I'm pleased to announce the final slate for the 2022 gathering of the Monsters & the Monstrous Area. NEPCA's annual conference will be held this weekend in Zoom. Details on the event and registration information can be found at this link.
Michael A. Torregrossa
Area Chair
Monsters & the Monstrous Area Panels for NEPCA 2022
Thursday, October 20th
Session 1: 3pm-4:15pm EDT: Monsters on Screen (Monsters & the Monstrous 1)
Session Chair: Joe Baumstark
Gangster/Monster: Cody Jarrett in White Heat
Gail Sheehan, Salem State University
Gail Sheehan, a member of the English Department at Salem State University (Salem, MA), teaches courses in film studies, in literature, and in writing. Gail’s areas of interest include: film history; adaptation studies; radio studies; and the representation of race and gender in media texts.
Shadows of the Vampire: Nosferatu, Phantom der Nacht as Post-Holocaust Trauma Allegory
Seth Wilder, Georgia State University
S. A. Wilder (he/him/his) is a doctoral student in Moving Image Studies in the School of Film, Media, and Theater at Georgia State University, where his research focuses principally on late cinematic style and its relationship to auteurism. His work has appeared in Slayage: The International Journal of Buffy+, Asian Cinema Journal, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Film & History, Porn Studies, Global Hip Hop Studies, and is scheduled to appear in the upcoming edited volumes Screening Controversy and Serial Killers and Serial Spectators.
The Horror Lives on: Trauma and Race in the Candyman Series
Loredana Bercuci, West University of Timisoara (Romania)
Loredana Bercuci is an assistant professor at the Department of Modern Languages of the West University of Timișoara, in Romania, where she teaches American cultural history and popular culture. She holds a Ph. D. in American Studies from the West University of Timisoara, with a focus on transmedial representations of trauma in contemporary American culture.
An Evolution of Monstrous Maleficence: Disney’s Changing Portrayal of Otherness
Amelia Meiburg, McNeese State University
An expert in monstrosity, Amelia Meiburg has taught secondary English for over a decade in southwest Louisiana. She is currently wading through the conquest of working on a masters in English literature from McNeese State University, and when not bogged down in graduate school work or grading sophomore English essays, she undergoes the quest of exploring texts through lenses of monster and feminist theories, generally focusing on modern American literary works.
Session 2: 4:30pm-5:45pm EDT: New Perspectives on Classic Monsters (Monsters & the Monstrous 2)
Session Chair: Joe Baumstark
Monsters Then and Now? Births, the Undead and Deformities as Divine Punishment
Luisa de Padua Zanon, Independent Scholar, and Luiz Felipe Anchieta Guerra, Estate University of Montes Claros
Luisa de Padua Zanon - Licentiate in History by the Federal University of Minas Gerais. Does research focused on early modern "British" prints and the figure of monstrosity, and has published material on demonic possession in English press and Education on Imperial Brazil. She also works as a high-school-level regular teacher.
Luiz Felipe Anchieta Guerra - Licentiate in History by the Federal University of Minas Gerais, MPhil candidate by the Estate University of Montes Claros. Current board member of the ISSM (International Society for the Study of Medievalism). Does research focused on 20-21st century political medievalisms in Brazil, with published works on the uses of medieval imagery by far-right and extremist groups in Brazil.
“Induced by the demon’s lips”: Vampiric Orality and the Lesbian Mouth in Le Fanu’s Carmilla
Rachel M. Friars, Queen's University, Kingston (Ontario, Canada)
Rachel M. Friars is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of English Language and Literature at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Her current work centers on neo-Victorianism and nineteenth-century lesbian literature and history, with secondary research interests in life writing, historical fiction, true crime, and the Gothic. Her work on lesbian historical fiction has been published with Palgrave Macmillan, The Journal of Neo-Victorian Studies, Lexington Books, Crime Studies Journal, Queer Studies in Media and Popular Culture, and is forthcoming in The Journal of Lesbian Studies and The Palgrave Handbook of Neo-Victorianism.
