Call For Papers

Oxford English Graduate Conference 2026: Strange Bedfellows

 

What makes literary collaboration unexpected, difficult, or strange? How have authors transcended barriers – national, social, ideological, religious, temporal – in the collaborative production of texts? For the upcoming EGO conference, we invite students to write on the prismatic theme of “strange bedfellows”. From plagiarism of unusual sources to fraught collaboration between literary “frenemies” to allyship across religious and political lines, this theme lends itself to discussions of the way literature is shaped by the collaboration of radically different perspectives and interests. “Strange bedfellows” may also be taken literally: how have unlikely romantic encounters, queerness, and troubled domesticity shaped literature? Taking a broader view, it may even be said that literary works and literary studies are often spaces where different disciplines converse and conflict. In this spirit, we welcome papers on the relationship of texts to visual media, music, and performance, as well as the role of interdisciplinarity at this critical moment in the contemporary humanities.    

 

This year’s EGO conference be held in person in Oxford in early June 2026. We invite papers on the theme of “strange bedfellows” across all periods, genres, and literary disciplines on topics including but not limited to: 

  • Local and transnational forms of collaborative influence: co-authorship, intertextuality, lines of allyship, patronage, coterie circles, artistic schools and movements 

  • Erased collaborators and plagiarism  

  • Translation and comparative criticism 

  • Strange bedfellows on the page: juxtapositions in miscellanies, magazines, newspapers, and anthologies 

  • Interdisciplinarity in texts and as methodology 

  • Strange, queer intimate relationships in literary works and as authorial influence 

  • Alienating domestic spaces and dynamics 

We welcome individual proposals for 20-minute papers, sent as a 250-word abstract alongside an additional short 100-word bio. We also encourage three-person panel proposals of 500 words with a short bio for each participant. Abstracts from all graduate students working in English and adjacent fields are invited. 

 

Please send all submissions, and any questions you may have, to oegc2026@gmail.com by 6 March.