Sunday, June 15, 2014

CFP Reanimate Earth: Liminality and Communitas in Literature of the America (Panel) (6/15/14)

Of potential interest:

Reanimate Earth: Liminality and Communitas in Literature of the Americas
Location: Georgia, United States
Call for Papers Date: 2014-11-07
Date Submitted: 2014-03-31
Announcement ID: 212657

Seeking out new growth in devastated spaces and optimism in the face of environmental despair, this panel will take on the task of enchanting readers with physical spaces in the U.S., Canada, and Latin America that have already been toxified or left for dead.   The liminal, a conception traditionally most relevant to anthropology and psychoanalysis, has the capacity to reinvigorate the relationship between culture and its more anomalous literary environments.

The possibilities for this concept are substantial, particularly when we perceive the liminal self as place, because as limen the hybridized monsters and liminal zones depicted in post-WW II literature are catalysts for environmental reanimation and a source for hope. What we propose is the observance, sorting and wise use of unclassified spaces where more than reforestation and revegetation will be needed to bring back ecological viability and biodiversity; sites of interest might include areas either flooded or desertified due to global warming, zones at the edge of leaking nuclear reactors, interstate medians, tornado-ravaged areas, aesthetic greens surrounding campuses, and graveyards.

 Possible topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• hybrid spaces and bodies

• interstitial regions and borderlands

• transnational approaches to place

• liminality as a result of globalization

golems, zombies, and shape-shifters

• liminal communities

post-post-apocalyptic literature and film

• ecological dead zones

genetically modified organisms

Send 200-500 word abstracts to Lee Rozelle at rozellehl@montevallo.edu by June 15.

Lee Rozelle
University of Montevallo
Department of English
Station 6420
Montevallo, AL 35115
(205) 665-6424 (office)

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

3rd Global Conference: Apocalypse: Imagining the End (Oxford, UK 7/5-7/14)

Sorry to have missed this before:

3rd Global Conference: Apocalypse: Imagining the End
Location: United Kingdom
Conference Date: 2014-07-05 (in 24 days)
Date Submitted: 2013-11-13
Announcement ID: 208511

3rd Global Conference: Apocalypse: Imagining the End

Saturday 5th July – Monday 7th July 2014, Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom


Call for Presentations:
From Christian concept of the ‘Apocalypse’ to the Hindu notions of the Kali Yuga, visions of destruction and fantasies of the ‘end times’ have a long history. In the last few years, public media, especially in the West, have been suffused with images of the end times and afterward, from the zombie apocalypse (the AMC series The Walking Dead) to life after the collapse of civilization (the NBC series Revolution.) Several popular television series and video games (Deep Earth Bunker) are now based on preparing for and surviving the end of the world. Once a fringe activity, ‘survivalism’ has gone mainstream, and a growing industry supplies ‘doomsday preppers’ with all they need to the post-apocalyptic chaos. One purpose of the conference is to explore these ideas by situating them in context — psychological, historical, literary, cultural, political, and economic. The second aim of the conference is to examine today’s widespread fascination the apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic thought, and to understand its rising appeal across broad sections of contemporary society around the world.

This interdisciplinary project welcomes proposals from all disciplines and research areas, including anthropology, psychoanalysis, political economy, psychology, area studies, communal studies, environmental studies, history, sociology, religion, theology, and gender studies.

Proposals for presentations, papers, performances, reports, work-in-progress, workshops and pre-formed panels are invited on issues related to (but not limited to) the following themes:

-Decline, Collapse, Decay, Disease, Mass Death
-Survivalism and Doomsday Preppers
-Revolution
-Theories of Social Change
-Peak Oil, Resource Depletion, Global Warming, Economic Collapse
-The Second Coming/Millenarianism/Rapture
-The Hindu Kali Yuga
-Sex and Gender at the End of Time
-Ironic and/or Anti-Apocalyptic Thinking
-Utopia and Dystopia
-Intentional Communities as Communities of the End Times
-Selling the Apocalypse, Commodifying Disaster, and Marketing the End Times
-Death Tourism and Disaster Capitalism
-The Age of Terror
-Zombies, Vampires, and Werewolves in Post-Apocalyptic Fiction
-Disaster Fiction/Movies/Video Games
-History as Apocalypse
-Remembering and Reliving the Collapse of the Western Roman Empire -Post- Apocalyptic conditions
-Positive aspects of an Apocalypse, including change and transformation

In order to support and encourage interdisciplinarity engagement, it is our intention to create the possibility of starting dialogues between the parallel events running during this conference.
Delegates are welcome to attend up to two sessions in each of the concurrent conferences. We also propose to produce cross-over sessions between these groups – and we welcome proposals which deal with the relationship between visions ofthe Apocalypse and Diasporas.

