Call for papers
Discarded Biological Ideas in Scientific Fiction, c. 1825-c. 1925: From Poe to Gernsback

Edited by Edward Guimont & Patrick Prominski

 Abstract Deadline: January 18, 2027

The period of the early nineteenth century to the early twentieth century was one in which the human understanding of life in all its forms—microscopic and macroscopic, terrestrial and oceanic, current and ancient, its origins and possible endings—expanded rapidly. Increased uses of the microscope and telescope, the spread of scientific societies, the theories of Gregor Mendel and Charles Darwin, the identification of Neanderthal and dinosaur remains, the charting of the ocean floor by the Challenger expedition, and the discovery—at least by Europeans—of new creatures like the gorilla and okapi are just some of the developments and ideas that emerged in the period of roughly 1825 to 1925.

Among the flowering of ideas into the nature of life that emerged in this time were notions which, while novel and scientific for the period, were later discarded, especially as newer technologies and the professionalization, and in some cases creation of new, fields of scientific inquiry further refined knowledge of life, especially in the fields of evolution, deep time, the origin of life, microscopic life and bacteria, alien life, proto-cryptids, psychic powers, and the afterlife.

This same period of roughly 1825-1925 was the dawn of science fiction, and many authors were inspired by the discoveries of that period. This early period of scientific fiction was intimately connected with the ideas of this time, and the legacy of those works continued to keep those ideas alive. Just as the field of biological sciences became more professionalized in the early twentieth century, so too did science fiction, when Hugo Gernsback founded the first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, in 1926, with the explicit aim of having his authors follow established and (relatively) plausible science as the basis of ‘scientifiction.’ Gernsback’s approach was mirrored by the authors and editors he helped launch, including John W. Campbell, and the reshaped fandom community via the Science Fiction League.

Discarded Biological Ideas in Scientific Fiction, c. 1825-c. 1925: From Poe to Gernsback brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds to explore how this early era of scientific fiction incorporated these now-discarded ideas into their plots, the impact of these ideas on the genre and public acceptance of them, and the changing role of scientific orthodoxy on a field of fiction meant to explore the boundaries of human knowledge. Potential topics for discarded biological ideas to be considered could include, but are not limited to:

• Biological change: Social Darwinism, eugenics, devolution, Lamarckism
• Site of past human occupation: Atlantis, Lemuria, Mu, Doggerland, geological/oceanic change, continental drift, polygenism
• The relation between scientific societies and literary fandom, and the impact of professionalization of science on both
• How scientific authors approached fiction writing, and how fiction authors incorporated scientific ideas
• Extraterrestrial life: nebular hypothesis, dinosaurs on Venus, canal-builders on Mars
• Microscopic life, including bacteria, viruses, and lineage
• The role of Biblical archaeology including the Hamitic theory, searches for Noah’s Ark and the Garden of Eden, and Young Earth Creationism
• Blood transfusions, gland transplants, vivisection, and other forms of life revitalization or cross-species hybridization
• The paranormal, including Spiritualism, ectoplasm, Bridget Cleary, Mercy Brown, and the role of parapsychology in early physics
• Hoaxes such as the Great Moon Hoax, Cardiff Giant, Fox Sisters, Piltdown Man, Cottingley Fairies
• Early cryptozoology, including sea serpent sightings, the Alaskan mammoth search, the Patagonian mylodon search, and the Battle of Ape Canyon

Potential authors of scientific fiction to be covered could include, but are not limited to: Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Edward Everett Hale, Ignatius Donnelly, Arthur Conan Doyle, Helena Blavatsky, H. G. Wells, Gustavus Pope, Alexander Bogdanov, William Hope Hodgson, Henry Tukeman, Hesketh Hesketh-Prichard, Mikhail Bulgakov, Vladimir Obruchev, Maurice Renard, H. P. Lovecraft, and Hugo Gernsback.

Please submit a 500-word abstract and brief biography in Word to the editors at discardedbiological@gmail.com by 18 January 2027. Authors notified will be notified of the decision by 15 February 2027, with full chapter drafts of 6,000-8,000 words for those accepted due by 13 December 2027.

Image Source: Science is Measurement by Henry Stacy Marks R.A (1879)

Harper-Schmidt Postdoctoral Fellow
University of Chicago

Application Deadline: December 1, 2026

The search committee is eager to receive as many promising applications as possible, and will gladly consider candidates in all humanities-related fields.