The Cosmic Horror of H. G. Wells
Samuel Crider, DePaul University
Samuel Crider (he/him) is a graduate student in the Media and Cinema Studies program at DePaul University in Chicago Illinois, and teaches courses in computer graphics and visual effects at Columbia College Chicago. His research interests include monster theory, fandom studies, and alternative narrative forms. He recently returned to academic studies and teaching after nearly 25 years working in the video game industry.
Don’t Tell Everyone: Candyman (1992) Film as an Urban Legend
Francine Sutton, University of Central Florida
Francine N. Sutton is a Ph.D. candidate in the Texts & Technology Program with a concentration in Digital Media at the University of Central Florida. She received a B.A. in Art and M.A. in Urban & Regional Planning from Jackson State University. Her research interests include improving the user experience of older adults with limited technology experience on mobile devices, fan studies, game studies, and popular culture.
Session 3: 6pm-7:15pm EDT: Transformations (Monsters & the Monstrous 3) [canceled 10/10
Monstrous Possibilities: The Re-Transfiguration of Female Desire and Agency in Carmen Maria Machado’s “The Husband Stitch” [MOVED TO Literature and Popular Culture 3: Literature and Challenging Society]
Mikayla Garcia, San Diego State University
Session 4: 7:30pm-8:45pm EDT: Mass Media Monsters (Monsters & the Monstrous 4)
Session Chair: Glen Farrelly, Athabasca University
Deceive, Disgrace and Dismember: The Vampire Histories of the Monstrous-Feminine in Comics
Julia Lane, Independent Scholar (Australia)
Julia Lane (She/Her) is an intersectional feminist academic with a focus in visual arts, graphic design, cultural studies, and education. Lane is a published editor, author and illustrator, her most recent work Tracing behind the image: An interdisciplinary exploration of visual literacy was published in 2020. Completed in September 2022, her PhD project was an exhibition accompanied by a thesis/exegesis entitled Vessels for the Devil: Exploring the rhetoric of the monstrous-feminine in graphic culture. Lane’s research engages in how the monster trope is used to ‘other’ marginalised groups, and works to question, subvert and transform existing societal narratives.
From Haunted House to House Haunting: Domesticity and the Monstrous Feminine in Monster House
Lauren Chun, San Diego State University
Lauren Chun (ch-uh-n) (she/her) is a second year M.A. Candidate at San Diego State University with a specialization in Children’s Literature. Her research as of late, focuses on gothic as well as Asian American children’s literature. In addition to this, she is a Rhetoric and Writing Studies instructor.
The Silence of The Witcher: Voicelessly Plant Like Monsters
Bryce King, Florida Atlantic University
Bryce King is a Florida Atlantic University Alumni with a BA in English: Writing and Rhetoric, minor in sociology and an MA in English:Science Fiction and Fantasy. Her MA thesis The Voice Not from Rivia: Silence, Ecofeminsim and Their Limits in The Witcher Series focuses on the role of monster plants and women within the Witcherverse to argue that the voices of each are both intertwined and in conflict.
Revamping the Vampire: How What We Do in the Shadows Updates the Vampire Story Colleen Etman, University of South Carolina [added in 10/10
[Michael doesn’t have contact info or bio. Sorry.]
Friday, October 21st
Session 1: 1pm-2:15pm EDT: Re-Imagining the Monster (Monsters & the Monstrous 5)
Session Chair: Giacomo Calabria
Monsters in the Mills: Industrial Gothic Horror in New England
Faye Ringel, U.S. Coast Guard Academy, Emerita
Faye Ringel is Professor Emerita of Humanities, U.S. Coast Guard Academy, New London CT. She is the author of The Gothic Literature and History of New England: Secrets of the Restless Dead (Anthem Press, 2022) and New England's Gothic Literature: History and Folklore of the Supernatural. Once chair of NEPCA’s former Fantastic Literature area, she has presented at the two virtual conferences and many in-person. She lives in Norwich, Connecticut, home to abandoned and repurposed (haunted) mills.
H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds and 21st Century Disclosure
Don Vescio, Worcester State University
Don is a member of Worcester State University’s Department of English and his scholarly interests include: contemporary critical and narrative theory; information design and architecture; data structures and applied analytics, and post-1950s American fiction. Additionally, he regularly consults in the private sector on advanced information technology issues, with a specific focus on developing scalable data structures. He finds that his education in English and the humanities is an excellent complement to his interest in data technologies.