What to send:
Proposals will also be considered on any related theme. 300 word proposals should be submitted by Friday 14th February 2014. If a proposal is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper of no more than 3000 words should be submitted by Friday 16th May 2014. Proposals should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in programme, c) email address, d) title of proposal, e) body of proposal, f) up to 10 keywords.
E-mails should be entitled: Apocalypse3 Proposal Submission.

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs

Sheila Bibb: scbibb@inter-disciplinary.net
Rob Fisher: apoc3@inter-disciplinary.net

The conference is part of the ‘Ethos’ series of research projects, which in turn belong to the Critical Issues programmes of ID.Net. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and challenging. All proposals accepted for and presented at the conference must be in English and will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected proposals may be developed for publication in a themed hard copy volume(s). All publications from the conference will require editors, to be chosen from interested delegates from the conference.

Inter-Disciplinary.Net believes it is a mark of personal courtesy and professional respect to your colleagues that all delegates should attend for the full duration of the meeting. If you are unable to make this commitment, please do not submit a proposal for presentation.

For further details of the conference, please visit: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/ethos/apocalypse-imagining-the-end/call-for-papers/

Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network and we are not in a position to be able to assist with conference travel or subsistence.

Priory House
149B Wroslyn Road
Freeland, Oxfordshire OX29 8HR
United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0)1993 882087
Fax: +44 (0)870 4601132
Email: apoc3@inter-disciplinary.net
Visit the website at http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/ethos/apocalypse-imagining-the-end/call-for-papers/

CFP Films of Jess Franco (7/30/14)

The Films of Jess Franco (Edited Volume)
Publication Date: 2014-07-30
Date Submitted: 2014-04-06
Announcement ID: 212836

Call for Papers

Edited Volume: The Films of Jess Franco

Editors: Antonio Lázaro-Reboll (University of Kent) and Ian Olney (York College of Pennsylvania)


Jesús “Jess” Franco (1930-2013) is one of the most prolific and madly inventive filmmakers in the history of cinema.  His remarkable career spanned more than half a century and produced almost two hundred films shot in Spain and across Europe.  He is best known as the director of jazzy, erotically-charged horror movies featuring mad scientists, lesbian vampires, and women in prison, but dabbled in a multitude of genres from comedy to science-fiction to pornography.  Although he made his career in the ghetto of low-budget exploitation cinema, he managed to create a body of work that is deeply personal, frequently political, and surprisingly poetic.  Franco’s offbeat films command a devoted cult following; they have even developed a mainstream audience in recent years, thanks to their release on DVD and Blu-Ray.  To date, however, they have received relatively little scholarly attention.  The Films of Jess Franco seeks to address this neglect by bringing together original essays on Franco and his movies written from a variety of different theoretical perspectives by noted scholars around the world.  Ultimately, its aim is to encourage a reassessment of this critically undervalued director and his significant contributions to popular European cinema.



The editors of this proposed volume invite original essays on any aspect of Jess Franco’s work; all theoretical approaches are welcome.  Possible topics might include:


Franco as Horror Auteur
Gender and/or Race in Franco’s Films
Queer Franco
The Franco Soundtrack
Franco’s Non-Horror Films
Late Franco (Films of the 1990s and 2000s)
Franco as Spanish Filmmaker
Franco as Transnational Filmmaker
Franco and the Art Film
Franco’s Influences
Sex and Eroticism in Franco’s Films
Franco and Film Adaptation
Performance and Stardom in Franco’s Films
The Politics of Franco’s Films
The Cult of Franco
Franco’s Legacy


Please send abstracts of 500 words to Antonio Lázaro-Reboll (a.lazaro-reboll@kent.ac.uk) and Ian Olney (iolney@ycp.edu) by July 30, 2014.  Final essays will be due January 30, 2015.  Essays should be 6,000-8,000 words in length and should follow MLA guidelines for citation and documentation.

