Call for Papers

Antenna: Journal in Arts, Humanities and Health

Care
 
In infancy we depend on the care of others to survive, while growing into adulthood is correlated with needing care less and less and learning more and more to care for others and our world. However, in societies where dependence on care has been pathologized, perhaps we fear that needing care diminishes us, not recognizing care as part of the human condition, as noted by the authors of The Care Manifesto (2020). This disregard for the need of care is a concern reflected by Atul Gawande, when he asks “If Independence is what we live for, what do we do when it can no longer be sustained?” (Being Mortal, 2015). Moreover, “if care activates our responsibility for the other and in its antithesis lies indifference, abandonment, or neglect,” as argued by José Tolentino de Mendonça (“Cuidar da vida frágil”, 2021), what do we do when faced with the need for care, both our own and that of others?
 
Bearing in mind the World Health Organization’s definition of health as biopsychosocial well-being, and the interdependence between human health and environmental health, Antenna vol. 2 seeks original reflections and artistic expressions, in English or Portuguese, on the experience of caregiving, and of being cared for in the context of health or illness. We want to explore questions such as: Who and what deserves our care? How do we decide between responsibility and indifference? On what and whom do we depend? Is there fear, shame, trust in (inter)dependence? What does caring imply or being cared for? What does it take to respond to the vulnerability of others, to the fragility of the world, and to expose and acknowledge our own vulnerability? What practices and languages facilitate care? What is the role of relationships and presence in care? Does there always have to be asymmetry between the caregiver and the one being cared for or is it possible to have reciprocity? How do we care, individually and collectively, in childhood, throughout life, and at the end of life?
 
Antenna no. 2 (2027)
 
Submissions – 8 July 2026
Publication – Spring 2027
Publication – annual
Submission guidelines – https://antenna.letras.ulisboa.pt/en/submissoes/
 
Contact: antenna@letras.ulisboa.pt
 
 

International Conference
American Shorts

Wrant Good, “American Shorts” (2023), [AI-generated on Bing, short prompt by B. Palmeirim]

An international conference of the Society for the Study of the American Short Story @ University of Lisbon, Portugal, October 29-31, 2026

“I don’t write long forms because I’m not interested in artificial deceleration. As soon as I see the glimmer of a consequence, I pull the trigger.” (Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments. 2017)

“The phonograph presented its own technological constraints to which composers likewise had to adapt. Thus when Stravinsky wrote his Serenade in A for piano (1925), he made sure that each movement fit the three-minute maximum of a disc turning at the then-standard rate of 78 revolutions per minute, just as rock bands in the 1950s and 1960s would tailor their songs to the length of the 45-rpm single and today’s pop stars keep in mind the 10- to 30-second duration of successful ringtones.” (Joseph Auner, Music in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. 2013)

“What is the sound of one hand clapping?” (Zen koan)

The contemporary American short story lives in a context where ‘short’ has tended towards the increasingly economic. Alongside a renewed interest in flash fiction, the 21st century has witnessed an explosion in literary terse forms extending within the web of the digital age, such as twitterature and nano-fiction. Beyond the written form, YouTube launched its “Shorts” in response to the success of TikTok, and the New York Times its “NYT Shorts” series. In our new attention economy, brief forms thrive.

This trend towards pithiness may be symptomatic of a fast-paced technological era, where our attention spans and the contents designed to match are compressed by busier times and competing space. And yet, aphorisms, fables, philosophical fragments, haikus, riddles, jokes and an assortment of other textual short forms predate the digital by centuries. How different were these from our contemporary correlatives? Do they mark historical differences; what is the nature of those? Can a compact narrative do things a longer one cannot, i.e. what are their affordances (C. Levine)? Do we necessarily read brief forms faster? What are the specific conditions, effects and affects promoted by reading such forms? Do they require and/or activate specific uses of attention? Under what conditions does ‘short’ mean ‘simple’ (Jolles) versus ‘fragment’ (Adorno; Barthes)?

More concisely, how has US brief fiction integrated and contended with, reacted to and against different forms of condensed narrative? Open to traditional approaches and close readings, the “American Shorts” symposium will also strive to rethink the specificities of American brief fiction within the broader theoretical, material and historical contexts of ‘short forms’, a term which has garnered increasing interest from academics. This conference will also welcome affiliated societies that have been working on similar interests (the European Network for Short Fiction Research and the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnerships Short Forms Beyond Borders project; the Centre for Attention Studies (a collaboration between UEdinburgh & King’s College London)) and others willing to join from around the globe. We are eager to discuss, in a setting amiable to researchers, independent scholars, students and professionals, how the American short story has been morphing, or can be revisited, through the burgeoning umbrella term of the ‘short form’.

Confirmed Keynote: Dr. Michael Collins (King’s College, London), Chair of the British Association for American Studies, co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story (2023).

We (non-exclusively) accept perspectives on:

Broadly understood:

  • Critical new readings on American short stories and flash fiction
  • The American short story in its relation to other compact forms (e.g. micro-essays, anecdotes, maxims, song lyrics, poems, aphorisms, spoken word music, jokes, video clips in social media and digital platforms, fragments, video games, graphic adaptations, comics, riddles, multimedia, etc.)

More specific relations (always on American short narrative):

  • Historical comparisons between past and recent American short stories and short forms
  • New voices and incursions in American short forms
    • Hybrid forms (e.g. spoken-word songs), liminal forms
  • Emerging short story authors
  • Experimental and conceptual art
  • Attention studies
    • attention to short forms; short forms in the attention economy; theories of attention, interest, curiosity, fascination applied to short forms
  • Reception/Reader Response
    • Theories of reading (postcritique, close reading, surface reading, distance reading)
  • (Neo-)Formalist approaches to short forms (from Jolles to Caroline Levine)
  • New aesthetic categories (Sianne Ngai)
  • Praxeological approaches (Florian Fuchs)
  • The digital age and its impact on the short story/form:
    • post-literature
    • plagiarism
    • digital publishing
    • digital capitalism
    • social media
    • fandoms
    • generative AI
    • video game narratives
  • Medial spaces between fictional/biographic/historical/memoir
  • Genres
  • Materiality of short forms
  • Translatability and multilinguism of short forms
  • Time and space in short-form narratives
    • Volatility and portability
    • Spatial circulation, publication, transmissibility, dissemination
  • Anthologizing and editing short forms
  • Adaptation
  • Seriality; short story cycles
  • Erasure, absence and silence as negative forms of compression
  • Rhetorical effects and stylistics of brevity
  • Political uses of short forms
  • Narrative short forms in religion
  • Short forms in medical humanities and narrative medicine
  • Mobility, hyphenation, hybridization
  • Affect studies
  • Gender studies
  • Ethnic studies
  • Class studies
  • Labor studies

We welcome proposals for individual submissions or thematically aligned panels of speakers (20-minute presentations).

Abstracts (max. 250 words) and brief biographical note (max. 150 words) should be submitted by no later than 10 June 2026. We will respond to applications by the end of 10 July 2026. Submissions must be made via the designated platform on the website.