Unto Dust Thou Shalt Return: The Corporeal Legacy of Carl Dreyer’s Vampyr
Jordan Parrish, University of Pittsburgh
Jordan Parrish is a doctoral candidate in Film and Media studies and English at the University of Pittsburgh. He received an MA from Ohio University with a thesis titled “The Undead Subject of Lost Decade Japanese Horror Cinema.” He is currently writing a dissertation on temporal body horror cinema, defining bodily experiences of gaps between living and experiencing time in horror films from Japan, Canada, and Europe. His work has been published in the journal Horror Studies.
We Are the Monsters. Strange Creatures in Dino Buzzati’s Short Stories
Simone Pettine, "G. d'Annunzio" University of Chieti-Pescara (Abruzzo, Italy)
Simone Pettine is currently a PhD student at the “Gabriele d’Annunzio” University of Chieti-Pescara in "Languages, Literatures and Cultures in Contact" and Subject Matter Expert in "Italian Literature". His main field of research is Realism, Verismo and their relationship with fantastic narrative. He has published a monograph dedicated to Giovanni Verga ("Un viaggio nel quale si riposa per sempre. La morte in Verga", Solfanelli, 2021) and some essays on Salvatore Di Giacomo, Cesare Pavese and Francesco Biamonti. He has also participated in numerous national and international conferences (Mexico City, Wroclaw, Turkey, Viterbo, Washington).
Session 2: 2:30pm-3:45pm EDT:
(No Monsters & the Monstrous Area sessions scheduled at this time as of 10/3.)
Session 3: 4pm-5:15pm EDT: Monsters in Comics (Monsters & the Monstrous 6)
Session Chair: Michael Torregrossa, Independent Scholar
Tapioca Pudding, Bingo, and Homicide: A Vision of Two Aging Serial Killers in The Roberts
Angela Tenga, Florida Institute of Technology
Angela Tenga is an associate professor at Florida Institute of Technology. Her classes focus on literature, culture, and history, while her research interests include representations of the monstrous, the fictional construction of criminality (especially serial killers), and early English literature. She has co-edited two collections of critical essays: The Written Dead: Essays on the Literary Zombie (with Kyle William Bishop) and Plant Horror: Approaches to the Monstrous Vegetal in Fiction and Film (with Dawn Keetley). Her work has been featured in Gothic Studies, The Journal of Popular Culture, Supernatural Studies, and Studies in Popular Culture, along with several edited volumes of critical essays. She and co-author Jonathan Bassett received a Whatley Award for “Spies Like Us: Ideology and Futility in the FX Television Series The Americans.”
Comic Book Monster-Human Hybrids in “Fine Art”
Gustavo Garcia, California State University, Northridge
Gustavo Garcia [he/him/his] is an interdisciplinary visual artist/writer, arts educator and a MA candidate at California State University Northridge. His artwork is in the Collections of MoMA New York, LACMA and the Bibliotheque Nationale de France. His writing has been published in literary journals and publications including the online speculative fiction journal Strange Horizons, the literary journal Bilingual Review and the comic/manga magazine Shonen Jump/Aoharu. As an Arts Educator, Gustavo creates art experiences for museums and arts organizations including the California African American Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Self Help Graphics and artworxLA. Gustavo holds a BA from Hampshire College, Certificate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Certificate from California State University Los Angeles and Certificates from the Architectural Association London.
Riverdale Monster Mash: An Initial Survey of Horror in Archie Comics’ Non Horror Books
Michael Torregrossa, Independent Scholar
Michael A. Torregrossa (he/him/his) is a medievalist and comics scholar. He works as an adjunct in both Rhode Island and Massachusetts and serves on the council of the New England American Studies Association. Michael is also NEPCA’s chair for the Monsters & the Monstrous Area, which he initiated in 2018, and he welcomes your ideas for monster-related papers and panels for future NEPCA conferences and other events throughout the year.
Keynote & Awards: 5:30pm-7pm EDT
(Please attend the session if you are able, especially if you are a student. NEPCA offers a number of student paper awards that you are now eligible to complete for. NEPCA is also open to ideas for new areas if you have any thoughts on things you’d like to see next year.)
