2026 Conference:
Solidarity! A joint conference of the Space Between Society and the Feminist inter/Modernist Association (FiMA)

University of North Carolina, Greensboro

May 26 – 29, 2026

Proposals Due: January 15, 2026

CFP: SOLIDARITY!

Greensboro, North Carolina, the host city for this year’s joint conference, is geographically, culturally, and historically a space between. Known as “Gate City” because of its key position on the rail network, it is not only a midpoint between the state capital, Raleigh, and North Carolina’s biggest city, Charlotte, but also an entrance to the South. At once an integral part of the region and open to the broader world, it has long exemplified the solidarities as well as the divisions that have marked the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is not only the site of the 1979 Greensboro Massacre, in which members of the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis killed five Communist demonstrators, but of the Woolworth lunch counter protests, a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights movement. These episodes demonstrate the complexities of the city’s history, which includes examples of oppression and resistance, division and solidarity, as well as the ability of political organization and activism to challenge systemic injustice.

The host institution, the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, embodies the contemporary city. Opened in 1892, it was for many years a women’s college and is one of the most diverse institutions in the state. 66% of current students are female, 56% are people of color, and 52% of undergraduates are first-generation. The university is ranked by US News and World Report first in North Carolina and thirteenth in the country for social mobility. It has a long-standing commitment to the arts and humanities, demonstrated in everything from its MFA in Creative Writing, one of the oldest such programs; to its summer music camp, the largest in America; to the Weatherspoon Art Museum, which has work by figures including Willem de Kooning and Henri Matisse in its permanent collection. The university’s emphasis on difference as a source of strength rather than division makes it a particularly fitting site for this year’s conference.

We invite proposals for “Solidarity!,” a joint multidisciplinary conference co-hosted by the Space Between: Literature and Culture, 1914-1945 and the Feminist inter/Modernist Association. Proposals should explore solidarity across the interwar era. From wartime alliances and antifascist fronts to labor internationals, colonial and anti-colonial coalitions, mutual aid networks, and faith- or community-based forms of care, 1914–1945 witnessed intense experimentation with how people stand together across borders, classes, races, and ideologies. We welcome historical, literary, cultural, political, and theoretical approaches that illuminate how solidarity was imagined, organized, represented, contested, and lived.

Proposals could engage with but are not limited to topics such as:

• Archival gate-keeping and literary afterlives
• Community building
• Civility
• Civil Discourse
• Civil Disobedience
• Civil War
• 100th anniversary of the UK General Strike
• Bodily solidarity: Health, reproduction, contraception, dis/ability, surveillance, imprisonment, technology, pleasure
• Union leading, governance, and busting
• Women’s clubs/groups and building intergenerational solidarity
• Groups and non-groups (organized and unorganized solidarity)
• Media Ecologies: photography, film, radio, documentary, periodicals, visual and plastic arts
• Holocaust Studies
• Urban, suburban, rural collectivity
• Solidarity and the use of space
• Queer and Trans Counterpublics
• Mutual Aid and Community Care
• Underground Resistance
• Teaching solidarity/solidarity in the classroom
• Feminist modernist solidarity in the age of polarization
• Solidarity across/with ethnic and linguistic minorities
• Cross-class solidarity
• Solidarity by/through design
• Violence, solidarity, and resistance

Part of SB’s and FiMA’s mission is to mentor and support graduate students at any level in their professionalization. We encourage graduate students to propose individual papers and full panels with fellow graduate students and/or faculty mentors. Please note, this year, the selection committee will be nominating graduate student proposals for our “Emergent Voices” Graduate Student Plenary Session. Graduate students chosen for this session will be mentored and offered the opportunity for a practice panel session pre-conference. If you are a graduate student and would be interested in being considered for this session, please indicate so on your individual proposal.

Individual proposals should be 250-300 words and include a working title. Please also include a short bio.

Panel proposals (3-4 participants) should be no more than 600 words and include a panel title and working titles. Please also include short bios for each participant.

Workshops proposals for any workshops related to mentorship, scholarship, or teaching should be 200 words and include proposed title and leaders with bios.

A note on period: Because we recognize that writers, artists, and culture makers did not simply stop their work at the close of 1945, topics may move outside the range of 1914-1945 as long as the link to the Space Between is manifest.

Proposals for panels, individual papers, and workshops are due January 15, 2026 and should be sent to feministintermodernist@gmail.com by January 15, 2026. Please note, all conference-related inquiries should be directed to Ben Clarke b_clarke@uncg.edu.