Monday, July 2, 2018

CFP American Ecogothic (9/30/2018; NeMLA 2019)


American Ecogothic, NeMLA
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/06/29/american-ecogothic-nemla

deadline for submissions: September 30, 2018

full name / name of organization: Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)

contact email: caitlin.duffy@stonybrook.edu


Leslie Fiedler describes American fiction as “bewilderingly and embarrassingly, a gothic fiction… a literature of darkness and the grotesque in a land of light and affirmation” (Love and Death in the American Novel, 29). However, for settlers within the early colonies and citizens of the young republic, the wilderness of the supposed New World not only represented material promise, but also unknown danger. This panel proposes a move away from the more common “land of light and affirmation” reading of American nature towards an ecogothic approach. Despite recent attention paid to the intersections between gothic and ecocritical studies, there continues to be an unfortunate dearth in scholarship focusing on the specifically American ecogothic. This scarcity is surprising given the important role played by nature in the formation of the American gothic mode. Three major critical works focused on the American ecogothic include Tom J. Hillard’s and Kevin Corstorphine’s essays within Ecogothic (2013) and Ecogothic in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (2017), edited by Dawn Keetley and Matthew Wynn Sivils. In the introduction to their volume, Keetley and Sivils note that, given its unwavering fixation with the wilderness, “American gothic literature has always been ecogothic” (6).

This panel invites papers that interrogate gothic depictions of landscapes and wilderness in American fiction (including, but not limited to, literature, film, television, and video games) from any time period. In particular, we seek papers that work towards a definition of the American ecogothic as a national mode or style. Papers that utilize the ecogothic lens to support, challenge, or problematize current conceptions of the American gothic are especially welcome. We also encourage papers that explore the American ecogothic temporally by tracing transformations or continuations of its fictional appearance across time.

All proposals must be submitted through the NeMLA portal by September 30th and should be no more than 300 words.

The 50th annual NeMLA conference will take place on March 21-24, 2019 in Washington, DC. For more information: http://www.buffalo.edu/nemla.html

Please email any questions you may have to caitlin.duffy@stonybrook.edu.

CFP Contemporary Horror Within and Beyond the Nation (9/30/2018; NeMLA 2019)


Contemporary Horror Within and Beyond the Nation, NeMLA 2019
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/06/26/contemporary-horror-within-and-beyond-the-nation-nemla-2019

deadline for submissions: September 30, 2018

full name / name of organization: Jack Dudley, Mount St. Mary's University

contact email: dudley@msmary.edu



Accepted Roundtable for NeMLA 50, March 21 -24, 2019, Washington, DC.

As Sophia Siddique and Raphael Raphael write in Transnational Horror Cinema: Bodies of Excess and the Global Grotesque (2016), “From its origins, what would eventually come to be called ‘the horror genre’ has been deeply transnational both in contexts of production and reception.” In “The American Horror Film? Globalization and Transnational U.S.-Asian Genres” (2013), Christina Klein observes that this transnational quality has particularly been evident most recently, as cinema as a whole continues to become increasingly transnational. For Klein, genre films such as horror lend themselves to the transnational because of their indebtedness to convention or tropes, which can be culturally portable or which, in her words, “can be combined by local filmmakers in fresh ways to carry locally specific meanings.” This accepted roundtable invites participants to interrogate the relationship between contemporary horror—understood as roughly post-1960—and the critical categories of the nation, the global, and the transnational. How do the particular conventions, tropes, and forms most associated with horror facilitate and/or complicate its relationship to the nation? Are the conventions, tropes, and forms of particular national traditions truly exportable and what are the limits of their cultural adaptability? Have recent examples of contemporary horror resisted the transnational and instead laid claim to specifically national visions of horror? By exploring these questions, this roundtable seeks not only to examine how the category of the nation and the transnational have shaped contemporary horror, but how what is still often denigrated as a marginal genre, horror itself, can help us continue to theorize the nation and the transnational as well. Participants are welcome to focus on any medium.

Please submit abstracts through the NeMLA portal, which can be accessed here: https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/Login

Abstracts are due to the NeMLA portal by Sept. 30, 2018.

