A head's up from the MEARCSTAPA list:
Jewish Zombies
Call for Papers
Workshop at the Jewish Studies Program, Penn State University
October 27-28, 2020
The Jewish Studies Program at Penn State University presents an interdisciplinary academic workshop to examine zombies in the context of Jewish history and culture.
Throughout history, Jews have often been depicted as monstrous figures, such as demons and vampires, and Jews themselves have imagined Golems, werewolves, and other fantastic creatures to address predicaments and even answer questions of Jewish thought and experience. Yet zombies, the most persistent monsters of our time, have so far mostly eluded a critical examination from scholars engaging in Jewish Studies. This workshop will explore Jewish characters, images, and perspectives in zombie films, literature, comics, etc. from the early prehistory of the genre to the present; or, conversely, use the zombie or conceptions of the undead or living dead as a category of analysis to address problems of and questions about Jewishness in modern and premodern Jewish writing and thought.
We invite participants to examine the political and cultural linkages between zombie narratives and Jewish histories through various notions of loss and reanimation. Zombie tales present situations in which individuals lose their cognitive abilities and personal memories in the face of a social breakdown, when norms, values, and laws, the very safeguards of human existence, disappear; but they also address possibilities of restoration, revenge, and continuity. We will discuss the zombie in relation to other monstrous representations of Jewish identity, to think on the relationships between dehumanization practices and posthumanism narratives, and explore diverse moments when zombies, both in the past and the present, sink their teeth, metaphorically and not, into Jewish figures, history, and imagination.
Paper proposals should include a title, an abstract (300 words), institutional affiliation, and contact information. Please submit proposals to Kobi Kabalek (kabalek@psu.edu) by February 20, 2020.
Saturday, December 7, 2019
Thursday, November 14, 2019
NEPCA Monsters Area 2019 Panels
Here are the final panel breakdowns for our inaugural Monsters and the Monstrous Area sessions.
Northeast Popular
Culture Association 2019 Annual Conference
15-16 November 2019
Sheraton Portsmouth
Harborside Hotel, Portsmouth, NH
NEPCA Monsters and
the Monstrous Area 2019
Michael A.
Torregrossa, Area Chair
Session 5: Saturday 9:30-10:45am
Monsters and the
Monstrous I: Reimagining Monsters (Thaxter, Lobby Level)
Chair: Don
Vescio, Worcester State University
“The Monstrosity
of Heroism in Beowulf”
Richard Fahey, University of Notre Dame
Richard Fahey is a PhD candidate at the University of
Notre Dame, who is scheduled to graduate this January. In addition to his
studies, Richard serves as Assistant Project Manager for Notre Dame’s Medieval
Studies Research Blog and Assistant Book Review Editor for the Journal
of Religion & Literature. His research areas include
allegory, monstrosity, wonders and riddles, especially in Old English, Latin,
Old Norse-Icelandic and Middle English literature. Richard is also interested
medievalism, including the works of J. R. R. Tolkien and George R. R. Martin,
and modern adaptations of medieval literature.
“Vegetarianism
and Synthetic Blood: Green Neoliberal Vampires”
Jessica Hautsch, Stony Brook University
Jessica Hautsch is a PhD student at Stony Brook University.
She has published and presented numerous papers about the Whedonverse focusing
on representations of race and gender in Buffy
the Vampire Slayer. Her current research combines rhetorical and cognitive
theory in an analysis of reading and writing practices in digital fan
communities.
“In the Footsteps of Fox Mulder: When Will We Know?”
Don Vescio, Worcester State University
Don Vescio is a faculty member of Worcester State
University’s Department of English.
After serving ten years as Worcester State’s Chief Information
Office/Vice President of Information Technologies, and two years as Vice
President of Enrollment Management and Marketing, Don now focuses his energies
on teaching undergraduate and graduate students in a variety of
disciplines. His research interests are
in critical theory, narratological analysis, and information design.
Session 6: Saturday 11:00am- 12:15pm
Monsters and the
Monstrous II: Everyday Monsters (Thaxter, Lobby Level)
Chair: Richard Fahey, University of Notre Dame
“Blood-Drinkers of the Nineteenth Century”
Rachel Widmer, University of Arkansas
Rachel Widmer is a Masters student at the University of
Arkansas in Fayetteville, Arkansas. She is currently working on her Master’s
Thesis which focuses on an unusual blood cure for consumption in nineteenth
century America, and its cultural implications as related to the vampire from
the Romantic Period into modern day. She works as a Registrar at a small
museum, and lives with her boyfriend, Joel and her adorable cat, Lucifer.
“The Girl in The Seven Year Itch is a Monster”
Abigail Driver, University of West Georgia
Abigail Driver is currently completing her M.A. in
English at The University of West Georgia. Her special areas of research are
women's literature, monstrosity, and pedagogy. In addition, Abigail is an
English teacher in Carrollton, Georgia. She teaches 9th grade English and AP
Literature and Composition. Her passion is helping students discover new
perspectives on literature.
“The Familiar
Other in Derf Backderf’s My Friend Dahmer”
Patrick Woodstock, Concordia University
Patrick Woodstock is currently completing his MA in Film
Studies at Concordia University in Montréal. His research is primarily
concerned with the application of queer and feminist perspectives towards
contemporary and historical popular visual cultures, with a specific focus on
classical Hollywood, camp, horror media and the histories of decadent
aesthetics.
Session 8: Saturday, 3:00pm- 4:15pm
Monsters and the
Monstrous III: Monsters and their Afterlives (Thaxter, Lobby Level)
Chair: Ava
Brillat, University of Miami
“Individuation and the Beast Within: A Jungian
Interpretation of Andre Norton’s The Year
of the Unicorn” (102)
Kathleen Healey, Worcester State University
Dr. Kathleen
Healey is an adjunct instructor at Worcester State University. She is the co-editor with Sharon Healey Yang
of Gothic Landscapes: Changing Eras,
Changing Cultures, Changing Anxieties.
Her publications include essays on gothic literature and the
relationship between literature and the visual arts.
“King Arthur vs. Cthulhu: The Motif of Arthur Redivivus in Lovecraft-inspired
Arthuriana”
Michael A. Torregrossa, Independent Scholar
Michael A. Torregrossa is Monsters and the Monstrous
Area Chair. He is a graduate if the Medieval Studies program at the University
of Connecticut (Storrs), and his research focuses on aspects of the medieval in
popular culture, including fiction, film and television, and comics.
“The Kids Aren’t Alright: Monstrous Children and
Parental Fears”
Ava Brillat, University of Miami, and April Mann, University
of Miami
Ava Brillat is the Learning & Research Services
Librarian for English, Theatre Arts, and Classical Studies at the University of
Miami. She has presented on the family
as the source of fear and the abject in horror movies at the Pop Culture
Association/ American Culture Association Annual Meeting in 2019. Her genre research is focused on familial
relationships in horror movies.
April Mann is a senior lecturer in the University of
Miami’s Composition Program, teaching courses in first year writing for
Engineering students and advanced writing for STEM fields. She has directed the Writing Center since
2004 and provided grant- and article-writing support to the University of Miami
Miller School of Medicine since 2015.
April has recently co-authored an article entitled “Crossing the Bridge:
Writing and Research Bridge Programming for an Intensive English Program” in
the edited collection Teaching,
Information Literacy, and Writing Studies. V.2, Upper Level and Graduate
Courses.
Sunday, October 13, 2019
CFP Not Dead, But Dreaming: Reading Lovecraft in the 21st Century (11/30/2019)
CFP: Not Dead, But Dreaming: Reading Lovecraft in the 21st Century
In CFP On September 5, 2019
https://www.fantastic-arts.org/2019/cfp-not-dead-but-dreaming-reading-lovecraft-in-the-21st-century/
Edited Volume CFP
Not Dead, But Dreaming: Reading Lovecraft in the 21st Century
In the one hundred and twenty-nine years since his birth, H. P. Lovecraft’s reputation has grown beyond all expectation. Not only has he influenced generations of readers, but he has also influenced scores of people in areas such as filmmaking, television, comics, music, and literary theory. Because interest in Lovecraft continues to grow, our intention is to explore some of the reasons why he has become so influential—and so indispensable—since the early 1990s. From his stories of human degeneration that started with “The Tomb” and “Dagon” to the cosmic horror that culminated in The Shadow out of Time and “The Haunter of the Dark,” the less than 20 years that Lovecraft devoted to a career in fiction produced narratives that remain popular among a growing number of readers who follow his work from multiple areas of interest. Additionally, Lovecraft’s literary production in general has also become increasingly relevant from an academic perspective since at least the 1990s. In this volume, we want to reflect on the possible reasons for Lovecraft’s expanding popularity and the significance of his legacy as we entered the digital age. Consequently, we are interested in research that focuses on the significance of Lovecraft’s work from the 1990s to the present day.
Possible topics to explore in the work of Lovecraft and its connection with the 1990s to the present might include, but are not limited to:
• The Anthropocene
• Influence in videogames
• Lovecraft Adaptations, including his influence on film and art in general
• Lovecraft’s philosophical thought
• Lovecraft’s poetry
• Lovecraft related RPGs and LARs
• Lovecraftian families
• Object Oriented Ontology
• Posthumanism
• Postmodernism
Please send a proposal of about 500 words, for chapters of 6000-7000 words, and a short biography to Tony Alcala antonio.alcala@tec.mx or Carl Sederholm csederholm@gmail.com, by 30 Nov 2019.
Contributors can expect to be selected and notified by 15th December 2019. The deadline for submission of completed articles will be 30 May 2019.
In CFP On September 5, 2019
https://www.fantastic-arts.org/2019/cfp-not-dead-but-dreaming-reading-lovecraft-in-the-21st-century/
Edited Volume CFP
Not Dead, But Dreaming: Reading Lovecraft in the 21st Century
In the one hundred and twenty-nine years since his birth, H. P. Lovecraft’s reputation has grown beyond all expectation. Not only has he influenced generations of readers, but he has also influenced scores of people in areas such as filmmaking, television, comics, music, and literary theory. Because interest in Lovecraft continues to grow, our intention is to explore some of the reasons why he has become so influential—and so indispensable—since the early 1990s. From his stories of human degeneration that started with “The Tomb” and “Dagon” to the cosmic horror that culminated in The Shadow out of Time and “The Haunter of the Dark,” the less than 20 years that Lovecraft devoted to a career in fiction produced narratives that remain popular among a growing number of readers who follow his work from multiple areas of interest. Additionally, Lovecraft’s literary production in general has also become increasingly relevant from an academic perspective since at least the 1990s. In this volume, we want to reflect on the possible reasons for Lovecraft’s expanding popularity and the significance of his legacy as we entered the digital age. Consequently, we are interested in research that focuses on the significance of Lovecraft’s work from the 1990s to the present day.
Possible topics to explore in the work of Lovecraft and its connection with the 1990s to the present might include, but are not limited to:
• The Anthropocene
• Influence in videogames
• Lovecraft Adaptations, including his influence on film and art in general
• Lovecraft’s philosophical thought
• Lovecraft’s poetry
• Lovecraft related RPGs and LARs
• Lovecraftian families
• Object Oriented Ontology
• Posthumanism
• Postmodernism
Please send a proposal of about 500 words, for chapters of 6000-7000 words, and a short biography to Tony Alcala antonio.alcala@tec.mx or Carl Sederholm csederholm@gmail.com, by 30 Nov 2019.
Contributors can expect to be selected and notified by 15th December 2019. The deadline for submission of completed articles will be 30 May 2019.
CFP Horror(s) of Childhood and Adolescence (Spec Issue of Dzieciństwo. Literatura i Kultura) (1/31/2020)
CFP: Horror(s) of Childhood and Adolescence
In CFP On September 29, 2019
https://www.fantastic-arts.org/2019/cfp-horrors-of-childhood-and-adolescence/
Please find pasted below the call for papers for the next issue of Dzieciństwo. Literatura i Kultura [Childhood: Literature and Culture], a biannual journal published at the University of Warsaw, Poland. The theme of the issue is Horror(s) of childhood and adolescence, and the deadline is January, 31, 2020.
The first issue of the journal is here: https://www.journals.polon.uw.edu.pl/index.php/dlk/issue/view/18.
All papers are peer-reviewed and, if accepted, published in open access without any article processing fees.
Call for papers 1/2020
To read more about the journal, including our submission procedure, please visit our platform: http://www.journals.polon.uw.edu.pl/index.php/dlk (to change the language to English, please click the ‘globe’ button of the page). You can also find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dlkuw/.
Yours faithfully,
Maciej Skowera
Vice-director of the journal Dzieciństwo. Literatura i Kultura [Childhood: Literature and Culture
Horror(s) of childhood and adolescence
On the one hand, within literary and film studies, the notion of horror is used as a genological category. On the other hand, as an aesthetic category, it is referred to various cultural texts: literary works, films, and TV series as well as theatrical performances and video games. Anita Has-Tokarz, in a monograph Horror w literaturze współczesnej i filmie [Horror in Contemporary Literature and Film] (2010), even considers it to denote “an effect [of dread] exerted on the recipient by a [cultural] text” (p. 51; our own translation). We would like to devote the third issue of “Dzieciństwo. Literatura i Kultura” to the relations of childhood and adolescence with horror – understood in all these ways – which are visible in three fields of consideration.
Firstly: the child in horror fiction. Culture, especially popular culture, eagerly casts children in the roles of disturbingly mysterious, mediumistic, frightening, demonic beings, or even torturers – but also in the roles of victims, specially protected individuals, objects of interest of variously presented evil, as well as heroes and heroines who are the only ones that can fight this evil. From the classic examples, it is enough to recall the teenage girl, Regan, from The Exorcist directed by William Friedkin, the young antichrist from The Omen franchise, and children’s characters from Stephen King’s prose – e.g. The Shining, Children of the Corn, Pet Semetary, or It – and from many famous screen adaptations of his works. Such figures – demonic children, but also children as saviours – have appeared in many popular films in recent years, such as John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place, Jennifer Kent’s Babadook, or Ari Aster’s Hereditary; in TV series, to mention the American Horror Story anthology by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, Stranger Things by the Duffer brothers, The Haunting of Hill House by Mike Flanagan (loosely based on the novel by Shirley Jackson); in video games, e.g. The Last of Us by the Mighty Dog studio and American McGee’s Alice series; and, finally, in literature, like Josh Malerman’s already filmed novel, Bird Box. It is also worth to mention the approaches other than the Anglo-Saxon ones: the dreadful child presented by the classics of Japanese horror cinema in which it is an embodiment of tragedy and mystery, and where childhood is stigmatised by unimaginable suffering from which the protagonists cannot free themselves (e.g. The Ring and Dark Water by Hideo Nakata, or Ju-On: The Grudge by Takashi Shimizu); Spanish, Portuguese, Mexican, and South American representations, connected to folklore, traditional beliefs, and fairy tales, such as Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth or J. A. Bayona’s The Orphanage; the cruel children from German and Austrian works, e.g. Goodnight Mommy by Veronica Franz and Severin Fiala. We would like to look at the ways in which children’s characters are used both in the classics of the genre and in the latest cultural production.
