EASA Triennial International Conference 2026
Peripheral identities and entanglement
(in person) 29 June to 1 July 2026, University of Pretoria, South Africa
CFP deadline extended to 15 February
People are inevitably intertwined – entangled – in complex relationships with each other, with their natural and urban environment, and with their cultural and historical environment and practices, as reflected in literature and language. As they interact with the forces that shape their identities, they negotiate the intersectional complexities (for example, cultural, material, economic, political, military, gendered, historical) of their world, often moving between the centre and the periphery. This process often calls upon them to face and/or resist binaries in their writing and ways of speaking to understand themselves and their world, and more importantly, to change their world to embrace mutual dependence between humans, and humans and their environment. Overcoming divisive personal, cultural and national boundaries that enforce the centre/periphery binary is essential for social justice based on mutual respect, across the globe, including social arenas and regions beleaguered by gendered, religious and political strife resulting in the marginalization of those excluded from power.
Bearing in mind notions of the periphery and entanglement, and the English Academy of Southern Africa’s focus on language and literature, we invite papers on topics including (but not limited to):
Intersectionality and marginalization
● Entangled histories and memories
● Reading the centres from the peripheries
● Resistance narratives and literature (this may include Palestinian resistance narratives and literature
– writing against the military-industrial complex, the creation of trauma narratives in real-time, and
conflict, writing and the digital space)
● Literary representations of subalternity
● Literary and cultural imaginaries of the future/s and infrastructure
● Representation and voice
● Disabled readings, and reading disability
● Gender and sexuality at/from the periphery
● Ecocritical entanglements
● AI, posthumanism, and the peripheries of human identity; machine/human entanglements
● Genre fiction from the global South
● Teaching or learning English from the linguistic periphery
● Entanglement through translation
● Islandness and restoring the agency of the island population
● Shifting peripheries of academe: ephemera, popular and online culture, genre, children’s and young
adult writing
● Epistemologies of the periphery
● Critical theory in conversation with ideas of personal identity and collective connection.
Proposals should consist of a title and abstract of up to 250 words, as well as the author’s name, affiliation, contact details, and a brief biography of no more than 100 words. Papers should be no longer than 20 minutes when read (approximately 2 500 words) and will be followed by Q and A.
Please submit proposals to Idette Noomé (idette.noome@up.ac.za) by 15 February 2026. Any enquiries can be sent to the same email address.
Acceptance of abstracts and details on payment will be sent by 28 February 2026.