Please consult the conference website for submissions, payment, and other instructions. The website will be updated as we approach the conference date.

Conference director: Bernardo Palmeirim: americanshorts2026@gmail.com

Project DECONSTRUCT: Video Contest

The Portuguese team of the DECONSTRUCT project is organising a video competition for students in Portugal in grades 8 to 12.

Videos must be between 1 and 3 minutes in length and submitted via the USC Shoah Foundation’s IWitness platform, within an activity created specifically for this purpose. The activity includes several questions and supporting videos designed to help students understand the concepts of historical distortion and Holocaust distortion.

Teachers may accompany their students and complete the activities together. However, it is also possible simply to disseminate the call, allowing students to explore the activity independently. Submission of the video is mandatory to apply for the competition, but responding to the activity questions is optional.

The videos will be evaluated by an independent jury, composed of secondary and higher education teachers. Only the top three entries will receive prizes and be publicly announced:

1st prize: FNAC gift voucher of €100
2nd prize: FNAC gift voucher of €50
3rd prize: FNAC gift voucher of €25

Student registration deadline: 27 February 2026

Registration form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfx9t7pnrZKrUMe1Z02K2XO12XsxI6afbnKg2ZMVt6ArSBYXg/viewform (includes the parental consent declaration and the mandatory field for submission of the authorisation form in the case of underage participants)

Video submission deadline: 15 March 2026
For further information, please visit our website: https://deconstruct.letras.ulisboa.pt/pt/concurso-de-video-protege-os-factos/

Download the contest notice here.

CFP | International Symposium American Studies Over_Seas: Independent Beat Waves

School of Arts and Humanities,
University of Lisbon,
May 18-19, 2025

Independent Beat Waves wishes to highlight the connections between the poetical and the political on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the independence of the United States and the 100th anniversary of Allen Ginsberg, one of the most prophetic voices of the Beat Generation. Organized by the American Studies Over_Seas project at ULICES (University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies), this event will not only reflect on territorial independence in tandem with literary independence, but also on forms of politics and poetics that extend beyond (familiar) shores, Portugal included. It also wishes to discuss “independence” as a possible concern, and as such, consider human and other-than-human interdependence as it relates to the epithet “land of the free”.

Independent Beat Waves, a two-day symposium which is to take place on May 18-19, 2026, will feature Anne Waldman, renowned Beat poet, eco-artist, and the director of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, who will perform her poetry and discuss alternate visions of the university and of the universe itself. The program includes paper presentations, roundtable discussions, and community-oriented activities, such as film screenings, music, and poetry performances. We welcome proposals on the following topics (illustrative but not exclusive):

• The Beats and political poetry from Whitman to today;
• 1776 in American and transnational poetics and/or rhetoric;
• Transatlantic dialogues between the Beats and Lusophone poetry;
• Fluid poetics beyond national borders;
• Eco-poetics in Ginsberg, Waldman, Snyder, and other modern voices;
• “Land of the free” and critiques of empire in literary, artistic, and cultural expressions;
• The Beats, diversity and inclusion;
• Multiple universes, cosmopolitanism, and university models;
• Political independence and poetics of in(ter)dependence;
• Countercultural continuities and debates.

We invite you to send us your abstract proposal for this symposium by March 30, 2026 to: margaridagato@campus.ul.pt and emsilva@iscsp.ulisboa.pt

Scientific and Organizing Committee: Camila Querino, Diana V. Almeida, Edgardo A. Medeiros da Silva, Isabel Alves, João Miguel Palaio, José Duarte, Margarida Vale de Gato, Nuno Marques.

For more information please click here.

CFP | RHOME 2026: Sanctuaries and Displacements – Negotiating Home, Refuge and Belonging

The RHOME research project (Representations of Home in Literatures and Cultures in English) is pleased to announce the international conference RHOME 2026, which will take place at the School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon, on 25–26 June 2026. Under the theme Sanctuaries and Displacements: Negotiating Home, Refuge and Belonging, the conference invites scholars, writers and artists to examine how conceptions of home intersect with displacement, sanctuary and belonging across contemporary English-language literatures and cultures. Building on RHOME’s decade-long investigation into home and identity, this edition seeks to foster critical and creative dialogues on the ways in which home is imagined, remembered and contested across diverse contexts.

Extended deadline for Abstract submission until 15 January 2025. For further details, please see the Call for Papers here.

CFP | It’s in their Blood: Television Series and the Representation of Violence in the 21st Century

International conference hosted by Metropolitan University in Prague and
School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon/ULICES
6-7 March, 2026 Online

 

This online conference will focus on the representation of violence in contemporary audiovisual production, specifically in television series. The 21st century is marked by profound transformations in social relations, in human interactions with an increasingly precarious environment, and in the nature of politically motivated violence – from macropolitical conflicts to micropolitical forms of resistance. These convergent shifts demand new analytical frameworks and interdisciplinary approaches.

Contemporary television offers a privileged lens through which to analyze these sociocultural transformations. After all, isn’t the purpose of filmmaking to uncover and reveal the repressed and traumatic, to draw attention to the threats, violence, and injustices that are taking place and “knocking on the door”? Essentially, “everything” is at stake, especially the survival of humanity, which must take on different forms than it has until now. Art must shape the micro-politics of resistance and outline visions of the future. Every work offers a diagnosis of contemporary crises, articulating a particular sensitivity to the violence (explicit and structural) that circulates through social life. Our primary focus is on English-speaking series, though other approaches are equally welcome.

Below is a non-exhaustive list of suggested areas for the submission of abstracts:

  • Ecological and environmental violence (Humans, non-humans, landscape, and violence);
  • Feral violence and post-apocalyptic world (post-apocalyptic dystopian environments, the use of technology, and human destruction);
  • Gender-based violence (Representations of gender-based and minority-targeted violence in audiovisual media);
  • Adaptation and Violence (Adaptation of well-known works that explore the idea of violence);
  • Technology, Hybrid Bodies and Violence (The body and digital technologies);
  • Micropolitics and Violence (Resistance against the ideological status quo);
  • New Forms of Violence (Memory, rewriting of the past, forgetting, erasure);
  • Violence and Genre (Westerns, Noir, Gangster, Crime series, among others);
  • Other.

Keynotes: TBA Submission details:

Abstract submission: 31st of December 2025
Notification of acceptance: 16th of January 2026

We welcome proposals for individual submissions, round-table discussions, or thematically aligned panels of speakers, including practice-oriented submissions (15-minute presentations).