Secondly: children’s and young adult horror fiction. In the last dozen or so years, we have been experiencing a renaissance of horror literature for young people. The literary roots of such works date back to the tradition of the 19th century and, inter alia, to the so-called pedagogy of fear, while in the 20th century, classical examples are the works by John Bellairs, Zilpha Keatley Snyder, and Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. Today, many authors display both the ludic and reflective dimensions of horror, such as Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket), Ian Ogilvy, Chris Priestley, or Neil Gaiman and, in Poland, Marcin Szczygielski and Grzegorz Gortat. The issue of horror in cultural texts for children and young adults has become the subject of research of many scholars, both in Poland, especially Katarzyna Slany, and abroad, including Jessica R. McCort, Michael Howarth as well as Anna Jackson, Karen Coats and Roderick McGillis, Monica Flegel, Christopher Parkes, Chloé Germaine Buckley, K. Shryock Hood, Laura Hubner. To continue the considerations they have undertaken, we would like to invite authors to examine the strategies of creating horror fiction for young recipients – not only literary works, but also those from other media, such as films, TV series, video games, comic books.
Thirdly and lastly: childhood and adolescence as a horror. In this problem area, the concept of horror will be understood the most broadly. Such plots and motifs appear in works addressed both to adults (including biographical and autobiographical pieces) and children and young adults. The dominance of the Arcadian tone in cultural texts for young people is a thing of the past; for several decades, there has been a clear tendency to raise drastic subjects, tabooed before, such as domestic violence, sexual abuse, addictions, suicides, etc. 13 Reasons Why, a famous TV series created by Brian Yorkey (adapted from the novel by Jay Asher), Euphoria by Sam Levinson, Stephen Chbosky’s novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower and its screen adaptation directed by the writer, The Lovely Bones by Jodi Picoult and Peter Jackson’s film based on this work, Dom nie z tej ziemi [The House Out of This World] by Małgorzata Strękowska-Zaremba, The Book Everything by Guus Kuijer, or transgressive picturebooks (like those by Gro Dahle and Svein Nyhus) – are just a few of the many examples. Another issue is the horror of childhood and adolescence in dystopias and post-apocalyptic narratives, those for adult audiences (The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and a TV series inspired by this prose, The Road by Cormac McCarthy and a film based on it) and those for young adults (Suzanne Collins’s trilogy The Hunger Games, Veronica Roths’s Divergent series, and screen adaptations of these works, or Meto by Yves Grevet) and children (Woolvs in the Sitee by Margaret Wild and Anne Spudvilas). Social problems with a destructive impact on childhood and adolescence, reflected or extrapolated in many cultural texts, are therefore another issue we encourage potential authors to explore.
We invite you to consider various aspects of the relations of childhood and adolescence with horror in diverse cultural texts for different audiences. We are interested in cross-sectional articles and case studies about works created in the 19th, 20th, and 21st century. The three problem areas we identified – the child in horror fiction, horror for children and young adults, and childhood and adolescence as a horror – do not cover such a complex issue fully; therefore, the editorial team is open to other proposals, going beyond the proposed topics.
We also invite you to send texts unconnected with the issue’s subject matter to our Varia and Reviews sections.
Article submission deadline: 31.01.2020
In CFP On September 29, 2019
https://www.fantastic-arts.org/2019/cfp-horrors-of-childhood-and-adolescence/
Please find pasted below the call for papers for the next issue of Dzieciństwo. Literatura i Kultura [Childhood: Literature and Culture], a biannual journal published at the University of Warsaw, Poland. The theme of the issue is Horror(s) of childhood and adolescence, and the deadline is January, 31, 2020.
The first issue of the journal is here: https://www.journals.polon.uw.edu.pl/index.php/dlk/issue/view/18.
All papers are peer-reviewed and, if accepted, published in open access without any article processing fees.
Call for papers 1/2020
To read more about the journal, including our submission procedure, please visit our platform: http://www.journals.polon.uw.edu.pl/index.php/dlk (to change the language to English, please click the ‘globe’ button of the page). You can also find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dlkuw/.
Yours faithfully,
Maciej Skowera
Vice-director of the journal Dzieciństwo. Literatura i Kultura [Childhood: Literature and Culture
Horror(s) of childhood and adolescence
On the one hand, within literary and film studies, the notion of horror is used as a genological category. On the other hand, as an aesthetic category, it is referred to various cultural texts: literary works, films, and TV series as well as theatrical performances and video games. Anita Has-Tokarz, in a monograph Horror w literaturze współczesnej i filmie [Horror in Contemporary Literature and Film] (2010), even considers it to denote “an effect [of dread] exerted on the recipient by a [cultural] text” (p. 51; our own translation). We would like to devote the third issue of “Dzieciństwo. Literatura i Kultura” to the relations of childhood and adolescence with horror – understood in all these ways – which are visible in three fields of consideration.
Firstly: the child in horror fiction. Culture, especially popular culture, eagerly casts children in the roles of disturbingly mysterious, mediumistic, frightening, demonic beings, or even torturers – but also in the roles of victims, specially protected individuals, objects of interest of variously presented evil, as well as heroes and heroines who are the only ones that can fight this evil. From the classic examples, it is enough to recall the teenage girl, Regan, from The Exorcist directed by William Friedkin, the young antichrist from The Omen franchise, and children’s characters from Stephen King’s prose – e.g. The Shining, Children of the Corn, Pet Semetary, or It – and from many famous screen adaptations of his works. Such figures – demonic children, but also children as saviours – have appeared in many popular films in recent years, such as John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place, Jennifer Kent’s Babadook, or Ari Aster’s Hereditary; in TV series, to mention the American Horror Story anthology by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, Stranger Things by the Duffer brothers, The Haunting of Hill House by Mike Flanagan (loosely based on the novel by Shirley Jackson); in video games, e.g. The Last of Us by the Mighty Dog studio and American McGee’s Alice series; and, finally, in literature, like Josh Malerman’s already filmed novel, Bird Box. It is also worth to mention the approaches other than the Anglo-Saxon ones: the dreadful child presented by the classics of Japanese horror cinema in which it is an embodiment of tragedy and mystery, and where childhood is stigmatised by unimaginable suffering from which the protagonists cannot free themselves (e.g. The Ring and Dark Water by Hideo Nakata, or Ju-On: The Grudge by Takashi Shimizu); Spanish, Portuguese, Mexican, and South American representations, connected to folklore, traditional beliefs, and fairy tales, such as Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth or J. A. Bayona’s The Orphanage; the cruel children from German and Austrian works, e.g. Goodnight Mommy by Veronica Franz and Severin Fiala. We would like to look at the ways in which children’s characters are used both in the classics of the genre and in the latest cultural production.
Secondly: children’s and young adult horror fiction. In the last dozen or so years, we have been experiencing a renaissance of horror literature for young people. The literary roots of such works date back to the tradition of the 19th century and, inter alia, to the so-called pedagogy of fear, while in the 20th century, classical examples are the works by John Bellairs, Zilpha Keatley Snyder, and Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. Today, many authors display both the ludic and reflective dimensions of horror, such as Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket), Ian Ogilvy, Chris Priestley, or Neil Gaiman and, in Poland, Marcin Szczygielski and Grzegorz Gortat. The issue of horror in cultural texts for children and young adults has become the subject of research of many scholars, both in Poland, especially Katarzyna Slany, and abroad, including Jessica R. McCort, Michael Howarth as well as Anna Jackson, Karen Coats and Roderick McGillis, Monica Flegel, Christopher Parkes, Chloé Germaine Buckley, K. Shryock Hood, Laura Hubner. To continue the considerations they have undertaken, we would like to invite authors to examine the strategies of creating horror fiction for young recipients – not only literary works, but also those from other media, such as films, TV series, video games, comic books.
Thirdly and lastly: childhood and adolescence as a horror. In this problem area, the concept of horror will be understood the most broadly. Such plots and motifs appear in works addressed both to adults (including biographical and autobiographical pieces) and children and young adults. The dominance of the Arcadian tone in cultural texts for young people is a thing of the past; for several decades, there has been a clear tendency to raise drastic subjects, tabooed before, such as domestic violence, sexual abuse, addictions, suicides, etc. 13 Reasons Why, a famous TV series created by Brian Yorkey (adapted from the novel by Jay Asher), Euphoria by Sam Levinson, Stephen Chbosky’s novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower and its screen adaptation directed by the writer, The Lovely Bones by Jodi Picoult and Peter Jackson’s film based on this work, Dom nie z tej ziemi [The House Out of This World] by Małgorzata Strękowska-Zaremba, The Book Everything by Guus Kuijer, or transgressive picturebooks (like those by Gro Dahle and Svein Nyhus) – are just a few of the many examples. Another issue is the horror of childhood and adolescence in dystopias and post-apocalyptic narratives, those for adult audiences (The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and a TV series inspired by this prose, The Road by Cormac McCarthy and a film based on it) and those for young adults (Suzanne Collins’s trilogy The Hunger Games, Veronica Roths’s Divergent series, and screen adaptations of these works, or Meto by Yves Grevet) and children (Woolvs in the Sitee by Margaret Wild and Anne Spudvilas). Social problems with a destructive impact on childhood and adolescence, reflected or extrapolated in many cultural texts, are therefore another issue we encourage potential authors to explore.
We invite you to consider various aspects of the relations of childhood and adolescence with horror in diverse cultural texts for different audiences. We are interested in cross-sectional articles and case studies about works created in the 19th, 20th, and 21st century. The three problem areas we identified – the child in horror fiction, horror for children and young adults, and childhood and adolescence as a horror – do not cover such a complex issue fully; therefore, the editorial team is open to other proposals, going beyond the proposed topics.
We also invite you to send texts unconnected with the issue’s subject matter to our Varia and Reviews sections.
Article submission deadline: 31.01.2020
CFP Spoofing the Vampire: What We Do in the Shadows and the Comedic Vampire (expired)
Apologies for having missed this. If offers an innovative approach to the type.
CFP: Spoofing the Vampire: What We Do in the Shadows and the Comedic Vampire
In CFP On May 30, 2019
https://www.fantastic-arts.org/2019/cfp-spoofing-the-vampire-what-we-do-in-the-shadows-and-the-comedic-vampire/
Spoofing the Vampire: What We Do in the Shadows and the Comedic Vampire
Editors: Simon Bacon & Ashley Szanter
contact email: spoofingthevamp@gmail.com
Project Overview
Editors Bacon and Szanter seek original essays for an edited collection on What We Do in the Shadows (2014) and the Comedic Vampire. While the majority of films, television series, comics, games and books portray the vampire as a deeply dramatic, Gothic figure, there are many examples of the vampire and its generic trappings as a source of comedy. Much of this is down to genuine comedic moments and situations, but often, and of particular interest here, is the parodying, pastiching, and self-referencing within the vampire genre itself and the spoofing of other vampire narratives. What We Do in the Shadows, both the original movie and the television series, is a well known example of this, but as early and as varied as Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (Barton: 1948) The Munsters (Burns: 1964-66), and Dance of the Vampires (Polanski: 1967), purposely nod and wink at earlier vampire texts. The vampire is nothing other than egalitarian in its targets choosing political, sexual, social and religious topics to lampoon, as well as innocent children, lovelorn teenagers, and the nostalgic elderly, the comedic vampire has spread its bat wings and taken a pretty bumpy flight into our homes and canons. This collection will explore the figure of the comedic vampire in all its incarnations and the implications of taking a beloved dramatic figure a little less seriously.
Chapters in the proposed collection can focus on aspects or intersections between one or more of the following categories:
– Notable comedic vampire film What We Do in the Shadows (2014) by Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement or the recent FX television adaptation of the same name.
– Examinations of the place/function of comedy in the vampire film genre. What role should comedy, laughter, or satire hold within the broader vampire zeitgeist? Consider Dark Shadows (2012), Fanged Up (2017), Vampires Suck (2010), Hotel Transylvania film series (2012-2018), Vampire Academy (2014), Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), Suck (2009), Mom’s Got a Date with a Vampire (2000), Dracula: Dead and Loving it (1995), Son of Dracula (1974), or any others not mentioned on this list.
– Address contemporary comedic vampire fictions through a particular scholarly lens.
– Political and social satire and/or comedy in a vampire work of fiction.
– Explore the comedic vampire phenomenon in written vampire fiction. Texts for consideration may include those by MaryJanice Davidson, Christopher Moore, Charlaine Harris, Gerry Bartlett, and especially the Fat Vampire series by Johnny B. Truant.
– The comedic vampire as the result of genre exhaustion for both the traditional vampire genre as well as the paranormal genre. Have we taken the dramatic vampire to its limits? Have audiences bored of the dramatic vampire tropes?
– Nationalism/national identity through comedy: Vampires (2010), Ko?ysanka (2010), Strigoi (2009).
– (Un)intentional comedy extracted from serious vampire content: Twilight series, True Blood, Vampire Diaries, The Originals, Buffy the Vampire Slayer [film or series], The Lost Boys, Dark Shadows television series, Blade film series. Could either be humor woven into the drama or external parodies.
– Address comedic vampires and intersectionality. Of particular interest to the editors are non-binary gender and sexuality, feminism, and alternative masculinity.
– The use of comedic vampires with narratives meant for children and young adults: Count Von Count, Count Duckula, Bunnicula, Young Dracula, Vampirina, Scream Street, and Vampire Sisters.
Abstract Due Dates
Preference will be given to abstracts received before Friday 26th July 2019. Abstracts should be no longer than 350 words and be accompanied by a current CV.
Final manuscripts of 5,000-6,500 words should be submitted in MLA style by Friday 28th February 2020.
Contact us and send abstracts to spoofingthevamp@gmail.com
CFP: Spoofing the Vampire: What We Do in the Shadows and the Comedic Vampire
In CFP On May 30, 2019
https://www.fantastic-arts.org/2019/cfp-spoofing-the-vampire-what-we-do-in-the-shadows-and-the-comedic-vampire/
Spoofing the Vampire: What We Do in the Shadows and the Comedic Vampire
Editors: Simon Bacon & Ashley Szanter
contact email: spoofingthevamp@gmail.com
Project Overview
Editors Bacon and Szanter seek original essays for an edited collection on What We Do in the Shadows (2014) and the Comedic Vampire. While the majority of films, television series, comics, games and books portray the vampire as a deeply dramatic, Gothic figure, there are many examples of the vampire and its generic trappings as a source of comedy. Much of this is down to genuine comedic moments and situations, but often, and of particular interest here, is the parodying, pastiching, and self-referencing within the vampire genre itself and the spoofing of other vampire narratives. What We Do in the Shadows, both the original movie and the television series, is a well known example of this, but as early and as varied as Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (Barton: 1948) The Munsters (Burns: 1964-66), and Dance of the Vampires (Polanski: 1967), purposely nod and wink at earlier vampire texts. The vampire is nothing other than egalitarian in its targets choosing political, sexual, social and religious topics to lampoon, as well as innocent children, lovelorn teenagers, and the nostalgic elderly, the comedic vampire has spread its bat wings and taken a pretty bumpy flight into our homes and canons. This collection will explore the figure of the comedic vampire in all its incarnations and the implications of taking a beloved dramatic figure a little less seriously.
Chapters in the proposed collection can focus on aspects or intersections between one or more of the following categories:
– Notable comedic vampire film What We Do in the Shadows (2014) by Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement or the recent FX television adaptation of the same name.
