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

Science and Sensibility: Method Meets Art
Conference | Submission deadline: August 31, 2025

This transdisciplinary conference at the Association of Jungian Analysts Centre, London (hybrid and online October 11 and 12, 2025) seeks to deconstruct the common divide between two seemingly distinct disciplines of art and science, building bridges instead of boundaries, and showing the importance of creatively contemplating, cherishing, and preserving the beauty of what we learn and experience. It aims to bring together scholars, creatives, and other arts-based researchers from different disciplines working on topics related to transdisciplinarity, with a focus on the bridging of science with the arts.

Select Wittliff resources: Cormac McCathy Papers (The Passenger and Stella Maris)

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
Monograph | 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

What is Research? Religious Studies Methods and Theory
Conference | Submission deadline: September 15, 2025

This conference panel at The University of Oregon, Portland (April 23-25, 2026) is meant to discuss the variety of methodological and theoretical issues present today in the field of religious studies, anthropology or religion, history of religion, and other related fields (hereafter "religious studies"). This panel is meant to pull from a wide range of areas of research both in subject matter and in geographical location. Theoretical approaches to the categories of "religion," "sect," "cult," "spirituality," and other pertinent labels will be discussed. This panel may also seek to determine the reflexive impact of studying religion both on the practitioners studied and the wider society in which they live.

Select Wittliff resources: Dick Reavis Papers (Branch Davidians)

“The Colours of Pride: Queer Identities in Literature and Culture”
Panel (virtual option) | Submission deadline: September 15, 2025

The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the World (MELOW) mini conference (November 22-23, 2025, virtual and at Dibrugarh University) invites papers on areas that include (but are not restricted to) the following: Queer theory and literary criticism; Intersectionality: Queerness and caste, class, region, religion, race, disability; Shifting representations of queer identities in literature, film, theatre, and other cultural texts; Queer autobiographies, memoirs, and life-writing; Indigenous, regional, and non-Western perspectives on gender and sexuality; Censorship, silence, and the politics of queer visibility; Translations and the language of queerness; Queer spaces: urban/rural, digital/real, imagined/embodied; Teaching queer texts: pedagogy, resistance, and acceptance.

Select Wittliff resources: The John Rechy Papers

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

American Poetry
Paper | Submission deadline: October 1, 2025

The Society for the Study of American Poetry invites proposals for its annual symposium (Salem, MA, March 2-28, 2026). Proposals for individual papers, complete panels, and roundtable discussions on any aspect of American poetry and poetics are welcome. Proposals may focus on individual poets and their works, or on any of the movements, schools, genres, or traditions that constitute the varied and diverse history of poetry in the United States.

Select Wittliff resources: Sandra Cisneros Papers | Naomi Shihab Nye 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

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

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.