UIGEC 2026 

Call for proposals!

The UI English Graduate Association is excited to announce our 2026 conference theme “(k)no(w) books, (k)no(w) people: Multidisciplinary Studies of Narrative, Media, and the Anthropocene.” At the forefront of our conference is the power of narratives. Humans are storytellers by nature, and for thousands of years we have used stories to remember our pasts and envision our futures. We have used them to entertain and inspire us, to empower us in the face of oppression, and to understand the world around us. And, as the Anthropocene makes strikingly clear, human stories have shaped the world, to an irreversible degree. And yet, in an era dually defined by technological proliferation and environmental volatility, it has become increasingly apparent that humans are not the only authors writing the planet's future. More-than-human agents, from artificial intelligence to rising seas, are taking center stage in the storied world, both as characters and as narrators. In reckoning with this shift, we have an obligation to broaden our understanding of who (or what) can tell these stories while expanding our notion of what a narrative can be.