– Examinations of the place/function of comedy in the vampire film genre. What role should comedy, laughter, or satire hold within the broader vampire zeitgeist? Consider Dark Shadows (2012), Fanged Up (2017), Vampires Suck (2010), Hotel Transylvania film series (2012-2018), Vampire Academy (2014), Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), Suck (2009), Mom’s Got a Date with a Vampire (2000), Dracula: Dead and Loving it (1995), Son of Dracula (1974), or any others not mentioned on this list.
– Address contemporary comedic vampire fictions through a particular scholarly lens.
– Political and social satire and/or comedy in a vampire work of fiction.
– Explore the comedic vampire phenomenon in written vampire fiction. Texts for consideration may include those by MaryJanice Davidson, Christopher Moore, Charlaine Harris, Gerry Bartlett, and especially the Fat Vampire series by Johnny B. Truant.
– The comedic vampire as the result of genre exhaustion for both the traditional vampire genre as well as the paranormal genre. Have we taken the dramatic vampire to its limits? Have audiences bored of the dramatic vampire tropes?
– Nationalism/national identity through comedy: Vampires (2010), Ko?ysanka (2010), Strigoi (2009).
– (Un)intentional comedy extracted from serious vampire content: Twilight series, True Blood, Vampire Diaries, The Originals, Buffy the Vampire Slayer [film or series], The Lost Boys, Dark Shadows television series, Blade film series. Could either be humor woven into the drama or external parodies.
– Address comedic vampires and intersectionality. Of particular interest to the editors are non-binary gender and sexuality, feminism, and alternative masculinity.
– The use of comedic vampires with narratives meant for children and young adults: Count Von Count, Count Duckula, Bunnicula, Young Dracula, Vampirina, Scream Street, and Vampire Sisters.
Abstract Due Dates
Preference will be given to abstracts received before Friday 26th July 2019. Abstracts should be no longer than 350 words and be accompanied by a current CV.
Final manuscripts of 5,000-6,500 words should be submitted in MLA style by Friday 28th February 2020.
Contact us and send abstracts to spoofingthevamp@gmail.com
CFP 9th Slayage Conference on the Whedonverses (1/13/2020; Montreal 7/9-12/2020)
The 9th 'Slayage' Conference on the Whedonverses
Full details and submission form at https://www.scw9.ca/cfp--submit.html.
Slayage: The Journal of Whedon Studies, the Whedon Studies Association, and conveners Lorna Jowett, Cynthia Burkhead, and Kristopher Woofter solicit proposals for the ninth biennial Slayage Conference on the Whedonverses (SCW9). This conference dedicated to the imaginative universe(s) of Joss Whedon and his primary collaborators (e.g., Marti Noxon, Tim Minear, David Greenwalt, Jane Espenson, Maurissa Tancharoen, Jed Whedon, etc.) will be held on the downtown campus of Dawson College, Montréal, Québec, Canada, from 9-12 July 2020. Kristopher Woofter of Dawson College will serve as local arrangements chair.
We welcome proposals of 200-300 words (or an abstract of a completed paper) on any aspect of the following topics.
Whedon's Work:
Whedon’s television and web texts (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, Dollhouse, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and [who knows?] The Nevers, and the "reboot" of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, produced by Monica Owusu-Breen);
his films (Serenity, The Cabin in the Woods, Marvel’s The Avengers, Much Ado About Nothing, Avengers: Age of Ultron);
comics (e.g. Fray, Astonishing X-Men, Runaways, Sugarshock!, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel: After the Fall, Angel & Faith, and the Buffy and Angel comics from Boom! Studios); or any element of the work of Whedon and his collaborators.
The Post-Whedon TV Landscape: With the idea that ‘Whedon studies’ might include a range of creative work by Whedon collaborators and others influenced by his work, exclusive of Whedon’s involvement, proposals may address
series like Veronica Mars (Rob Thomas), Grimm (David Greenwalt), iZombie (Rob Thomas, Diane Ruggiero), Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa), Lucifer (Tom Kapinos), Stranger Things (Ross and Matt Duffer), and others;
paratexts, fandoms, or Whedon’s extracurricular—political and activist—activities, such as his involvement with Equality Now.
Presentations may come from any disciplinary perspective: literature, history, communications, film and television studies, women’s and gender studies, queer and trans studies, religion, linguistics, music, cultural studies, genre studies, and others. In other words, multidisciplinary discussions of the text, the social context, the audience, the producers, the production, and more are all appropriate. A proposal/abstract should demonstrate familiarity with already-published scholarship in the field, which includes dozens of books, hundreds of articles, and nearly twenty years of the blind peer-reviewed journal, Slayage.
An individual paper is strictly limited to a reading time of 18-20 minutes, and we encourage, though do not require, self-organized panels of three presenters. Proposals for workshops, roundtables, or other types of sessions are also welcome. Submissions by both graduate and undergraduate students are invited; undergraduates should provide the name, email, and phone number of a faculty member willing to consult with them (the faculty member does not need to attend). Proposals should be submitted online through this SCW9 webpage (see below) and will be reviewed by program chairs Rhonda V. Wilcox and Cynthia Burkhead, and local arrangements chair, Kristopher Woofter.
Proposal Format: Proposals of 250-300 words for individual papers should include a title, projected thesis, identification of the corpus, and sense of the theoretical approach. Proposals for workshops, roundtables, or other types of sessions should include a title, a description of the session's organizing theme, and a list of the names, affiliations, and contact info of potential presenters; proposals for the papers that comprise the session would be sent individually by potential presenters, indicating their presentation as part of a proposed session.
Submissions must be received by Monday, 13 January 2020. Decisions will be made by Monday, 2 March 2020.
Questions regarding proposals can be directed to Slayage editor Rhonda V. Wilcox at the conference email address: slayage.conference@gmail.com.
Full details and submission form at https://www.scw9.ca/cfp--submit.html.
Slayage: The Journal of Whedon Studies, the Whedon Studies Association, and conveners Lorna Jowett, Cynthia Burkhead, and Kristopher Woofter solicit proposals for the ninth biennial Slayage Conference on the Whedonverses (SCW9). This conference dedicated to the imaginative universe(s) of Joss Whedon and his primary collaborators (e.g., Marti Noxon, Tim Minear, David Greenwalt, Jane Espenson, Maurissa Tancharoen, Jed Whedon, etc.) will be held on the downtown campus of Dawson College, Montréal, Québec, Canada, from 9-12 July 2020. Kristopher Woofter of Dawson College will serve as local arrangements chair.
We welcome proposals of 200-300 words (or an abstract of a completed paper) on any aspect of the following topics.
Whedon's Work:
Whedon’s television and web texts (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, Dollhouse, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and [who knows?] The Nevers, and the "reboot" of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, produced by Monica Owusu-Breen);
his films (Serenity, The Cabin in the Woods, Marvel’s The Avengers, Much Ado About Nothing, Avengers: Age of Ultron);
comics (e.g. Fray, Astonishing X-Men, Runaways, Sugarshock!, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel: After the Fall, Angel & Faith, and the Buffy and Angel comics from Boom! Studios); or any element of the work of Whedon and his collaborators.
The Post-Whedon TV Landscape: With the idea that ‘Whedon studies’ might include a range of creative work by Whedon collaborators and others influenced by his work, exclusive of Whedon’s involvement, proposals may address
series like Veronica Mars (Rob Thomas), Grimm (David Greenwalt), iZombie (Rob Thomas, Diane Ruggiero), Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa), Lucifer (Tom Kapinos), Stranger Things (Ross and Matt Duffer), and others;
paratexts, fandoms, or Whedon’s extracurricular—political and activist—activities, such as his involvement with Equality Now.
Presentations may come from any disciplinary perspective: literature, history, communications, film and television studies, women’s and gender studies, queer and trans studies, religion, linguistics, music, cultural studies, genre studies, and others. In other words, multidisciplinary discussions of the text, the social context, the audience, the producers, the production, and more are all appropriate. A proposal/abstract should demonstrate familiarity with already-published scholarship in the field, which includes dozens of books, hundreds of articles, and nearly twenty years of the blind peer-reviewed journal, Slayage.
An individual paper is strictly limited to a reading time of 18-20 minutes, and we encourage, though do not require, self-organized panels of three presenters. Proposals for workshops, roundtables, or other types of sessions are also welcome. Submissions by both graduate and undergraduate students are invited; undergraduates should provide the name, email, and phone number of a faculty member willing to consult with them (the faculty member does not need to attend). Proposals should be submitted online through this SCW9 webpage (see below) and will be reviewed by program chairs Rhonda V. Wilcox and Cynthia Burkhead, and local arrangements chair, Kristopher Woofter.
Proposal Format: Proposals of 250-300 words for individual papers should include a title, projected thesis, identification of the corpus, and sense of the theoretical approach. Proposals for workshops, roundtables, or other types of sessions should include a title, a description of the session's organizing theme, and a list of the names, affiliations, and contact info of potential presenters; proposals for the papers that comprise the session would be sent individually by potential presenters, indicating their presentation as part of a proposed session.
Submissions must be received by Monday, 13 January 2020. Decisions will be made by Monday, 2 March 2020.
Questions regarding proposals can be directed to Slayage editor Rhonda V. Wilcox at the conference email address: slayage.conference@gmail.com.
CFP Vampires: Consuming Monsters and Monstrous Consumption (Spec Issue of Revenant) (1/18/2020)
“Vampires: Consuming Monsters and Monstrous Consumption”
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/09/16/%E2%80%9Cvampires-consuming-monsters-and-monstrous-consumption%E2%80%9D
deadline for submissions: January 18, 2020
full name / name of organization: Revenant: Critical and Creative Studies of the Supernatural
contact email: brooke.cameron@queensu.ca
Call for Proposals
“Vampires: Consuming Monsters and Monstrous Consumption”
Revenant: Critical and Creative Studies of the Supernatural is a peer-reviewed, online journal looking at the supernatural, the uncanny, and the weird. Revenantis now accepting articles, creative writing pieces and book, film, game, event, or art reviews for a themed issue on ‘Vampires: Consuming Monsters and Monstrous Consumption’ (due 18 January 2020), guest edited by Dr Brooke Cameron and Suyin Olguin.
Everyone knows that vampires suck. They suck blood, and they suck the life out of you. Still, we cannot help but feel drawn to these mysterious creatures—through feelings of repulsion and/or desire—because they manifest such deviant appetites. This special issue of Revenant celebrates our continued fascination with the blood-sucking nosferatu. We wish to explore the idea of the vampire as a monster defined by theories of consumption, from bodily appetites and ravenous hunger to dissident desires and cannibalism. Looking at the Victorian period and beyond, we are also interested in modern adaptations or rereadings of vampire narratives.
Since its first appearance in modern culture, the vampire has been defined by acts of deviant consumption. Even if not engaged in drinking human blood, this monstrous creature has always been written as a parasite sucking the life out of his human counterparts. Nick Groom, in his touchstone study, The Vampire(2017), talks about early folk narratives of reanimated corpses revisiting and predating upon family and friends (e.g., the Arnold Paole case [c. 1726]). Later, literature of the nineteenth-century wrote this parasitic creature into popular imagination as a body of unruly desire. Bram Stoker’s iconic Dracula(1897) gives us the perverse vampire whose consumption of blood resembles both a sexual act and a corruption of the religious sacrament of communion. However, other early narratives avoid graphic accounts of bloodlust and instead focus on the terror of parasitic relationships (Polidori’s The Vampire[1819] & Byron’s ‘Giaour’ [1813] are early examples of this approach). Similarly, Le Fanu’s Carmilla(1872) explores the idea of dissident consumption and lesbian desire, while Marryat’s The Blood of the Vampire(1897) traces a relationship between colonial exploitation and the parasitic monster.
More recent narratives have had fun with the theme of consumption in representations of the undead nosferatu. There is the vegetarian vampire in Meyer’s Twilight saga (2005–8), and those that are tied to questions of capitalist consumption in Dracula 2000(2000). In a reversal of the power dichotomy, we also have humans marketing and drinking vampire blood in Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries(2001–13). This is not to mention the abundance of fan fiction on, and film adaptions of, vampire stories signaling our own ravenous cultural appetites for representations of this libidinal Other. Furthermore, the consumer-friendly vampires in twentieth- and twenty-first century works present us with a very new or ‘post-Victorian’ vampire who can be, as Nina Auerbach suggests, ‘everything we are’ because of his relationship to food (Our Vampires, Ourselves[1995] 130). Matt Haig’s The Radleys(2010), as well as Kevin Williamson’s and Julie Plec’s television adaptions of L. J. Smith’s literary series, The Vampire Diaries(2009–17), are even more avant-garde (or ‘post-Victorian’) in their representation of contemporary vampires who enjoy partaking in ‘human’ acts of eating and drinking.In every case, the vampire is defined as ‘Other’ because of appetites that challenge or draw attention to human rules of consumption.
We invite abstracts that discuss the vampire as a body of consumption in literature, film, television, art, or any other cultural narrative. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:
For articles and creative pieces (such as poetry, short stories, flash fiction, videos, artwork, and music): please send a 300–500 word abstract and a short biography by 18 January 2020. If your abstract is accepted, the full article (maximum 7000 words, including Harvard referencing) and the full creative piece (maximum 5000 words) will be due 1 June 2020.
Additionally, we are seeking reviews of books, films, games, events, and art that engage with vampires (800–1,000 words in length). Please send a short biography and full details of the book you would like to review as soon as possible.
Further information, including Submission Guidelines, is available at the journal site: www.revenantjournal.com.
Please e-mail submissions to brooke.cameron@queensu.ca. If emailing the journal directly at revenant@falmouth.ac.ukplease quote ‘vampire issue’ in the subject box.
Last updated September 23, 2019
This CFP has been viewed 453 times.
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/09/16/%E2%80%9Cvampires-consuming-monsters-and-monstrous-consumption%E2%80%9D
deadline for submissions: January 18, 2020
full name / name of organization: Revenant: Critical and Creative Studies of the Supernatural
contact email: brooke.cameron@queensu.ca
Call for Proposals
“Vampires: Consuming Monsters and Monstrous Consumption”
Revenant: Critical and Creative Studies of the Supernatural is a peer-reviewed, online journal looking at the supernatural, the uncanny, and the weird. Revenantis now accepting articles, creative writing pieces and book, film, game, event, or art reviews for a themed issue on ‘Vampires: Consuming Monsters and Monstrous Consumption’ (due 18 January 2020), guest edited by Dr Brooke Cameron and Suyin Olguin.
Everyone knows that vampires suck. They suck blood, and they suck the life out of you. Still, we cannot help but feel drawn to these mysterious creatures—through feelings of repulsion and/or desire—because they manifest such deviant appetites. This special issue of Revenant celebrates our continued fascination with the blood-sucking nosferatu. We wish to explore the idea of the vampire as a monster defined by theories of consumption, from bodily appetites and ravenous hunger to dissident desires and cannibalism. Looking at the Victorian period and beyond, we are also interested in modern adaptations or rereadings of vampire narratives.
Since its first appearance in modern culture, the vampire has been defined by acts of deviant consumption. Even if not engaged in drinking human blood, this monstrous creature has always been written as a parasite sucking the life out of his human counterparts. Nick Groom, in his touchstone study, The Vampire(2017), talks about early folk narratives of reanimated corpses revisiting and predating upon family and friends (e.g., the Arnold Paole case [c. 1726]). Later, literature of the nineteenth-century wrote this parasitic creature into popular imagination as a body of unruly desire. Bram Stoker’s iconic Dracula(1897) gives us the perverse vampire whose consumption of blood resembles both a sexual act and a corruption of the religious sacrament of communion. However, other early narratives avoid graphic accounts of bloodlust and instead focus on the terror of parasitic relationships (Polidori’s The Vampire[1819] & Byron’s ‘Giaour’ [1813] are early examples of this approach). Similarly, Le Fanu’s Carmilla(1872) explores the idea of dissident consumption and lesbian desire, while Marryat’s The Blood of the Vampire(1897) traces a relationship between colonial exploitation and the parasitic monster.
