CFP Theorizing Cyborgs, Elves, and Vampires: Popular Genres in the Academy (2/2/2024)

Theorizing Cyborgs, Elves, and Vampires: Popular Genres in the Academy

deadline for submissions:
February 2, 2024

full name / name of organization:
Binghamton University Comparative Literature Department

contact email:
swhite32@binghamton.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/11/07/theorizing-cyborgs-elves-and-vampires-popular-genres-in-the-academy

The Comparative Literature Graduate Student Organization at Binghamton University invites proposals for papers discussing popular genres for our graduate conference scheduled for April 12-13, 2024.



There has been a heightened academic interest in popular genres within the last decade. Scholars have approached these texts from a variety of lenses, and—with our graduate conference—we hope to make space for further research through various forms of critical engagement. In addition to welcoming essays regarding individual texts and specific genres, we are also interested in examining the state of popular genres in the academy, and especially encourage submissions engaged with non-Western texts and theory.



We welcome essays which focus on:

• Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction
• Horror Fiction
• Thriller and Mystery
• Young Adult Fiction
• Graphic Novels
• New Media Formats (TV, Video Games, Hypertext, Transmodal, etc.)

We seek essays which approach these genres primarily through one of the following academic approaches:

• Queer Theory
• Women and Gender Studies
• Decolonial or Postcolonial Studies
• Psychoanalysis
• Ecocritical Studies
• Posthumanism
• Media and Materiality Studies
• Analytic and Continental Philosophy
• Marxist Thought
• Or any other academic approach which opens meaningful inquiry into these genres.

Please send all inquiries and proposals (a title, 250-word abstract, and 100-word bio) to Sarah White at swhite32@binghamton.edu. The deadline for proposals is February 2, 2024. Panels will be decided and participants informed by February 16, 2024.



Last updated November 9, 2023

CFP Vampire Studies Area PCA (11/30/2023; Chicago 3/27-30/2024)

Vampire Studies (PCA/ACA National Conference) March 27-30 2024

deadline for submissions:
November 30, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Popular Culture Association

contact email:
pcavampires@gmail.com


source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/09/13/vampire-studies-pcaaca-national-conference-march-27-30-2024

PCA CONFERENCE 27-30 March 2024, CHICAGO, IL

The Vampire Studies Area of the PCA welcomes papers, presentations, panels, and roundtable discussions that cover all aspects of the vampire as it appears throughout global culture.

The complicated issue of consent is central to all vampire texts, from being fed upon, to being transformed (infected) without consent or one that is informed, freely given, by individuals responsible for negotiating, maintaining, and communicating their on-going consent. In various media and art, sexual assault is often used as a narrative device to motivate characters, as an initiator of power, or the beginnings of a revenge narrative arc. This year we specifically welcome papers, panel presentations, or creative pieces that grapple and explore the ways in which consent functions in vampire narratives. We encourage scholars to consider the ways that power dynamics, social identities, and cultural contexts have shaped conversations over time about consent within vampire tales.

We also look forward to submissions addressing media focusing on the ways in which vampires explore issues of race, ethnicity, and inclusion.

As well as this broad theme we also encourage papers, presentations, and panels that cover any of the following:Products where sexual violence is used as a core narrative trope or motivating factor ie Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire.
The vampire bite and consent in shows like the Vampire Diaries, True Blood, First Kill, Dracula
The Non-Western Vampire (i.e. Black, Asian, Latino/a/x, African, Aboriginal)
The vampire on legacy television shows (i.e., Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Moonlight, The Vampire Diaries, The Originals)
The vampire on recent television shows (i.e., First Kill, The Passage, Interview with the Vampire, Vampire in the Garden, Fire Bite)
Legacy Cinematic vampires (i.e., Nosferatu, Interview with the Vampire, Near Dark, Twilight, Dracula Adaptations etc.)
Recent Cinematic Vampires (i.e., Night Teeth, Morbius, Monster Family etc.)
Vampire Cultures and Contexts (i.e. vampire RPGs or other gaming universes, fan studies, graphic novels, Tik Tok & other social media platforms)
Vampires and the Marginalized (i.e., race, gender, sexualities, national origin)
Genres (i.e. Gothic Horror, Urban Fantasy, Romance, Steampunk, Early Readers, Children’s Picture Books, Young Adult, Erotica, Comedy)
Historic and contemporary vampiric locations and geographies (i.e. cemeteries, castles, cities)
The Horror Vampire, Byronic vs Hedonistic, or Horror vs Romantic
Vampire Studies (i.e., the vampire in the classroom, vampire scholarship)

And anything and everything in between!

To have your proposal/abstract considered, please submit your proposal/abstract of approximately 250 words at the Popular Culture Association Website. We also accept complete panel proposals of 3-4 people.

