Re-Action(s): Humanities in a Time of Transformation and Turbulence

The world today is characterized by radical transformations: environmental degradation, political extremism, cultural and epistemic crises, the fracturing of public discourse, and technological disruption. At the same time, we witness persistent struggles over identity, belonging, memory, and meaning. In this volatile landscape, the humanities are not only being redefined—they are being called upon to act.

The Faculty of Modern Languages at the University of Warsaw, an institution devoted to multilingual and intercultural research, invites you to a Congress that embraces the full disciplinary richness of contemporary humanities. This event provides a transdisciplinary forum for philologists, linguists, philosophers, anthropologists, historians, literary scholars, educators, political theorists, and others who seek to understand—and re-act to—the intersecting forces shaping our societies.

The theme Re-Action(s) expresses this dual commitment: to interpret and to intervene. Through discourse, narration, embodiment, and resistance, we ask: how do the humanities help us make sense of the present? How can they respond to a world marked by fracture, uncertainty, and renewal?

As humanities scholars, we find ourselves confronting multiple overlapping crises:

• The epistemic precarity of the humanities themselves, often dismissed in public discourse or subordinated to utilitarian logic. We need a renewed defense of the humanities as critical forms of knowledge production.
• The crisis of communication—from toxic polarization and populism to the collapse of shared discursive norms. The humanities must reimagine civic engagement and rhetorical ethics in fragmented public spheres.
• The ecological emergency and its entanglement with myth, memory, and planetary injustice. Narratives of resistance and solidarity must be cultivated and theorized.
• The persistence and return of myth, not only as cultural nostalgia but as a political and philosophical force. How do myths re-emerge in contemporary crises, and in what ways do they shape or challenge collective identities and ideological formations?
• The transformation of subjectivity through trauma, migration, precarity, and algorithmic governance—challenges which demand new forms of life-writing, autobiographical practice, and narrative experimentation. These shifts also call for renewed engagement with critical theory, philosophy of the self, and posthumanism, as scholars rethink agency, embodiment, and identity beyond humanist paradigms.
• The pedagogical challenge: in a world shaped by digital acceleration and multilingual migration, how can we teach language, literature, and cultural empathy with greater efficacy and inclusivity?

To respond to the issues formulated above, the 2025 Congress will be divided into the following thematic sections (links to sections’ CFPs in titles):

Submission Guidelines:

Please submit an abstract (250–300 words), a short bio (100 words), and your institutional affiliation to panels’ coordinators (contact information in CfPs) and to hsic.wn@uw.edu.pl by 15.07.2025.

If needed, please follow the specific guidelines as presented in the CfP of each section.

Student applications will be accepted according to the guidelines in a separate CFP

Key dates

2 June 2025 – Call for Papers opens
15 July 2025 – Call for Papers closes
31 July – 30 September 2025 – Registration
November 2025 – Programme released online
3-5 December 2025 – 4th International Humanities-Society-Identity Congress. Re-Action(s)

Fees

• 120 EUR: basic fee;
• 60 EUR: reduced participation fee (scholars from the University of Warsaw and PhD candidates from other universities);
• fee waiver: all students, PhD candidates from the University of Warsaw and scholars from the Faculty of Modern Languages UW