Harper-Schmidt Fellows join the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts on campus, where they teach first-year courses in the Humanities Core and receive excellent compensation, considerable research support and mentorship, and regular opportunities for social and professional fellowship both within the program and with other colleagues on campus.

Although many UChicago Humanities Core instructional sequences feature more-or-less set reading lists, successful applicants do not always need to have conventional expertise in the specific texts and topics currently taught. Rather, the search committee welcome applicants from a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds who will bring conceptual and methodological creativity and skill to the teaching of general education courses while also contributing to our research community.

For more details about the program and to submit an application, please see the Society of Fellows website and the application website on Interfolio:

https://college.uchicago.edu/faculty/society-of-fellows

https://apply.interfolio.com/193778

Please direct any questions you may have about the position to fellows@uchicago.edu.

Call for papers
transhistorical themed issue of Studies in English literature (SEL) 1500-1900
"Decolonizing Historical English Literary Studies"

 Abstract Deadline: February 1st, 2027

This transhistorical themed issue of SEL Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 (Fall 2028, 66.4) invites contributions from scholars working in the four centuries of SEL’s remit who share a desire to decolonize historical English literary studies. While Indigenous, Black, diasporic, postcolonial, anti-racist, feminist, queer, and trans scholarship have profoundly reshaped literary criticism over the last several decades, the field of historical English literary studies continues to rely upon disciplinary structures rooted in Eurocentric epistemologies and imperial narratives of civilization, progress, and historical development. These structures shape not only the canon but also the temporal frameworks, archival practices, institutional histories, and methodologies through which literary scholarship is organized and legitimized.

Following K. Wayne Yang (writing under the pseudonym la paperson), the organizers approach decolonization as “the rematriation of land, the regeneration of relations, and the forwarding of Indigenous, Black, and queer futures—a process that requires countering what power seems to be up to” (2017). Taking up this capacious definition, the organizers invite scholars who share this decolonizing desire to contribute projects that engage with decolonization as a literary, methodological, institutional, and social project across four centuries and beyond.

This conversation arrives at a critical moment. Across North America, renewed investments in “classical” education and the Western canon have coincided with attacks on Critical Race Theory, Gender Studies, diversity initiatives, and race-conscious institutional practices. At the same time, scholars working in literary studies continue to confront longstanding questions concerning the relationship between literary history and colonial power: whose histories become central to the field, which forms of knowledge count as legitimate, and how historical English literary studies might engage forms of relationality, temporality, and knowledge production beyond Eurocentric frameworks.

Historical periodization remains especially central to these questions. Organizing literary study through categories such as “Early Modern,” “Enlightenment,” “Romantic,” or “Victorian” often reproduces linear narratives of progress tied to imperialism and white epistemologies (Chatterjee, Christoff, Wong 2020). Such rigid temporalities specifically marginalize and create barriers to engaging Indigenous ways of knowing centered around land, kinship, and relationality (Binhammer 2021). Given SEL’s traditional structure reliant on periodicity, this transhistorical themed issue offers a deliberately reflexive opportunity to agitate such conventions in a journal that has been previously known for reinforcing those very structures. The organizers seek work that not only interrogates the canon but also examines the structures that continue to organize the field itself.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Indigenous sovereignty, land rights, treaties, and cultural revitalization
• The relationship between literary periodization and imperial narratives of progress
• Indigenous, Black, diasporic, queer, and trans critiques of historical temporality
• The presence and erasure of Indigenous, Black, diasporic, queer, and trans intellectual and literary genealogies within English literature
• Archival silences, reading against the grain, and critical fabulation
• Oral traditions and unconventional forms of textuality
• Community-engaged and relational research methodologies
• Rematriation of Indigenous ancestors and belongings from colonial institutions, including universities, museums, churches, and archives
• Making empire, race, and colonialism visible within canonical English literary texts
• Institutional histories of English literary studies and the politics of disciplinarity
• Transhistorical and comparative approaches that challenge Eurocentric literary histories

Overall, this transhistorical themed issue welcomes contributions that reconsider how literary history is organized, narrated, and institutionalized, and that imagine new possibilities for the study of historical English literature beyond colonial frameworks.

