Calls for Applications, Papers, and Submissions

 

Calls for Papers

Critical Health: Feminist Perspectives on Health and Well-Being in the Nineteenth-Century United States

Paris, France, October 17-18, 2025

Conference Organizers: Dr. Alice de Galzain (Sorbonne Université) and Dr. habil. Johanna Pitetti-Heil (Universität zu Köln)

In a letter addressed to Ralph Waldo Emerson written in October 1843, Margaret Fuller invited his wife, Lydia (Lidian) Jackson Emerson, to take part in her Boston conversations for women, which she had previously attended: “Will not Lidian come to our Conversations this Winter if I get a class [on] the subject Health.” Health precarity was a central issue for women in the nineteenth century, and Transcendentalist women writers, who suffered daily from health oppression despite the relative and varying levels of privilege they enjoyed, sought to resist it through activist and pedagogical enterprises. 

In the nineteenth-century United States, health care and treatment of illnesses were often not available due to reasons of racialization, scientific racism, enslavement, economic precarity, and gendered and racialized assumptions about health and the experience of pain. During this period, explorations and discussions of health included alternative approaches and ancestral and syncretic practices, advocating for structural changes, and a general rethinking of the relationship of nature and the body to the soul and the spiritual world. Critical thinking about matters of health in the nineteenth century often coincided with discussions on women’s rights, and it lends itself to inquiries from feminist and intersectional perspectives today. 

We invite contributions that discuss matters of agency, resistance, empowerment, and emancipation in respect to health and healing in the nineteenth century. We also welcome reflections on the connections that can be drawn across the Atlantic—including both connections that were actively engaged in (via travel or correspondence) and nineteenth-century practices in the Atlantic world in general that address the relationship between the spiritual and the material. Additionally, we encourage contributions on the links between health and literature in relation to academic work, as well as presentations pertaining to feminist/health pedagogical practices.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Transcendentalism, spiritualism, and health
  • Transcendentalist debates around self-culture and self-care
  • Body and soul in medical debates of the nineteenth century
  • Midwifery and gynecology
  • Abolitionism and health
  • Practices of healing in the U.S. American South during slavery including herbalism, hoodoo, voodoo/voudou
  • Indigenous practices of healing
  • Socialism and health
  • Vegetarianism and health
  • Mesmerism / animal magnetism, hypnotism
  • Inquiries into the non-conscious and somnambulism
  • Disability in nineteenth-century women’s writing
  • Feminist phenomenology applied to nineteenth-century discourses around the body, soul, and health
  • Mental and physical health in relation to academic life and pedagogical practices

Please send paper proposals (350 words) and panel proposals (350 words per paper plus a short framing statement) as well as a short bio containing your affiliation (if any) and contact details to Johanna Pitetti-Heil and Alice de Galzain at [email protected] by 10 February 2025

The conference will be held at Sorbonne Université. Funding options will be available to support travel and accommodation costs, please get in touch to discuss this with us by e-mail at [email protected] once proposals have been accepted. For those who may not wish to travel, hybrid participation will also be an option.

Attendance fees: 75 EUR for all university staff and professional attendees, free for students and early career researchers.

Further information will be available here: www.criticalhealthconference.wordpress.com


IDENTITY AND POETICS OF UKRAINIAN CANADIAN LITERATURE

March 14, 2025

The University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada

We invite scholars, writers, and literary enthusiasts to submit proposals for the international conference IDENTITY AND POETICS OF UKRAINIAN CANADIAN LITERATURE.