Saturday, October 22
Session 1: 9:00am-10:15am EDT: Rethinking the Role of the Monster (Monsters & the Monstrous 7)
Session Chair: Lance Eaton
The Perilous Realm: Folklore and Horror in Tolkien's Works
Monica Sanz, Independent Scholar
Monica Sanz (she/her/hers) holds a Masters Degree in English Philology, and a Postgraduate Degree in Literature from the UK. Tolkien has been her main field of study for more than 20 years, and she is an internationally published author and lecturer on Tolkien.
Monica Sanz is an independent scholar on Tolkien. As an English Philologist, she specialised in Literature of the British Islands. Her main field of study is Tolkien, and she has published several essays on topics such as the influence of Nordic and Scandinavian mythology in Tolkien’s works or the impact of the writer in subculture, counterculture and exploitation. She has also cooperated with Spanish universities, such as Universidad de Zaragoza (Saragossa), Universitat de les Illes Balears (Majorca) or Universidad Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona) offering lectures about Tolkien in their academic courses and events. Mrs Sanz has been an active member of the Sociedad Tolkien Española (Tolkien Society of Spain) for more than 20 years, where she currently leads many projects. She has organised national and local Tolkien events, exhibitions, readings, shows, round tables, screenings, workshops and other Tolkien-centred activities. She has also collaborated with other Tolkien Societies’ activities, such as the 2020 Tolkien Society Seminar (UK) or the 2022 Mythopoeic Society's Online Midwinter Seminar (USA).
The Power of the Elusive Presence in Horror Fiction
Oscar De Los Santos, Western Connecticut State University, and Kelly L. Goodridge, Western Connecticut State University
Oscar De Los Santos is former chair of the Writing Department at Western Connecticut State University, where he teaches fiction and essay workshops. His books include short story collections, a novel, a writing handbook, and edited essay collections.
Kelly L. Goodridge, M.A., M.F.A., teaches fiction and nonfiction workshops at Western Connecticut State University. A former journalist, her books include A Modern Bestiary: When the Ape-Hawk Strikes and 25 Questions All Writers Should Ask Themselves.
Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla and S.D. Simper’s Carmilla and Laura: The Vampire and the Victim’s Evolution, their Relationship and the New Representation of the Sublime in the Original and in its Retelling
Marika Strano, Swansea University (Wales)
After a Bachelor’s Degree in International Communication and a Master’s Degree in Modern Italian Philology, Marika Strano is now a second year PhD candidate in English Literature at Swansea University, in Wales. Her thesis concerns the presence of the works of Giacomo Leopardi, the most famous Italian modern author, in James Joyce’s masterpieces. Marika’s interests range from English Literature (in particular on Gothic Literature) to Italian, Irish and Comparative literatures. She’s currently working both on her thesis and on an essay about the reception of the Greek Mith Giacomo Leopardi’s work.
King’s Pennywise and the Rise of Coulrophobia in Popular Culture
Ananya Roy, University of Delhi / Independent Scholar (India)
Ananya Roy (she/her/hers) has completed her masters in English Literature from Jesus and Mary College, University of Delhi. Her focus on research is widespread ranging from the renaissance to the modern-contemporary literary world, more significantly on gothic, horror, noir, crime, speculative and science fiction(s). Her works have been previously published in e-journals like IJELLH, IJOES, CLRI, IJECLS.
Session 2: 10:30am-11:45am EDT: We Live with the Monstrous We Made: Perspectives on the Netflix Series Extraordinary Attorney Woo (Monsters & the Monstrous 8)
Session Chair: Giacomo Calabria
The Society Violence in Autistic World: Reality X Possibilities Based on Extraordinary Attorney Woo
Isabelle Ferreira Pires, Centro Universitário do Rio Grande do Norte (Brazil)
Isabelle Ferreira Pires graduated in business administration at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte and holds a postgraduate degree in strategic management of people by Centro Universitário do Rio Grande do Norte. She is interested in marketing, working with images and watching movies and exploring other cultures such as Jewish, Egyptian, Indian and Koreans through references of the drama she is watching. Lately she is crazy about the dramas especially those of history, magic or the romantic and funny ones.