Please note that, due to the limited slots available, we will only accept the first 50 proposals, of which we will select roughly half. To submit your proposal, please send a 300-word abstract and a 100-word bio-note by using this link and following the guidelines:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf4xsvJ3V6aJPjIyTJN-quni0NNixd4VzIxlst3S Ag2rB53Rg/viewform?usp=dialog

Any additional inquiries should be made via email to: tvviolenceconf@gmail.com

Conference fee: 60 Euro regular, 40 Euro PhD students

Organizing Committee:

André Francisco (School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon/ULICES)
José Duarte (School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon/ULICES)
Martin Charvát (Metropolitan University in Prague)
Michaela Fikejzová (Metropolitan University in Prague)

Scientific Committee

Ana Rita Martins (School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon/ULICES & U. Aberta)
Anna Marta Marini (Freie Universität Berlin)
Cecilia Beecher Martins (School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon/ULICES)
Dragoş Manea (Bucharest University)
Ljubica Matek (University of Osijek)
Mariana Liz (School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon/CeComp)
Mário Avelar (School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon/ULICES)
Mihaela Preccup (Bucharest University)

CFP: Human, Machine, Empire: Embodied AI and Postcolonial Agency

The 2026 Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association will be held in person at the Palais des congrès de Montréal, February 26 – March 1, 2026. The paper proposal portal is open through October 2 and we invite you to submit a proposal to the Seminar: Human, Machine, Empire: Embodied AI and Postcolonial Agency organised by Ana Cristina Mendes and Margarida Pereira Martins from the University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies.

Human, Machine, Empire: Embodied AI and Postcolonial Agency

In the age of Artificial Intelligence, more accurately, the “age of AI Empire” (Tacheva and Ramasubramanian 2023), machines are no longer defined solely by their ability to process information. They are increasingly imagined as also capable of emotion, bodily awareness and interaction with the natural environment. This seminar examines the representation of embodied AI in literature and digital media focusing on the interrelationships between humans and the more-than-human alongside the growing emphasis on the body as a site of knowledge. Central to our analysis is how the increasing indistinctiveness unfolds within a global context still profoundly shaped by colonial histories and power asymmetries: a context of empire in the longue durée.

Since the late 1990s and early 2000s the concept of “embodied artificial intelligence” (Brooks 1991; Clark 1997; Pfeifer and Scheier 1999) has engaged scholars in the humanities and social sciences especially within critical AI studies, posthumanism, and affect theory (e.g., Haraway 2016; Braidotti 2013, 2019a, 2019b; Hayles 2017). Drawing on that framework, as well as foundational texts such as Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto” (1991), Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation (1981) and Bruno Latour’s Science in Action (1987), we establish a theoretical foundation for examining AI embodiment, agency, and (the end of) the Anthropocene.

Research has demonstrated that the infrastructures of AI are built on racialised data, asymmetrical flows of labour and capital, environmental harm, and the epistemicide of non-western ways of knowing and being (Benjamin 2019; Katz 2020; Madianou 2024; McQuillan 2022; Muldoon and Wu 2023). Anchored in postcolonial critiques of the techno-utopianism that often accompany AI discourse, we consider, e.g., whether embodied AI challenges human exceptionalism or instead reinscribes the dynamics of racial capitalism and colonial governance, and whether machines can participate in affective or ecological relations or remain instruments of techno-colonial control, surveillance, and extractivism.

Our inquiry focuses on how literature and other digital media imagine AI through the lens of coloniality, racial capitalism (Robinson 1983), and epistemic justice (Fricker 2017). By analysing representations in literature and digital media, we examine whether embodied AI generates hyperrealities in which the human body – historically coded through colonial and racialised imaginaries – is rendered obsolete, as virtual agents simulate presence with increasing precision and affective resonance. Or, conversely, whether the persistence of the human form in AI technologies signals an attachment to a universalised, often Western model of subjectivity, one that is still imagined as central to narratives of progress and planetary survival. Either way, the question is political: who is being reproduced, who is being erased, and whose futurity is being encoded into the machine?

To submit a proposal for the seminar: https://www.acla.org/seminar/09ceb2cf-4942-40e1-a505-aece75fd8a5f

For more information on the conference:
ACLA

International Conference
American Shorts

Wrant Good, “American Shorts” (2023), [AI-generated on Bing, short prompt by B. Palmeirim]

An international conference of the Society for the Study of the American Short Story @ University of Lisbon, Portugal, October 29-31, 2026

“I don’t write long forms because I’m not interested in artificial deceleration. As soon as I see the glimmer of a consequence, I pull the trigger.” (Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments. 2017)

“The phonograph presented its own technological constraints to which composers likewise had to adapt. Thus when Stravinsky wrote his Serenade in A for piano (1925), he made sure that each movement fit the three-minute maximum of a disc turning at the then-standard rate of 78 revolutions per minute, just as rock bands in the 1950s and 1960s would tailor their songs to the length of the 45-rpm single and today’s pop stars keep in mind the 10- to 30-second duration of successful ringtones.” (Joseph Auner, Music in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. 2013)

“What is the sound of one hand clapping?” (Zen koan)

The contemporary American short story lives in a context where ‘short’ has tended towards the increasingly economic. Alongside a renewed interest in flash fiction, the 21st century has witnessed an explosion in literary terse forms extending within the web of the digital age, such as twitterature and nano-fiction. Beyond the written form, YouTube launched its “Shorts” in response to the success of TikTok, and the New York Times its “NYT Shorts” series. In our new attention economy, brief forms thrive.

This trend towards pithiness may be symptomatic of a fast-paced technological era, where our attention spans and the contents designed to match are compressed by busier times and competing space. And yet, aphorisms, fables, philosophical fragments, haikus, riddles, jokes and an assortment of other textual short forms predate the digital by centuries. How different were these from our contemporary correlatives? Do they mark historical differences; what is the nature of those? Can a compact narrative do things a longer one cannot, i.e. what are their affordances (C. Levine)? Do we necessarily read brief forms faster? What are the specific conditions, effects and affects promoted by reading such forms? Do they require and/or activate specific uses of attention? Under what conditions does ‘short’ mean ‘simple’ (Jolles) versus ‘fragment’ (Adorno; Barthes)?

More concisely, how has US brief fiction integrated and contended with, reacted to and against different forms of condensed narrative? Open to traditional approaches and close readings, the “American Shorts” symposium will also strive to rethink the specificities of American brief fiction within the broader theoretical, material and historical contexts of ‘short forms’, a term which has garnered increasing interest from academics. This conference will also welcome affiliated societies that have been working on similar interests (the European Network for Short Fiction Research and the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnerships Short Forms Beyond Borders project; the Centre for Attention Studies (a collaboration between UEdinburgh & King’s College London)) and others willing to join from around the globe. We are eager to discuss, in a setting amiable to researchers, independent scholars, students and professionals, how the American short story has been morphing, or can be revisited, through the burgeoning umbrella term of the ‘short form’.

Confirmed Keynote: Dr. Michael Collins (King’s College, London), Chair of the British Association for American Studies, co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story (2023).

We (non-exclusively) accept perspectives on:

Broadly understood:

  • Critical new readings on American short stories and flash fiction
  • The American short story in its relation to other compact forms (e.g. micro-essays, anecdotes, maxims, song lyrics, poems, aphorisms, spoken word music, jokes, video clips in social media and digital platforms, fragments, video games, graphic adaptations, comics, riddles, multimedia, etc.)