Proposals of 250–500 words and a bio are due by February 1, 2027. Authors will be notified if their proposals have been accepted by March 1, 2027. Full essays of 7,000–8,000 words (inclusive of notes) will be due June 1, 2027 and conform to SEL submission guidelines. This themed issue will be received for review, and submissions will undergo double-anonymized peer review. Inquiries and submissions should be sent to the themed issue’s editor: Willow White (Métis, Cree, settler), wdwhite@ualberta.ca

Works Cited

Binhammer, Katherine.“Is the Eighteenth Century a Colonizing Temporality?” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 33, no. 2 (2021): 199–204. https://doi.org/10.3138/ecf.33.2.199.

Chatterjee, Ronjaunee, Alicia Mireles Christoff, and Amy R. Wong. “Introduction: Undisciplining Victorian Studies,” Victorian Studies 62, no. 3 (2020): 369–91. https://doi.org/10.2979/victorianstudies.62.3.01.

la paperson. A Third University Is Possible. University of Minnesota Press, 2017.

Image Source: Young Woman with a Fan by Simon Maris (1906)

Call for papers
Gothic 1730-1850: Traditions, Transmissions, Translations
An International Conference hosted at St Mary's UNIVERSITY and Strawberry House, Twickenham
June 17-18, 2027

 Abstract Deadline: January 4th, 2027

In collaboration with The Lewis Walpole Library (Yale University) and the Kulturstiftung Dessau-Wörlitz. 

The Gothic Revival has long been understood as a predominantly British phenomenon, with Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill occupying a central place in its history as a site of aesthetic innovation.

This two-day international conference seeks to broaden and complicate that picture by examining the Gothic Revival as an interdisciplinary and global network of parallel and intersecting manifestations across literature, the visual arts, architecture, and material culture.

Drawing on the methodological framework of histoire croisée (Werner and Zimmermann, 2006) and recent work on the ‘world-gothic’ (Duncan, Cumpsty et al., 2026), it brings together historians of art and architecture, literary scholars, and historians of collecting and antiquarianism to ask how objects, texts, and images moved across geographic and national boundaries in relations of mutual exchange and influence, while tracking how similar aesthetic and cultural impulses emerged across different European, American and colonial contexts.

Strawberry Hill House provides the ideal setting for this enquiry, not merely as an iconic monument of the Revival but as a laboratory in which Walpole and his collaborators experimented with this emergent sensibility.

There his antiquarian and architectural work accompanied his literary endeavours, developing a Gothic mode in which textual and material practices were interconnected, and drawing at once on medieval English sources, continental models, ‘Moorish’ decorative forms and the scholarly networks of a broader multinational conversation about the past.

The Gothic novel emerged in the same way, through reciprocal exchanges across contemporary media, from theatre and music to poetry and painting. If the Revival is a network rather than a lineage, its history is carried by materials as much as by monuments, and translation is not only verbal: Otranto is rendered from an invented Italian original, a Westminster vault into papier mâché in the Gallery at Strawberry Hill. Diverse forms made the Gothic reproducible and portable, and the conference seeks to investigate its movement across media as well as time and space.

A study tour of the Dessau-Wörlitz Garden Realm will follow on 3-4 September 2027. Its Gotisches Haus, which was begun in 1774 and probably uses inspirations from Strawberry Hill for different purposes, is among the earliest Gothic Revival buildings on the Continent and the clearest possible demonstration of the transmissions this conference sets out to trace.

Confirmed plenary speakers include Martin Bressani (McGill University), Deborah Russell (University of York), Roger White (independent architectural historian), and James Uden, Professor of Classics at Yale University.

The organizers welcome proposals for twenty-minute papers and panels from scholars at all career stages. Early-career researchers and scholars working outside the UK are particularly encouraged to apply.

Please send an abstract of up to 300 words and a biographical note of up to 150 words to gothic2027@gmail.com. Panel proposals should include a panel overview and individual paper abstracts.

Conference website

Call for papers
Fiction in Victorian and edwardian socialist PERIODICALS
Virtual conference
February 5-6, 2027

 Abstract Deadline: October 31, 2026

This online study day, the first co-organized by the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP) and the Victorian Popular Fiction Association (VPFA), will bring together scholars from both societies to share knowledge and build expertise about understudied popular authors and genres, complex multidisciplinary forms, and the material print genre of socialist periodicals.

