Open Calls for Submissions

Below we post any open calls with information about submitting.

Please see our Submission Guidelines for information about general submissions to SEL.

Call for Papers: Decolonizing Historical English Literary Studies

This transhistorical themed issue of SEL Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 (Autumn 2028, 66.4) invites contributions from scholars working in the four centuries of SEL’s remit who share a desire to decolonize historical English literary studies. While Indigenous, Black, diasporic, postcolonial, anti-racist, feminist, queer, and trans scholarship have profoundly reshaped literary criticism over the last several decades, the field of historical English literary studies continues to rely upon disciplinary structures rooted in Eurocentric epistemologies and imperial narratives of civilization, progress, and historical development. These structures shape not only the canon, but also the temporal frameworks, archival practices, institutional histories, and methodologies through which literary scholarship is organized and legitimized.

This conversation arrives at a critical moment. Across North America, renewed investments in “classical” education and the Western canon have coincided with attacks on Critical Race Theory, Gender Studies, diversity initiatives, and race-conscious institutional practices. At the same time, scholars working in literary studies continue to confront longstanding questions concerning the relationship between literary history and colonial power: whose histories become central to the field, which forms of knowledge count as legitimate, and how historical English literary studies might engage forms of relationality, temporality, and knowledge production beyond Eurocentric frameworks.

Historical periodization remains especially central to these questions. Organizing literary study through categories such as “Early Modern,” “Enlightenment,” “Romantic,” or “Victorian” often reproduces linear narratives of progress tied to imperialism and white epistemologies (Chatterjee, Christoff, Wong 2020). Such rigid temporalities specifically marginalize and create barriers to engaging Indigenous ways of knowing centered on land, kinship, and relationality (Binhammer 2021). Given SEL’s traditional structure reliant on periodicity, this transhistorical themed issue offers a deliberately reflexive opportunity to agitate such conventions in a journal that has been previously known for reinforcing those very structures. We seek work that not only interrogates the canon but also examines the temporal, archival, and institutional structures that continue to organize the field itself.

Following K. Wayne Yang, writing under the pseudonym la paperson, we approach decolonization as “the rematriation of land, the regeneration of relations, and the forwarding of Indigenous, Black, and queer futures—a process that requires countering what power seems to be up to” (2017). Taking up this capacious definition, we invite contributions that engage with decolonization as a literary, methodological, institutional, and social project across four centuries and beyond.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Indigenous sovereignty, land rights, treaties, and cultural revitalization
  • The relationship between literary periodization and imperial narratives of progress
  • Indigenous, Black, diasporic, queer, and trans critiques of historical temporality
  • The presence and erasure of Indigenous, Black, diasporic, queer, and trans intellectual and literary genealogies within English literature
  • Archival silences, reading against the grain, and critical fabulation
  • Oral traditions and unconventional forms of textuality
  • Community-engaged and relational research methodologies
  • Rematriation of Indigenous belongings and the role of colonial institutions, including universities, museums, churches, and archives
  • Making Empire, race, and colonialism visible within canonical English literary texts
  • Institutional histories of English literary studies and the politics of disciplinarity
  • Transhistorical and comparative approaches that challenge Eurocentric literary histories

Overall, this transhistorical themed issue welcomes contributions that reconsider how literary history is organized, narrated, and institutionalized, and that imagine new possibilities for the study of historical English literature beyond colonial frameworks.

Proposals of 250–500 words and a bio are due by February 1, 2027. Authors will be notified if their proposals have been accepted by March 1, 2027. Full essays of 7,000–8,000 words (inclusive of notes) will be due June 1, 2027 and conform to SEL submission guidelines. This themed issue will be received for review, and submissions will undergo double-anonymized peer review. Inquiries and submissions should be sent to the themed issue’s editor: Willow White (wdwhite@ualberta.ca).

Works Cited

Binhammer, Katherine.“Is the Eighteenth Century a Colonizing Temporality?” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 33, no. 2 (2021) : 199–204. https://doi.org/10.3138/ecf.33.2.199.

Chatterjee, Ronjaunee, Alicia Mireles Christoff, and Amy R. Wong. “Introduction: Undisciplining Victorian Studies,” Victorian Studies 62, no. 3 (2020): 369–91. https://doi.org/10.2979/victorianstudies.62.3.01.

la paperson. A Third University Is Possible. University of Minnesota Press, 2017.

Call for Papers:

SEL Studies in English Literature 1500–1900

SEL Studies in English Literature 1500–1900, published quarterly by Johns Hopkins University Press for Rice University, invites submissions of original scholarly essays for upcoming issues. We seek work that offers fresh, rigorous contributions to the study of British literature across four historical fields:

  • English Renaissance Literature
  • Tudor and Stuart Drama
  • Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature
  • Nineteenth-Century Literature

We welcome literary scholarship at any career stage—especially work that brings historically excluded or underrepresented perspectives. SEL values methodological variety, archives both familiar and newly uncovered, and arguments reflecting enduring or emergent subjects of literary interest. Essays should be intellectually ambitious while remaining accessible to a broad scholarly readership.

About SEL

For sixty-five years, SEL has published exceptional scholarship on British literature across the four centuries that constitute our remit. The journal has long been known for essays marked by intellectual originality, conceptual acumen, and historical rigor.

SEL is also distinguished by the care taken with every published essay. Our editorial staff conducts unusually thorough copyediting and fact-checking, ensuring that each essay reflects the precision and clarity that have shaped the journal’s reputation. We are committed to fostering a diverse, equitable, and vibrant scholarly community, and we actively encourage submissions that broaden the canon, rethink disciplinary assumptions, or approach familiar texts from unexpected angles.

SEL publishes substantial articles of 7,000-8,000 words that intervene meaningfully in their fields. We follow CMS 18th edition citation and SEL house style.

Submission Process

Authors should consult our full submission guidelines at: https://sel.rice.edu/submission-guidelines-faq

Submissions are accepted through our ScholarOne portal (linked on our website). Essays are reviewed year-round. Questions about submissions or the suitability of a project may be directed to Executive Editor Amy Kahrmann Huseby (akhuseby@rice.edu) and to the SEL office (sel@rice.edu).