Please email dudley@msmary.edu with any questions.

CFP Things That Go Bump in the North: Canadian Horror Media (7/31/2018)

Seems its a good time to be studying monsters. Here's another interesting call.


Things That Go Bump in the North: Canadian Horror Media
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/06/03/things-that-go-bump-in-the-north-canadian-horror-media

deadline for submissions: July 31, 2018

full name / name of organization: UOIT

contact email: andrea.braithwaite@uoit.ca



Things That Go Bump in the North: Canadian Horror Media


Horror stories speak of our fears. In doing so, horror stories also speak of our everyday, our “normal,” as this ordinariness is quickly thrown into disarray. Things That Go Bump in the North will look at Canadian horror across media – from fiction, film, and television to games, graphic novels, and web series. This edited collection considers what Canadian horror texts can tell us about Canadian culture, media, history, and politics. Things That Go Bump in the North aims to see horror stories as stories about nation, as sites for critical reflection on the meanings and uses of “Canada” in this genre – and what we are terrified to lose, or perhaps keep.


This collection deliberately uses “Canadian” and of “horror” loosely in order to more fully explore the cultural work of horror stories. By “Canadian,” we seek texts that are by, in, and/or about Canada or Canadians; “horror” includes inflections like the gothic and the grotesque, the silly and the supernatural. We encourage diverse submissions from a range of critical approaches and research methods; we are particularly excited about work that addresses Indigenous, diasporic, and other underrepresented productions and perspectives.


Topics may include and are not limited to:


  • A specific creator or creative team
  • A singular media form, text, or series
  • Adaptations and transformations
  • Generic hybrids
  • Regional or community-specific horror stories
  • Studies of fans, audiences, and reception contexts
  • Historical horror tales and texts
  • Co-productions and international ventures
  • Alternate histories and horrifying futures
  • Industry and/or policy analysis
  • Transmedia texts and storytelling
  • True crime texts


Proposals of not more than 250 words will be due by July 31 2018. Final essays of approximately 6000-8000 words, including all notes and references in Chicago author-date style will be due by April 30 2019. Please direct inquiries and proposals to: andrea.braithwaite@uoit.ca and p.greenhill@uwinnipeg.ca.

CFP Gothic Journeys: Paths, Crossings, and Intersections Conference (8/31/2018; Australia 1/22-23-2019)


Gothic Journeys: Paths, Crossings, and Intersections
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/06/11/gothic-journeys-paths-crossings-and-intersections

deadline for submissions: August 31, 2018

full name / name of organization: The Gothic Association of New Zealand and Australia (GANZA)

contact email: conference@ganza.co.nz



The Gothic Association of New Zealand and Australia (GANZA) welcomes papers for its fourth biennial conference, to be held at the Mantra on View Hotel in Surfers Paradise, Australia, on 22-23 January 2019.

GANZA is interdisciplinary in nature, bringing together scholars, students, teachers and professionals from a number of Gothic disciplines, including literature, film, music, television, fashion, architecture, and other popular culture forms. It is the aim of the Association to not only place a focus on Australasian Gothic scholarship, but also to build international links with the wider Gothic community as a whole.

The conference invites abstracts for 20-minute presentations related to the theme of 'Gothic Journeys’.

Topics can include, but are not limited to:

  • Gothic wanderers, travellers, and explorers
  • Journeys of the mind and body
  • Gothic spaces, regionalities, and geographies
  • Death, haunting, and ‘crossing over’
  • Boundaries and transgressions
  • Monsters and the Monstrous
  • Gothic maps and migrations
  • Gothic histories and Gothic folklore
  • Horror in its various contexts
  • Displacement and identity
  • Trauma and trauma narratives
  • Movement through time, space, and digital worlds
  • Gothic forms in popular culture
  • Navigating the Gothic (from the road well-travelled to new pathways)
  • Intersections between the Gothic and other fields of study
  • Global Gothic
  • The Uncanny
  • Postcolonial Gothic
  • Travel Gothic and Gothic tourism
  • The Gothic in the past, present, and future

Please e-mail abstracts of 200 words to the attention of the conference organisers at: conference@ganza.co.nz

Abstracts should include your name, affiliation, e-mail address, the title of your proposed paper, and a short bio (100 words max). The deadline for submissions is 31st August 2018.