The socialist movement emerged in Victorian Britain during the 1880s with the foundation of the Democratic Federation (later the Social Democratic Federation) in 1881, the Fabian Society in 1884, and the Socialist League in 1885. Alongside the political developments ran a rich seam of socialist fiction, both novel length and short form. Like the Chartists before them, socialists used fiction as a vehicle for political discourse, shaping it for a popular audience. The majority of it was published within periodicals, never reaching book form.

Michael Rosen (2018) has argued that, “In Britain, the ideas of socialism embodied many strands of intertwined thought and activity, owing their thought to very different – sometimes contradictory – traditions.” The fiction which emerged during this period reflected those often-conflicting ideologies and factions.  It was presented in a multiplicity of genres, including science fiction, fairy tales, fables, moral tales, realist novels, humourous stories, mystery stories, romances and utopias.

Many authors of such texts are familiar to us – George Bernard Shaw, Edith Nesbit, William Morris, H.G. Wells, Edward Carpenter, Margaret Harkness – while others have remained more obscure and less known, although popular in their own time.  Socialism was an international movement and many European, North American and Australian socialist novels enjoyed widespread English distribution and recognition, with influences running in both directions. Socialist periodicals were consumed by individual readers but also communally: in reading groups; lectures and meetings; informal “worker’s libraries” and reading rooms; and read aloud during services in the Labour Church.  The use of fiction as part of collective activity is another research area that demands further exploration.

Suggested Topics for Proposals

RSVP and VPFA invite proposals for a joint study day on topics including but not limited to:

• Genre and socialist fiction, whether prose or poetry (i.e., epic, utopia, fable)
• Periodical publication and / or serialisation; the socialist periodical as a home for fiction
• Education versus entertainment in the socialist periodical
• Modes of reception
• Trans-Atlantic, Trans-European, and / or Imperial Socialist fiction
• Regional and / or dialect socialist fiction
• Religion and socialist fiction
• Gender in socialist fiction
• Relationship between socialist fiction and other movements and campaigns – eugenics, pacifism, social purity, temperance, pastoralism, feminism, sexual liberation, anticolonialism, anarchism, the cooperative and guild movements, etc.
• Individual writers, editors, proprietors, and / or texts
• Disagreements and splits within the socialist movement and the role of the periodical press

Visit https://rs4vp.org/vpfa-online-study-day/ for more information.

Call for Contributions

Volcanic MATERIALITY in Literature and Art of the ANTHROPOCENE
Edinburgh University press

 Abstract Deadline: November 30, 2026

Volcanic Materiality: Phenomena in the Age of the Anthropocene asserts that volcanic eruptions during the long nineteenth century contributed to the rise of the Anthropocene, which has been viewed as human impact on the climate and environment since James Watts’s reinvention of the steam engine in 1784. Whereas in the past geologic epoch, the Holocene, the Earth evolved and changed over deep time, unprecedented changes have occurred in the past 240 years inducing a global, existential crisis as a direct result from human intervention due in part to capitalist industrialism, which has disrupted the climate and environment. Volcanic Materiality: Phenomena in the Age of the Anthropocene stakes out the claim that volcanic eruptions in their fiery reality with a Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) of 4 or greater created shocks to the system that exacerbated the growing threat of carbon emissions. Subsequently, with implications for the 21st century, the edition considers these two major questions: 1) How have volcanoes and humanity contributed to the rise of the Anthropocene due to volcanic and anthropogenic activity? 2) What sort of evidence appears in literary and visual representations during the long nineteenth century?

Volcanic matter really matters. During a one hundred year span from the 1780s to 1880s, a series of volcanic eruptions occurred that altered the atmosphere, disrupted weather conditions, and caused unprecedented loss due to famine and widespread disease: Laki, Iceland (1783-1784); Vesuvius, Italy (1794); Pico Viejo, Canary Islands (1798); Tambora, Indonesia (1815); Ferdinandea, Sicily (1831); Hekla, Iceland (1840, 1845); and Krakatoa, Indonesia (1883). Various critics have written about the systemic effects geologically, meteorologically, and ecologically such as Richard Altick, David Higgins, Monique Morgan, Marilynn Olsen, Nicholas Robbins, Jesse Oak Taylor, and Gillen D’Arcy Wood. 

A variety of writers and artists documented the effects due, in part to a great extent, to the eruptions, which may include the sky watchers identified, but are not limited to the following. 

