Call for Papers: BIPOC & Asian American Literature at CEA 2027 (4/1-4/3/27)

Apr. 1-3, 2027 | St. Louis, Missouri
The Westin St. Louis Hotel
https://cea-web.org/the-conference-hotel

The College English Association, a gathering of scholar-teachers in English studies, welcomes proposals for presentations on BIPOC & Asian American Literature for our 2027 conference. Submit your proposal at www.cea-web.org

We welcome a wide range of approaches, periods, genres, and traditions. In keeping with the conference theme of “Gateways,” proposals might take up any of the questions and possibilities suggested below in the general call for papers as they relate to BIPOC and Asian American literature.


The deadline for abstract submissions is 11/01/2026.

Conference Theme: Gateways
For its 2027 annual conference, the College English Association (CEA) invites proposals for papers and panels that explore the theme of “Gateways” and their significance in literature, criticism, and pedagogy.

Tracing its history back to French explorers in the second half of the 18th century, the great city of St. Louis began as a fur trading post named after King Louis IX of France and was established on the ancestral lands of the Osage Nation, Missouria, and Illini Confederacy. Becoming part of the United States through the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the city famously came to be known as the “Gateway to the West,” serving as a launching point for generations of explorers and settlers expanding the frontier. Yet, we must remember that the city also serves as a gateway to its past as part of indigenous lands transformed through its colonial history into a major river port and trading center that fostered migration both outwards and inwards for centuries.

Today, St. Louis invites us to reflect on the continued significance of gateways in our 21st-century lives.

GENERAL CALL FOR PAPERS

GATEWAYS: For its 2027 annual conference, the College English Association (CEA) invites proposals for papers and panels that explore the theme of “Gateways” and their significance in literature, criticism, and pedagogy. Potential areas of interest:
• How do gateways expand literary and cultural spaces but also, as access points, mark out boundaries and limits?
• Do gateways invite gatekeepers to enable and limit access? Is it possible to imagine gateways without gatekeepers?
• How can we imagine literary and cultural gateways to foster inter-cultural, cross-cultural, and trans-cultural interactions?
• How do we envision pedagogical approaches to create gateways for our students to new literary vistas, critical thought, and professional opportunities?
• How can gateways in both their physical and symbolic significances (like the city of St. Louis and the Gateway Arch) connect the territorial to the cultural, imaginative, and spiritual in literary-critical studies?
• In what ways can we re-imagine our scholarly and pedagogical work to open up interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary gateways?

For CEA 2027, we are especially interested topics related to GATEWAYS in texts, disciplines, people, cultural studies, media, and pedagogy. Consider such topics as the implications of political gateways across time and place, cultural gateways of identity, gateways in the media (including social media) and how they impact society, pedagogical gateways of teaching philosophy and their implementation, or personal gateways through autobiography and memoir.

GENERAL TOPICS: The CEA Conference encompasses a wide range of areas, including literary studies, creative writing, rhetoric and composition, technical communication, linguistics, and film. We further encourage proposals in areas about our wider role as academics, including student/instructor accountability and assessment, student advising, academic leadership in departments and programs, and the place of the English department in the university.

NEW FOR 2027: UNDERGRADUATE ROUNDTABLES
CEA invites undergraduates to enjoy the conference experience by sharing their work in flash-essay roundtable sessions. A flash essay is a highly condensed, high-impact presentation (typically 300-1000 words, or 2-5 minutes) that delivers core research findings, a specific argument, or a compelling narrative. During roundtable sessions, the speakers and audience engage in discussion with each other in more of an open conversation than in traditional panels. Learn more about roundtables here: https://cea-web.org/about-roundtables.

For any questions you might have on this special topic area, please contact:
Luke Anderson (Louisiana State University)
lande72@lsu.edu