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Call for Papers

EVENT: 6th Annual GOTH Symposium
CFP DEADLINE: 12 January 2026
EVENT DATE: Friday 15 May 2026

ORGANIZERS: The Open University Centre for Research into Gender and Otherness in the Humanities
GUEST PANEL: The Open University Medieval and Early Modern Research Group
TYPE: F2F
HOST: Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, School of Arts & Humanities
LOCATION: The Open University, Milton Keynes, Library Seminar Rooms 3&5.
THEME: Gender and otherness in drama, literature and visual culture, IV.

The Annual GOTH Symposium welcomes scholars from within and outside The Open University for productive interdisciplinary discussion and debate. The Program Committee invites proposals for presentations focusing on any aspects of gender and/or otherness in creative writing or pre-modern drama, literature and visual culture, in two formats:

1. Postgraduate students only: 5-minute lightning papers on any aspects of human gender and otherness in creative writing or drama, literature and/or visual culture.

2. Open call: 15-minute papers focusing on any aspects of gender and otherness in creative writing or drama, literature and/or visual culture, with particular emphasis on:

Panel 1: Gender, race, disability and/or human physical otherness in religious and secular medieval and early modern theatre, with topics including but not limited to:
performed otherness
otherness in secular dramatic texts
otherness in religious drama (eg convent drama, liturgical drama within the church, performances of Biblical episodes or Saint’s lives in religious and/or secular spaces).
understanding performed otherness through the study of performativity, gesture, costume, crossdressing and/or textiles.

Panel 2: Gender, race, disability and/or otherness in creative writing (Fiction, non-fiction, poetry, script), with topics including but not limited to:
Dark tourism and memorialisation
Ekphrasis
The portrayal and representation of “other” in creative writing
The role of the outsider in contemporary writing
The role of the body political in contemporary writing
The Gothic genre in contemporary writing

Panel 3: Female patrons and the fashioning of gender in medieval and early modern literary, dramatic and visual arts, with topics including but not limited to:
the role of gender in cultural creation, performance and patronage
cultural patronage as a pathway to female legal power and status.
Ways of using gender, costume, cross-dressing and textiles to study and reframe dramatic narrative (eg women as ‘story-weavers’ /embroiderers of vestments/costumes).

Panel 4: The Open University Medieval and Early Modern Research Group guest panel:
Radical Otherness? Utopia and other ideal societies in the medieval and early modern world, with topics including but not limited to:
Self and other in visual, literary and musical utopias
Gender, race, age and disability
Self and other in monastic and other ideal communities

Please submit your proposal (200 words max) and academic bio (100 words max) on or before the CFP deadline of 12 December 2025, to m.a.katritzky@open.ac.uk & FASS-GOTH-Admin@open.ac.uk. All presenters who stay for the whole symposium will be provided with 1 night of paid accommodation (14-15 May) and all refreshments on the day.

Further information on the event and registration is being posted on the GOTH website as it becomes available: http://fass.open.ac.uk/research/centres/goth.

Inquiries on any aspect of the symposium may be emailed to FASS-GOTH-Admin@open.ac.uk.

Circulated on behalf of Team GOTH
Consultant: Dr Chloe Fairbanks

Committee:
M A Katritzky – Director, GOTH & Professor of Theatre Studies, OU, ECW
Dr Andrew Murray, GOTH EDI Co-ordinator, Lecturer in Art History, OU
Mrs Jennie Owen, GOTH Health & Safety Co-ordinator, Lecturer in Creative Writing, OU, ECW.
Isabelle Lepore, GOTH PG Forum Convenor (OU, ECW)

Please check GOTH website for latest details: http://fass.open.ac.uk/research/centres/goth

A hybrid conference convened by the University of Warwick and Manchester in partnership with the European Network for Short Fiction Research.

We are excited to announce this call for papers on Ecological Futurity in ShortFiction. We welcome papers that consider the ways in which short fiction envisions radical alternative futures to a world threatened by socio-ecological crisis.