Ian Olney
English & Humanities Dept.
York College of Pennsylvania
York, PA 17403
(717) 815-6446
Email: iolney@ycp.edu

CFP 2014 Victorians Institute Conference (6/15/14; Charlotte, NC 10/24-25/14)

CFP DEADLINE EXTENDED: 2014 Victorians Institute Conference
Location: North Carolina, United States
Conference Date: 2014-06-15 (in 4 days)
Date Submitted: 2014-05-14
Announcement ID: 213763
The Mysteries at Our Own Doors

The 43rd Meeting of the Victorians Institute

Proposals Due: 6/15/2014 (NEW DEADLINE)

Conference Dates: October 24-25, 2014
Location: Charlotte, NC

Sponsored by Winthrop University

 Please send 300-500 word proposals for papers and a 1-page c.v. to Casey Cothran via email at viconf@winthrop.edu  by June 15, 2014.

 Henry James once said of Wilkie Collins: “To Mr. Collins belongs the credit of having introduced into fiction those most mysterious of mysteries, the mysteries which are at our own doors.” Indeed, through the fiction of Collins (and others) the Victorian Era saw the rise of the detective novel as an art form.  Moreover, it also produced a wealth of poems, novels, and prose works that concerned themselves with mysteries, secrets, enigmas, and the unknown. Sensing that they stood on a threshold, that the shadowy borders of new knowledge and understanding lay almost within reach--at their “own doors,” as James said--Victorian authors struggled with a variety of mysteries arising from their interests in science, religion, the occult, mesmerism, identity, sexuality, race, class, and the Empire. We invite papers on any of these topics. Papers or panels on poetry, prose, nonfiction, or visual art are welcome, as are presentations on the pedagogy of teaching Victorian literature.

Possible topics might address detective fiction; poetic mysteries; spiritualists and mesmerists; mysteries of gender and sexuality; the mysterious Other; death; crime; ghosts, vampires or monsters; religion; Victorian science and medicine; industry and technology; archeology and paleontology; illustrations and media adaptations; language and hybridity; history and discovery; new worlds and cultures; travel and empire; pseudonyms; biography; photography; music; journalism; the mysteries of unveiling Victorian literature and culture to undergraduates; how Victorian mysteries can be discovered and solved in online classrooms, and other topics related to Victorian studies.

The keynote speaker is Marlene Tromp, Professor of English and Women’s Studies and Dean of Arizona State University’s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences. https://newcollege.asu.edu/directory/marlene-tromp

Selected papers from the conference will be refereed for the Victorians Institute Journal annex at NINES.

Limited travel subventions will be available from the Victorians Institute for graduate students whose institutions provide limited or no support. More information about the travel awards and the application process will be posted to www.vcu.edu/vij.

Please visit www.vcu.edu/vij for information about the conference, the Victorians Institute, and the Victorians Institute Journal.


Casey A. Cothran
Winthrop University
Rock Hill, SC

Email: viconf@winthrop.edu
Visit the website at http://www.vcu.edu/vij

Sunday, June 8, 2014

CFP Fourth International Edgar Allan Poe Conference (6/1/14; New York 2/26-3/1/14)

UPDATE Fourth International Edgar Allan Poe Conference
full name / name of organization:
Poe Studies Association and Penn State Lehigh Valley Continuing Education
contact email:
bac7@psu.edu
Fourth International Edgar Allan Poe Conference
full name / name of organization:
Poe Studies Association and Penn State Lehigh Valley Continuing Education
contact email:
rxk3@psu.edu and bac7@psu.edu

Proposals are invited for the Fourth International Edgar Allan Poe Conference to be held in New York City, February 26-March 1, 2015. Email 250-word abstracts, subject heading “2015 Poe Conference,” to Barbara Cantalupo bac7@psu.edu by June 1, 2014.


