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
Friday, July 12, 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
CFP Witches (Spec Issue of Journal of Dracula Studies) (1/1/2020)
Journal of Dracula Studies Special Issue: Witches
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/06/27/journal-of-dracula-studies-special-issue-witches
deadline for submissions: January 1, 2020
full name / name of organization: Anne DeLong/Transylvanian Society of Dracula
contact email: journalofdraculastudies@kutztown.edu
The Journal of Dracula Studies is accepting submissions of manuscripts of scholarly articles (4000-6000 words) for a 2020 Special Issue focusing on witches and witchcraft. Papers may examine the figure of the witch and/or the practice of witchcraft in literature, film, folklore, and popular culture. Submissions are due by January 1, 2020. Possible topics include the following:
Last updated July 5, 2019
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/06/27/journal-of-dracula-studies-special-issue-witches
deadline for submissions: January 1, 2020
full name / name of organization: Anne DeLong/Transylvanian Society of Dracula
contact email: journalofdraculastudies@kutztown.edu
The Journal of Dracula Studies is accepting submissions of manuscripts of scholarly articles (4000-6000 words) for a 2020 Special Issue focusing on witches and witchcraft. Papers may examine the figure of the witch and/or the practice of witchcraft in literature, film, folklore, and popular culture. Submissions are due by January 1, 2020. Possible topics include the following:
- witches, wizards, warlocks, cunning folk
- magic and magical practices
- hexing and spell casting
- witches throughout history
- witch hunts and witch trials
- witchcraft and feminism
- witchcraft and New Age spirituality
- witchcraft and political activism
- witchcraft and spiritualism: seances, spirit communication
- culturally diverse witchcraft practices: Voodoo, conjure, pow wow, etc.
- depictions of witches and witchcraft in film, television, and popular culture
Last updated July 5, 2019
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