For more information, visit our web site: www.ganza.co.nz. Alternatively, please contact Dr Gwyneth Peaty (g.peaty@curtin.edu.au) and/or Dr Erin Mercer (e.mercer@massey.ac.nz).

CFP Re-Visions of Eden: The Idea of the Midwestern Gothic (9/1/2018)

Another great idea for a collection:

Re-Visions of Eden: The Idea of the Midwestern Gothic
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/06/14/re-visions-of-eden-the-idea-of-the-midwestern-gothic

deadline for submissions: September 1, 2018

full name / name of organization: Brandi Homan & Julia Madsen

contact email: mwgothicscholar@gmail.com



In the American cultural imagination, the Midwest embodies the “home” or “heart” of the nation associated with frontier and rural values of promise, fertility, order, and stability, according to Joanna Jacobson in “The Idea of the Midwest.” Jacobson argues that the Midwest has come to symbolize the quintessentially “American,” speaking to “the impulse to invent a myth of commonality rooted in the physical landscape at the center of the continent and for the insufficiency of that myth as a response to the conditions of urban industrial culture.” While the idea and image of the Midwest in American culture serve as resources of recovery and refuge from the ill effects of urban industrialism, it is increasingly evident that these visions of a pastoral, rural middlescape illuminate the necessity for a more comprehensive, critical view of the region. The Midwestern Gothic complicates the Midwest’s role in myths of progress, drawing attention to vital sociopolitical and economic concerns of the region, including deindustrialization and economic disparity, crime, addiction, mental illness, racism, sexism, homophobia, and isolation. In this sense, the Midwestern Gothic counterintuitively articulates the region as the “wound” of the United States, a place ravaged by the nation’s myths and ideals.


The Midwestern Gothic tradition has a vibrant lineage in American literature, including authors like Sherwood Anderson, Toni Morrison, Sinclair Lewis, Bonnie Jo Campbell, and Ander Monson. This edited volume seeks critical, academic essays on the Midwestern Gothic in American literature and culture. In particular, this edited volume looks to establish the Midwestern Gothic as genre, exploring relationships with other regional gothics and the American gothic broadly speaking. It is also interested in critical essays on particular authors or works associated with the Midwestern Gothic tradition, including Sherwood Anderson, Toby Altman’s Arcadia, Indiana, Frank Bill, Sam Shepard’s Buried Child, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Harmony Korine’s Gummo, Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son, Sinclair Lewis, Edgar Lee Masters, Ander Monson, Toni Morrison, Donald Ray Pollock, C.S. Giscombe’s Prairie Style, Michael Lesy’s Wisconsin Death Trip, Laird Hunt’s Indiana, Indiana, James Wright, and others.


This edited volume is particularly interested in original contributions of between 3,000 and 6,000 words on topics including, but not limited to:


  • Intersections with other regional American gothics (e.g., the Southern Gothic, Great Plains Gothic, etc.)
  • The Midwestern Gothic and popular culture
  • Race, class, and gender politics in the Midwestern Gothic
  • Grotesque, uncanny, and abject domestic spaces in the Midwestern Gothic
  • Histories and myths of place and region
  • Community formation politics and identity politics
  • The Midwest and frontierism
  • Deindustrialization and economic disparity
  • The opioid crisis, addiction, and mental illness
  • Pastoral/post-pastoral studies
  • The decline of the Rust Belt
  • Rural studies
  • The dark side of Midwestern “niceness”
  • Current politics of the Midwest
  • Documentary and non-fiction approaches to the Midwestern Gothic
  • Visual studies in the Midwestern Gothic (film, photography, and multimedia)

Please submit abstracts of 300-500 words to Dr. Brandi Homan and Julia Madsen at mwgothicscholar@gmail.com by September 1, 2018. Selections will be made by December 1, 2018. Final essays (of 3000-6000 words) are due March 1, 2019.

