This is the annual call for papers for our journal Working Papers in the Humanities: we invite contributions to Volume 18 (2023), Voyages, edited by Emily Di Dodo and Rachel Hayes.

MHRA Working Papers in the Humanities is an electronic open-access journal intended to allow researchers to present initial findings or hypotheses. As such it will be of particular interest to postgraduate and early career researchers. We invite proposals for papers of up to 4000 words in MHRA style, with completed essays to be delivered to the editors by 4th April 2023. Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be sent, accompanied by a short biographical statement on the same page, to postgrads@mhra.org.uk, by 5th December 2022.

journal cover

Though confined to ink on paper, a text is never static. Whether before or after it is put into writing, any literary work traverses a vast expanse of space, time, versions, media, ideas, identities. Rather than focusing on the finished product, this issue of Working Papers in the Humanities aims to better understand the process by which literary works undergo or recount the journey a text (alongside its author and its audience) undertakes or is subjected to from its conception to its reception, and beyond.

This can be interpreted in many ways – as the study of literary works that either narrate or embody transition, translation, travel, (re-)adaptation or transformation. We invite proposals engaging with (but by no means limited to) the following areas of study:

  • Travel writing
  • Voyages of memory
  • Perspectives of time and temporality
  • Exploration of personal/cultural identity
  • Dynamics of power
  • Traversing boundaries
  • Transnational literature
  • Literature of migration
  • Bilingual writing
  • Translation theory
  • Linguistic transition
  • Textual criticism
  • Variety in oral literature
  • Reception and transmission of texts
  • Adaptation and parody

Proposals may cover a range of periods (from the medieval and Early Modern to the twenty-first century) and different cultural contexts (including English-, French-, Germanic-, Hispanic-, Italian-, Portuguese-, and Slavonic-speaking cultures). We hope to attract scholars working in a variety of fields (Modern Languages, English Studies, World Literature, Comparative Literature, Cultural History, Gender Studies, Queer Theory, Film and Media Studies and the Digital Humanities, Art History, Performance and Reception History).

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