More specific relations (always on American short narrative):

  • Historical comparisons between past and recent American short stories and short forms
  • New voices and incursions in American short forms
    • Hybrid forms (e.g. spoken-word songs), liminal forms
  • Emerging short story authors
  • Experimental and conceptual art
  • Attention studies
    • attention to short forms; short forms in the attention economy; theories of attention, interest, curiosity, fascination applied to short forms
  • Reception/Reader Response
    • Theories of reading (postcritique, close reading, surface reading, distance reading)
  • (Neo-)Formalist approaches to short forms (from Jolles to Caroline Levine)
  • New aesthetic categories (Sianne Ngai)
  • Praxeological approaches (Florian Fuchs)
  • The digital age and its impact on the short story/form:
    • post-literature
    • plagiarism
    • digital publishing
    • digital capitalism
    • social media
    • fandoms
    • generative AI
    • video game narratives
  • Medial spaces between fictional/biographic/historical/memoir
  • Genres
  • Materiality of short forms
  • Translatability and multilinguism of short forms
  • Time and space in short-form narratives
    • Volatility and portability
    • Spatial circulation, publication, transmissibility, dissemination
  • Anthologizing and editing short forms
  • Adaptation
  • Seriality; short story cycles
  • Erasure, absence and silence as negative forms of compression
  • Rhetorical effects and stylistics of brevity
  • Political uses of short forms
  • Narrative short forms in religion
  • Short forms in medical humanities and narrative medicine
  • Mobility, hyphenation, hybridization
  • Affect studies
  • Gender studies
  • Ethnic studies
  • Class studies
  • Labor studies

We welcome proposals for individual submissions or thematically aligned panels of speakers (20-minute presentations).

Abstracts (max. 250 words) and brief biographical note (max. 150 words) should be submitted by no later than 10 June 2026. We will respond to applications by the end of 10 July 2026. Submissions must be made via the designated platform on the website.

Please consult the conference website for submissions, payment, and other instructions. The website will be updated as we approach the conference date.

Conference director: Bernardo Palmeirim: americanshorts2026@gmail.com

Project DECONSTRUCT: Video Contest

The Portuguese team of the DECONSTRUCT project is organising a video competition for students in Portugal in grades 8 to 12.

Videos must be between 1 and 3 minutes in length and submitted via the USC Shoah Foundation’s IWitness platform, within an activity created specifically for this purpose. The activity includes several questions and supporting videos designed to help students understand the concepts of historical distortion and Holocaust distortion.

Teachers may accompany their students and complete the activities together. However, it is also possible simply to disseminate the call, allowing students to explore the activity independently. Submission of the video is mandatory to apply for the competition, but responding to the activity questions is optional.

The videos will be evaluated by an independent jury, composed of secondary and higher education teachers. Only the top three entries will receive prizes and be publicly announced:

1st prize: FNAC gift voucher of €100
2nd prize: FNAC gift voucher of €50
3rd prize: FNAC gift voucher of €25

Student registration deadline: 27 February 2026

Registration form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfx9t7pnrZKrUMe1Z02K2XO12XsxI6afbnKg2ZMVt6ArSBYXg/viewform (includes the parental consent declaration and the mandatory field for submission of the authorisation form in the case of underage participants)

Video submission deadline: 15 March 2026
For further information, please visit our website: https://deconstruct.letras.ulisboa.pt/pt/concurso-de-video-protege-os-factos/

Download the contest notice here.

CFP | International Symposium American Studies Over_Seas: Independent Beat Waves

School of Arts and Humanities,
University of Lisbon,
May 18-19, 2025

Independent Beat Waves wishes to highlight the connections between the poetical and the political on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the independence of the United States and the 100th anniversary of Allen Ginsberg, one of the most prophetic voices of the Beat Generation. Organized by the American Studies Over_Seas project at ULICES (University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies), this event will not only reflect on territorial independence in tandem with literary independence, but also on forms of politics and poetics that extend beyond (familiar) shores, Portugal included. It also wishes to discuss “independence” as a possible concern, and as such, consider human and other-than-human interdependence as it relates to the epithet “land of the free”.

Independent Beat Waves, a two-day symposium which is to take place on May 18-19, 2026, will feature Anne Waldman, renowned Beat poet, eco-artist, and the director of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, who will perform her poetry and discuss alternate visions of the university and of the universe itself. The program includes paper presentations, roundtable discussions, and community-oriented activities, such as film screenings, music, and poetry performances. We welcome proposals on the following topics (illustrative but not exclusive):

• The Beats and political poetry from Whitman to today;
• 1776 in American and transnational poetics and/or rhetoric;
• Transatlantic dialogues between the Beats and Lusophone poetry;
• Fluid poetics beyond national borders;
• Eco-poetics in Ginsberg, Waldman, Snyder, and other modern voices;
• “Land of the free” and critiques of empire in literary, artistic, and cultural expressions;
• The Beats, diversity and inclusion;
• Multiple universes, cosmopolitanism, and university models;
• Political independence and poetics of in(ter)dependence;
• Countercultural continuities and debates.

We invite you to send us your abstract proposal for this symposium by March 30, 2026 to: margaridagato@campus.ul.pt and emsilva@iscsp.ulisboa.pt

Scientific and Organizing Committee: Camila Querino, Diana V. Almeida, Edgardo A. Medeiros da Silva, Isabel Alves, João Miguel Palaio, José Duarte, Margarida Vale de Gato, Nuno Marques.

For more information please click here.

CFP | RHOME 2026: Sanctuaries and Displacements – Negotiating Home, Refuge and Belonging

The RHOME research project (Representations of Home in Literatures and Cultures in English) is pleased to announce the international conference RHOME 2026, which will take place at the School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon, on 25–26 June 2026. Under the theme Sanctuaries and Displacements: Negotiating Home, Refuge and Belonging, the conference invites scholars, writers and artists to examine how conceptions of home intersect with displacement, sanctuary and belonging across contemporary English-language literatures and cultures. Building on RHOME’s decade-long investigation into home and identity, this edition seeks to foster critical and creative dialogues on the ways in which home is imagined, remembered and contested across diverse contexts.

Extended deadline for Abstract submission until 15 January 2025. For further details, please see the Call for Papers here.

CFP | It’s in their Blood: Television Series and the Representation of Violence in the 21st Century

International conference hosted by Metropolitan University in Prague and
School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon/ULICES
6-7 March, 2026 Online

 

This online conference will focus on the representation of violence in contemporary audiovisual production, specifically in television series. The 21st century is marked by profound transformations in social relations, in human interactions with an increasingly precarious environment, and in the nature of politically motivated violence – from macropolitical conflicts to micropolitical forms of resistance. These convergent shifts demand new analytical frameworks and interdisciplinary approaches.

Contemporary television offers a privileged lens through which to analyze these sociocultural transformations. After all, isn’t the purpose of filmmaking to uncover and reveal the repressed and traumatic, to draw attention to the threats, violence, and injustices that are taking place and “knocking on the door”? Essentially, “everything” is at stake, especially the survival of humanity, which must take on different forms than it has until now. Art must shape the micro-politics of resistance and outline visions of the future. Every work offers a diagnosis of contemporary crises, articulating a particular sensitivity to the violence (explicit and structural) that circulates through social life. Our primary focus is on English-speaking series, though other approaches are equally welcome.