By web submission at 05/26/2014 - 15:57

CFP Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu Bicentenary Conference (6/15/14; Dublin 10/15-16/14)

[UPDATE] Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu Bicentenary Conference 15-16 October
full name / name of organization:
Trinity College Dublin
contact email:
cavalliv@tcd.ie

‘He stands in the absolutely first rank as a writer of ghost stories.’
– M.R. James

Best known for his Gothic masterpiece Uncle Silas and the vampire story ‘Carmilla’, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu was a prolific writer, whose extensive output included historical, sensation, and horror novels, poems and ballads, numerous stories of the supernatural, political journalism, and a verse-drama. However, while his name is well known to aficionados of the horror genre, much of his work still remains in the dark.
On the occasion of the bicentenary of Le Fanu’s birth, this conference intends to bring together established scholars and emerging researchers, in order to shed new light on some of Le Fanu’s less famous fiction and celebrate his influential contribution to the Gothic genre.

We are calling for papers on any aspect of the life and work of J. S. Le Fanu. While we welcome new research on Le Fanu’s best known work, we wish to attract papers that engage with those texts which are less frequently read and studied, with the author himself, and with the legacy that he has left.
Abstracts of 300 words for 20-minute papers should be submitted, together with a brief biography, to Valeria Cavalli at cavalliv@tcd.ie. More details will be available, in due course, at www.josephsheridanlefanu.wordpress.com.

The deadline for submissions is 15th JUNE 2014.


By web submission at 05/26/2014 - 10:55

Update on Werewolves, Wolves and the Gothic?

The post expired about a year ago. Might anybody have an update on the progress of the collection?

Werewolves, Wolves and the Gothic
full name / name of organization:
University of Sheffield
contact email:
john.miller@sheffield.ac.uk
Werewolves, Wolves and the Gothic

Edited by Robert McKay & John Miller (University of Sheffield, UK)

The window blind blew back with the wind that rushed in, and in the aperture of the broken panes there was the head of a great, gaunt gray wolf (Bram Stoker, Dracula)

Wolves lope across the gothic imagination. Signs of a pure animality opposed to the human, they become, in the figure of the werewolf, liminal creatures that move between the human and the animal: humans in animal form and animals in human form. They are metonyms of forbidding landscapes, an unsettling howl in the distance; more intimately, their imposing fangs and gaping mouths threaten a monstrous consumption. The gothic wolf is singular, anomalous but gothic wolves form a demonic multiplicity, a pack. Wolves and werewolves function as a site for working out or contesting complex anxieties of difference: of gender, class, race, space, nation or sexuality; but the imaginative and ideological uses of wolves also reflect back on the lives of material animals, long demonized and persecuted in their declining habitats across the world. Wolves, then, raise unsettling questions about the intersection of the real and the imaginary, the instability of human identities and the worldliness and political weight of the Gothic.

We welcome proposals for chapters on any aspect of wolves, werewolves and the Gothic on page or screen in any historical period for a collection of essays to be submitted to The University of Wales Press series of Gothic Literary Studies. We are particularly interested in proposals that seek to read gothic wolves in the context of material histories of (for example) human/animal relations; environmental development; empire and globalization; and gender and sexuality.

Please send chapter abstracts of 500 words along with a short biography to Robert McKay (r.mckay@sheffield.ac.uk) and John Miller (john.miller@sheffield.ac.uk) by July 31st, 2013. Completed essays will be 6500 words in length and will be commissioned in September 2013 for delivery in the autumn of 2014.

Topics and approaches may include, but are not restricted to:

Lycanthropy/metamorphosis
Real and imaginary wolves
Animal ethics and the anthropomorphic imagination
Monstrosity
Fangs, mouths, the oral and the abject
Lupine presences and gothic spaces
Wolves and the Postcolonial Gothic
Captivity/escape
Wolf to Man – gothic politics from Plautus to Hobbes to Agamben
Gothic wolves, capital and globalization
Sublimity
Natural and unnatural histories
Wolf packs/lone wolves: multitudes and singularities
Ecocritical readings
Zoonosis
She-wolves, he-wolves and gender criticism
Wolfish appetite
Howling and gothic soundscapes
Queer readings
Dogs/wolves; ferity/ferocity
Wolves in sheep’s clothing
Wolves and psychoanalysis from Freud to Deleuze and Guattari
Reforming the Gothic: comic (or teen) werewolves