More recent narratives have had fun with the theme of consumption in representations of the undead nosferatu. There is the vegetarian vampire in Meyer’s Twilight saga (2005–8), and those that are tied to questions of capitalist consumption in Dracula 2000(2000). In a reversal of the power dichotomy, we also have humans marketing and drinking vampire blood in Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries(2001–13). This is not to mention the abundance of fan fiction on, and film adaptions of, vampire stories signaling our own ravenous cultural appetites for representations of this libidinal Other. Furthermore, the consumer-friendly vampires in twentieth- and twenty-first century works present us with a very new or ‘post-Victorian’ vampire who can be, as Nina Auerbach suggests, ‘everything we are’ because of his relationship to food (Our Vampires, Ourselves[1995] 130). Matt Haig’s The Radleys(2010), as well as Kevin Williamson’s and Julie Plec’s television adaptions of L. J. Smith’s literary series, The Vampire Diaries(2009–17), are even more avant-garde (or ‘post-Victorian’) in their representation of contemporary vampires who enjoy partaking in ‘human’ acts of eating and drinking.In every case, the vampire is defined as ‘Other’ because of appetites that challenge or draw attention to human rules of consumption.
We invite abstracts that discuss the vampire as a body of consumption in literature, film, television, art, or any other cultural narrative. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:
- Vampires and food
- Vampire diets (vegetarian or carnivore)
- Bodies of sexual desire in vampire fiction
- Gendered appetites in vampire fiction
- Appetite and the vampire child
- Deviant desires and the vampire body
- Consumptive bodies and vampirism
- Vampiric appetites in transnational and postcolonial vampires
- Consuming the Other
- Curbing vampiric appetites
- Consuming vampires in popular literature
- Neo-Victorian vampires
For articles and creative pieces (such as poetry, short stories, flash fiction, videos, artwork, and music): please send a 300–500 word abstract and a short biography by 18 January 2020. If your abstract is accepted, the full article (maximum 7000 words, including Harvard referencing) and the full creative piece (maximum 5000 words) will be due 1 June 2020.
Additionally, we are seeking reviews of books, films, games, events, and art that engage with vampires (800–1,000 words in length). Please send a short biography and full details of the book you would like to review as soon as possible.
Further information, including Submission Guidelines, is available at the journal site: www.revenantjournal.com.
Please e-mail submissions to brooke.cameron@queensu.ca. If emailing the journal directly at revenant@falmouth.ac.ukplease quote ‘vampire issue’ in the subject box.
Last updated September 23, 2019
This CFP has been viewed 453 times.
CFP Japanese Horror: New Critical Approaches to History, Narratives and Aesthetics (Extended Deadline) (11/25/2019)
Call for Chapters: Japanese Horror: New Critical Approaches to History, Narratives and Aesthetics (Extended Deadline).
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/09/24/call-for-chapters-japanese-horror-new-critical-approaches-to-history-narratives-and
deadline for submissions: November 25, 2019
full name / name of organization: Subashish Bhattacharjee (Jawaharlal Nehru University), Ananya Saha (Jawaharlal Nehru University) and Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina)
contact email: jhorrorvolume@gmail.com
Call for Chapters: Japanese Horror: New Critical Approaches to History, Narratives and Aesthetics (Extended Deadline).
Edited by Subashish Bhattacharjee (Jawaharlal Nehru University),
Ananya Saha (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina)
Cathedra of Film and Literature
http://artes.filo.uba.ar/la-literatura-de-las-artes-combinadas-ii
The cultural phenomenon of Japanese Horror has been of the most celebrated cultural exports of the country, being witness to some of the most notable aesthetic and critical addresses in the history of modern horror cultures. Encompassing a range of genres and performances including cinema, manga, video games, and television series, the loosely designated genre has often been known to uniquely blend ‘Western' narrative and cinematic techniques and tropes with traditional narrative styles, visuals and folklores. Tracing back to the early decades of the twentieth century, modern Japanese horror cultures have had tremendous impact on world cinema, comics studies and video game studies, and popular culture, introducing many trends which are widely applied in contemporary horror narratives. The hybridity that is often native to Japanese aestheticisation of horror is an influential element that has found widespread acceptance in the genres of horror. These include classifications of ghosts as the yuurei and the youkai; the plight of the suffering individual in modern, industrial society, and the lack thereof to fend for oneself while facing circumstances beyond comprehension, or when the features of industrial society themselves produce horror (Ringu, Tetsuo, Ju on); settings such as damp, dank spaces that reinforce the idea of morbid, rotten return from the afterlife (Dark Water)—these are features that have now been rather unconsciously assimilated into the canon of Hollywood or western horror cultures, and may often be traced back to Japanese Horror (or J-Horror) cultures. Besides the often de facto reliance on gore and violence, the psychological motif has been one of the most important aspects of Japanese Horror cultures. Whether it is supernatural, sci-fi or body horror, J-Horror cultures have explored methods that enable the visualising of depravity and violent perversions, and the essence of spiritual and material horror in a fascinating fashion, inventing the mechanics of converting the most fatal fears into visuals.
The proposed volume will focus on directors and films, illustrators and artists and manga, video game makers/designers and video games that have helped in establishing the genre firmly within the annals of world cinema, popular culture and imagination, and in creating a stylistic paradigm shift in horror cinema across the film industries of diverse nations. We seek essays on J-Horror sub-genres, directors, illustrators, designers and their oeuvre, the aesthetics of J-Horror films, manga, and video games, styles, concepts, history, or particular films that have created a trajectory of J-Horror cultures. Works that may be explored in essay-length studies include, but are not limited to, Kwaidan, Onibaba, Jigoku, Tetsuo: The Iron Man and its sequels, Audition, Fatal Frame, the Resident Evil game franchise, Siren, Uzumaki, Gyo, Tomie, besides the large number of Japanese horror films that have been remade for the US market, including Ringu, Ju on, Dark Water, and Pulse among others, and a host of video games with Western/American settings (such as the Silent Hill franchise) and film adaptations (Resident Evil franchise)—analysing the shift from the interactive game form to consumable horror in the cinematic form. For adaptations, we are also looking for essays that analyse the shift from the interactive game form or image-and-text form to consumable audiovisual horror in the form of cinema and vice versa. Analyses of remakes could also focus on the translatability of Japanese horror vis-à-vis American or Hollwood-esque horror, and how the Hollywood remakes have often distilled western horror cinematic types to localise the content.
Directors, designers and manga artists working in the ambit of Japanese horror cultures who may be discussed include, but are not limited to, Nobuo Nakagawa, Kaneto Shindo, Masaki Kobayashi, Hideo Nakata, Takashi Miike, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Ataru Oikawa, Takashi Shimizu, Hideo Kojima, Junji Ito, Kazuo Umezu, Shintaro Kago, Katsuhisa Kigtisu, Gou Tanabe and others. Other issues that may be explored in J-Horror cultures may include the issue of violence and gore, gender and sexuality, sexual representation, the types of the supernatural, cinematic techniques and narrative techniques and others.
At this stage we are looking for abstracts for proposed chapters up to 500 words within November 25th, 2019, but complete papers will be well received. The papers must be written according to the MLA stylesheet, following the rules of the 7th Edition handbook, with footnotes instead of endnotes. All submissions (Garamond, 1.5 pt line spacing) must be accompanied by an abstract (200-250 words) and a short bio-biblio of the author. Images, if used, should preferably be free from copyright issues—sourced from creative commons/copyright-free sources, or permissions should be obtained from relevant copyright holders.
Enquiries and submissions are to be directed to Subashish Bhattacharjee, Ananya Saha and Fernando Pagnoni Berns at jhorrorvolume@gmail.com
Subashish Bhattacharjee is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of North Bengal, India. He edits the interdisciplinary online journal The Apollonian, and is the Editor of Literary Articles and Academic Book Reviews of Muse India. His doctoral research, on the cultures of built space, is from the Centre for English Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, where he has also been a UGC-Senior Fellow. His recent publications include Queering Visual Cultures (Universitas, 2018), and New Women's Writing (Cambridge Scholars, co-edited with GN Ray, 2018).
Ananya Saha is a PhD scholar in the Centre for English Studies, JNU, New Delhi. Her research is on the idea of the 'outsider' in Japanese and non-Japanese manga vis-a-vis globalization. Other research interests include Fandom and Queer studies, Translation theory and practice, New Literatures and so on. She has published in international journals, including Orientaliska Studier (No 156), from the Nordic Association of Japanese and Korean Studies. She is the co-editor of the volume titled Trajectories of the Popular: Forms, Histories, Contexts (2019), published by AAKAR, New Delhi. She has been the University Grants Fellow, SAP-DSA-(I) in the Centre for English Studies, JNU (2016-17), and has been awarded a DAAD research visit grant to Tuebingen University, Germany under the project "Literary Cultures of Global South."
Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns is an Assistant Professor at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA) - Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (Argentina)-. He teaches courses on international horror film and is director of the research group on horror cinema “Grite.” He has published chapters in the books To See the Saw Movies: Essays on Torture Porn and Post 9/11 Horror, edited by John Wallis, Critical Insights: Alfred Hitchcock, edited by Douglas Cunningham, A Critical Companion to James Cameron, edited by Antonio Sanna, and Gender and Environment in Science Fiction, edited by Bridgitte Barclay, among others. He has authored a book about Spanish horror TV series Historias para no Dormir.
Contact Info:
subashishbhattacharjee@gmail.com;
citeron05@yahoo.com
Contact Email:
jhorrorvolume@gmail.com
Last updated September 24, 2019
This CFP has been viewed 756 times.
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/09/24/call-for-chapters-japanese-horror-new-critical-approaches-to-history-narratives-and
deadline for submissions: November 25, 2019
full name / name of organization: Subashish Bhattacharjee (Jawaharlal Nehru University), Ananya Saha (Jawaharlal Nehru University) and Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina)
contact email: jhorrorvolume@gmail.com
Call for Chapters: Japanese Horror: New Critical Approaches to History, Narratives and Aesthetics (Extended Deadline).
Edited by Subashish Bhattacharjee (Jawaharlal Nehru University),
Ananya Saha (Jawaharlal Nehru University)
Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina)
Cathedra of Film and Literature
http://artes.filo.uba.ar/la-literatura-de-las-artes-combinadas-ii
The cultural phenomenon of Japanese Horror has been of the most celebrated cultural exports of the country, being witness to some of the most notable aesthetic and critical addresses in the history of modern horror cultures. Encompassing a range of genres and performances including cinema, manga, video games, and television series, the loosely designated genre has often been known to uniquely blend ‘Western' narrative and cinematic techniques and tropes with traditional narrative styles, visuals and folklores. Tracing back to the early decades of the twentieth century, modern Japanese horror cultures have had tremendous impact on world cinema, comics studies and video game studies, and popular culture, introducing many trends which are widely applied in contemporary horror narratives. The hybridity that is often native to Japanese aestheticisation of horror is an influential element that has found widespread acceptance in the genres of horror. These include classifications of ghosts as the yuurei and the youkai; the plight of the suffering individual in modern, industrial society, and the lack thereof to fend for oneself while facing circumstances beyond comprehension, or when the features of industrial society themselves produce horror (Ringu, Tetsuo, Ju on); settings such as damp, dank spaces that reinforce the idea of morbid, rotten return from the afterlife (Dark Water)—these are features that have now been rather unconsciously assimilated into the canon of Hollywood or western horror cultures, and may often be traced back to Japanese Horror (or J-Horror) cultures. Besides the often de facto reliance on gore and violence, the psychological motif has been one of the most important aspects of Japanese Horror cultures. Whether it is supernatural, sci-fi or body horror, J-Horror cultures have explored methods that enable the visualising of depravity and violent perversions, and the essence of spiritual and material horror in a fascinating fashion, inventing the mechanics of converting the most fatal fears into visuals.
The proposed volume will focus on directors and films, illustrators and artists and manga, video game makers/designers and video games that have helped in establishing the genre firmly within the annals of world cinema, popular culture and imagination, and in creating a stylistic paradigm shift in horror cinema across the film industries of diverse nations. We seek essays on J-Horror sub-genres, directors, illustrators, designers and their oeuvre, the aesthetics of J-Horror films, manga, and video games, styles, concepts, history, or particular films that have created a trajectory of J-Horror cultures. Works that may be explored in essay-length studies include, but are not limited to, Kwaidan, Onibaba, Jigoku, Tetsuo: The Iron Man and its sequels, Audition, Fatal Frame, the Resident Evil game franchise, Siren, Uzumaki, Gyo, Tomie, besides the large number of Japanese horror films that have been remade for the US market, including Ringu, Ju on, Dark Water, and Pulse among others, and a host of video games with Western/American settings (such as the Silent Hill franchise) and film adaptations (Resident Evil franchise)—analysing the shift from the interactive game form to consumable horror in the cinematic form. For adaptations, we are also looking for essays that analyse the shift from the interactive game form or image-and-text form to consumable audiovisual horror in the form of cinema and vice versa. Analyses of remakes could also focus on the translatability of Japanese horror vis-à-vis American or Hollwood-esque horror, and how the Hollywood remakes have often distilled western horror cinematic types to localise the content.
Directors, designers and manga artists working in the ambit of Japanese horror cultures who may be discussed include, but are not limited to, Nobuo Nakagawa, Kaneto Shindo, Masaki Kobayashi, Hideo Nakata, Takashi Miike, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Ataru Oikawa, Takashi Shimizu, Hideo Kojima, Junji Ito, Kazuo Umezu, Shintaro Kago, Katsuhisa Kigtisu, Gou Tanabe and others. Other issues that may be explored in J-Horror cultures may include the issue of violence and gore, gender and sexuality, sexual representation, the types of the supernatural, cinematic techniques and narrative techniques and others.
At this stage we are looking for abstracts for proposed chapters up to 500 words within November 25th, 2019, but complete papers will be well received. The papers must be written according to the MLA stylesheet, following the rules of the 7th Edition handbook, with footnotes instead of endnotes. All submissions (Garamond, 1.5 pt line spacing) must be accompanied by an abstract (200-250 words) and a short bio-biblio of the author. Images, if used, should preferably be free from copyright issues—sourced from creative commons/copyright-free sources, or permissions should be obtained from relevant copyright holders.
Enquiries and submissions are to be directed to Subashish Bhattacharjee, Ananya Saha and Fernando Pagnoni Berns at jhorrorvolume@gmail.com
Subashish Bhattacharjee is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of North Bengal, India. He edits the interdisciplinary online journal The Apollonian, and is the Editor of Literary Articles and Academic Book Reviews of Muse India. His doctoral research, on the cultures of built space, is from the Centre for English Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, where he has also been a UGC-Senior Fellow. His recent publications include Queering Visual Cultures (Universitas, 2018), and New Women's Writing (Cambridge Scholars, co-edited with GN Ray, 2018).