Below is a non-exhaustive list of suggested areas for the submission of abstracts:

  • Ecological and environmental violence (Humans, non-humans, landscape, and violence);
  • Feral violence and post-apocalyptic world (post-apocalyptic dystopian environments, the use of technology, and human destruction);
  • Gender-based violence (Representations of gender-based and minority-targeted violence in audiovisual media);
  • Adaptation and Violence (Adaptation of well-known works that explore the idea of violence);
  • Technology, Hybrid Bodies and Violence (The body and digital technologies);
  • Micropolitics and Violence (Resistance against the ideological status quo);
  • New Forms of Violence (Memory, rewriting of the past, forgetting, erasure);
  • Violence and Genre (Westerns, Noir, Gangster, Crime series, among others);
  • Other.

Keynotes: TBA Submission details:

Abstract submission: 31st of December 2025
Notification of acceptance: 16th of January 2026

We welcome proposals for individual submissions, round-table discussions, or thematically aligned panels of speakers, including practice-oriented submissions (15-minute presentations).

Please note that, due to the limited slots available, we will only accept the first 50 proposals, of which we will select roughly half. To submit your proposal, please send a 300-word abstract and a 100-word bio-note by using this link and following the guidelines:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf4xsvJ3V6aJPjIyTJN-quni0NNixd4VzIxlst3S Ag2rB53Rg/viewform?usp=dialog

Any additional inquiries should be made via email to: tvviolenceconf@gmail.com

Conference fee: 60 Euro regular, 40 Euro PhD students

Organizing Committee:

André Francisco (School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon/ULICES)
José Duarte (School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon/ULICES)
Martin Charvát (Metropolitan University in Prague)
Michaela Fikejzová (Metropolitan University in Prague)

Scientific Committee

Ana Rita Martins (School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon/ULICES & U. Aberta)
Anna Marta Marini (Freie Universität Berlin)
Cecilia Beecher Martins (School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon/ULICES)
Dragoş Manea (Bucharest University)
Ljubica Matek (University of Osijek)
Mariana Liz (School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon/CeComp)
Mário Avelar (School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon/ULICES)
Mihaela Preccup (Bucharest University)

CFP: Human, Machine, Empire: Embodied AI and Postcolonial Agency

The 2026 Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association will be held in person at the Palais des congrès de Montréal, February 26 – March 1, 2026. The paper proposal portal is open through October 2 and we invite you to submit a proposal to the Seminar: Human, Machine, Empire: Embodied AI and Postcolonial Agency organised by Ana Cristina Mendes and Margarida Pereira Martins from the University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies.

Human, Machine, Empire: Embodied AI and Postcolonial Agency

In the age of Artificial Intelligence, more accurately, the “age of AI Empire” (Tacheva and Ramasubramanian 2023), machines are no longer defined solely by their ability to process information. They are increasingly imagined as also capable of emotion, bodily awareness and interaction with the natural environment. This seminar examines the representation of embodied AI in literature and digital media focusing on the interrelationships between humans and the more-than-human alongside the growing emphasis on the body as a site of knowledge. Central to our analysis is how the increasing indistinctiveness unfolds within a global context still profoundly shaped by colonial histories and power asymmetries: a context of empire in the longue durée.

Since the late 1990s and early 2000s the concept of “embodied artificial intelligence” (Brooks 1991; Clark 1997; Pfeifer and Scheier 1999) has engaged scholars in the humanities and social sciences especially within critical AI studies, posthumanism, and affect theory (e.g., Haraway 2016; Braidotti 2013, 2019a, 2019b; Hayles 2017). Drawing on that framework, as well as foundational texts such as Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto” (1991), Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation (1981) and Bruno Latour’s Science in Action (1987), we establish a theoretical foundation for examining AI embodiment, agency, and (the end of) the Anthropocene.

Research has demonstrated that the infrastructures of AI are built on racialised data, asymmetrical flows of labour and capital, environmental harm, and the epistemicide of non-western ways of knowing and being (Benjamin 2019; Katz 2020; Madianou 2024; McQuillan 2022; Muldoon and Wu 2023). Anchored in postcolonial critiques of the techno-utopianism that often accompany AI discourse, we consider, e.g., whether embodied AI challenges human exceptionalism or instead reinscribes the dynamics of racial capitalism and colonial governance, and whether machines can participate in affective or ecological relations or remain instruments of techno-colonial control, surveillance, and extractivism.

Our inquiry focuses on how literature and other digital media imagine AI through the lens of coloniality, racial capitalism (Robinson 1983), and epistemic justice (Fricker 2017). By analysing representations in literature and digital media, we examine whether embodied AI generates hyperrealities in which the human body – historically coded through colonial and racialised imaginaries – is rendered obsolete, as virtual agents simulate presence with increasing precision and affective resonance. Or, conversely, whether the persistence of the human form in AI technologies signals an attachment to a universalised, often Western model of subjectivity, one that is still imagined as central to narratives of progress and planetary survival. Either way, the question is political: who is being reproduced, who is being erased, and whose futurity is being encoded into the machine?

To submit a proposal for the seminar: https://www.acla.org/seminar/09ceb2cf-4942-40e1-a505-aece75fd8a5f

For more information on the conference:
ACLA

CFP | ANTENNA: Journal of Arts, Humanities and Health

We are pleased to announce the launch of Antenna: Journal of Arts, Humanities and Health, based at ULICES – University of Lisbon Centre for Englis Studies, within the Project in Medical Humanities.

Antenna accepts texts, images, and videos in the following categories: poetry; fiction; literary non-fiction; graphic narrative; visual arts; video; reviews. The working languages are English and Portuguese. You are welcome to submit your proposal by 30 June 2025.

Please find more information attached and here.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse | Political Thought and Social Theory
27-28 November, 2025
University of Lisbon, School of Arts and Humanities, CEAUL/ULICES

Confirmed keynote speakers:

Michael Freeden
Emeritus Professor of Politics, University of Oxford and Emeritus Professorial Fellow, Mansfield College, Oxford.

Peter Clarke
Emeritus Professor of Modern British History at Cambridge University and a former Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge.

“Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse was the most sophisticated intellectual exponent of the ‘New Liberalism’ which emerged in Britain in the closing years of the nineteenth century.”*

Such a sophistication, recurrently acknowledged throughout his career, was ultimately marked by his election as a Fellow of the British Academy a hundred years ago, in 1925.

Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse (1864-1929) was an extremely dynamic scholar and journalist, who wrote prolifically on a wide variety of subjects that were invariably closely related to the political and social reality of his time. Politics and sociology were, in fact, the two great fields that inspired most of the author’s writings. Besides having been a vigorous political thinker, Hobhouse was also one of the founding fathers of sociology in England and actually held the first Professorship of this discipline in the country.

