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Literature and Writing Research

Professional

Conferences, Journals, and More

The following is a selected list of professional resources for CSUSM courses in literature  such as scholarly conferences and calls for papers.

Related Pages:

CSUSM LTWR home page

CSUSM Writing Center

Online Lists

Some lists are more complete and up-to-date than others, but the following list provides links to the sites that have been most consistent in keeping their information updated or attempt to be comprehensive in their scope.

  • All Conferences.com provides a short list of conferences with direct links. There is also a longer list of past events--many conferences are offered either annually or less frequently, so you might want to look for an announcement of a tenative or proposed future date for a past conference.
  • Literature Conferences Worldwide offers the most extensive list of conferences, but the list can be overwhelming by simply being sorted by month, rather than focus of the conference. Keyword searching is available to locate specific interests.
  • English Literature and Languages Conferences Worldwide is focused on teaching English and TESOL. Keyword searching is available to locate specific interests.
  • Communication, Language and Literature Conferences of Interest does not link to current conferences, but offers information on recurring conferences, their focus and frequency.
  • Zuzu's Petals Literary Resource offers a mixed bag of information. The simplest way to find conferences or CFPs is to use the search function and select to only search the Zuzu's Petals pages.

Listservs

Publishers
Journal and book publishers can also host conferences or offer links to conferences as a service to the discipline.. Check the publisher's website who publishes materials on your focus.

Journal and Professional Publication Sources

Not everything is published on the Internet, although for some short-turnaround announcements, the internet may be the most likely place to look. Unfortunately, doing a search on literature and conferences using Google turned up about 1,840,000 hits--far too many to look through to find current listings.

A more effective means to locate conferences that would be suitable for your research would be to look at appropriate journals. They may be in paper or electronic format. Here are some titles to look at, but keep in mind other titles may carry an announcement of use to you:

Paper--Browsing the most recent issue of the journals listed here will provide both conference announcements and CFPs.

Chronicle of Higher Education (Periodicals L11 .C47, conferences listed in Gazette/Coming Events section)

Publications of the Modern Language Association of America(Periodicals PB6 .M6)

Writer's Chronicle (Periodicals PN101 .A88)

Electronic

Using the Library Catalog, you can do a search on the GENRE "electronic journals--literature" to see the growing list of full-text journals available through our various databases. You may want to browse this list to see what is offered, or search the catalog for a specific journal title. A link will be offered to the journal to save you looking through all the databases to figure out where it is.

Once you are in a specific journal, you can type the word conference* (use the asterick to get conference or conferences) and any keywords that identify the specific focus. (For example, a search on just the search word conference* in MLA found over 6700 hits and they were on all types of conferences in different languages and offering different emphasis.)

Some databases such as MLA do not offer full text of the articles. Use the Check SFX for Availability button to check our other resources for full text for further information on the conference of interest.

Reading Today (Upcoming Events section) (found in Academic Search Premier)

Times Educational Supplement (Noticeboard section) (found in Academic Search Premier)

Free Fulltext Journals

  • Directory Of Open Access Journals freely-available full text online journals
  • Early Modern Literary Studies (note the conference dates are past, but could lead to conferences of interest that may be coming up with new dates.)
    EServer.org Iowa State University-hosted site offers a section on CFPs as well as many full-text online journals
  • Writer Magazine (conferences of interest to writers in the West, find them through the Classified link)

Professional Organizations

Another focused resource besides journals is to look at the organizations that address your particular field of study. This will generally lead to a specific conference instead of lists of possible conferences. The following is a short list, for more, refer to the Encyclopedia of Associations (REF AS22 .E5. Vol. 3 has a list of associations sorted by subject area such as 'literature'.)

Calls for Papers (CFP)

General Guidelines Websites

While not all guidelines will be appropriate for all conferences or CFPs, reviewing these sites will help you think about what is important in your proposal and focus.