Ukrainian Canadian literature occupies a unique space in the broader context of Canadian multiculturalism and diaspora studies. It is shaped by the historical and cultural experiences of Ukrainian immigrants and their descendants. Despite the substantial amount of fiction written and published in English by Canadian-born Ukrainians featuring authors such as Myrna Kostash, Janice Kulyk Keefer, Lisa Grecul, Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch, Maurice Mierau, Laisha Rosnau, Randall Maggs, Laura Langston, Daria Salamon, Lindy Ledohowski, Elizabeth Bachinsky, Erin Moure, Barbara Sapergia, Thomas Trofimuk, and many others Ukrainian Canadian literature remains largely invisible in university curricula, academic programs, and research. We hope that this conference will draw active attention to Ukrainian Canadian literature, highlighting its rich topicality, diverse genre, and poetic forms that not only preserve cultural heritage but also enrich Canadian literary tradition as a whole.

 Possible Topics for Submission Include (but are not limited to):

  • · Memory and nostalgia in Ukrainian Canadian literature
  • · The Ukrainian Canadian identity in contemporary fiction and poetry
  • · Diaspora and transnationalism: Ukrainian Canadian literature in a global context
  • · Intersections of language, culture, and identity in Ukrainian Canadian writing
  • · Representation of historical events and collective memory in Ukrainian Canadian literature
  • · The impact of migration and settlement on literary expression
  • · Gender and feminist perspectives in Ukrainian Canadian literary works
  • · The Ukrainian folklore and mythology in Canadian literary contexts
  • · Comparative studies of Ukrainian Canadian literature and other ethnic literatures in Canada
  • · The role of Ukrainian Canadian literature in cultural preservation and resistance to assimilation
  • · The contribution of Ukrainian Canadian writers to Canadian multiculturalism
  • · Religious and spiritual themes in Ukrainian Canadian literature
  • · Ukrainian Canadian literary responses to political and social changes in Ukraine and Canada

We welcome proposals for papers, panel discussions, and roundtables. Submissions should include a title, an abstract (250-300 words), a brief bio (100 words), and contact information.

Submission Guidelines:

Please submit your proposals by February 15, 2025, to Prof. Mariya Shymchyshyn ([email protected]) or https://forms.office.com/r/QSrNq3xMQ3.

Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by March 1, 2025.

This conference will offer a hybrid format, allowing participants to join either in person at the University of Manitoba or virtually.


ASLE 2025 Biennial Conference

Collective Atmospheres: Air, Intimacy, and Inequality

July 8-11, 2025
University of Maryland, College Park,
ancestral lands of the Piscataway People

https://www.asle.org/conference/biennial-conference/

Call for Proposals

Reflecting on the use of tear gas and other chemical weapons during the 2016 Standing Rock protests, Paiute scholar Kristen Simmons notes that “[t]he conditions we breathe in are collective and unequally distributed. … The atmosphere is increasingly a sphere to be weaponized.” A few years later, this weaponization became clear as the unequally-experienced COVID-19 respiratory pandemic overlapped with protests over the chokehold murder of George Floyd at the hands of police—giving heartbreaking new relevance to the Black Lives Matter rallying cry, “I can’t breathe.” Meanwhile, deforestation and air pollution are again on the rise. The Amazon rainforest, for instance—dubbed the “lungs of the world” due to its ability to absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen—has come under intensified threats. Wildfires stoked by climate change fill the air with toxic smoke. And new research finds that unhoused people are disproportionately exposed to air pollution. Breath and air, as has become palpably obvious, are phenomena necessary for life, yet often overlooked and not equally available to all. As historian Achille Mbembe states, what humanity currently faces is “a matter of no less than reconstructing a habitable earth to give all of us the breath of life.” 

Fittingly, in our fields of ecocriticism, ecomedia studies, and environmental humanities, we find a nascent wave of work attending to the idea that air/atmospheres are at once specific to our individual bodies, unequally experienced, and shared by all biotic life across time and space. This work contributes to an emerging “respiratory humanities” and “atmospheric humanities” —the latter of which, as the International Commission on Science and Literature and the International Commission on History of Meteorology recently declared in a joint call for papers, considers “the atmosphere’s agency as it becomes manifest as a medium, life-giver, carrier, nutrient source, threat and a concern in modern life, politics, and art.” Meanwhile, the prominent subfield of affect studies engages with more figurative conceptions of “atmosphere,” including mood and ambience. In sum, atmospheres become increasingly visible as sites of contestations and convergences where the intimacy of breath is bound up with wide-ranging environmental and cultural crises. 

