2026 Festival of Monsters Call for Proposals

October 14-18, 2026 at the University of California, Santa Cruz

The Center for Monster Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz is an interdisciplinary research, arts, and outreach organization focused on the ways monsters and tropes of monstrosity both perpetuate and contravene forms of social and cultural injustice. Each year we host a Festival of Monsters that brings together scholars, artists, students, and members of the general public to consider these issues.

Our 2026 Festival of Monsters (Oct. 14-18 in beautiful Santa Cruz, California) is an academic conference that includes scholarly panels as well as performances, readings, and presentations from monster-makers in theater, literature, film, games, television and other media.

We invite proposals for 20-minute papers or presentations on any aspect of monsters or monster studies. In Academic Year 2026-27, the annual theme for The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz is “Language.” Presentations on the relationship of monsters to language[s], speech/non-speech, communication (and its discontents), and monstrous writing/form are particularly encouraged.

Papers and presentation proposals from all disciplines are welcome. Because participants in the Festival include members of the general public as well as people from across the academic community, we ask that proposals consider the Festival’s mixed audience. We welcome complex theoretical concepts, project postmortems, and scholarly interventions, but please make sure your abstract articulates the terms and stakes of your presentation as clearly as possible

New this year, the Festival is also calling for game proposals! If you would like to run a monstrous play activity (TTRPG, board game, digital experience, LARP, etc) of up to 3 hours, with no more than 15 players, we invite you to send us an abstract. Please note that there are few spots available for games, so you are free to submit a separate paper presentation abstract along with a game proposal, indicating which of the two would be your first choice.

Please submit 250-word abstracts (500 for full-panel proposals) and 50-word bios for each participant by April 10, 2026.

Click on this link to submit your proposal!