In literary studies, one might think of literary and non-literary records:

• Gilbert White's Natural History of Selborne (1789) in response to the effects of the Laki eruption
• William Wordsworth's Lucy poems written in Goslar, Germany (e.g., "Strange fits of passion" and "A slumber did my spirit seal") influenced by the Pico Viejo eruption
• George Gordon, Lord Byron's "Darkness" (1816) and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus (1818) in response to the Tambora eruption
• Gerard Manley Hopkins's "Remarkable Sunsets" in Nature (1883) and John Ruskin's "The 'Storm-Cloud' of the Nineteenth Century" (1884) shaped by the Krakatoa eruption

In visual art, a host of artists captured the dramatic stratovolcanic eruptions and the sky altering effects:

• Joseph Wright of Derby's Vesuvius from Portici (1774-1776)
• J.M.W. Turner's Eruption of Soufriere Mountain (1812)
• J.M.W. Turner's Vesuvius in Eruption (1817)
• Caspar David Friedrich's Woman before the Rising or Setting Sun (1818-1824)
• Georges Seurat's Bathers at Asnieres (1884)
• William Ascroft's Twilight and afterglow effects at Chelsea (1888)

Scholars interested in submitting to the call for contributions to the edited collection Volcanic Materiality in Literature and Art of the Anthropocene, under contract with Edinburgh University Press, will be asked to include a 200-300 word abstract along with a 100 word biography sent to Dewey W. Hall, Ph.D. at dwhall@cpp.edu. The deadline will be November 30, 2026. Full drafts will be due February 28, 2027.

Image Source: Caspar David Friedrich's Woman before the Rising or Setting Sun (1818-1824)

Call for Editors
The Journal of UNDERGRADUATE Research in the Humanities (JURH)
Carroll University Center for the Humanities

Application Deadline: November 1, 2026

The Journal of Undergraduate Research in the Humanities (JURH) is looking for guest editors for its Summer 2027 issue. The organizers are happy to consider nineteenth century-focused themes. Click here to learn more about JURH.

Assistant Professor, TENURE-TRACK, Victorian literature
Department of English
University of notre dame
notre dame, IN

Application Deadline: October 22, 2026

The Department of English at the University of Notre Dame invites applications for a full-time, tenure-track appointment at the rank of Assistant Professor in Victorian Literature. The anticipated start date for the position is August 2027, and candidates must have completed all requirements for a PhD in Victorian literature or closely related field by that date. Candidates should show evidence of an ambitious program of research and a commitment to excellence in teaching and service. We welcome applicants working in any genre and with any critical approach. The position requires teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels (normally two courses per semester), including introductory or survey courses in Victorian literature, and courses in more specialized topics. The successful candidate will also mentor and advise students at all levels. 

To apply, candidates should submit the following through Interfolio: https://apply.interfolio.com/192973

• An application letter;
• A current cv;
• The names and contact information of three referees (who will be contacted if the candidate is called to interview).

Candidates may be asked to provide additional materials later in the review process, including a writing sample and dossier of references.

Applications must be received by October 22, 2026, for full consideration. We expect to conduct all interviews of longlisted candidates over Zoom. Finalists will be invited to visit campus for departmental interviews.

Inquiries may be directed to Professor Yasmin Solomonescu, Chair of the Search Committee, at ysolomon@nd.edu. Further information about the Department of English and the University of Notre Dame can be found at https://english.nd.edu/ and https://www.nd.edu/.

The University of Notre Dame seeks to attract, develop, and retain the highest quality faculty, staff and administration. The University is an Equal Opportunity Employer, and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national or ethnic origin, sex, disability, veteran status, genetic information, or age in employment. Moreover, Notre Dame prohibits discrimination against veterans or disabled qualified individuals, and complies with 41 CFR 60-741.5(a) and 41 CFR 60-300.5(a). We strongly encourage applications from candidates attracted to a university with a Catholic identity.

Associate or full professor Position in Victorian Literature
Department of English
University of notre dame
notre dame, IN

Application Deadline: October 22, 2026

The Department of English at the University of Notre Dame invites applications for a full-time appointment at the rank of Associate Professor or Professor in Victorian Literature. Candidates should have a distinguished record of publication and a demonstrated commitment to excellence in teaching and service. We welcome applicants working in any genre and with any critical approach. The position requires teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels (normally two courses per semester), including introductory or survey courses in Victorian literature, and courses in more specialized topics. The successful candidate will also mentor and advise students at all levels. We are particularly seeking candidates eager to take a leading role in the life of our department and university, and in the profession as a whole. The anticipated start date for the position is August 2027. 