Of course, atmospheric thinking has a very long history. The idea of "bad air" as a disease vector is an ancient one, and it persisted into the 19th century in the miasma theory of disease transmission. In the 1800s, polymath Charles Babbage wrote of the air as a “one vast library” that serves as a repository of human and more-than-human history. Scientists Simon L. Lewis and Mark A. Maslin recently concurred, suggesting with their “Orbis Hypothesis” that the European colonization of the Americas left an atmospheric trace. And since the late 1970s, the ozone layer and greenhouse gasses have been major topics of scientific as well as public concern.

We seek papers, creative works, and other forms of inquiry that engage with these concerns, broadly construed. Possible topics include but are not limited to: 

  • “Settler atmospherics” (Simmons) and Indigenous activism 
  • Climate and/as history; histories of weather 
  • Sensing air pollution; citizen science around air pollution
  • The emergence and role of the “respiratory humanities” or “atmospheric humanities” 
  • Relationship of the above to the “blue humanities,” “green ecocriticism,” and/or “energy humanities”; waves of ecocriticism
  • Aesthetics of visibility/invisibility and air 
  • Representing air inequality in haptic, olfactory, or other non-visual media
  • Unhoused populations and air inequality  
  • Environmental racism and air inequality  
  • Wildfires and smoke; prescribed burns and Indigenous fire knowledge as alternative technologies
  • Respiratory pandemics and the media
  • Rhetoric of anti-AAPI hate during COVID-19
  • Masking and dis/ability rhetoric; long COVID and “crip time” (Alison Kafer)
  • Air purification technology and the commodification of air (see Yangdon Li)
  • “Atmospheric rivers,” flooding, and representation  
  • Representations of atmospheric layers (troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere, exosphere) 
  • Air travel and alternatives 
  • Space environmentalism: space debris, cosmic dust, extraterrestrial exploration
  • Airwaves, radio waves, soundwaves—from podcasts to birdsong
  • Affect studies and intangible/figurative atmospheres

We also welcome work that engages in other ways with the larger concerns outlined above—including climate change, environmental health and justice, settler colonialism—and/or with the vision and mission of ASLE, which seeks to inspire and promote intellectual work in the environmental humanities and arts. Our vision is an inclusive community whose members are committed to environmental research, education, literature, and art, as well as service, environmental justice, and ecological sustainability. See more here: https://www.asle.org/discover-asle/vision-history/.

Confirmed keynote speakers include: 

  • Hsuan Hsu, author of The Smell of Risk: Atmospheric Disparities and the Olfactory Arts, and Air Conditioning
  • Craig Santos Perez, winner of the 2023 National Book Award for poetry
  • JT Roane, author of Dark Agoras: Insurgent Black Social Life and the Politics of Place in Philadelphia, and co-leader of the Black Ecologies Lab at Rutgers
  • Kaia Sand, poet, activist, and Executive Director of Street Roots (Portland, OR)