Evolution of Perspectives on Autism Spectrum Disorder from Extraordinary Monster to Good Professionals
Aryong Choi-Hantke, Independent Scholar (Korea)
Aryong Choi-Hantke has finished a Ph.D. program at the School of Media, Art & Technology, at Sogang University, S. Korea, and established Institute of Body and Mind aiming at the interdisciplinary research in the field of communication, film studies, comparative literature, cultural studies, psychology and yoga therapy in 2005. Since 2006, she presented papers analyzing Park Chan Wook’s films, Korean films, culture and society in Transforma, SWPACA, NEPCA, GFF and ICLA. Aside from working as a translator and writing about issues in Korean culture and films, her recent interest has been the disease, the healing and the medicine in cinemas and were the area chair of the very topic in 2016 ICLA. and acted as the referee of Participations:International Journal of Audience Research(2015-2016). She participates in The World Hobbit Project and Game of Thornes Project. Her articles were published in the “Three Asias” issue of Paradoxa (Nov. 2010) and “Peppermint Candy” in Neues ostasiatisches Kino (May.2015). And she published her own books: Our Body Culture Probe (2011) and At 7 P.M., I Meet Myself (2014), and contributed to “Yoga, Women, & Popular Culture,” in Yoga and Culture (2013).
The Court Hearing Monsters
Ressu Ferreira Pires, Independent Scholar (Brazil)
Ressu Ferreira Pires graduated with her Bachelor of Laws degree from Centro Universitário do Rio Grande do Norte in 2016, and she has been practicing as a Brazilian lawyer since 2016. She also received an international trade bachelor's degree from Instituto Federal do Rio Grande also in 2016. Nowadays she is engaged in a post graduation program for legal practice in Escola da Magistratura do Rio Grande do Norte (ESMARN).
Session 3: 12:00pm-1:15pm EDT: Making Monsters (Monsters & the Monstrous 9)
Session Chair: Derya Agis
Monster of the Time: When the Lion Becomes Post-Human
George Sieg, Southwestern Indian Polytechic Institute
Dr. George Sieg (PhD Western Esotericism, University of Exeter Centre for the Study of Esotercism; MA Study of Religion, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) is the Area Chair for Esotericism, Occultism, and Magic at the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association. He teaches philosophy at the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In addition to these areas, his specialties as a historian of religion include dualism and its Iranian origins, apocalypticism, gnosis and Gnosticism, radicalism and extremism, ideological violence, traditionalist worldviews, conspiracism, occult war beliefs, and contemporary expressions of the Left-Hand Path and the sinister. He has published articles and chapters on these subjects, as well as self-referential horror, intimacy in the zombie apocalypse, and survival euphoria, with a forthcoming chapter on survival horror and the transfiguration of the zombie toward the transhuman.
Monstrous Possibilities: HG Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau and the Chimera
Paul Driskill, Tufts University
Paul Driskill is a PhD candidate at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. His dissertation, Narrative Species: Imagining the Modern Human in Nineteenth-Century Science and Fiction explores the emergence of the species concept in the nineteenth century and considers the role that narrative, imagination, and fiction played in how Victorians understood themselves as subjects, characters, and species. Throughout, he argues that the chimera manifests Victorian anxieties about the reality of their nonhuman being—a part of their evolutionary history as a species. (Most of human history is, in fact, nonhuman.) HIs third chapter focuses specifically on Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Island of Dr. Moreau and considers their claims to possibility. In doing so, he considers the monster’s slippery status within the context of realism. Additionally, Paul will (pending approval) be teaching a class called “The Monsters that Make Us” to college undergraduates. This course will be all about the figure of the monster in popular culture—what it reveals to us about our deepest fears, desires, and uncertainties.
“I just wanted my dog back”: Suspended Animation and Queer Potentiality in Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie (2012)
Dani Nouriazad, San Diego State University
Dani Nouriazad (they/she) is a graduate student at San Diego State University in San Diego, CA. A specialist in children’s literature, their research and writing interests include gothic and horror studies, queer studies, cultural studies, performance and visual culture, and critical theory.
Writers’ Roundtable: 1:30pm-2:45pm EDT
(Please support NEPCA by attending this special event.)