Ananya Saha is a PhD scholar in the Centre for English Studies, JNU, New Delhi. Her research is on the idea of the 'outsider' in Japanese and non-Japanese manga vis-a-vis globalization. Other research interests include Fandom and Queer studies, Translation theory and practice, New Literatures and so on. She has published in international journals, including Orientaliska Studier (No 156), from the Nordic Association of Japanese and Korean Studies. She is the co-editor of the volume titled Trajectories of the Popular: Forms, Histories, Contexts (2019), published by AAKAR, New Delhi. She has been the University Grants Fellow, SAP-DSA-(I) in the Centre for English Studies, JNU (2016-17), and has been awarded a DAAD research visit grant to Tuebingen University, Germany under the project "Literary Cultures of Global South."
Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns is an Assistant Professor at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA) - Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (Argentina)-. He teaches courses on international horror film and is director of the research group on horror cinema “Grite.” He has published chapters in the books To See the Saw Movies: Essays on Torture Porn and Post 9/11 Horror, edited by John Wallis, Critical Insights: Alfred Hitchcock, edited by Douglas Cunningham, A Critical Companion to James Cameron, edited by Antonio Sanna, and Gender and Environment in Science Fiction, edited by Bridgitte Barclay, among others. He has authored a book about Spanish horror TV series Historias para no Dormir.
Contact Info:
subashishbhattacharjee@gmail.com;
citeron05@yahoo.com
Contact Email:
jhorrorvolume@gmail.com
Last updated September 24, 2019
This CFP has been viewed 756 times.
Saturday, October 12, 2019
Survey and CFP on MLA's Approaches to Teaching Stoker’s Dracula (11/1/2019)
The MLA is seeking responses to a survey on Teaching Bram Stoker's Dracula. Full details follow as well as the related call for papers.
Contribute to an MLA Approaches Volume on Stoker’s Dracula
Posted 6 September 2019 by Michelle Lanchart
https://news.mla.hcommons.org/2019/09/06/contribute-to-an-mla-approaches-volume-on-stokers-dracula/
The volume Approaches to Teaching Stoker’s Dracula, edited by William Thomas McBride, is now in development in the MLA series Approaches to Teaching World Literature. Instructors who have taught this work are encouraged to contribute to the volume by completing a survey about their experiences. Information about proposing an essay is available at the end of the survey (https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PQYKN6Z).
12. If you would like to propose an original essay for this volume, please submit an abstract of approximately 250–300 words in which you describe your approach or topic and explain its potential usefulness for students and instructors. The proposed essays should be pedagogically focused.
Note that if you plan to quote from student writing in your essay, you must obtain written permission from the student. Proposed essays should not be previously published.
Abstracts and brief CVs (4-page maximum) should be sent by e-mail to the volume editor, William Thomas McBride, at wmcbrid@ilstu.edu by 1 November 2019. You may also send queries, comments, and supplemental materials such as course descriptions, syllabi, assignments, and bibliographies as attachments (accepted formats are .doc, .docx, .rtf, and .pdf).
Contribute to an MLA Approaches Volume on Stoker’s Dracula
Posted 6 September 2019 by Michelle Lanchart
https://news.mla.hcommons.org/2019/09/06/contribute-to-an-mla-approaches-volume-on-stokers-dracula/
The volume Approaches to Teaching Stoker’s Dracula, edited by William Thomas McBride, is now in development in the MLA series Approaches to Teaching World Literature. Instructors who have taught this work are encouraged to contribute to the volume by completing a survey about their experiences. Information about proposing an essay is available at the end of the survey (https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PQYKN6Z).
12. If you would like to propose an original essay for this volume, please submit an abstract of approximately 250–300 words in which you describe your approach or topic and explain its potential usefulness for students and instructors. The proposed essays should be pedagogically focused.
Note that if you plan to quote from student writing in your essay, you must obtain written permission from the student. Proposed essays should not be previously published.
Abstracts and brief CVs (4-page maximum) should be sent by e-mail to the volume editor, William Thomas McBride, at wmcbrid@ilstu.edu by 1 November 2019. You may also send queries, comments, and supplemental materials such as course descriptions, syllabi, assignments, and bibliographies as attachments (accepted formats are .doc, .docx, .rtf, and .pdf).
Thursday, October 3, 2019
CFP Supermatural Studies Winter 2020 Number (11/1/19)
Supernatural Studies Seeks Submissions for Vol. 6, No. 1 (Winter 2020)
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/09/14/supernatural-studies-seeks-submissions-for-vol-6-no-1-winter-2020
deadline for submissions: November 1, 2019
full name / name of organization: Supernatural Studies
contact email: supernaturalstudies@gmail.com
Supernatural Studies
Call for Papers, Winter 2020 Issue
Supernatural Studies is a peer-reviewed journal that promotes rigorous yet accessible scholarship in the growing field of representations of the supernatural, the speculative, the uncanny, and the weird. The breadth of “the supernatural” as a category creates the potential for interplay among otherwise disparate individual studies that will ideally produce not only new work but also increased dialogue and new directions of scholarly inquiry. To that end, the editorial board welcomes submissions employing any theoretical perspective or methodological approach and engaging with any period and representations including but not limited to those in literature, film, television, video games, and other cultural texts and artifacts.
Submissions should be 5,000 to 8,000 words, including notes but excluding Works Cited, and follow the MLA Handbook, 8th ed. (2016); notes should be indicated by superscript Arabic numerals in text and pasted at the end of the article. International submissions should adhere to the conventions of U.S. English spelling, usage, and punctuation. Manuscripts should contain no identifying information, and each submission will undergo blind peer review by at least two readers. Contributors are responsible for obtaining any necessary permissions and ensuring observance of copyright. Submissions should be emailed to supernaturalstudies@gmail.com as an attached Microsoft Word file. The deadline for guaranteed consideration for the Winter 2020 issue is 1 November 2019. Submissions received after this date will be considered for the winter issue or a subsequent issue at the discretion of the editors.
www.supernaturalstudies.com
Last updated September 23, 2019
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/09/14/supernatural-studies-seeks-submissions-for-vol-6-no-1-winter-2020
deadline for submissions: November 1, 2019
full name / name of organization: Supernatural Studies
contact email: supernaturalstudies@gmail.com
Supernatural Studies
Call for Papers, Winter 2020 Issue
Supernatural Studies is a peer-reviewed journal that promotes rigorous yet accessible scholarship in the growing field of representations of the supernatural, the speculative, the uncanny, and the weird. The breadth of “the supernatural” as a category creates the potential for interplay among otherwise disparate individual studies that will ideally produce not only new work but also increased dialogue and new directions of scholarly inquiry. To that end, the editorial board welcomes submissions employing any theoretical perspective or methodological approach and engaging with any period and representations including but not limited to those in literature, film, television, video games, and other cultural texts and artifacts.
Submissions should be 5,000 to 8,000 words, including notes but excluding Works Cited, and follow the MLA Handbook, 8th ed. (2016); notes should be indicated by superscript Arabic numerals in text and pasted at the end of the article. International submissions should adhere to the conventions of U.S. English spelling, usage, and punctuation. Manuscripts should contain no identifying information, and each submission will undergo blind peer review by at least two readers. Contributors are responsible for obtaining any necessary permissions and ensuring observance of copyright. Submissions should be emailed to supernaturalstudies@gmail.com as an attached Microsoft Word file. The deadline for guaranteed consideration for the Winter 2020 issue is 1 November 2019. Submissions received after this date will be considered for the winter issue or a subsequent issue at the discretion of the editors.
www.supernaturalstudies.com
Last updated September 23, 2019
CFP Fourth Annual Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference at StokerCon UK (10/31/19; Scarborough UK 4/16-19/2020)
Call for Presentations: The Fourth Annual Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference at StokerCon UK
deadline for submissions: October 31, 2019
full name / name of organization: StokerCon / Horror Writer's Association
contact email: annradcon@gmail.com
The Fourth Annual Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference at StokerCon UK
Abstract Submission Deadline: October 31, 2019
The Fourth Annual Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference at StokerCon UK
Conference Dates: April 16-19, 2020
Conference Hotel: The Royal and The Grand Hotels, Scarborough, UK
Conference Website: https://stokercon-uk.com/
The Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference co-chairs invite all interested scholars, academics, and non-fiction writers to submit presentation abstracts related to horror studies for consideration to be presented at the fifth annual StokerCon which will be held April 16 – 19, 2019 in Scarborough, UK.
The Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference is an opportunity for individuals to present on completed research or work-in-progress horror studies projects that continue the dialogue of academic analysis of the horror genre. As in prior years, we are looking for completed research or work-in-progress projects that can be presented to with the intent to expand the scholarship on various facets of horror that proliferates in:
- Art
- Cinema
- Comics
- Literature
- Music
- Poetry
- Television
- Video Games
- Etc.
We invite papers that take an interdisciplinary approach to their subject matter and can apply a variety of lenses and frameworks, such as, but not limited to:
- Auteur theory
- Close textual analysis
- Comparative analysis
- Cultural and ethnic
- Fandom and fan studies
- Film studies
- Folklore
- Gender/LGBT studies
- Historic analysis
- Interpretations
- Linguistic
- Literature studies
- Media and communications
- Media Sociology
- Modernity/Postmodernity
- Mythological
- Psychological
- Racial studies
- Semiotics
- Theoretical (Adorno, Barthes, Baudrillard, Dyer, Gerbner, etc.)
- Transmedia
- And others
Conference Details
Please send a 250 – 300 word abstract on your intended topic, a preliminary bibliography, and your CV to AnnRadCon@gmail.com by October 31, 2019. Responses will be emailed out starting early November 15 to the end of the month. Final acceptances will require proof of StokerCon registration.
Presentation time consideration: 15 minute maximum to allow for a Question and Answer period. Limit of one presentation at the conference.
There are no honorariums for presenters.
Organizing Co-Chairs
Michele Brittany, Nicholas Diak, and Kevin Wetmore Jr.
Email: AnnRadCon@gmail.com
The Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference is part of the Horror Writers Association’s Outreach Program. Created in 2016 by Michele Brittany and Nicholas Diak, the Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference has been a venue for horror scholars to present their work. The conference has also been the genesis of the Horror Writer Association’s first academic release, Horror Literature from Gothic to Post-Modern: Critical Essays, comprised entirely of AnnRadCon presenters and slated to be released by McFarland in the fall of 2019.
Membership to the Horror Writers Association is not required to submit or present, however registration to StokerCon 2020 is required for to be accepted and to present. StokerCon registration can be obtained by going to https://stokercon-uk.com/. There is no additional registration or fees for the Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference outside StokerCon registration. If interested in applying to the Horror Writer’s Association as an academic member, please see www.horror.org/about/ .
StokerCon is the annual convention hosted by the Horror Writers Association wherein the Bram Stoker Awards for superior achievement in horror writing are awarded.
Last updated July 19, 2019
Saturday, September 7, 2019
CFP MEARCSTAPA at Kalamazoo 2020 (proposals by 9/15/19)
MEARCSTAPA is still seeking presenters for the following panels. Proposals are due 9/15/19.
MEARCSTAPA KZOO 2020 CFPs
Xenophobia and Border Walls: Monstrous Foreigners and Polities
Kalamazoo 2020
Co-sponsors: MEARCSTAPA and Société Rencesvals, American-Canadian Branch
Organizers: Asa Simon Mittman and Ana Grinberg
Who is that knight, threatening “our” town walls? Why are they roaming outside, besieging “our” castle? What shall we do with all these [Jewish], [Muslim], [Saracen], [Genoese], [pilgrim] people coming to this area, “robbing us of our jobs” and taking up our lands? As Jeffrey Cohen writes, “all the familiar stereotypes about foreigners,medieval and modern, find their place here: they make too much noise, they smell bad, they eat repulsive foods, their excess is disgusting” (emphasis added). Our current political environment makes these ideas more pressing, as xenophobia runs rampant and walls are (re)built.
Medieval and early modern representations of foreigners as a threat are not that different from our own. With this in mind, MEARCSTAPA and Société Rencesvals invite papers delving into pre- and early modern representations of contacts between cultures, races, religions, and even species from diverse disciplines and methodological approaches. Of particular interest are constructions of monstrosity in chivalric epic and romances.
Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words together with a completed Participant Information Form to session organizers Ana Grinberg (grinberg@auburn.edu) or Asa Simon Mittman (asmittman@csuchico.edu) by September 15. Please include your name, title, and affiliation on the abstract itself. All abstracts not accepted for the session will be forwarded to Congress administrators for consideration in general sessions, as per Congress regulations.
Keywords: Foreigners, othering, stereotypes, xenophobia, political climate
____________
Taking Shape: Sculpting Monsters
Kalamazoo 2020
Sponsor: MEARCSTAPA
Organizers: Mary Leech and Asa Simon Mittman
For centuries, the actions of monsters were more important that what the monsters looked like. Some monsters were given more specific descriptions than others, yet monstrosity was often based on Otherness, such as deformity, threatening animals, gender, or foreigners. As time goes on, many monsters take on more precise shapes based on the exaggerated physical conceptions of difference. By exploring how monsters take on specific shapes, this panel will analyze the ways in which specific fears (and desires) can create specific physical features.
The panel will be most effective with a range of methodologies and fields. While literary descriptions are often the base of how monsters are perceived, folkloric traditions that predate writing influence literary traditions. Works of history contain aspects of monstrosity, either literally or in how certain groups are described. Artistic renderings of monsters can also highlight the variety of interpretations of monstrosity. How and why monsters are formed, both as a concept and as a physical threat, has relevance across fields and eras. The panel should appeal to many areas of scholarship, particularly those that explore how gender, sexuality, and physical disabilities are presented as fearsome and monstrous.
Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words together with a completed Participant Information Form to session organizers Mary Leech (leechme@uc.edu) or Asa Simon Mittman (asmittman@csuchico.edu) by September 15. Please include your name, title, and affiliation on the abstract itself. All abstracts not accepted for the session will be forwarded to Congress administrators for consideration in general sessions, as per Congress regulations.
Keywords: Monster, gender, disability, Other, folklore
____________
Adorable Monsters in Medieval Culture (Roundtable)
Kalamazoo 2020
Sponsor: MEARCSTAPA
Organizers: Mary Leech, Tina Boyer and Asa Simon Mittman
Medieval Monstrosity is usually conceived as something that is physically dangerous or repulsive, often both. What happens when the monster is not physically dangerous, or is attractive? For example, when the loathly lady becomes beautiful, is she no longer dangerous? Is the threat she represented gone? Manuscript marginalia has many images of rabbits, dogs, goats, and adorable hybrid monsters engaging in violent behavior. What do images of domestic animals and otherwise delightful creatures possibly have to say about monstrosity in humans? By exploring monstrosity with attractive exteriors, this discussion will seek to analyze the hidden nature of monstrosity.
The panel will be most effective with a range of methodologies and fields. While literary descriptions are often the base of how monsters are perceived, folkloric traditions that predate writing influence literary traditions. Works of history contain aspects of monstrosity, either literally or in how certain groups are described. Artistic renderings of monsters can also highlight the variety of interpretations of monstrosity. Ideally, this panel will have participants from several different fields. The wider the range of participants, the more interesting the discussion will be for potential audience members.
Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words together with a completed Participant Information Form to session organizers Tina Boyer (boyertm@wfu.edu), Mary Leech (leechme@uc.edu), or Asa Simon Mittman (asmittman@csuchico.edu) by September 15. Please include your name, title, and affiliation on the abstract itself. All abstracts not accepted for the session will be forwarded to Congress administrators for consideration in general sessions, as per Congress regulations.
Keywords: cuteness, monsters, animals, gender, manuscript.
MEARCSTAPA KZOO 2020 CFPs
Xenophobia and Border Walls: Monstrous Foreigners and Polities
Kalamazoo 2020
Co-sponsors: MEARCSTAPA and Société Rencesvals, American-Canadian Branch
Organizers: Asa Simon Mittman and Ana Grinberg
Who is that knight, threatening “our” town walls? Why are they roaming outside, besieging “our” castle? What shall we do with all these [Jewish], [Muslim], [Saracen], [Genoese], [pilgrim] people coming to this area, “robbing us of our jobs” and taking up our lands? As Jeffrey Cohen writes, “all the familiar stereotypes about foreigners,medieval and modern, find their place here: they make too much noise, they smell bad, they eat repulsive foods, their excess is disgusting” (emphasis added). Our current political environment makes these ideas more pressing, as xenophobia runs rampant and walls are (re)built.
Medieval and early modern representations of foreigners as a threat are not that different from our own. With this in mind, MEARCSTAPA and Société Rencesvals invite papers delving into pre- and early modern representations of contacts between cultures, races, religions, and even species from diverse disciplines and methodological approaches. Of particular interest are constructions of monstrosity in chivalric epic and romances.
Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words together with a completed Participant Information Form to session organizers Ana Grinberg (grinberg@auburn.edu) or Asa Simon Mittman (asmittman@csuchico.edu) by September 15. Please include your name, title, and affiliation on the abstract itself. All abstracts not accepted for the session will be forwarded to Congress administrators for consideration in general sessions, as per Congress regulations.
Keywords: Foreigners, othering, stereotypes, xenophobia, political climate
____________
Taking Shape: Sculpting Monsters
Kalamazoo 2020
Sponsor: MEARCSTAPA
Organizers: Mary Leech and Asa Simon Mittman
For centuries, the actions of monsters were more important that what the monsters looked like. Some monsters were given more specific descriptions than others, yet monstrosity was often based on Otherness, such as deformity, threatening animals, gender, or foreigners. As time goes on, many monsters take on more precise shapes based on the exaggerated physical conceptions of difference. By exploring how monsters take on specific shapes, this panel will analyze the ways in which specific fears (and desires) can create specific physical features.
The panel will be most effective with a range of methodologies and fields. While literary descriptions are often the base of how monsters are perceived, folkloric traditions that predate writing influence literary traditions. Works of history contain aspects of monstrosity, either literally or in how certain groups are described. Artistic renderings of monsters can also highlight the variety of interpretations of monstrosity. How and why monsters are formed, both as a concept and as a physical threat, has relevance across fields and eras. The panel should appeal to many areas of scholarship, particularly those that explore how gender, sexuality, and physical disabilities are presented as fearsome and monstrous.
Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words together with a completed Participant Information Form to session organizers Mary Leech (leechme@uc.edu) or Asa Simon Mittman (asmittman@csuchico.edu) by September 15. Please include your name, title, and affiliation on the abstract itself. All abstracts not accepted for the session will be forwarded to Congress administrators for consideration in general sessions, as per Congress regulations.
Keywords: Monster, gender, disability, Other, folklore
____________
Adorable Monsters in Medieval Culture (Roundtable)
Kalamazoo 2020
Sponsor: MEARCSTAPA
Organizers: Mary Leech, Tina Boyer and Asa Simon Mittman
Medieval Monstrosity is usually conceived as something that is physically dangerous or repulsive, often both. What happens when the monster is not physically dangerous, or is attractive? For example, when the loathly lady becomes beautiful, is she no longer dangerous? Is the threat she represented gone? Manuscript marginalia has many images of rabbits, dogs, goats, and adorable hybrid monsters engaging in violent behavior. What do images of domestic animals and otherwise delightful creatures possibly have to say about monstrosity in humans? By exploring monstrosity with attractive exteriors, this discussion will seek to analyze the hidden nature of monstrosity.
The panel will be most effective with a range of methodologies and fields. While literary descriptions are often the base of how monsters are perceived, folkloric traditions that predate writing influence literary traditions. Works of history contain aspects of monstrosity, either literally or in how certain groups are described. Artistic renderings of monsters can also highlight the variety of interpretations of monstrosity. Ideally, this panel will have participants from several different fields. The wider the range of participants, the more interesting the discussion will be for potential audience members.
Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words together with a completed Participant Information Form to session organizers Tina Boyer (boyertm@wfu.edu), Mary Leech (leechme@uc.edu), or Asa Simon Mittman (asmittman@csuchico.edu) by September 15. Please include your name, title, and affiliation on the abstract itself. All abstracts not accepted for the session will be forwarded to Congress administrators for consideration in general sessions, as per Congress regulations.
Keywords: cuteness, monsters, animals, gender, manuscript.
Friday, July 12, 2019
CFP Fantasy, Horror, and the Supernatural (7/19/19; PAMLA 2019)
Please note the impending deadline:
Fantasy, Horror, and the Supernatural
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/07/10/fantasy-horror-and-the-supernatural
deadline for submissions: July 19, 2019
full name / name of organization: Kate Watt / PAMLA
contact email: kate.watt@ucr.edu
From golems to Gollum, ghosts to Ironman, hobbits to succubi, zombies to dopplegangers, the possessed to those who wield the dark arts, the not-human, the almost-human, the was-human, the wants-to-be-human, the beyond-human, and those who use unknown powers to prey on humans have populated human culture and narrative from the beginning. Analysis from any critical perspective, exploring texts drawn from literature, film/TV, graphic novels, manga, comics, visual arts, and elsewhere, is welcome.
Us, Get Out, The Walking Dead, Cthulhu, It, and a wide variety of other texts would be appropriate topics.
Please submit through the PAMLA.org website directly.
PAMLA is in San Diego, November 14-17, 2019.
Last updated July 11, 2019
Fantasy, Horror, and the Supernatural
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/07/10/fantasy-horror-and-the-supernatural
deadline for submissions: July 19, 2019
full name / name of organization: Kate Watt / PAMLA
contact email: kate.watt@ucr.edu
From golems to Gollum, ghosts to Ironman, hobbits to succubi, zombies to dopplegangers, the possessed to those who wield the dark arts, the not-human, the almost-human, the was-human, the wants-to-be-human, the beyond-human, and those who use unknown powers to prey on humans have populated human culture and narrative from the beginning. Analysis from any critical perspective, exploring texts drawn from literature, film/TV, graphic novels, manga, comics, visual arts, and elsewhere, is welcome.
Us, Get Out, The Walking Dead, Cthulhu, It, and a wide variety of other texts would be appropriate topics.
Please submit through the PAMLA.org website directly.
PAMLA is in San Diego, November 14-17, 2019.
Last updated July 11, 2019
CFP Interdisciplinary Interrogations of the SyFy Original Films (10/31/19)
CFP: Essays on SyFy Channel Original Films
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/07/10/cfp-essays-on-syfy-channel-original-films
deadline for submissions: October 31, 2019
full name / name of organization: Justin Wigard and Mitch Ploskonka, Michigan State University
contact email: wigardju@msu.edu
Call for Chapters -- Interdisciplinary Interrogations of the SyFy Original Films
Edited by Justin Wigard and Mitch Ploskonka
This collection’s goal is to devote critical attention to an understudied avenue of popular culture: Sci-Fi/SyFy Channel’s original films. Since 2002, Sci-Fi/SyFy Channel’s production company, Sci-Fi Pictures, has created over 200 original films, spawning such franchises as the Sharknado and Lavalantua series alongside cult/fan favorites like Ghost Shark, Ice Spiders, and Mongolian Death Worm. Sharknado’s release in 2013 saw unprecedented popularity for one of SyFy’s creature feature films, correlating to a meteoric rise in popularity of not just the recently-minted Sharknado franchise, but SyFy’s feature films as a whole.
This book, published by McFarland & Co., seeks interdisciplinary approaches to understanding, contextualizing, and interrogating these SyFy films, in order to make sense of their position within popular culture. We are also interested in submissions that highlight interesting, surprising, and overlooked connections to/from the SyFy original films.
The editors are seeking proposals for essays dealing with all aspects of Syfy original films. Potential topics can include but are not limited to the following:
Please submit a 250-500 word abstract (with brief author bio and affiliation) by October 31, 2019 to Justin Wigard (wigardju@msu.edu) and Mitch Ploskonka (ploskonk@msu.edu). If a proposal is accepted, essays of 5,000-6,000 words will be due February 28, 2020. Final approval for inclusion in the book will be April 30, 2020.
Last updated July 10, 2019
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/07/10/cfp-essays-on-syfy-channel-original-films
deadline for submissions: October 31, 2019
full name / name of organization: Justin Wigard and Mitch Ploskonka, Michigan State University
contact email: wigardju@msu.edu
Call for Chapters -- Interdisciplinary Interrogations of the SyFy Original Films
Edited by Justin Wigard and Mitch Ploskonka
This collection’s goal is to devote critical attention to an understudied avenue of popular culture: Sci-Fi/SyFy Channel’s original films. Since 2002, Sci-Fi/SyFy Channel’s production company, Sci-Fi Pictures, has created over 200 original films, spawning such franchises as the Sharknado and Lavalantua series alongside cult/fan favorites like Ghost Shark, Ice Spiders, and Mongolian Death Worm. Sharknado’s release in 2013 saw unprecedented popularity for one of SyFy’s creature feature films, correlating to a meteoric rise in popularity of not just the recently-minted Sharknado franchise, but SyFy’s feature films as a whole.
This book, published by McFarland & Co., seeks interdisciplinary approaches to understanding, contextualizing, and interrogating these SyFy films, in order to make sense of their position within popular culture. We are also interested in submissions that highlight interesting, surprising, and overlooked connections to/from the SyFy original films.
The editors are seeking proposals for essays dealing with all aspects of Syfy original films. Potential topics can include but are not limited to the following:
- Monstrosity as it manifests within the SyFy creature films.
- SyFy’s “Sharknado week” and other cross-channel interactions
- Issues of race, gender, and sexuality in SyFy films
- SyFy films and transmedial properties (video games, board games, comics, “field guides,” etc.)
- Ecocriticism, particularly regarding environmental disaster films
- Audience reception, cult film status, and fandom
- Critical examination of SyFy film series (Sharknado, Mega Shark, Lavalantula, etc.)
- Historical contextualization of the SyFy films
- Humor, metatextuality, and/or seriousness within the SyFy films
Please submit a 250-500 word abstract (with brief author bio and affiliation) by October 31, 2019 to Justin Wigard (wigardju@msu.edu) and Mitch Ploskonka (ploskonk@msu.edu). If a proposal is accepted, essays of 5,000-6,000 words will be due February 28, 2020. Final approval for inclusion in the book will be April 30, 2020.
Last updated July 10, 2019
CFP American Gothic Domesticity: Blissful Misery (9/30/19; NeMLA 2020)
NeMLA Panel: American Gothic Domesticity: Blissful Misery
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/07/11/nemla-panel-american-gothic-domesticity-blissful-misery
deadline for submissions: September 30, 2019
full name / name of organization: NeMLA 2020
contact email: caitlin.duffy@stonybrook.edu
Chairs:
Danielle Cofer (University of Rhode Island)
Caitlin Duffy (SUNY Stony Brook University)
Leslie Fiedler describes American fiction as “bewilderingly and embarrassingly, a gothic fiction… in a land of light and affirmation.” This panel pushes past Fiedler’s focus to instead explore the dark and enclosed spaces of the American home. These sites are featured in countless texts, from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839), to Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), and beyond, to 21st-century films like Ari Aster’s Hereditary (2018). To better understand the role played by fictionalized domestic spaces in constructing American identity, our panel will yoke together gothic and sentimental theory and literature. Lora Romero’s remapping of literary landscapes challenges perpetual binarisms of the nineteenth-century by locating domesticity not only in the middle-class home, but also in the frontier. This panel adds to this work by further emphasizing the influence of domesticity in constructing American character.
This panel invites papers interrogating gothic depictions of domestic spaces in American fiction (including, but not limited to, literature, film, and television). Papers utilizing gothic and sentimental literature to support, challenge, or problematize conceptions of what qualifies as ‘home’ are especially welcome. We also encourage papers that explore the American home’s representation temporally by tracing transformations or continuations of its fictional appearance across time. Can home spaces be conceived of as racialized or gendered, and how might play between the inside/outside binary allow for new modes of thinking about the home and identity politics? In what ways can we problematize the fixity of home to include the sea and the expanding frontier? How are notions of selfhood and home inherently linked or radically redefined through genre?
Please submit abstracts of 300 words or less by September 30, 2019 through the NeMLA portal: https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/18286
The 51st annual NeMLA conference will take place on March 5-8, 2020 in Boston, MA. For more information: http://www.buffalo.edu/nemla.html
Please email any questions you may have to either daniellecofer@uri.edu or caitlin.duffy@stonybrook.edu.
Last updated July 12, 2019
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/07/11/nemla-panel-american-gothic-domesticity-blissful-misery
deadline for submissions: September 30, 2019
full name / name of organization: NeMLA 2020
contact email: caitlin.duffy@stonybrook.edu
Chairs:
Danielle Cofer (University of Rhode Island)
Caitlin Duffy (SUNY Stony Brook University)
Leslie Fiedler describes American fiction as “bewilderingly and embarrassingly, a gothic fiction… in a land of light and affirmation.” This panel pushes past Fiedler’s focus to instead explore the dark and enclosed spaces of the American home. These sites are featured in countless texts, from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839), to Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), and beyond, to 21st-century films like Ari Aster’s Hereditary (2018). To better understand the role played by fictionalized domestic spaces in constructing American identity, our panel will yoke together gothic and sentimental theory and literature. Lora Romero’s remapping of literary landscapes challenges perpetual binarisms of the nineteenth-century by locating domesticity not only in the middle-class home, but also in the frontier. This panel adds to this work by further emphasizing the influence of domesticity in constructing American character.
This panel invites papers interrogating gothic depictions of domestic spaces in American fiction (including, but not limited to, literature, film, and television). Papers utilizing gothic and sentimental literature to support, challenge, or problematize conceptions of what qualifies as ‘home’ are especially welcome. We also encourage papers that explore the American home’s representation temporally by tracing transformations or continuations of its fictional appearance across time. Can home spaces be conceived of as racialized or gendered, and how might play between the inside/outside binary allow for new modes of thinking about the home and identity politics? In what ways can we problematize the fixity of home to include the sea and the expanding frontier? How are notions of selfhood and home inherently linked or radically redefined through genre?
Please submit abstracts of 300 words or less by September 30, 2019 through the NeMLA portal: https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/18286
The 51st annual NeMLA conference will take place on March 5-8, 2020 in Boston, MA. For more information: http://www.buffalo.edu/nemla.html
Please email any questions you may have to either daniellecofer@uri.edu or caitlin.duffy@stonybrook.edu.
