CFP Regional Gothic Collection (12/1/2014)

CFP: Regional Gothic(12/1/2014)
posted by MARY BETH HARRIS on JUL 03, 2014
CFP Edited Collection
Regional Gothic
Edited by William Hughes and Ruth Heholt
Abstracts Due: December 1, 2014
Essays Due: September 2015
Source: http://navsa.org/2014/07/03/cfp-regional-gothic1212014/

With the referendum for Scottish Independence scheduled for September 2014 and the Cornish having recently been granted minority status, questions about the dis-unity of the “United” Kingdom are prominent in the contemporary debate regarding nationalism and regional identity. Regional Gothic will explore these fractures and the darker imaginings that come from the regions of Britain.

The British regions, “imagined communities” with fragile and threatened identities and boundaries, carry their own dark sides and repressions. The Gothic preoccupation with borders, invasion, contamination and degeneration imbricates quite naturally with the different and shifting meanings that arise from writings from – and about – the scattered margins of British identity. Locality affects the Gothic and Regional Gothic seeks to explore these specificities. Gothic fictions of the regions may originate from within those territories or be imagined from elsewhere. Yet, whether coming from the inside or the outside, conceptions of the regional can powerfully inform ideas of identity and belonging. And, as Ian Duncan has pointed out, whilst this may sometimes be a positive thing, regionalism can also “register a wholesale disintegration of the categories of home, origin, community, belonging”.

The editors are seeking abstracts for chapters that address the concept of regions and the Gothic. Submissions are welcomed that address the historic specificities of regional difference and Gothic traditions, as well as inter-disciplinary studies and contemporary imaginings of the regions and the Gothic. Topics may include (but are not bound by):

• Welsh/Scottish/Irish Gothic
• Nationalism
• Cornish or Northern Gothic
• Peripheralism
• Gothic of the Islands
• Dark Tourism
• Queer identities in the regions
• Urban Gothic
• Ethnicity and the regions
• Village Gothic
• Gender and regionalism
• Suburban Gothic

Please send 300 word abstracts by December 1, 2014 to William Hughes and Ruth Heholt:w.hughes@bathspa.ac.uk and ruth.heholt@falmouth.ac.uk .Completed essays of approximately 6000 words will be required by September 2015.