We do not currently accept papers from fledgling/undergraduate scholars, but you can submit your proposal to the Undergraduate Area. We encourage you to get involved in our vibrant vampire community by joining one of our social media spaces and attending our conference events such as our business meeting. film screening, other roundtables, and sessions.

If you have questions, contact us at pcavampires@gmail.com Also, follow us on Twitter @pca_vampires or join our Facebook groups PCA Vampire Studies and Vampire Scholars.


categories
cultural studies and historical approaches
ethnicity and national identity
film and television
gender studies and sexuality
popular culture

Last updated September 18, 2023

CFP Queer/ing Horror: Video Essays at the Intersection of Horror and Queerness (Spec Issue of Monstrum) (11/15/2023)

CFP: Queer/ing Horror: Video Essays at the Intersection of Horror and Queerness

deadline for submissions:
November 15, 2023

full name / name of organization:
MONSTRUM 7.2 (December 2024)

contact email:
daynarama@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/10/17/cfp-queering-horror-video-essays-at-the-intersection-of-horror-and-queerness


CFP: Queer/ing Horror: Video Essays at the Intersection of Horror and Queerness
MONSTRUM 7.2 (December 2024)
Guest Editor: Dayna McLeod

In What’s the Use? (2019), Sara Ahmed examines “queer use as reuse” (198). She posits, “If I have considered queer use as how we dismantle a world that has been built to accommodate some, we can also think of queer use as a building project” (219-221). Here she highlights the potentiality of queer use, emphasizing its capacity to deconstruct a world full of biased systems, and facilitate creative and productive practices. How might we consider “queer use as reuse” (198) in videographic criticism of queer horror? What interventions, analysis, and critique might we manifest if we look at the form of the video essay in relationship to queer/horror media objects? Ahmed writes, “Queer use can also be about not ingesting something; spitting it out; putting it about. If queer use is not ingesting something, not taking it in, queer use can also be about how you attend to something” (207-8).

Submissions are now open for Monstrum 7.2, a special issue entirely comprised of video essays that “attend to” the intersections of horror and queerness. We seek proposals for 2–7-minute video essays that take up, speak to, or relate Ahmed’s notion of queer use in relation to horror. Likewise, video essayists might consider re/readings of the monstrous, where it is located, and how it is constructed (Jack Halberstam, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters, 1995); dis/identification practices and pleasures in queering and circulating negative and positive affect found in horror (Michael J. Faris, “The Queer Babadook: Circulation of Queer Affects” in The Routledge Handbook of Queer Rhetoric, 2022); and/or how “queer horror has turned the focus of fear upon itself, on its own communities and subcultures” (Darren Elliott-Smith, Queer Horror Film and Television: Sexuality and Masculinity at the Margins, 2016, 197).

We are interested in how the video essayist might situate queerness relative to horror through the analysis of specific media objects and/or texts and their formal techniques as productive, disruptive, interventionist, analytical, methodological, and/or confrontational. Does horror be/come in the process of queering or through its queer re/use? How/does horror lie within queerness itself? Video essayists may also consider the medium of the video essay or source media-object as ‘the body’, where the medium itself (film, television, web-based media object, etc.) and its production are horrific: What does the construction of the media object tell us about queer horror? What is the horror? How do queers and queerness encounter and contend with it? What might queer reuse of queerness look like through a horror lens? What are queer re-telling and reviewing practices of horror?

Accepted proposals will also be asked to submit an accompanying statement of 750-1000 words to accompany the published video essay.

Proposal Guidelines
Proposals should include the following elements:Title: A descriptive title for your video essay.
Abstract: A concise summary (250-300 words) of your proposed video essay, identifying your object of study, and outlining the central thesis, methodology, and approach.
Methodology/Approach: Describe the methods and techniques you intend to use in your video essay, including how you plan to convey your ideas visually and aurally.
Thesis: Clearly articulate the main argument or concept you will explore in your video essay regarding the relationship between concepts of ‘horror’ and ‘queer’.
References: Provide a preliminary list of key texts, media objects, etc., that inform your project.

Timeline
The written component will be formatted according to standards set out in the current Chicago Manual of Style. Please see the Monstrum submission guidelines for more information: https://www.monstrum-society.ca/submissions--soumissions.html
Proposal Deadline: November 15, 2023
Notification of Acceptance: December 15, 2023
Submission of Final Video Essay and Artist's Statement: July 1, 2024
Revisions: July-November 2024
Publication: December 2024

For inquiries or further information, or to submit a proposal, please contact Dayna McLeod at daynarama@gmail.com




Last updated October 18, 2023

CFP National PCA Monsters Area (11/30/2023; Chicago 3/27-30/2024)

Note: We are NOT affiliated with this area or its endeavors. 

