CFP Haunted Bodies Conference (1/19/2026; Kingston, UK & Online 5/22-24/2026)

Please note imminent deadline:

Haunted Bodies

deadline for submissions:
January 19, 2026

full name / name of organization:
Queen’s Graduate Conference in Literature

contact email:
queensgraduateconference@gmail.com



Queen’s Graduate Conference in Literature

Call for Papers | Haunted Bodies

Date: May 22-24, 2026 Location: Queen’s University, Kingston and Online

Submissions due:

DEADLINE EXTENDED TO JANUARY 19, 2026

The Queen’s Graduate Conference in Literature (QGCL) seeks academic abstracts and creative pieces for its 2026 conference on the theme of “Haunted Bodies.” The concept of “haunting” has both literal and metaphorical implications. Literature is rife with haunted bodies and haunting spectres, from the ghost of Patroclus visiting Achilles in a dream, to Hamlet’s father stalking the ramparts of Elsinore, to Catherine Earnshaw begging to come inside, to the uncanny visitation in Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Yet bodies can also be haunted in much subtler ways: characters can be haunted by grief or trauma; landscapes can be haunted by violence; bodies of text can be haunted by literary legacies, erasure, or edits. We invite proposals that aim to explore hauntings in their various forms and the ways in which these hauntings affect (or not) the unstable/undefined body.

Presentations will be 15–20 minutes long; topics of interest may include, but are not restricted to:

• Encountering the Other: How do hauntings reflect epistemological anxieties? How do ghosts and hauntings help us explore ideas surrounding belonging and alienation?
• Corporeality: What does it mean for a body to be haunted? Which body is being haunted? A human body? A body of text? Is the body corporeal at all? How can hauntings explore or complicate understandings of intimacy?
• Afterlives: Is the afterlife literal and/or metaphorical? What type of inheritances—literary, physical, or spiritual—are at play? How do we interact with loss? How does it manifest within and outside the body?
• Ghosts: In what ways do literal ghosts appear in literature? Consider ghost stories, horror fiction, the Gothic, etc. What does it mean to possess or be possessed, literally or metaphorically?

Academic Submission Guidelines:

• Submit a brief biography of no more than 100 words
• Academic abstracts should be 200–300 words
• Do not include your name in the abstract

Creative Works Submission Guidelines:

• Creative works can come in any form: fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, fragments, audio-visual, etc.
• Submit a brief biography of no more than 100 words
• Submissions should be no more than 6000 words total or 15 minutes for non-textual works
• Applicants must upload a complete copy of their submission, including a title, to the Google form
• Do not include your name in the submission document

Please fill out the Google form here to apply: https://forms.gle/zFpKpNfjXo8zBk4v6

If you have any questions about the conference, please email queensgraduateconference@gmail.com



Last updated January 13, 2026