Call For Papers

A SPECIAL ISSUE OF VOLUPTÉ: INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF DECADENCE STUDIES
​

Abstract Submission: Friday, January 15th, 2027

Symposium of works-in-progress: Friday, April 16th, 2027

Full Articles: Monday, May 31st, 2027

 

Over recent decades, decadence studies has moved beyond earlier identifications of decadence with the Western European literary and artistic canon of the fin de siècle. Recent scholarship has, for example, developed new critical approaches to decadence, from translation studies to affect and sensory studies to postcolonial theory; illuminated the global dimensions of decadence; traced its afterlives and new literary histories; and examined its significance across diverse artistic and sociocultural practices, from food and fashion to performance and popular media. Taken together, these efforts underline the continued resonance of decadence as a capacious and multifaceted phenomenon for thinking about the many faces of modernity.

 

This Volupté special issue contributes to these conversations by considering decadence from a digital perspective. How might decadence, broadly understood, relate to digital, computational, and informational culture? Is decadence, often associated with countercultural and counter-progressive attitudes, at odds with technological change or could it anticipate aspects of digital culture, within and against existing dynamics of class, gender, race, religion, and sexuality? How might modern media be understood as decadent, and how might decadence function as a form of media criticism? Are there new digital genres of literature, music, and art, including automations, generative art, e-poetry, and video games, that engage with decadence in disruptive and different ways? Could developments in technology – particularly AI – be a decadent driver of the collapse of human critical thought or function as Baudrillardian simulacra leading to the decay of the so-called “information age”? Finally, how might digital collections and computational approaches — whether as methodology or as theoretical and critical frameworks — mediate or illuminate decadence?

 

We welcome submissions that explore the intersections of decadence and data, media, and computation, broadly understood. We also welcome proposals for creative contributions (e.g. short fiction, poetry, artwork) that reflect on or are inspired by the intersections of decadence and data, media, and computation. Following the field’s global turn, we are open to submissions that explore the stakes of digital decadence in countries and regions within, and outside, of Western Europe, such as Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, South America, and more. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

 

• Media studies and media archaeological approaches to decadence
   

• Decadence and media aesthetics
   

• Decadence and (pre-)digital culture
   

• Decadence and modern information culture and practices
   

• Decadence and computation (including computational approaches to decadence)
   

• Decadence and algorithms or algorithmic culture
   

• Data, datafication, and decadence under late capitalism
   

• Digital literature and decadence
   

• Dead internet theory, social media, cultural stagnation, memes, gaming, and decadence
   

• Artificiality, artifice, and artificial intelligence
   

• Digitization collections and projects related to decadence (see below)

 

Abstracts are due January 15, 2027. They should be 200-300 words in length, accompanied by a short biography.

 

We will hold a small online symposium about Digital Decadence on Friday, April 16, 2027. Contributors to the special issue will present their drafts in a 10 to 12-minute presentation and circulate verbal feedback through a Q&A. Then, full versions of the papers for the special journal issue will be due on Monday, May 31, 2027. Articles should be 6,000-7,000 words, including endnotes.

 

All textual material should be in Microsoft Word format and follow the MHRA Style Guide, though we are also open to accepting a wide range of digital files for relevant projects and artworks. We also invite submissions of “Data Biographies,” which present collections, corpora, datasets, performance art, poetry, or exhibitions of digital or digitized media related to decadence (including text, image, audio, or other kinds of media).

These submissions should be 300-500 words in length and should include:

• A name or title for the collection

• A short introduction to the collection and how it relates to decadence (this can include: the conception/origin, purpose, and context of creation of the collection);

• An overview of the materials included in the collection;

• The names and brief biographies of the creators or curators of the collection (if known) and/or the name of the submitter;

• A link to the collection.

You do not need to be a creator or curator of the collection you submit, but please ensure the collection is openly accessible and free of copyright restrictions, or indicate in the submission any access requirements. We expect these biographies to form the starting point of a library of digital and digitized resources for the decadence research and creative community.