Out Now: Neil Gaiman's A Study in Emerald HC


Now available from Dark Horse Comics:

Neil Gaiman's A Study in Emerald HC
https://www.darkhorse.com/Books/30-897/Neil-Gaimans-A-Study-in-Emerald-HC (click link for a multi-page preview)

This supernatural mystery set in the world of Sherlock Holmes and Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos features a brilliant detective and his partner as they try to solve a horrific murder.

This complex investigation takes the Baker Street investigators from the slums of Whitechapel all the way to the Queen's Palace as they attempt to find the answers to this bizarre murder of cosmic horror!

From the Hugo, Bram Stoker, Locus, World Fantasy, Nebula Award-winning, and New York Times bestselling writer Neil Gaiman comes this graphic novel adaptation with art by Eisner award-winning artist Rafael Albuquerque!


Creators
Writer:Neil Gaiman, Rafael Albuquerque, Rafael Scavone
Artist:Rafael Albuquerque, Dave Stewart
Colorist:Dave Stewart
Cover Artist:Rafael Albuquerque
Genre: Science-Fiction, Crime
 
Publication Date: June 27, 2018
Format: FC, 88 pages; HC; 6 5/8" x 10 3/16"
Price:$17.99
ISBN-10:1-50670-393-3
ISBN-13:978-1-50670-393-0

CFP Tropical Gothic (Spec Issue of eTropic) (12/30/2018)


'Tropical Gothic'
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/07/02/tropical-gothic

deadline for submissions:
December 30, 2018

full name / name of organization:
eTropic journal

contact email:
etropic@jcu.edu.au


CALL FOR PAPERS special issue ‘Tropical Gothic’


Submission Deadline: 30 December 2018



‘TROPICAL GOTHIC’

‘The Gothic’ is undergoing a resurgence in academic and popular cultures. Propelled by fears produced by globalization, the neoliberal order, networked technologies, post-truth and environmental uncertainty – tropes of ‘the gothic’ resonate. The gothic allows us to delve into the unknown. It calls up unspoken truths and secret desires.

Across the tropics, the gothic manifests in specific ways according to spaces and places, and in relation to cultures and their encounters, crossings and interminglings.

Gothic studies that provide particularly interesting arenas of analysis include: culture, ritual, mythology, film, architecture, literature, fashion, art, landscapes, places, nature, spaces, histories and spectral cities. ‘Tropical Gothic’ may include subgenres such as: imperial gothic, orientalism in gothic literature, colonial and postcolonial gothic. In contemporary society neoliberal connections with the tropics and gothic may be investigated. In popular culture, tropical aspects of gothic film, cybergoth, gothic-steampunk, gothic sci-fi, goth graphic novels, and gothic music may be explored.

The eTropic journal is indexed in Scopus, Ulrich's and DOAJ. Publication is in 2019.

Instructions for authors: https://journals.jcu.edu.au/etropic.

Equiries, please contact: etropic@jcu.edu.au.

CFP Varieties of the Monstrous Feminine in American Literature (9/30/2018; NeMLA 2019)


“Varieties of the Monstrous Feminine in American Literature”
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/07/01/%E2%80%9Cvarieties-of-the-monstrous-feminine-in-american-literature%E2%80%9D

deadline for submissions:
September 30, 2018

full name / name of organization:
Mary Balkun/Seton Hall University

contact email:
mary.balkun@shu.edu



NeMLA 2019

The monstrous female is a staple of the literary imagination. The Medusa, the witch, the Sirens, the succubus/vampire, the she-devil, the madwoman, the coquette, the cross-dresser—these are just some versions of this trope that can be identified from the earliest periods to the present day. Some figures represent the ways women have been marginalized as “other” and the impact of that designation, while others represent ways that outsider positions can become a locus of power. This roundtable will explore various manifestations of the monstrous feminine trope, specifically in American literature and culture. It will consider questions such as: Who defines monstrosity? How can it be construed as positive as well as negative? How does the monstrous feminine manifest in different time periods and locations (urban vs. rural, east vs. west vs. midwest, north vs. south)? Does the monstrous feminine always have to be female?

Proposals of 300 words should be submitted by Sept. 30, 2018 via the NeMLA portal https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/CFP.