In fact, within the ideological sphere, L. T. Hobhouse was one of the most relevant representatives of the new liberalism that gained shape in Britain in the last decades of the 19th century and which influenced the nature of politics in the 20th century, namely as far as the expansion of the welfare state is concerned. Moreover, in a context of great social instability, but also one of dynamic political and ideological debate, Hobhouse’s new liberalism promoted a belief in an organic conception of society characterised by a harmonious and cooperative relationship between the individual, the state and the community. His proposal implied a redefinition of the roles of these three entities, so as to allow for and foster individual development and the common good, both of which were of crucial importance for progress. We therefore find, in his political thought, the merging together of traditional liberal ideas, coupled with the expression of concerns of an imminently social nature.

Today, a hundred years over Hobhouse’s election as a fellow of the British Academy this conference aims at celebrating the author’s relevance within the sphere of British political thought, as well as his contribute in the field of sociology, by gathering together scholars from different areas of expertise.

We therefore welcome individual paper or panel proposals both on L. T Hobhouse and on his political and social context. Proposals should be sent to hobhouse.lisbonconference@gmail.com and include an abstract of 250-300 words, the author’s name, affiliation and email address, as well as a short bionote (circa 100-120 words). Panels of three to four and one discussant speakers should also include a general abstract introducing the theme of the panel.

Deadline for the submission of proposals: 12th September 2025.

The conference will take place at the University of Lisbon, School of Arts and Humanities. There will not be a virtual or hybrid option for this conference. Organisers expect to publish a selection of papers presented at the Conference.

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Hobhouse on liberty, democracy and equality;
  • Hobhouse’s definition of rights;
  • Hobhouse on the State, individual and society;
  • Hobhouse’s ethical dimension;
  • Hobhouse’s social theory/theory of harmony;
  • Hobhouse on the evolution of the mind and morals;
  • Hobhouse, S. Mill and T. H. Green;
  • Hobhouse, Hegel and Bosanquet;
  • Hobhouse and the Press;
  • Hobhouse and The Boer War;
  • Hobhouse and World War I
  • The Oxford years: Hobhouse and the Fabians;
  • The New Liberalism and the Welfare State;
  • The New Liberalism and Imperialism;
  • The New Liberalism and the Scientific Theories of Evolution: progress, Social Darwinism and Eugenics;
  • The New Liberalism and Idealism
  • The New Liberalism, Collectivism and Socialism;
  • The New Liberalism and Utilitarianism;
  • The New Liberalism: political theory and party politics;
  • The New Liberalism, Social Reform and the Budget of 1910;
  • Liberalism as a tradition and a historical phenomenon: T.Hobhouse, Isaiah Berlin, John Rawls;
  • The legacy of Classical Liberalism in the shaping of the New Liberalism;
  • Hobhouse and the New Liberalism Today: legacies from the past;

*Meadowcroft, James (Ed.). (1994). Introduction. L. T. Hobhouse. Liberalism and other Writings. Cambridge: CUP. ix- xxvi.

Fees:

Early bird (until 15 September): 150 euros
Late Bird (16 September to 20 November): 175 euros
Students: 75 euros

Conference email: hobhouse.lisbonconference@gmail.com
Conference Website: https://international-conference-leonard-trelawny-hobhouse.webnode.pt/

Organising Committee:

 Adelaide Meira Serras, CEAUL/ULICES, School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon Carla Larouco Gomes, CEAUL/ULICES, School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon Carlos Viana Ferreira, CEAUL/ULICES, School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon Elisabete Mendes Silva, CITeD, Polytechnic Institute of Bragança

Iolanda Ramos, CEAUL/ULICES, School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon; CETAPS, FCSH, NOVA University of Lisbon

Rogério Miguel Puga, CEAUL/ULICES, School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon; CETAPS, FCSH, NOVA University of Lisbon

Scientific Committe:

Adelaide Meira Serras, CEAUL/ULICES, School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon Carla Larouco Gomes, CEAUL/ULICES, School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon Carlos Viana Ferreira, CEAUL/ULICES, School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon, Elisabete Mendes Silva, CITeD, Polytechnic Institute of Bragança

Iolanda Ramos, CEAUL/ULICES, School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon; CETAPS, FCSH, NOVA University of Lisbon

Luísa Leal de Faria,FCH – Faculty of Human Sciences, UCP – the Catholic University of Portugal Nelson Pinheiro Gomes, CEAUL/ULICES,School of Arts and Humanities,University of Lisbon

Rogério Miguel Puga, CEAUL/ULICES, School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon; CETAPS, FCSH, NOVA University of Lisbon

Teresa Malafaia, CEAUL/ULICES, School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon

Messengers from the Stars: On Science Fiction and Fantasy No. 9, 2026

Guest Editor: Alexandra Cheira Co-Editor: Ana Rita Martins

Messengers from the Stars is an international, peer-reviewed, open-access journal, offering academic articles, reviews, and providing an outlet for a wide range of creative work inspired by science fiction and fantasy. The 2026 issue will be dedicated to the following theme:

The Streets of Tomorrow: The Cityscape(s) of Fantasy & Science Fiction 

The city has always been a fertile ground for storytelling in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction. From the glittering spires of fantastic cities like Gondolin (The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien) to the dark alleys of Chiba City (Neuromancer, William Gibson), urban spaces can embody both humanity’s hopes and dreams as well as its fears and uncertainties becoming a kaleidoscope of contradictions (Soja 1996). Likewise, the numerous spaces within the city (whether private or public) can shape its inhabitants’ collective memory, embodying the city’s past and “contain[ing] it like the lines of a hand” (Calvino 1972), while simultaneously molding the present and carving the foreseeable future. Streets, as major arteries of the cityscape, serve not only as stages for connection and transformation but also resistance, especially in Fantasy, Science and Speculative fiction in which cities can become living characters that shape and are shaped by their inhabitants.

For Messengers from the Stars, No. 9, we are especially interested in contributions that analyse the role of streets, the city or urban landscapes in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction, with a focus on both utopias and dystopias.

Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

  • Cities as Characters
  • Dystopian Cities
  • Ecocriticism and Sustainable Urban Futures
  • Resistance and Rebellion
  • Urban Utopias
  • Streets as Liminal Spaces
  • Urban Magic and Folklore

Submissions, between 4000 and 6000 words in English, must be sent to mfts.journal@gmail.com by September 1, 2025. The authors will be notified by the end of November 2025.

Furthermore, we also welcome creative texts (short stories, poems, flash fiction, etc.) that fall within this number’s theme and should be between 1,000 to 2,000 words.

In addition, you can propose a book or film review. We welcome book and film reviews on current science fiction and fantasy research and PhD dissertations. Reviews should be between 500 to 1,000 words. Longer reviews, e.g. dealing with more than one book, must be agreed upon with the Editorial Board.