Last updated July 12, 2019
CFP Indigeneity and Horror (Conference Panel) (7/31/19; SCMS 2020)
Do note the impending due date:
SCMS Panel: Indigeneity and Horror
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/07/08/scms-panel-indigeneity-and-horror
deadline for submissions: July 31, 2019
full name / name of organization: Murray Leeder
contact email: murray.leeder@nucleus.com
In his classic essay “An Introduction to the American Horror Film,” Robin Wood establishes the basic formula of the horror film as “normality is threatened by the monster.” He subsequently mentions that if one were to “substitute for ‘Monster’ the term ‘Indians’ . . . one has a formula for a large number of classical Westerns.” Wood’s point is to establish the flexibility of his framework but it also points in another direction: the monstrousness of the idea of Indigeneity within the colonial mindset. Today, one of the most exciting growing areas in horror cinema at the moment comes from Indigenous persons. In Canada, Jeff Barnaby (Mi’gmaq) will soon release Blood Quantum (2019), a zombie film set on the same reserve as his earlier Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013) -- which Scott Pewenofkit has suggested “may be the first truly Indigenous horror film,” dipping as it does into the representational space of the horror film (the zombie film, especially) to allegorize the real-life, genocidal horrors of the residential school system.
Only recently has scholarship emerged on distinctly Indigenous horror and Gothic literature and film; examples include Joy Porter’s chapter in The Palgrave Handbook to Horror Literature (2018), Ariel Smith’s article “This Essay Was Not Built On an Ancient Indian Burial Ground” (2014) and Gail de Vos and Kayla Lar-son’s contribution to The Horror Companion (2019). This panel asks: how does Indigenous horror contribute to or even challenge our understanding of the horror genre and of horror theory?
We seek papers for the 2020 SCMS conference in Denver. Topics may include:
Please submit a title, an abstract (max. 2500 characters), a bio (max. 500 characters), and 3–5 bibliographic sources to murray.leeder@nucleus.com and gdrhodes@gmail.com by August 1. Responses will be given by August 13.
Murray Leeder holds a Ph.D. from Carleton University and is a Research Affiliate at the University of Manitoba. He the author of Horror Film: A Critical Introduction (Bloomsbury, 2018), The Modern Supernatural and the Beginnings of Cinema (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and Halloween (Auteur, 2014), as well as the editor of Cinematic Ghosts: Haunting and Spectrality from Silent Cinema to the Digital Era (Bloomsbury, 2015) and ReFocus: The Films of William Castle (Edinburgh University Press, 2018), as well as numerous articles and book chapters.
Gary D. Rhodes currently serves as Associate Professor of Film and Mass Media at the University of Central Florida, Orlando. He is the author of Emerald Illusions: The Irish in Early American Cinema (IAP, 2012), The Perils of Moviegoing in America (Bloomsbury, 2012), and The Birth of the American Horror Film (Edinburgh University Press, 2018), as well as the editor of such anthologies as Edgar G. Ulmer: Detour on Poverty Row (Lexington, 2008), The Films of Joseph H. Lewis (Wayne State University, 2012), and The Films of Budd Boetticher (Edinburgh University Press, 2017). Rhodes is also the writer-director of such documentary films as Lugosi: Hollywood's Dracula (1997) and Banned in Oklahoma (2004). Forthcoming from Edinburgh University Press is the monograph Consuming Images: Film Art and the American Television Commercial, coauthored with Robert Singer.
Last updated July 11, 2019
SCMS Panel: Indigeneity and Horror
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/07/08/scms-panel-indigeneity-and-horror
deadline for submissions: July 31, 2019
full name / name of organization: Murray Leeder
contact email: murray.leeder@nucleus.com
In his classic essay “An Introduction to the American Horror Film,” Robin Wood establishes the basic formula of the horror film as “normality is threatened by the monster.” He subsequently mentions that if one were to “substitute for ‘Monster’ the term ‘Indians’ . . . one has a formula for a large number of classical Westerns.” Wood’s point is to establish the flexibility of his framework but it also points in another direction: the monstrousness of the idea of Indigeneity within the colonial mindset. Today, one of the most exciting growing areas in horror cinema at the moment comes from Indigenous persons. In Canada, Jeff Barnaby (Mi’gmaq) will soon release Blood Quantum (2019), a zombie film set on the same reserve as his earlier Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013) -- which Scott Pewenofkit has suggested “may be the first truly Indigenous horror film,” dipping as it does into the representational space of the horror film (the zombie film, especially) to allegorize the real-life, genocidal horrors of the residential school system.
Only recently has scholarship emerged on distinctly Indigenous horror and Gothic literature and film; examples include Joy Porter’s chapter in The Palgrave Handbook to Horror Literature (2018), Ariel Smith’s article “This Essay Was Not Built On an Ancient Indian Burial Ground” (2014) and Gail de Vos and Kayla Lar-son’s contribution to The Horror Companion (2019). This panel asks: how does Indigenous horror contribute to or even challenge our understanding of the horror genre and of horror theory?
We seek papers for the 2020 SCMS conference in Denver. Topics may include:
- Particularities of different settler-colonialist nations (Canada, the United States of America, New Zealand, Australia, etc.) and their film industries
- The monster as a figure of Othering vs. a figure of resistance
- The relationship of Indigenous horror literature and film
- Reinterpretations of classic horror narratives are ripe for revisiting through the lens of Indigeneity
- Indigenous spins of familiar horror figures (vampire, zombie, werewolf, ghost, etc.), and conversely, settler appropriation of folkloric figures like the Wendigo
- Cycles of horror production that have favoured Indigenous characters and themes (e.g. ‘70s eco-horror)
- Genre hybridity (the Western, science fiction, fantasy, magic realism, drama, comedy, romance, etc.)
- Film festivals, funding structures, etc.
Please submit a title, an abstract (max. 2500 characters), a bio (max. 500 characters), and 3–5 bibliographic sources to murray.leeder@nucleus.com and gdrhodes@gmail.com by August 1. Responses will be given by August 13.
Murray Leeder holds a Ph.D. from Carleton University and is a Research Affiliate at the University of Manitoba. He the author of Horror Film: A Critical Introduction (Bloomsbury, 2018), The Modern Supernatural and the Beginnings of Cinema (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and Halloween (Auteur, 2014), as well as the editor of Cinematic Ghosts: Haunting and Spectrality from Silent Cinema to the Digital Era (Bloomsbury, 2015) and ReFocus: The Films of William Castle (Edinburgh University Press, 2018), as well as numerous articles and book chapters.
Gary D. Rhodes currently serves as Associate Professor of Film and Mass Media at the University of Central Florida, Orlando. He is the author of Emerald Illusions: The Irish in Early American Cinema (IAP, 2012), The Perils of Moviegoing in America (Bloomsbury, 2012), and The Birth of the American Horror Film (Edinburgh University Press, 2018), as well as the editor of such anthologies as Edgar G. Ulmer: Detour on Poverty Row (Lexington, 2008), The Films of Joseph H. Lewis (Wayne State University, 2012), and The Films of Budd Boetticher (Edinburgh University Press, 2017). Rhodes is also the writer-director of such documentary films as Lugosi: Hollywood's Dracula (1997) and Banned in Oklahoma (2004). Forthcoming from Edinburgh University Press is the monograph Consuming Images: Film Art and the American Television Commercial, coauthored with Robert Singer.
Last updated July 11, 2019
Tuesday, July 9, 2019
CFP ReFocus: The Films of Sam Raimi (12/1/19)
ReFocus: The Films of Sam Raimi
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/06/04/refocus-the-films-of-sam-raimi
deadline for submissions: December 1, 2019
full name / name of organization: University of Edinburgh Press
contact email: kwetmore@lmu.edu
Call for Papers
ReFocus: The Films of Sam Raimi
Sam Raimi was a fan of cinema since his earliest years and before he was ten years old, he was making movies with an 8mm camera. From Within the Woods (1978), the short that led to The Evil Dead (1981) and the ongoing saga of Ash (Bruce Campbell), to such genre-bending and genre-transcending work as The Quick and the Dead (1996), A Simple Plan (1998) and For Love of the Game (1999) to the Spider-Man trilogy (2002, 2004, 2007), which predate the MCU yet set the tone for the films to come, Raimi has demonstrated himself to be a versatile and inventive director, knowledgeable in genre, style, form, and cinema history.
We are currently soliciting abstracts of approximately 100 words for essays to be included in a book-length anthology on Sam Raimi’s cinema to appear in 2021. As this volume will be the first comprehensive study in English of all of Raimi’s work through Ash vs. Evil Dead, this collection seeks to contextualize, problematize and theorize his entire canon, with a desired focus on his underrepresented films. Essays may focus on a single film, group of films, themes and topics that pervade his work, his television directing or influence.
Essays accepted and included in the refereed anthology should be approximately 6,000 to 7,000 words referenced in Chicago endnote style.
The Films of Sam Raimi will be a scholarly volume published in the University of Edinburgh’s ReFocus series, examining American film directors. Series editors are Robert Singer, Gary D. Rhodes, and Frances Smith. ReFocus features a series of contemporary methodological and theoretical approaches to the interdisciplinary analyses and interpretations of the work of these American directors, from the once-famous to the ignored, in direct relationship to American culture --its myths, values, and historical precepts.
Please attach a curriculum vitae and abstract and email by December 1, 2019 to both editors:
Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr.
kwetmore@lmu.edu
Ron Riekki
ronriekki@hotmail.com
Last updated June 5, 2019
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/06/04/refocus-the-films-of-sam-raimi
deadline for submissions: December 1, 2019
full name / name of organization: University of Edinburgh Press
contact email: kwetmore@lmu.edu
Call for Papers
ReFocus: The Films of Sam Raimi
Sam Raimi was a fan of cinema since his earliest years and before he was ten years old, he was making movies with an 8mm camera. From Within the Woods (1978), the short that led to The Evil Dead (1981) and the ongoing saga of Ash (Bruce Campbell), to such genre-bending and genre-transcending work as The Quick and the Dead (1996), A Simple Plan (1998) and For Love of the Game (1999) to the Spider-Man trilogy (2002, 2004, 2007), which predate the MCU yet set the tone for the films to come, Raimi has demonstrated himself to be a versatile and inventive director, knowledgeable in genre, style, form, and cinema history.
We are currently soliciting abstracts of approximately 100 words for essays to be included in a book-length anthology on Sam Raimi’s cinema to appear in 2021. As this volume will be the first comprehensive study in English of all of Raimi’s work through Ash vs. Evil Dead, this collection seeks to contextualize, problematize and theorize his entire canon, with a desired focus on his underrepresented films. Essays may focus on a single film, group of films, themes and topics that pervade his work, his television directing or influence.
Essays accepted and included in the refereed anthology should be approximately 6,000 to 7,000 words referenced in Chicago endnote style.
The Films of Sam Raimi will be a scholarly volume published in the University of Edinburgh’s ReFocus series, examining American film directors. Series editors are Robert Singer, Gary D. Rhodes, and Frances Smith. ReFocus features a series of contemporary methodological and theoretical approaches to the interdisciplinary analyses and interpretations of the work of these American directors, from the once-famous to the ignored, in direct relationship to American culture --its myths, values, and historical precepts.
Please attach a curriculum vitae and abstract and email by December 1, 2019 to both editors:
Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr.
kwetmore@lmu.edu
Ron Riekki
ronriekki@hotmail.com
Last updated June 5, 2019
CFP Things That Go Bump In The Night: Premodern Narratives and Depictions of Spirit Visitation (9/1/19; IMC Leeds 2020)
Things That Go Bump In The Night: Premodern Narratives and Depictions of Spirit Visitation
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/06/04/things-that-go-bump-in-the-night-premodern-narratives-and-depictions-of-spirit
deadline for submissions: September 1, 2019
full name / name of organization: MEARCSTAPA
contact email: tmtomaini@gmail.com
Things that go Bump in the Night: Premodern Narratives and Depictions of Spirit Visitation
IMC Leeds 2020
Sponsor: MEARCSTAPA
Organizers: Asa Simon Mittman and Thea Tomaini
MEARCSTAPA seeks papers for the 2020 International Medieval Congress at Leeds on the varietal experiences of spirit visitation in premodern narratives and art. In accordance with the conference theme of “Borders”, we are especially concerned with liminal spaces and states of being. In contemporary ghost narratives there is a clear distinction between spirits of the dead who communicate with the living directly (by appearing in the material world to a human being who is awake and alert) and those who communicate with the living indirectly (by appearing in dreams to people who are asleep, or in visions to people who are in a trancelike state). In medieval and early modern literature, art, and theological narratives about spirits of the dead, this distinction is far less clear. Waking experiences in premodern narratives indicate the same sense of validation as non-waking experiences. The sensory reaction and emotional state of a person in the aftermath of a dream or vision (as in The Vision of Barontus) differs from that of a person (or people) experiencing the sensory shock of seeing, hearing, or speaking to a ghost in the material world, in real time (as in The Ghost of Beaucaire). Nevertheless, a ghost, phantom, or spectre appearing in a dream or vision is purported to be as “real,” its message to be as consequential and as meaningful, as one that manifests in the material world (whether is it seen, as a spectral figure, or unseen, as an invisible presence). We are looking for papers that explore issues of validation and experience in communication with the spirit world. In the premodern world, what is a “real” ghost experience where “crossover” is concerned?
Send proposals of 250 words maximum to tmtomaini@gmail.com and asmittman@asuchico.edu.
Deadline: September 1, 2019
Last updated June 5, 2019
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/06/04/things-that-go-bump-in-the-night-premodern-narratives-and-depictions-of-spirit
deadline for submissions: September 1, 2019
full name / name of organization: MEARCSTAPA
contact email: tmtomaini@gmail.com
Things that go Bump in the Night: Premodern Narratives and Depictions of Spirit Visitation
IMC Leeds 2020
Sponsor: MEARCSTAPA
Organizers: Asa Simon Mittman and Thea Tomaini
MEARCSTAPA seeks papers for the 2020 International Medieval Congress at Leeds on the varietal experiences of spirit visitation in premodern narratives and art. In accordance with the conference theme of “Borders”, we are especially concerned with liminal spaces and states of being. In contemporary ghost narratives there is a clear distinction between spirits of the dead who communicate with the living directly (by appearing in the material world to a human being who is awake and alert) and those who communicate with the living indirectly (by appearing in dreams to people who are asleep, or in visions to people who are in a trancelike state). In medieval and early modern literature, art, and theological narratives about spirits of the dead, this distinction is far less clear. Waking experiences in premodern narratives indicate the same sense of validation as non-waking experiences. The sensory reaction and emotional state of a person in the aftermath of a dream or vision (as in The Vision of Barontus) differs from that of a person (or people) experiencing the sensory shock of seeing, hearing, or speaking to a ghost in the material world, in real time (as in The Ghost of Beaucaire). Nevertheless, a ghost, phantom, or spectre appearing in a dream or vision is purported to be as “real,” its message to be as consequential and as meaningful, as one that manifests in the material world (whether is it seen, as a spectral figure, or unseen, as an invisible presence). We are looking for papers that explore issues of validation and experience in communication with the spirit world. In the premodern world, what is a “real” ghost experience where “crossover” is concerned?
Send proposals of 250 words maximum to tmtomaini@gmail.com and asmittman@asuchico.edu.
