Call for Papers: Literature in Eras of Conflict: Ideology and Ethics

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Acta Litteraria Comparativa, the peer-reviewed, open-access journal of the Lithuanian Comparative Literature Association, invites submissions for Volume 11, dedicated to the theme Literature in Eras of Conflict: Ideology and Ethics. This issue seeks to explore the multifaceted relationship between literature, ideological structures, and ethical dilemmas in times of social, political, and cultural conflict.

The deadline for submissions has been extended to 15 September 2025.

Articles (4,000–6,000 words) must be submitted in English and should include an abstract (up to 300 words) and 4–8 keywords. Submissions should be sent to info@llla.lt.

Please note that the quality of English will be taken into account during the review process. Full submission guidelines are available here: https://www.llla.lt/en/reikalavimai-publikacijoms

This volume will be published ahead of the Association’s next biennial congress in 2026, to be held at the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore.

The following thematic guidelines are proposed:

• Catastrophes and catastrophism: a new language for new times;

• The role, value, and status of literature in a period of socio-political turning-points;

• The memory of wars and memory wars in literature;

• Shifting styles, radicalization of value choices, revision of the literary canon;

• Literary conjuncture and texts that distort the politics of memory;

• Various forms of control and overcoming of Soviet literature: propaganda, censorship, internal censor, Aesop‘s language;

• Literature as a form of cultural resistance under ideological indoctrination

• Variations of inscribing authentic/non-authentic existence in art;

• Possibilities and impossibilities of communication, polylogue of ideas (miscommunication);

• Recurrences of colonial thinking in postcolonial discourses;

• Cancel culture in the literary field;

• Literature in eras of conflict: a medium for ethical evaluation

• Conflicts and social media in the literary field (tensions between fiction and social media, between professional criticism and bookstagrammers, etc.);

• Conflicts of the future: the challenges of artificial intelligence for authentic literature and literary creators.

• The rise of the dystopian genre; apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic imagery; themes of disaster survival and management in literature.

  
  

About the topic:

In 1940, after the shocking experience of war, Czesław Miłosz published an essay entitled "Reflections on the Season of Fires", in which he reflected on Europe‘s defeat and the world‘s apocalypse. In the face of today‘s upheavals, it is relevant to revisit these questions by bringing to life the experience of historical and contemporary conflicts in literature.

When thinking about conflict literature, ethical and ideological dichotomies are at the forefront, as well as the complex relations between truth and lies, autocracy and democracy, survival and death, humanism and evil, the human body and political power, collective and individual tragedy, aggression and heroism, totalitarian control, and creative impulse, and so on. We propose to look at fiction as a medium for conveying these morally and psychologically complex experiences. It is also evident that the mechanisms and functions of literature in recording experience in texts are shifting, with literature gravitating towards moral philosophy or historical education, or spawning new genres, such as dystopia, war reportage, and topical war poetry.

A huge discursive rift is opening up between the experience of conflict and its verbal expression, in which ideological and ethical aspects play a key role. How do political discourse and totalitarian control shape the literary narrative? What is the relationship between the aesthetic value of literature and its ideological function? How is literary language influenced by the representation of conflict themes and what rhetorical and stylistic strategies do writers choose? Is literary expression capable of adequately conveying trauma when the author has not directly experienced it?