By web submission at 05/09/2013 - 09:11

Friday, June 6, 2014

CFP Devilish Visions and Visions of the Devil in World Literature (7/1/14; 11/7-8/14)

"The Hermeneutics of Hell: Devilish Visions and Visions of the Devil in World Literature"
Location: Massachusetts, United States
Date Submitted: 2014-04-12
Announcement ID: 212994

2014 Northeast Regional Conference of Christianity and Literature
 "The Hermeneutics of Hell: Devilish Visions and Visions of the Devil in World Literature"
November 7-8, 2014
Gordon College, Wenham, MA

“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors, and hail a materialist or magician with the same delight.”  C. S. Lewis.  The Screwtape Letters

For centuries, the biblical account of Satan has inspired countless authors worldwide. Medieval texts dealing with devils often combined biblical and pagan imageries. But it wasn’t until the early Baroque era when the devil in world literature became more individualistic. Since then, authors from around the world have been drawn to the devil as a literary figure. Often times, the devils created by Milton, Goethe, Chateaubriand, Byron, Lermontov, Strindberg, C.S. Lewis, Mahfouz and many others differ significantly from biblical texts and the literal interpretation of the Satan in the Old Testament. Even though the topic of hell seems to have lost its appeal on pulpits, it is still alive and well in literature.

This conference aims to analyze devilish visions and visions of the devil and the different roles devils have assumed in world literature. What makes devils attractive literary figures? What are the functions of the devils? What are the underlying theologies? How do the literary devils differ from biblical images? Why are we as readers still fascinated by literary manifestations of the devil?

Possible topics may include:

•          The devil as tempter

•          The devil as accuser

•          The devil as satirist

•          The devil as cultural critic

•          The devil as God’s counterpart

•          The devil as revolutionist

•          The devil as a tragic figure

•          The devil and damnation

•          The devil and salvation

•          The devil in passion plays

•          Sympathy for the devil

•          The future of devils

•          Hell on earth

•          Visions of hell

•          Eternal damnation vs. extinction


Email your 250 word abstracts by July 1, 2014 to NECCL@gordon.edu  Graduate students are encouraged to apply for a CCL grant. http://www.christianityandliterature.com/Travel_Grant_recipients  The conference organizers, Dan Russ and Gregor Thuswaldner (Gordon College), cannot offer contributors compensation for conference- or travel expenses. Select contributions will be considered for publication in an edited collection.  Location of the conference: Gordon College, Wenham, MA. Gordon College is located just 25 miles north of Boston on Boston's historic North Shore.


Gregor Thuswaldner, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of German and Linguistics
Fellow, Center for Faith and Inquiry
Gordon College
255 Grapevine Road
Wenham, MA 01984
USA

Tel: (978) 867 4350
Fax: (978) 867 3300


Email: neccl@gordon.edu

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Updated CFP Journal of Dracula Studies (6/1/14)

Apologies for having missed this:

[UPDATE] DEADLINE EXTENDED to June 1, 2014
full name / name of organization:
The Journal of Dracula Studies
contact email:
journalofdraculastudies@kutztown.edu

We invite manuscripts of scholarly articles (4000-6000 words) on any of the following: Bram Stoker, the novel Dracula, the historical Dracula, the vampire in folklore, fiction, film, popular culture, and related topics.
Submissions should be sent electronically (as an e-mail attachment in .doc or .rtf). Please indicate the title of your submission in the subject line of your e-mail.

Please follow the 2009 updated MLA style.

Contributors are responsible for obtaining any necessary permissions and ensuring observance of copyright.
Manuscripts will be peer-reviewed independently by at least two scholars in the field.

Copyright for published articles remains with the author.

Submissions must be received no later than June 1, 2014, in order to be considered for the 2014 issue.
Send electronic submissions to journalofdraculastudies@kutztown.edu

Contact: Dr. Curt Herr or Dr. Anne DeLong


By web submission at 05/15/2014 - 21:57