Dear Friends, believe it or not, four years have gone now and here we come back again.
We are pleased to announce that time has come that we hold again our international conference on the American Literary and Cultural West.
In REWEST Research Group we are confident that we will have our sixth edition next October 2026.
And we'd better start getting it all ready. Here you have some information on what we are planning to do and how to get on board. Soon, you'll find more information right here, stuff on how to travel and stay, registration, program, keynote speakers...
Now, we are sharing the call for papers and a summary of the most important and basic information:
Title of the conference: VI INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE AMERICAN LITERARY AND CULTURAL WEST: LOCAL/REGIONAL PERSPECTIVES AND GLOBAL IMAGININGS.
Days: 5, 6 and 7 of October, 2026
Place: Faculty of Arts, University of the Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz
You will find more information on how to submit proposals in the call for papers. You can either read it here below or click on the link to download it:
CFP.
Do not hesitate to get in touch with us if you want to get more information or if you have doubts or comments.
We have a new email address just for the conference: rewest2026@gmail.com.
We would really enjoy having you here with us next October.
VI INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE AMERICAN LITERARY AND CULTURAL WEST
Local/Regional Perspectives and Global Imaginings
University of the Basque Country (EHU), Vitoria-Gasteiz (Spain)
5–7 October 2026
The VI International Conference on the American Literary and Cultural West, organized by the research group REWEST (Research in Western American Literature), aims to provide an updated, wide-ranging, and interdisciplinary forum for the study of the literature, culture, and artistic representations of the American West. Building on the legacy of previous editions, this conference seeks to reassess the West as a dynamic, mobile, and continually reimagined cultural space shaped by both local and regional experiences and global narratives, circulations, and imaginaries.
Traditionally understood through a set of powerful myths and visual iconographies, the American West has long functioned as a site of national identity formation. However, contemporary critical approaches increasingly emphasize the West as a transnational, heterogeneous, and contested space, marked by migration, displacement, environmental crisis, technological change, and cultural hybridity. This sixth edition of the conference foregrounds the productive tension between localized perspectives—rooted in specific geographies, communities, and histories—and global imaginings that circulate across borders, media, and genres.
The conference invites scholars to explore how literary and artistic texts negotiate the relationship between myth and material reality, between place-based narratives and global cultural flows. Particular attention will be given to interdisciplinary approaches that examine how Western narratives interact with other cultural forms and media, including film and television, theatre, music, photography, fashion, sports, visual and digital arts, video games, comics and graphic novels, animation, translation, podcast and online cultures. Speakers are also encouraged to address the specific cultural transplants and approaches resulting from European perspectives towards the American West, its images and culture. By doing so, the conference seeks to map the evolving contours of local and regional imaginings of the West and the geographical and cultural locales they stem from.
Possible topics include (but are not limited to):
● Reconfigurations of Old West myths in the 21st century
● The West as an exceptional region as opposed to the West as an inherent part of American Culture
● Local, regional, and global constructions of the American West
● Mobility, nomadism, and rootedness in the West
● Urbanization, technology, and digital cultures of the West
● Western identities and landscape; ecological and environmental approaches
● The Western space and the American self
● Indigenous, minority, and marginalized Western voices
● Migration, diaspora, and crossing the border
● Voices of protest and narratives of dissent in the American West
● Gender, sexuality, and the reimagining of Western identities
● Animals and non-human others in the West
● Ageist approaches in the West
● The West in popular culture and mass-media
● Transnational and comparative Westerns
● Speculative fiction, and the Weird West
● Music, soundscapes, and Western imaginaries
● Photography, visual culture, and the American West
● Comics, graphic novels, and alternative Western forms
● The West in the web
Papers should be designed for a 20-minute presentation.
Although English will be the official language of the conference, papers in Spanish or Basque will also be accepted.
The conference will be held at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of the Basque Country (EHU), in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain.
Submission guidelines:
Please submit an abstract of 300 words along with a brief CV by May 24, 2026.
Proposals should be sent by email to:
rewest2026@gmail.com
Please include the following heading in the subject line of your email:
REWEST2026