Books available for review:

  • Ahlberg, Sofia. Magic, Literature and Climate Pedagogy in a Time of Ecological Crisis.
  • Bloomsbury, 2024. ISBN 9781350401143.
  • Álvarez-Ossorio, Alfonso, et al. Game of Thrones – A View from the Humanities Vol. 1.
  • Time, Space and Culture. Palgrave MacMillan, 2023. ISBN 9783031154881.
  • Bacon, Simon. Zombie Futures in Literature, Media and Culture Pandemics, Society and the Evolution of the Undead in the 21st Century. Bloomsbury, 2024. ISBN 9781350285491.
  • Brooker, Will. Never-Ending Watchmen: Adaptations, Sequels, Prequels and Remixes. Bloomsbury, 2023. ISBN 9781350198760.
  • Carrión-Arias, Rafael. Batman and the Shadows of Modernity. A Critical Genealogy on Contemporary  Hero  in  the  Age  of  Nihilism.  Routledge,  2024. ISBN 9781003362210
  • Esser, Helena. Steampunk London: Neo-Victorian Urban Space and Popular Transmedia Memory. Bloomsbury, 2024. ISBN 9781350433908.
  • Hawkes, Joel et al. American Science Fiction Television and Space: Productions and (Re)configurations  (1987-2021).  Palgrave  Macmillan,  2023.  ISBN: 9783031105272.
  • Kotsko, Adam. Late Star Trek: The Final Frontier in the Franchise Era. University of Minnesota Press, 2025. ISBN 9781517919108.

All submissions must follow the journal’s guidelines available here.

CALL FOR PAPERS: International Conference Discourses in Interaction III

(Funchal October 29 – 31, 2025)

The International Conference Discourses in Interaction explores the connections between memory studies, literary studies, interactional linguistics, pragmatics, media analysis and cultural studies to provide a comprehensive perspective on the complexities of human communication. Thematically it builds upon two previous academic venues held at the University of Madeira, Discourses in Interaction: Literary & Film-induced Tourism and Discourses in Interaction II: Experiences, Memories and Identities, while sharing their genre-crossing and interdiscursive approaches.

Drawing on the critical perspective by Baynham and Lee, this conference proposes to “consider translanguaging and translation in tandem – across languages, language varieties, registers, and discourses, and in a diverse range of contexts” (2019:74). This range of contexts is meant to address a more nuanced understanding of the concepts of memory and identity which carry strategic, political and ethical implications on the way we represent the relationship between the past and the present in a contemporary globalised society.

Inspired by Andreas Huyssen’s Present Pasts (2003), we seek submissions which examine the extent to which memories travel and transform across borders, and media, impacting identity and belonging, along with the role of mediation in shaping diasporic narratives, knowledge and socio-political aspects of remembering and forgetting. Contributions may also delve into the ethical implications of empowerment and silencing within socio-historical discourses, collective memory and archives. We encourage discussions on the impact of propaganda and (dis)information strategies, as well as on the promotion of historical accuracy and initiatives which prioritize education and awareness in the public sphere. Furthermore, we welcome reflections on fictional and non-fictional representations of (collective) remembrance and forgetting, and their relationship with historical discourse on memory and identity.

We invite panel, roundtable, paper or art-based proposals and workshops dealing with, but not restricted to, the following topics:

  1. Transcultural Mobility and (Dis)Location: Memory, Authenticity, and Mediation
  2. Encoding / Decoding Emotion and Multimodal Narratives of the Self
  3. (Re)addressing Knowledge, Ethics, and Aesthetics Paradigms
  4. From Cognitivism to Ecologism in Language Studies
  5. Rhetoric and Gender Studies
  6. Mis/Disinformation and Publishing in the Digital Age
  7. Deconstructing Propaganda: Strategies for Media Literacy
  8. Holocaust and Genocide Denial and Distortion
  9. Activism and Social Justice Movements
  10. Agency, Voice, and (Dis)Empowering Discourses
  11. Language and Artificial Intelligence
  12. Interpreting, Translation, and Terminology
  13. (Digital) Storytelling as Translanguaging
  14. Dealing with the Past: Historical Discourses and Literary Representations

Proposals should be sent as PDF to <discourses.interaction@mail.uma.pt> by March 30, 2025, including: proposed format of presentation, title, abstract (up to 250 words), 5 keywords, presenter name(s), email(s), institution(s), and bionote(s) (up to 100 words).

ORGANISING COMMITTEE  

Agnieszka Lowczanin              (University of Lodz) 

Alcina Sousa                           (CEAUL- ULICES / University of Madeira) 

Ana Raquel Fernandes           (CEAUL-ULICES / Universidade Europeia) 

Elena Bollinger                       (CEAUL-ULICES / (University of Madeira) 

Paul Gross                               (University of Madeira) 

Zsófia Gombár                        (CEAUL-ULICES / University of Lisbon)

Organised by the University of Madeira in association with the University of Lisbon and the University of Łódź

CALL FOR CREATIVE SUBMISSIONS: ROAM 4 Creative Journal, 2024 Living in the “Here and Below” (Rilke)

Following the Spring/Autumn 2023 edition of ROAM 3 where we looked at shifting notions of home, in our fourth issue we broaden our focus to the self as regards to the
wider world and different forms of alterity. Whether it be an increasing engagement with technology and AI or a critical awareness of our relation to the planet, we find
ourselves amidst new contrasts and positionings that question our place in the world. The African-origin relational concept of Ubuntu, “humanity to others” — “I am because
we are”— and the broader turn to an ethics of care and response-ability seem increasingly compelling, given our present struggle with the urgent concerns of climate
change and war.

In looking at care, our attention is drawn to dailiness and the imperceptible everyday: we engage with our immediate spheres, over which some influence can be exerted.
Small rituals that add structure and meaning can be experienced as vital elements for rebuilding during difficult times. The eco-philosopher Donna Haraway has written about
the need for a new human worlding with animals, geographies, temporalities, of “learning to live and die well with each other in a thick present” taking on
“response-ability for a damaged earth” (2016). Some thinkers draw spiritual perspectives, seeing sacred elements in the everyday, notably in place. In her book
Tender Maps the writer Alice Maddicott explores the Celtic concept of “thin places,” alluding to what, pilot and psychiatrist, Alan McGlashan describes as the “translucent
nature of all things” that transforms the sensible universe and invests all objects with a sharp intensity of being.”

In our upcoming, Spring 2025, issue of ROAM we welcome submissions that address creative contemplations of significant change in our emotional, cultural, geographic
and political habitats. These might draw on:

. rediscovering the local
. the building of new communities/rebuilding of old communities
. the body and the self
. the self and nature
. our new non-human communities (animals and the inorganic world)
. ecology on the micro level
. everyday rituals of the domestic
. virtual imaginaries

Submissions can include unpublished poems, short fiction, memoir, essay, photos or film. Proposals should be brief: prose should not exceed 1500 words, poetry 30 lines
(max 3 poems), film (5 minutes) and photos a maximum of 3 (high resolution, at least 2000 pix)

Please send your submissions by 15 January 2025 to rephome@letras.ulisboa.pt with a subject heading “ROAM 4, 2025”. For additional information please click here.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Jean Page, Mary Fowke, Zuzanna Zarebska
Editors ROAM
Representations of Home Project (RHOME)
University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies (ULICES/CEAUL)

CALL FOR PAPERS Street&City2024: The Street and the City V – Challenges

Call for Papers

Nobody can deny the power of the city to change and reorder all of life.

