Mythical Archipelagos: Islands, Narratives, and Imaginaries Across Cultures and Media International Interdisciplinary Seminar

Across cultures, historical periods, and media, islands have functioned as privileged sites of myth-making and imagination. Often perceived as bounded worlds, islands have generated narratives of origin and apocalypse, utopia and dystopia, exile and belonging, isolation and connection. From ancient mythologies to contemporary cultural production, from oral traditions to visual and digital media, and from colonial imaginaries to ecological discourses, islands have operated as narrative laboratories in which cultural anxieties, desires, and transformations are articulated.

The international seminar Mythical Archipelagos: Islands, Narratives, and Imaginaries Across Cultures and Media invites scholars to explore islands as mythical, symbolic, and narrative spaces. Myths are understood here in a broad sense: as foundational stories, cultural imaginaries, symbolic systems, and narrative frameworks that are inherited, transformed, reimagined, or contested in relation to insular spaces.

Rather than treating islands as merely geographic entities, this seminar approaches them as dynamic sites where overlapping temporalities, negotiated identities, and human and more-than-human relations converge. Particular attention will be given to environmental humanities, indigenous and postcolonial perspectives, and intermedial approaches, while remaining open to comparative, historical, theoretical, and interdisciplinary contributions.

Institutional Framework

This seminar is organised within the framework of the ANDRÓMEDA Project (Ref. PHS-2024/PH-HUM-76) and results from the collaboration between:

• Discourse, Communication and Society (DiCoS) – Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
• Studies on Intermediality and Intercultural Mediation (SIIM) – Universidad Complutense de Madrid

The event is hosted by the Department of Modern Philology, Translation and Interpreting (DFMTI) at ULPGC.

Topics of Interest

The seminar welcomes proposals from literary studies, cultural studies, linguistics, visual studies, environmental humanities, education, anthropology, history, media studies, and related disciplines. Contributions may address (but are not limited to) the following thematic areas:

A. Myth, Folklore, and Cultural Memory

• Reinterpretations and adaptations of myths and folklore in insular cultures
• Mythical islands (Atlantis, Avalon, Hy-Brasil, the Fortunate Isles, San Borondón, Antillia, etc.)
• Islands as repositories of collective memory, ancestral knowledge, and cosmological worldviews
• Syncretism, Christianisation, and transformation of indigenous mythologies
• Myth as resistance, survival, and cultural continuity in insular contexts

B. Islands, Childhood, and Pedagogy

• Islands in children’s and young adult literature as spaces of initiation, adventure, danger, or refuge
• Mythical geographies in fantasy narratives for young readers
• Environmental storytelling and eco-myths
• Ethical narratives of stewardship, activism, and sustainability
• Indigenous storytelling and publishing for children and adolescents

C. Environmental and More-than-Human Humanities

• Oceans and seas as mythic and more-than-human realms
• Island ecosystems, biodiversity, and ecological fragility
• Climate change, rising seas, and environmental precarity
• Mythic framings of catastrophe, resilience, and regeneration
• Human–nonhuman entanglements in island imaginaries

D. Isolation, Confinement, and Liminality

• Islands as sites of quarantine, psychiatric confinement, or penal colonies
• Mythic and symbolic dimensions of exile and enforced separation
• Islands as liminal or heterotopic spaces
• Solitude, alienation, and psychological thresholds

E. Migration, Belonging, and Contested Spaces

• Islands as contested or multiply occupied territories
• Imperial, colonial, and postcolonial island narratives
• Refugee detention, migratory control, and border regimes
• Diaspora, mobility, and insular identities
• Myths of origin, return, and home

F. Visual, Intermedial, and Nonfiction Representations

• Picture books and the iconography of islands
• Island myths in film, illustration, comics, and digital media
• Nonfiction narratives (history, memoir, science, travel writing) and myth
• Intermedial reconfigurations of island imaginaries

G. Mobility, Tourism, and Connectivity

• Travel systems to, from, and around islands
• Water as a medium of connection and separation
• Mythologies of exploration and discovery
• Tourism imaginaries and their cultural and environmental impact

H. Linguistic, Religious, and Ethnographic Insularity

• Preservation, erosion, or reinvention of insular identities
• Oral traditions and myth transmission
• Islands as contact zones: multilingualism, translation, code-switching, and cultural mediation
• Insular memory and trauma: disaster narratives, displacement, loss, and cultural resilience

Submission Guidelines

Languages: English or Spanish (other languages may be considered).

Abstracts: 250–300 words, including title, research question(s), methodology, and relevance to the seminar theme.

Presentation format: Please indicate whether you wish to propose an oral paper or a poster.

Author information: A brief biographical note (approx. 100 words), institutional affiliation, and contact details.

File format: One single Word document, using the official event template (available on the website).

Submission email: [email protected]

Email subject line: “Mythical Archipelagos 2026 - Abstract submission”

Important Dates

Abstract submission deadline: 30 March 2026

Notification of acceptance: by 15 April 2026