Calls for Chapters

Unsettling the Heartland: Black Americans and the Making of the Midwest

Edited by: Dr. Sara Gallagher, PhD

Description: The Midwest has long been a pivotal yet underexplored region in the history and cultural expression of Black Americans. From Black homesteading communities that shaped the rural landscape to the literary voices that captured the complexities of migration, labor, and identity, the Midwest holds a unique place in the Black American experience. This edited volume seeks to explore the intersection of history and literature, focusing on Black homesteading, migration, and cultural production in the Midwest. We invite scholars, historians, and literary critics to contribute original essays that examine the Black Midwest through historical, cultural, and literary lenses. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Black Homesteading and Rurality: The role of Black farmers and settlers in building self-sufficient communities in the Midwest, including case studies of all-Black towns and agricultural practices.
  • Migration and Urbanization: How the Great Migration reshaped Black Midwestern communities and how literature reflects these transitions.
  • Black Women’s Voices: The contributions of Black Midwestern women in literature, journalism, and activism, from the 19th century to the present.
  • Popular Culture and the Black Midwest: The influence of Black Midwestern culture on music, film, and other forms of artistic expression.
  • Regional Identity in Black Literature: How authors such as Toni Morrison, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Colson Whitehead depict the Midwest in their works.
  • Canadian Connections: The history and cultural contributions of Black settlers in the Canadian Prairies.
  • Contemporary Reclamations of the Black Midwest: Modern literature, activism, and cultural movements that revisit or reinterpret Black Midwestern history.

Key Questions: This collection seeks to answer a range of questions, including but not limited to:

  • How did Black homesteaders shape the economic and cultural landscapes of the Midwest?
  • What role did the Great Migration play in the cultural and historical representation of Black Midwestern identity?
  • How have Black Midwestern women contributed to cultural and historical narratives?
  • In what ways does popular culture reflect or distort the realities of Black life in the Midwest?
  • How do contemporary writers and activists engage with the legacy of Black settlement and migration in the region?
  • What connections can be drawn between historical Black Midwestern communities and present-day social and political movements?

Target Audience: This collection is intended for scholars, researchers, and students in the fields of African American Studies, American History, Literary Studies, Cultural Studies, and Midwest Studies. It will also be valuable to educators, writers, and general readers interested in Black history and literature.

Chapter Submissions: We seek well-researched and original chapters between 6,000 and 8,000 words. Submissions should be grounded in historical and/or literary analysis and should align with the themes outlined above.

Details for Abstract Submissions: Interested contributors should submit a 300–500-word abstract outlining their proposed chapter, along with a brief biography (150 words), by April 27, 2025.

Important Dates:

  • Abstract Submission Deadline: April 27, 2025
  • Full Chapter Submission Deadline: August 10, 2025
  • Final Revisions Due: September 29, 2025
  • Tentative Publication Date: Spring 2026

Editor information/Biography: Dr. Sara Gallagher is a scholar and professor at Durham College in Canada, specializing in the Black American West and Western Studies broadly. She earned her PhD from the University of Waterloo in 2022. Her research focuses on Black literature and cultural production in the Midwest and West. She is the author of Black Wests: Reshaping Race and Place in Popular Culture (forthcoming from OU Press in Spring 2025) and has published widely on Black Western narratives in literature and film.

Contact/For all inquiries please email: [email protected]


Calls for Applications

The Newberry Library, Chicago

The Newberry Library's long-standing fellowship program provides outstanding scholars with the time, space, and community required to pursue innovative and ground-breaking scholarship. In addition to the Library's collections, fellows are supported by a collegial interdisciplinary community of researchers, curators, and librarians. An array of scholarly and public programs also contributes to an engaging intellectual environment.

Short-Term Fellowships are available to scholars who hold a PhD, PhD candidates, and those who hold other terminal degrees. Short-Term Fellowships are generally awarded for 1 to 2 months; unless otherwise noted the stipend is $3,000 per month. These fellowships support individual scholarly research for those who have a specific need for the Newberry's collection and are mainly restricted to individuals who live and work outside of the Chicago metropolitan area. The deadline for short-term opportunities is January 3rd.

Long-Term Fellowships are available to scholars who hold a PhD or other terminal degree for continuous residence at the Newberry for periods of 4 to 9 months; the stipend is $5,000 per month. Applicants must hold a PhD or equivalent degree by the application deadline in order to be eligible. Long-Term Fellowships are intended to support individual scholarly research and promote serious intellectual exchange through active participation in the fellowship program. The deadline for long-term fellowships is November 1.

Many of the Newberry's fellowship opportunities have specific eligibility requirements; for those details, as well as application guidelines, please visit their website.