Inglis, 2000

For many years leaving the countryside to move to urban areas was in itself a challenge.  The unknown that the city unveiled and the mystery in all the hidden corners was, as it is today, a free ride tour. The development of cities and all they encompass face never ending challenges with every generation striving for happiness. The latest United Nations report states that by 2050, two out of every three people are likely to be living in cities – the economic, social and environmental calls rely also on humankind’s ability to reimagine the city. The city, which Miéville describes as “endlessly kind of fecund and inspiring” since “to a certain cast of  mind, which many of us have, many of us who live  in a big city, our surroundings intrude on our lives” (2014) is the central locus of a plethora of challenges such as peace vs war, of the man vs machine, or the greatest challenge of all, urban surviving.

From smart cities to megalopolises, gateway cities to anchor cities or factory cities to green cities, real cities to imaginary cities, this conference aims at approaching the challenges that all of them pose and face. Literature, the visual arts together with the theoretical flow of thought offer multiple possibilities to discuss the prospects of more responsible and fairer cities. Challenges for a better life as far as sustainability is concerned, regarding education and new technologies, freedom and equality, and new approaches to what new cities can teach us.  As in Bansky’s words “Imagine a city where graffiti wasn’t illegal, a city where everybody could draw whatever they liked. Where every street was awash with a million colours and little phrases. Where standing at a bus stop was never boring. A city that felt like a party where everyone was invited, not just the estate agents and barons of big business. Imagine a city like that and stop leaning against the wall – it’s wet.” (2005).

Our cities, all across the world, pulse with endless challenges and infinite possibilities. We propose the analysis of the numerous challenges that set the pace of streets and cities of the past, the present and the future. A reflection of how cities are being redefined and renewed, cities in which, like in H.G. Wells words “We should strive to welcome change and challenges, because they are what help us grow.” (1912).

We welcome papers, pre-organised panels, and roundtables (20 minutes per speaker) in English or Portuguese responding to the above.

Suggested (merely indicative) topics include:

1. Cultural Challenges in the Street and the City
2. The visual arts: Challenges in the Street and the City
3. Literary Challenges in the Street and the City
4. Architectural Challenges in the Street and the City
5. Landscape Challenges in the Street and the City
6. Political Challenges in the Street and the City
7. Human flows: Challenges in the Street and the City
8. Touristic Challenges in the Street and the City
9. Soundscape Challenges in the Street and the City
10. Gender Challenges in the Street and the City
11. Sustainability Challenges the Street and the City
12. Digital Challenges in the Street and the City

As indicated by the number in its title, this conference is the fifth in a series of academic events based at CEAUL/ULICES

Submissions should be sent by email to: thestreetandthecity@gmail.com     

Please include SC5 in the subject line of your email and organise your proposal into two separate files:

• a file containing the full title and a 250-300 words description of your individual paper; Round tables of up to four speakers plus a chairperson. Please include a 500-word proposal; Panels of three speakers plus a chairperson. Please include a brief description of the panel (300 words) and a 300-word abstract.

• a file containing the author’s data: name, affiliation, contact address, paper title and author’s bio-note (100 words), as well as the preferred method of presentation: in situ or online.

 Please name these two documents as follows:

Surname_Name_Abstract_SC5
Surname_Name_AuthorInfo_SC5

Extended deadline for proposals:  2nd October 2024

All delegates are responsible for their own travel arrangements and accommodation. More information available at https://thestreetandthecitylx5.wordpress.com/

Individual Call for Scientific Employment Stimulus – 7th Edition

The Individual Call for Scientific Employment Stimulus – 7th Edition will open between 30th of September and 11th of December.

The Individual Call is aimed at PhD holders of any nationality or stateless with a background in any scientific area who wish to develop their scientific research or technological development activity in Portugal.

All information about this call is available at the FCT website.

Those interested in having ULICES/CEAUL as the host institution should express their interest by sending an e-mail to gestao.ceaul@letras.ulisboa.pt with the subject “CEEC 2024 – Call” with the information of the level/category of researcher they are applying for, choosing between two levels:

  • Junior Researcher: PhD holders with 5 years or less post-PhD experience by the application deadline, with limited post-doctoral research experience in the relevant scientific area.
  • Auxiliary Researcher: PhD holders by the application deadline with a significant curriculum in the relevant scientific area.

As well as the following documents:

  1. A summarized curriculum vitae;
  2. A copy of the project to be submitted to FCT;

These documents (in pdf format) should be sent by email to gestao.ceaul@letras.ulisboa.pt until October 18th, 2024.

The proposals will be analysed and CEAL-ULICES decision will be communicated to the candidates until the 31th of October 2024.

Call for Papers
Messengers from the Stars: On Science
Fiction and Fantasy
No. 7, 2024

Guest Editor: Ana Daniela Coelho
Co-editor: Diana Marques

Messengers from the Stars is an international, peer-reviewed, open-access journal, offering academic articles, reviews, and providing an outlet for a wide range of creative work inspired by science fiction and fantasy. The 2023 issue will be dedicated to the following theme:

Adapting Fantasy and Sci-Fi in the Age of Streaming

Adaptation, whether recognized as such or not, has long been a staple in Fantasy and Sci-Fi productions of different media. Given the undeniable importance of streaming and the increasing number of new productions, this tendency has only grown stronger in recent years, as the plethora of available material is joined by multiple-platform strategies, where both narrative and audience engagement are enhanced.

2022 has borne witness to expanding universes – HBO’s House of Dragon or Amazon Prime’s The Rings of Power –, as well as to new adaptations – Wheel of Time, Shadow and Bone. Beyond the more usual literature-to-film movement, adaptations from, to or including fewer central media or formats, such as comics – Sandman (Netflix, 2022-) – or videogames – The Witcher (Netflix, 2019-), The Last of Us (2023-) – also made their debut in the last few years.

In addition, transmedia storytelling and expansion of narratives beyond one main story arch are increasingly common, as new productions are brought to light – Arcane (Netflix, 2021-) –, and pioneering projects were remembered and celebrated, as in the case of the recent 10th anniversary of web series The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (2012).

Thus, for this issue we are looking for articles that delve deeper into the topics of streaming and adaptation of Fantasy and Sci-Fi works, in particular objects that exploit the new capacities brought about by new platforms, namely transmedia strategies.

Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

  • Adaptation of fantasy/sci-fi worlds into streaming/new platforms
  • Transmedia storytelling
  • Audience engagement and fandom
  • Issues of fidelity/creative independence to/from source texts
  • Expanding/reimagining fantasy/sci-fi worlds
  • Relevance of streaming platforms in the adaptation of fantasy/sci-fi works


Submissions, between 4000 and 6000 words in English, must be sent to mfts.journal@gmail.com by February 11th, 2024. The authors will be notified by the end of January.

In addition, you can propose a book or film review. We welcome book and film reviews on current science fiction and fantasy research and PhD dissertations. Reviews should be between 500 to 1,000 words. Longer reviews, e.g. dealing with more than one book, should be agreed upon with the Editorial Board. The guideline for book/film reviews is available here.

All submissions must follow the journal’s guidelines available at: http://messengersfromthestars.letras.ulisboa.pt/journal/submission-guidelines