Deadline: September 1, 2019
Last updated June 5, 2019
Advance Notice - Horror Literature from Gothic to Post-Modern: Critical Essays
Horror Literature from Gothic to Post-Modern: Critical Essays
https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/horror-literature-from-gothic-to-post-modern/
Edited by Michele Brittany and Nicholas Diak
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages:
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2019
pISBN: 978-1-4766-7488-9
eISBN: 978-1-4766-3791-4
Imprint: McFarland
Not Yet Published
$45.00
Available for pre-order
Michele Brittany is the book review editor for the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics and is the co-chair of the Ann Radcliffe Conference held in conjunction with Horror Writers Association’s annual Stokercon. She lives in Orange, California. Nicholas Diak is a pop culture scholar specializing in Italian spy films, post-industrial and synthwave music, and the works of H.P. Lovecraft. He has contributed essays, editorials and reviews to a variety of books, journals, and pop culture websites. He lives in Orange, California.
CFP Gothic Mash-Ups (Edited Collection) (8/30/19)
Call for Submissions: Gothic Mash-Ups (Edited Collection)
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/06/19/call-for-submissions-gothic-mash-ups-edited-collection
deadline for submissions: August 30, 2019
full name / name of organization: Natalie Neill
contact email: nneill@yorku.ca
Mash-up: “a mixture or fusion of disparate elements” (OED)
From its beginnings in the 18th century, the gothic was disparaged for its predictable group style and unoriginality. The earliest reviewers and parodists criticized gothic novels for being admixtures of already clichéd gothic scenes thrown in merely to attract fans of the new genre. To this day, the gothic is a paradoxical genre, its outré subject matters seemingly at odds with a tendency to rely on familiar tropes and formulae. All gothic texts are mash-ups to the extent that they are haunted by previous texts. Far from being a failing, this propensity on the part of gothic storytellers to make new stories out of older ones is arguably the genre’s most compelling feature.
Intended for publication with Lexington Books, Gothic Mash-Ups will theorize and trace the way that producers of gothic fiction – from the 18th century to today – appropriate, combine, and reimagine elements from earlier texts and genres. Particularly welcome are essays about individual texts (or groups of texts) that bring together characters and storylines from two or more prior gothic narratives or cross gothic storylines with other kinds of stories. From Walpole’s early generic hodgepodge and Universal Pictures’ monster film crossovers to such contemporary “Frankenfictions” (De Bruin-Molé) as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Penny Dreadful, this collection will examine the fundamental hybridity of the gothic as a genre.
Contributors to the collection might focus on (but need not be limited to):
Please send proposed chapter abstracts (400-500 words) and a short biography (200 words) to Natalie Neill (nneill@yorku.ca) by August 30, 2019. Finished chapters (approximately 6,000-7,000 words, including notes and bibliography) will be due by March 30, 2020.
Natalie Neill teaches in the Department of English at York University, where she specializes in nineteenth-century literature and first-year teaching. She has published articles and book chapters on Romantic-period satire, gothic parody, and film adaptations of nineteenth-century novels (among other topics).
Last updated June 19, 2019
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/06/19/call-for-submissions-gothic-mash-ups-edited-collection
deadline for submissions: August 30, 2019
full name / name of organization: Natalie Neill
contact email: nneill@yorku.ca
Mash-up: “a mixture or fusion of disparate elements” (OED)
From its beginnings in the 18th century, the gothic was disparaged for its predictable group style and unoriginality. The earliest reviewers and parodists criticized gothic novels for being admixtures of already clichéd gothic scenes thrown in merely to attract fans of the new genre. To this day, the gothic is a paradoxical genre, its outré subject matters seemingly at odds with a tendency to rely on familiar tropes and formulae. All gothic texts are mash-ups to the extent that they are haunted by previous texts. Far from being a failing, this propensity on the part of gothic storytellers to make new stories out of older ones is arguably the genre’s most compelling feature.
Intended for publication with Lexington Books, Gothic Mash-Ups will theorize and trace the way that producers of gothic fiction – from the 18th century to today – appropriate, combine, and reimagine elements from earlier texts and genres. Particularly welcome are essays about individual texts (or groups of texts) that bring together characters and storylines from two or more prior gothic narratives or cross gothic storylines with other kinds of stories. From Walpole’s early generic hodgepodge and Universal Pictures’ monster film crossovers to such contemporary “Frankenfictions” (De Bruin-Molé) as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Penny Dreadful, this collection will examine the fundamental hybridity of the gothic as a genre.
Contributors to the collection might focus on (but need not be limited to):
- First-wave gothic novels as mash-ups
- Generic hybrids that include gothic elements
- Victorian and neo-Victorian gothic mash-ups
- Pirated and plagiarized gothic texts as mash-ups
- Horror film, video game, or comic book mash-ups
- Gothic adaptations (broadly understood) as mash-ups
- Gothic televisual mash-ups like Dark Shadows and Penny Dreadful
- Gothic crossover fanfiction
- Critical and reader responses to gothic mash-ups
- Gothic parodies and satires of / as gothic mash-ups
- Theoretical approaches to gothic mash-ups
Please send proposed chapter abstracts (400-500 words) and a short biography (200 words) to Natalie Neill (nneill@yorku.ca) by August 30, 2019. Finished chapters (approximately 6,000-7,000 words, including notes and bibliography) will be due by March 30, 2020.
Natalie Neill teaches in the Department of English at York University, where she specializes in nineteenth-century literature and first-year teaching. She has published articles and book chapters on Romantic-period satire, gothic parody, and film adaptations of nineteenth-century novels (among other topics).
Last updated June 19, 2019
CFP Otherness: Essays and Studies 7.3 (9/1/2019)
Otherness: Essays and Studies 7.3 (General Issue)
deadline for submissions: September 1, 2019
full name / name of organization: Centre for Studies in Otherness
contact email: otherness.research@gmail.com
The peer-reviewed e-journal Otherness: Essays and Studies is now accepting submissions for its next general issue, 7.3, forthcoming Winter 2019.
Otherness: Essays and Studies publishes research articles from and across different scholarly disciplines that examine, in as many ways as possible, the concepts of otherness and alterity. We particularly appreciate dynamic cross-disciplinary study.
“To approach the Other in conversation is to welcome his expression, in which at each instant he overflows the idea a thought would carry away from it. It is therefore to receive from the Other beyond the capacity of the I, which means exactly: to have the idea of infinity. But it also means: to be taught.”
― Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority
Otherness is complex and multivalent term. Otherness is defined by difference, both via outside markers and internal characteristics. Otherness is also a means by which we define ourselves. Thus the concept is inevitably bound with conceptions of selfhood, making it fundamental for discussions of subjectivity, social, cultural and national identity, and larger discussions of ontology. In light of more recent theory and criticism, the assumed line between the self and the other, the defining boundary of identity construction, is blurred, and as such the entire concept of otherness has become intricate and problematic. It is this concept, otherness, in all of its complexities and nuances that we seek to explore and discuss through Otherness: Essays and Studies.
Past projects from the Centre, and past issues of the journal, have brought together articles from the fields of cultural theory, continental philosophy, sociology, postcolonial studies, psychoanalysis, gender studies, Gothic studies, animal alterity, the performing arts, fandom and celebrity studies, postmodernism and poststructuralist theory, and the consideration of the post-linguistic turn in their consideration of otherness. This journal invites submissions dealing with aspects of critical, socio-political, cultural, and literary exploration, within the scope of studies in otherness and alterity.
Topics may include, but are not limited to:
Articles should be between 5,000 – 8,000 words. All electronic submissions should be sent via email with Word document attachment formatted to Chicago Manual of Style standards to the editor Matthias Stephan at otherness.research@gmail.com
The deadline for submissions is Sunday, September 1, 2019.
Last updated June 19, 2019
deadline for submissions: September 1, 2019
full name / name of organization: Centre for Studies in Otherness
contact email: otherness.research@gmail.com
The peer-reviewed e-journal Otherness: Essays and Studies is now accepting submissions for its next general issue, 7.3, forthcoming Winter 2019.
Otherness: Essays and Studies publishes research articles from and across different scholarly disciplines that examine, in as many ways as possible, the concepts of otherness and alterity. We particularly appreciate dynamic cross-disciplinary study.
“To approach the Other in conversation is to welcome his expression, in which at each instant he overflows the idea a thought would carry away from it. It is therefore to receive from the Other beyond the capacity of the I, which means exactly: to have the idea of infinity. But it also means: to be taught.”
― Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority
Otherness is complex and multivalent term. Otherness is defined by difference, both via outside markers and internal characteristics. Otherness is also a means by which we define ourselves. Thus the concept is inevitably bound with conceptions of selfhood, making it fundamental for discussions of subjectivity, social, cultural and national identity, and larger discussions of ontology. In light of more recent theory and criticism, the assumed line between the self and the other, the defining boundary of identity construction, is blurred, and as such the entire concept of otherness has become intricate and problematic. It is this concept, otherness, in all of its complexities and nuances that we seek to explore and discuss through Otherness: Essays and Studies.
Past projects from the Centre, and past issues of the journal, have brought together articles from the fields of cultural theory, continental philosophy, sociology, postcolonial studies, psychoanalysis, gender studies, Gothic studies, animal alterity, the performing arts, fandom and celebrity studies, postmodernism and poststructuralist theory, and the consideration of the post-linguistic turn in their consideration of otherness. This journal invites submissions dealing with aspects of critical, socio-political, cultural, and literary exploration, within the scope of studies in otherness and alterity.
Topics may include, but are not limited to:
- Otherness in Cultural Representation
- The Representation of Otherness in Popular Culture
- Hybridity, Creolization, and the Global Other
- Representations of Otherness in the Global South
- Otherness and the Non-Human Animal
- Ethics, Responsibility, and the Other
- Memory, History, Trauma, and Otherness
- Sexuality, Gender, the Body and the Other
- Absolute Otherness vs. Self-Same Other
- Monstrosity, Spectrality and Terror of the Other
- Uncanny or Abject Others; or The Familiar Other
- The Sublime or the Unimaginable Other
- Otherness and the ‘Post-Racial’
- Political Otherness, Democracy, and the Post-Truth Era
- Nationalism, Multiculturalism, and the Identity of the Other
Articles should be between 5,000 – 8,000 words. All electronic submissions should be sent via email with Word document attachment formatted to Chicago Manual of Style standards to the editor Matthias Stephan at otherness.research@gmail.com
The deadline for submissions is Sunday, September 1, 2019.
Last updated June 19, 2019
CFP: Screening Loss: An Exploration of Grief in Contemporary Horror Cinema (9/30/19)
Call for Chapters - Screening Loss: An Exploration of Grief in Contemporary Horror Cinema
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/06/17/call-for-chapters-screening-loss-an-exploration-of-grief-in-contemporary-horror
deadline for submissions: September 30, 2019
full name / name of organization: Associate Professor Jan Selving / East Stroudsburg University; Assistant Professor Erica J. Dymond / East Stroudsburg University
contact email: screeninglosssubmissions@gmail.com
Horror films have long held a place in cinematic history as an expression of the monstrous, the un-nameable, and the unknown. They are a powerful point of catharsis in which viewers see their deepest fears played out onscreen, whether the threat is fully embodied or less concretely defined. As a result, grief and loss have always figured heavily in this genre.
This collection addresses horror films’ treatment of loss, specifically grief and how grief shapes, magnifies, and escalates the horrific. Selected films should be from the last twenty years. This contemporary approach will lend the collection a sense of urgency. Moreover, in addition to conventional horror films, we highly support explorations of less frequently examined films that contain a high degree of complexity in content and aesthetics. A24 films are the perfect example of this. Additionally, examinations of genre-defying films such as Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer and David Lowery’s A Ghost Story are especially encouraged.
We value inclusivity and welcome abstracts that focus on international films as well as those who are historically underrepresented.
The book is structured to be a reader for film seminars as well as a tool for research. As a result, each chapter will focus on a single film. And, while the chapters are narrow in this sense, we fully expect that contributors will wish to reference other films and works of art in their essays.
We welcome all theoretical approaches. Likewise, given the interdisciplinary nature of this collection, we invite abstracts from academics not only in film studies, English, and communications, but also psychology and sociology.
Suggestions for films include but are not limited to:
Ari Aster’s Midsommer (2019)
Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer’s Pet Sematary (2019)
Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)
Robert Eggers’s The VVitch (a.k.a. The Witch) (2015)
Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook (2014)
Ari Aster’s Hereditary (2018)
David Lowery’s A Ghost Story (2017)
Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2015)
Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook (2014)
Tomas Alfredson’s Låt den Rätte Komma (Let the Right One In) (2008)
J. A. Bayona’s El Orfanato (The Orphanage) (2007)
Lars von Trier’s Antichrist (2009)
Takashi Miike's Ôdishon (Audition) (1999)
Please submit a 500-word chapter abstract and a biography of no more than 250 words by September 30, 2019 to screeninglosssubmissions@gmail.com. All abstracts will be given full consideration. We will notify all applicants of the results by October 31, 2019. If selected, the contributor has until June 30, 2020 to submit her/his/their completed chapters.
The volume is intended for publication through Lexington Books, who has expressed interest in this project.
Last updated June 19, 2019
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/06/17/call-for-chapters-screening-loss-an-exploration-of-grief-in-contemporary-horror
deadline for submissions: September 30, 2019
full name / name of organization: Associate Professor Jan Selving / East Stroudsburg University; Assistant Professor Erica J. Dymond / East Stroudsburg University
contact email: screeninglosssubmissions@gmail.com
Horror films have long held a place in cinematic history as an expression of the monstrous, the un-nameable, and the unknown. They are a powerful point of catharsis in which viewers see their deepest fears played out onscreen, whether the threat is fully embodied or less concretely defined. As a result, grief and loss have always figured heavily in this genre.
This collection addresses horror films’ treatment of loss, specifically grief and how grief shapes, magnifies, and escalates the horrific. Selected films should be from the last twenty years. This contemporary approach will lend the collection a sense of urgency. Moreover, in addition to conventional horror films, we highly support explorations of less frequently examined films that contain a high degree of complexity in content and aesthetics. A24 films are the perfect example of this. Additionally, examinations of genre-defying films such as Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer and David Lowery’s A Ghost Story are especially encouraged.
We value inclusivity and welcome abstracts that focus on international films as well as those who are historically underrepresented.
The book is structured to be a reader for film seminars as well as a tool for research. As a result, each chapter will focus on a single film. And, while the chapters are narrow in this sense, we fully expect that contributors will wish to reference other films and works of art in their essays.
We welcome all theoretical approaches. Likewise, given the interdisciplinary nature of this collection, we invite abstracts from academics not only in film studies, English, and communications, but also psychology and sociology.
Suggestions for films include but are not limited to:
Ari Aster’s Midsommer (2019)
Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer’s Pet Sematary (2019)
Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)
Robert Eggers’s The VVitch (a.k.a. The Witch) (2015)
Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook (2014)
Ari Aster’s Hereditary (2018)
David Lowery’s A Ghost Story (2017)
Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2015)
Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook (2014)
Tomas Alfredson’s Låt den Rätte Komma (Let the Right One In) (2008)
J. A. Bayona’s El Orfanato (The Orphanage) (2007)
Lars von Trier’s Antichrist (2009)
Takashi Miike's Ôdishon (Audition) (1999)
Please submit a 500-word chapter abstract and a biography of no more than 250 words by September 30, 2019 to screeninglosssubmissions@gmail.com. All abstracts will be given full consideration. We will notify all applicants of the results by October 31, 2019. If selected, the contributor has until June 30, 2020 to submit her/his/their completed chapters.
The volume is intended for publication through Lexington Books, who has expressed interest in this project.
Last updated June 19, 2019
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