance-related products and services.

Select Wittliff resources: Ramón Hernández Tejano Music Collection (Selena)

Youth Writers and Their Worlds – International Conference on Literary Juvenilia
Conference | Submission deadline: 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

Music and Mind
Book chapter | Submission deadline: December 31, 2025

Music affects the mind in ways that have long fascinated philosophers. This philosophical interest in music's affective qualities stretches from ancient Greece and the Cult of Asclepius, to the enlightenment ethics of Spinoza, to the modern thought of Schopenhauer. As a non-representational art form, music resists the kind of semiological and mimetic analysis in which scholars and audiences typically approach the plastic arts and literature. Instead, music seems to affect people in ways that are predominantly visceral and emotional, not analytical. Music's affective properties make it an especially interesting medium to explore human consciousness and experience. A call for chapters along the lines of Music and Mind may be approached interdisciplinarily.

Select Wittliff resources: Daniel Johnston Collection

Captivating Criminality 13: Crime Fiction, Conflict, and Representation
Conference | Submission deadline: January 15, 2026

Papers presented at Captivating Criminality 13 are invited to examine any forms of conflict and representation and their relation to crime fiction in any form and in any medium, drawing on the multiple threads that have fed into the genre since its inception in all parts of the world. Speakers are invited to explore the crossing of forms and themes within crime fiction to discuss how crime fiction challenges, discusses, or upholds concepts of normalcy that underlie representation and conflict(s). The aim of this conference is to show crime fiction’s engagement with conflict and representation in its multifacetedness, ranging from the domestic and personal (e.g. in domestic noir) to the international and global political (e.g. in eco thrillers or crimate fiction). Papers may deal with both or either concept and are not limited by media, time, or place, or scholarly approach; all scholarship on crime fiction is welcome.

Select Wittliff resources: James Crumley Papers | Jesse Sublett Papers | Rick Riordan Papers (Tres Navarre)

“Living in a Material World”: The 1980s in Popular Culture
Symposium | Submission deadline: July 31, 2026

PopCRN (the Popular Culture Network) will be holding a free virtual symposium exploring the 1980s in popular culture to be held 26-27 November 2026. The 1980s was the decade of excess, technological innovation, and political upheaval. This conference aims to explore both the popular culture of the 1980s and how the 1980s have been depicted in the popular culture of other eras. We welcome papers from researchers across the academic spectrum and encourage submissions from postgraduate and early career researchers. We also welcome submissions for papers, panels and round tables. Papers from this conference will have the opportunity to be published in an edited book.