Key critical research that has recently been done in the field of Ecological Futurity revolves around dystopian and utopian depictions of humanity’s future. In Worlds Without US: Some Types of Disanthropy, for instance, Greg Garrad examines depictions of humanity’s extinction, considering the ways in which writers, artists and filmmakers have imagined a world, ‘completely and finally without people’, and the challenges these disanthropic representations pose to anthropocentric hierarchies and privilege.1 In contrast, Thom Van Dorren, Eben Kirsky and Ursula Münster consider in their introduction on Multispecies Studies, the ways in which cobecoming encourages, ‘the exchange and emergence of meanings’, between participants as they become immersed, ‘in webs of signification’, that might be, ‘linguistic, gestural, biochemical, and more’, and how these cobecoming relationships could foster greater harmony between the human and the more-than-human world in the future.2 These two diverging representations on the future of humanity are at the heart of what Deborah Lilley identifies as a New Pastoral movement in contemporary fiction:‘where the themes and conventions of the pastoral are being reimagined and reshaped in response to environmental crises’.3 This body of contemporary research highlights how studies into Ecological Futurity are shining a light on the political, economic and environmental systems in play in the current-day and-age, and how they will shape humanity’s future.

This conference foregrounds the role of short fictional forms in providing imaginative access into ecological futures. We are inviting abstracts of 450 words, including a 150-word bio on a broad range of topics, including but not limited to:

· Utopian Futures in short fiction
· Post-Apocalyptic/ Dystopian Imaginaries
· Short Fiction, Ecocriticism and the Environmental Humanities
· Speculative Fiction, Sci-Fi, and Climate Change
· Feminism and ecological futurity
· Indigenous Knowledge and Ecology
· Technological Innovations
· Queer futurity/ alternative reproductive futures
.The Weird tale in the twenty-first century
· The folktale and environmental folklore

The Ecological Futurity Conference will take place in-person and online at the University of Manchester on the 27th of June 2025. Deadline for abstracts: 2nd May 2025. To be sent to ensfrcg@gmail.com

Organisers: Paul Knowles (University of Manchester), Madeleine Sinclair (University of Warwick) and the ENSFR Network.

References 

1 ‘Worlds Without Us: Some Types of Disanthropy’, Greg Garrard, SubStance (2012), 41.1, 127, 40-60, p.41.
2  Multispecies Studies: Cultivating Arts of Attentiveness’, Thom Van Dooren, Eben Kirksey, Ursula Münster, Environmental Humanities (2016), 8.1, 1-23, p.2.
3 Deborah Lilley, The New Pastoral in Contemporary British Writing (Oxon, Routledge, 2020), p.156.

Short Fiction in Theory & Practice ISSN 2043-0701 | online ISSN 2043-071X 2 issues per volume | First published 2011

Special issue: ‘Uniquely Canadian Cultural Narratives’, guest edited by Zsuzsanna Lénárt-Muszka (University of Debrecen)

In 1972, seventeen-year-old Heather Scott submitted a memorable entry – ‘As Canadian as possible under the circumstances’ – to radio host Peter Gzowski’s contest seeking the perfect Canadian aphorism. But even before this iconic phrase, the question of what it means to be Canadian had been debated for generations. From garrison mentality and biculturalism to multiculturalism, Canada has frequently relied on such notions to define its identity, while simultaneously attempting to erase First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities and downplaying the contributions of various other minority groups. Today, amid increasing global migration, calls for reconciliation, bids to recognize and celebrate diverse communities, and official measures such as Canada’s Anti-Racism Strategy (2024 2028), the question of what – if anything – constitutes ‘Canadianness’ is still open.

The international, peer-reviewed journal, Short Fiction in Theory and Practice (Intellect Books) is inviting original submissions for a special issue to be published in 2026 that seeks to explore how short fiction reflects on historical and contemporary notions of ‘Canadianness’. We invite proposals for scholarly papers.