CALL FOR PAPERS

PASE 2026 CONFERENCE

Temporal Matters: Time in Narrative and Linguistic Structures

June 24-26, 2026

University of Rzeszów, Poland

 

Time is one of the most fundamental dimensions of human experience. It structures perception and cognition, organizes linguistic systems, and underpins narrative and cultural forms. At the same time, it resists stable definition, being constantly reinterpreted through historical, social, and technological change.

Our conference will explore the multifaceted role of time in textual, linguistic, and cultural production, bringing together scholars from literary studies, linguistics, translation studies, and related disciplines to reflect on how temporal frameworks inform meaning-making, identity, and communication. The conference aims to foster dialogue between different approaches to time: theoretical and empirical, diachronic and synchronic, human and more-than-human, as well as local and planetary.

How do languages encode temporal relations, and how do these linguistic patterns shape our understanding of the world? In what ways do literary and cultural narratives manipulate, compress, or expand time to produce particular aesthetic, emotional, or ideological effects? How do translation and interpretation negotiate temporal distance between texts, contexts, and audiences? In an era marked by ecological crisis, digital acceleration, and historical revision, questions of temporality have gained renewed urgency. The 2026 PASE Conference will provide a space for reflecting on these issues and for examining the diverse temporal dimensions of linguistic, narrative, and cultural practices.

We welcome contributions from a broad range of perspectives, including literary analysis, theoretical approaches, stylistics, sociolinguistics, discourse studies, and historical linguistics. Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

 

In Literary and Cultural Studies:

  • Narrative time in fiction, poetry, drama, and interactive media (e.g., video games)
  • Temporal poetics and genre: historical fiction, modernist time, speculative time, dystopian futures
  • The politics of time and identity: colonialism, modernity, trauma studies, queerness
  • More-than-human temporalities: vegetal, animal, and fungal time in literature
  • Temporality in critical theory (e.g., Bakhtin’s chronotope, queer temporality, deep time, planetary time)
  • Representations of memory, nostalgia, and anticipation
  • Time and affect: boredom, urgency, waiting, and crisis
  • Non-linear storytelling and disrupted chronologies
  • Indigeneous ways of timekeeping
  • Temporal aesthetics in film, media, and digital literature
  • The Anthropocene and geological time in ecocriticism

 

In Linguistics:

  • Tense, aspect, and modality across languages
  • The linguistic encoding of time in narrative and conversation
  • Historical change and language evolution
  • Temporal expressions in pragmatics and semantics
  • Cognitive approaches to time in language
  • Sociolinguistic perspectives on time (e.g., temporality in online discourse, workplace communication)
  • Time in metaphor, idioms, and conceptual grammar
  • Temporal perspectives on language acquisition constructs
  • Temporal dynamics of teacher development

 

In Translation Studies:

  • Translation across historical periods
  • Translation as historical intervention
  • Retranslation as a response to temporal change
  • Evolution of translation norms over time
  • Temporal fidelity in translation
  • Temporal ethics in translation practice
  • Translation reception and temporal context
  • Temporal aspects of the translation process
  • Time constraints and translator decision-making
  • New translations of literary works updated to suit contemporary conventions
  • Reception of translation over time: revision and obsolescence
  • Temporal distance between the source text and the target readership involving cultural explicitation
  • Concepts of cyclical, linear, or fragmented time in literature and their translatability
  • Comparative studies of translations across decades or centuries

 

*We also welcome proposals for presentations and panels on a variety of topics, including those not directly related to the main theme of the conference, as long as they align with the broader goals of the event.

 

A 300-word abstract and a brief bio note, including your affiliation, should be submitted as an email attachment to pase2026@ur.edu.pl by March 31, 2026.

For more information, please visit https://www.ur.edu.pl/pl/konferencje/pase-2026-temporal-matters

 

Deadline for submission: March 31, 2026

Notification of acceptance: April 10, 2026

Deadline for registration/payment: May 1, 2026

Conference fees (non-refundable):

Standard fee: 750 PLN / 185 EUR

PASE members: 650 PLN / 163 EUR

The fee does not include accommodation, but it does include two lunches and the conference dinner.

 

Bank account details:

IBAN: 24 1240 6960 1562 0000 0250 0202

BANK PEKAO S.A.

SWIFT/BIC: PKOPPLPW

Payment reference: PASE2026 First Name Last Name

Uniwersytet Rzeszowski, Al. T. Rejtana 16C, 35-959 Rzeszów

 

On Site Venue:

University of Rzeszów, Faculty of Philology, Al. Kopisto 2B, 35-315 Rzeszów

Materiały do pobrania