The American Name Society (ANS) is issuing its first call for abstracts for an upcoming special issue of the Society’s journal, NAMES. This issue will be devoted to analysis and discussion of toponyms and literaryscapes. Although toponyms are often taken for granted in our daily lives, they carry considerable potential for acquiring personal and social meanings depending on their contexts and co-texts of use. These multi-layered meanings are often utilized by authors as literary resources for evoking associations or invoking evaluative positioning. Papers accepted for this special issue will explore how the meanings of place-names—be they real or fictional—may be effectively harnessed to shape literary settings within specific works or by specific authors. Examples of themes that can be addressed include—but are not limited to—toponyms choice/invention and their connotations; toponyms in translation; toponyms in literary theory; and toponyms and intertextuality. You can download the call for papers here.
Proposal Submission Process:
- Abstracts proposals (max. 500 words) should be sent as an email attachment (PDF format) to Vice President, Dr. Luisa Caiazzo (luisa.caiazzo@unibas.it). Proposals should include a preliminary list of references.
- Proposals should include “NAMES 2021 proposal” in the subject line of the email.
- All submissions must include an abstract title, the full name(s) of the author(s), the author(s) affiliation(s), and email address(s) in the body of the email and NOT in the abstract.
- DEADLINE: Proposals must be received by 8pm GMT on 15 March 2021. Authors will be notified about the results of the blind review on or by 10 April 2021.
- The deadline for final papers is 31 July 2021.
- For further information, please contact ANS Vice President, Dr. Luisa Caiazzo (luisa.caiazzo@unibas.it).
At the meeting, members may present papers in formal theme sessions, participate in a toponymic fieldtrip and attend the annual general meeting of the Society. In 2021, the CSSN will meet as part of the Congress of the Humanites and Social Sciences 
The conference topics will be covered Toponymy in Cartography, Art in Cartography, Atlases, Cartographic Heritage into the Digital Domain, Cartography and Children, Cartography for Early Warning and Crisis Management, Cognition in Geovisualization, Education and Continuous Learning in Cartography, Generalization and Multiple Representation, Artificial Intelligence in Mapping, Social Sensing and Visual Analytics, History of Cartography etc.
We are glad to announce that the Journal 
The National Geographic Institute of Spain organizes at the occasion of its 150th anniversary in cooperation with the ICA Commission on Atlases and our Joint ICA/IGU Commission on Toponymy a meeting on atlases and toponymy in Madrid, Spain. After repeated postponing it is now definitely scheduled for 21-24 April 2021.
The High Desert Linguistics Society is pleased to announce our 14th biennial conference, HDLS 14. The conference will take place November 20-22, 2020 at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, New Mexico. HDLS 14 will focus on research in cognitive and functional linguistics, typology, sociocultural linguistics, indigenous languages, and Hispanic linguistics. This conference will also highlight interdisciplinary research from the point of view of psychology, cognitive science, anthropology, education, and computer science, among others.