To apply, candidates should submit the following through Interfolio: https://apply.interfolio.com/193155

• An application letter;
• A current cv;
• The names and contact information of three referees (who will be contacted if the candidate is called to interview).

Candidates may be asked to provide additional materials later in the review process, including a writing sample and dossier of references.

Applications must be received by October 22, 2026, for full consideration. We expect to conduct all interviews of longlisted candidates over Zoom. Finalists will be invited to visit campus for departmental interviews.

Inquiries may be directed to Professor Yasmin Solomonescu, Chair of the Search Committee, at ysolomon@nd.edu. Further information about the Department of English and the University of Notre Dame can be found at https://english.nd.edu/ and https://www.nd.edu/.

The University of Notre Dame seeks to attract, develop, and retain the highest quality faculty, staff and administration. The University is an Equal Opportunity Employer, and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national or ethnic origin, sex, disability, veteran status, genetic information, or age in employment. Moreover, Notre Dame prohibits discrimination against veterans or disabled qualified individuals, and complies with 41 CFR 60-741.5(a) and 41 CFR 60-300.5(a). We strongly encourage applications from candidates attracted to a university with a Catholic identity. 

Call for papers
A cultural history of countercultures in the long-nineteenth century
Bloomsbury Cultural Histories Series

 Abstract Deadline: December 1, 2026

Although the term “counterculture” is a recent development, tracing back only to the 1970s, cultural movements and ideals that reject established social values and practices, or that oppose traditional, entrenched mores and expectations, have a much longer history. Indeed, many of the social transformations associated with the modern era emerged from such challenges to the mainstream. Enlightenment thought rejected blind faith in tradition, even as some reformers enacted harsh censorship while circulating their own pornographic or heretical texts clandestinely. Romanticism elevated rebellion against social strictures, even as it was leveraged as a tool of nation building. Bohemian circles challenged bourgeois class conventions and norms around drug use, even as many bohemians benefitted from systemic societal privileges. Some abolitionist and suffrage movements in nineteenth-century Europe and the Atlantic world contested both the bourgeois model of the “angel of the hearth” and the developing pseudoscience used to justify enslavement, racism, and, eventually, eugenics, even as other reformers worked within eugenic frameworks or fostered an understanding of gender that, in many places, led women’s rights to be more restricted at the end of the century than they were at its outset. 

These and other countercultural formations provide the basis for this volume, which explores the emergence, scope, and impact of countercultures, broadly understood, amid the consolidation of industrial modernity and bourgeois hegemony in the long nineteenth century. The organizers seek essays that examine the relationships between dominant cultural forms, alternative ways of being, and interpretive frameworks that resisted, transgressed, or rejected the mainstream. Did countercultures consistently develop in direct opposition to cultural norms? How were they subsumed, assimilated, or rejected by dominant cultural actors? To what extent did cultural practices, political movements, and aesthetic forms that departed from the norm transform the status quo?

This series understands countercultures as collective formations that, across historical periods, make everyday life a site of transgressive refusal. Through alternative ways of living, believing, expressing, organizing, and belonging, they challenge dominant norms and reveal the boundaries of the proper, sacred, respectable, and legitimate as historically made, contested, and open to change; some remain fleeting experiments, while others help make broader social transformation imaginable.

(Inter)disciplinary research essays in any field are welcome. Essays should speak to a broad, interdisciplinary audience, and should respond to one of the following topic areas, within the context of the long nineteenth century:

• Countercultural movements and their origins
• Rebels and poets
• Aesthetics and sounds
• Transgressive genders and sexualities
• Cults, drugs and rituals
• Hybrid identities at the crossroads
• Resistance and counterpublic spaces
• Culture wars

These topics are held in common across A Cultural History of Countercultures, so essays not aimed specifically at one of these areas cannot be considered for inclusion in the volume.

A 250-word abstract and one-page CV are due by December 1, 2026, to rhirjohn@iu.edu. Full articles (max 10,000 words), if requested, will be due April 15, 2027. Please indicate in your abstract which topic area your essay addresses. Submissions may not be under review or published elsewhere.

Image Source: A Wreath of Roses (1880) by Marie Spartali Stillman