The issue will be co-guest edited by Sandra Leonard and Cherrie Kwok. If you are interested in contributing to the special issue and its associated symposium, please send your abstract submission to Cherrie Kwok (drcherriekwok@proton.me) by Friday, January 15, 2027.

A SPECIAL ISSUE OF VOLUPTÉ: INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF DECADENCE STUDIES

Deadline for Proposals: 30 SEPTEMBER 2026

​

Volupté is an MLA-indexed, online journal engaging with decadence from antiquity to the present day. Its aim is to enhance and broaden the scope of decadence studies and stimulate discussion in relation to literary decadence and other forms of discourse, including Philosophy, Psychology, Religion, and Science. Based at Goldsmiths, University of London, Volupté is dedicated to promoting cutting-edge work by creative writers and artists and publishing the best research on decadence by early career and established scholars.

 

This special issue on “Decadence and the Environment,” scheduled for publication in Summer 2027, will engage with the complicated intimacies of decadence and the nonhuman elements of the organic world. Rather than the common characterisation of decadence as a cultural movement invested in the dandy persona, distorted and artificial aesthetics, and passions beyond hetero-procreative monogamy, the essays, creative works, and visual art in this special issue of Volupté will focus on extending the boundaries of eco-decadence. Scholarly and creative contributions will, to offer a few examples:
 

• engage with the renderings of ornamental animals, pungent rot, ripe sexuality, and sensual landscapes found in works by individuals such as Jean Moréas, Rachilde, F. Holland Day, and Peter Greenaway.
   

• assess the anti-mainstream politics and queer heroes of decadence through a biocentric lens,
   

• situate more recent genres such as environmentalist cli fi, the new weird, and post-apocalyptic literature within or in relation to the contrarian attitudes of works of the decadent movement,
   

• use decadence’s renderings of self-commodification to address practices such as carbon offsets, designating parklands, and defending old-growth forests as acts of self-assuagement, or
   

• address ways in which decadent art and literature might reduce the anthropocentrism of subjectivity itself.

These options are no more than suggestions. Other topics are strongly encouraged. As a whole, this special issue will cover a broad time period and works from various countries and/or cultures.

Please send 250-500 word proposals to the guest editor Dennis Denisoff at dennis1denisoff@gmail.com by September 30, 2026. The deadline for final submission (essays and creative writing of no more than 7000 words; maximum 3 visual works) will be 1 March 2027.

A SPECIAL ISSUE OF VICTORIANS: A JOURNAL OF CULTURE AND LITERATURE

Deadline for Proposals: 1 NOVEMBER 2026

​

Victorians: A Journal of Culture and Literature invites article submissions on the topic of “planetary precarity” for its Winter 2027 issue. This special issue will consider how precarity is produced on both local and global scales. As we confront our own possible extinction-level threats caused by climate disaster and, supposedly, a future dominated by artificial superintelligence, we seek to investigate how the Victorians reconceived their own precarity in the face of extractive capitalism and ecological crisis. Essays may consider the complicities of Victorian science (including scientific institutions and technologies spawned by scientific breakthroughs), politics, and economics in producing precarity locally and/or globally. Essays could also explore counter-movements that fight to reduce precarity, such as eco-topian communities, trade unions, political parties, agricultural reformers, activist movements, and artists of the period. Authors may choose their preferred lens, from carbon to ecology, from labor to design, from bodies to affect. Overall, the special issue wishes to theorize and historically trace the emergence of the planetary as a politically and ecologically resonant category during the nineteenth century, although essays may also investigate precarity as a historically situated feeling generated by nineteenth-century political trends, scientific findings, and speculative art.

​

Essays should be 7,500-9,500 words, inclusive of notes.

 

The citation style is The Chicago Manual of Style (18th edition), notes and bibliography. Please submit full essays by November 1, 2026, via Scholastica (https://victorians.scholasticahq.com/for-authors). Ashley Miller (Albion College) joins Victorians’ editorial team as guest editor for this issue.