Monsters, Monstrosities, & the Monstrous

deadline for submissions:
November 30, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Popular Culture Association

contact email:
colleen.karn@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/09/16/monsters-monstrosities-the-monstrous

Monsters, Monstrosities, & the Monstrous CFP

Do you do monster scholarship? If so, we encourage you to consider submitting a paper to the new Monsters, Monstrosities, & the Monstrous area of the Popular Culture Association for the PCA National Conference in Chicago, March 27-30, 2024. https://pcaaca.org/page/nationalconference

Our special topic area (hopefully to become a standing area) will finally provide a home for everything monsters at PCA. We are proud to be the sister area of Vampire Studies who inspired us to create this area for the rest of the monsters. Please join us in exploring the themes, influences, and impact of the monster as a cultural and historical touchstone.

Across the globe and throughout the centuries, the label of monster has been invoked to separate the “natural” from the “unnatural” and the acceptable from the socially unacceptable. Whether referring to mythological creatures, the Victorian creations that have become standards through Universal film adaptations, or as a shorthand to denigrate othered peoples, the monster has no shortage of applications and, sometimes, reevaluations.

We specifically welcome papers or presentations that focus on the use of the monster as a teaching tool or educational lens.

As the term monster has a wide application, topics can be anything from the inhabitants of Sesame Street to medieval studies to medical oddities. Potential paper topics include:

• Children’s books, toys, or related media
• Film and television including remediations and transmediations
• Literary texts
• Board games, RPGs, video games, and pinball
• Monsters queering societal norms and the monster as Other
• Propaganda materials
• Freakshows and oddities

As part of our “Emerging Monster Scholars” initiative, we are accepting a limited number of papers from undergraduates to showcase and support these future researchers in the field of monster studies. We will be asking applicants for these slots to provide information about an instructor who can attest to the strength of the proposed material and who will help prepare them for a national conference presentation.

Scope of the paper topics accepted under this area: From Grendel to Grover and Hannibal Lecter to high rises, topics in this area span the monstrous in form, behavior, and theory.

List of example paper titles: “Using Cohen’s Seven Monster Theses When Teaching Frankenstein,” “Monsters Helping Children Understand Death in A Monster Calls,” “Monstrifying the Other for Entertainment: From Freak Shows to B-Movies,” “The Monster and his Monstrosity: H. H. Holmes’ Murder Hotel,” and “Deromanticizing the Monster in What We Do in the Shadows.”

Submission requirements: Please submit an abstract (maximum of 300 words).

Contact: Colleen Karn: colleen.karn@gmail.com or David Hansen: hansend@baycollege.edu



Last updated September 18, 2023

CFP The Mummy Edited Collection (12/15/2023)

Call for Chapters: The Mummy Edited Collection

Editors, Michele Brittany and Sean Woodard
Contact Email: mummybookproject@gmail.com

Abstract Deadline: December 15, 2023

Chapter Drafts Deadline: June 15, 2024

Essays sought for an edited collection focused on Universal Pictures’ The Mummy franchise.

While academic research has been focused on various releases of The Mummy (1932, 1959, 1999, and 2017), there has not been a singular scholarly text devoted to the film franchise.

We seek proposals for chapters that approach the subject matter with theoretical concepts that will appropriately meet the rigorous expectations of an academic work, but through a prose style that shall be accessible for both an academic audience and a general readership.

The purpose of this edited collection is to place The Mummy into a cultural and theoretical context, as well as critically analyze the franchise, its connections to other genre films, and its continued influence.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Resurgent interest in Brendan Fraser/“Brenaissance”
• Stephen Sommers as an auteur
• Representation of Egypt in popular culture and early filmic representation
• Eastern mythology/culture/religion
• Exoticism of non-western cultures
• Post/De-colonialism
• Heroic representation
• Body horror
• Eco-horror/Ecocriticism
• Gender representation
• Toxic depictions in film
• Queer/LGBTQ+ representation
• Meme/GIF culture
• Psychoanalysis
• Generational nostalgia
• Element of music/film scoring
• Genre hybridity
• Film cycles/reboots/retcons (such as The Scorpion King, The Mummy animated series, Universal Classic Monsters, Hammer Studios, Dark Universe, etc.) and related adventure/archaeological-driven films (such as Ark of the Sun God, The Sphinx, The Librarian franchise, etc.)

Please send abstracts of 300 – 500 words with a working title and five (5) keywords, accompanied by a short third-person author bio (100 words max), to mummybookproject@gmail.com as a Word document. The collection is being considered by a leading academic press.

CFP American Nightmares Symposium (10/31/2023; Salem, MA 3/21-24/2024)

Cross-posted from the Poe Studies Association list:


Call For Proposals

AMERICAN NIGHTMARES: THE INAUGURAL SYMPOSIUM OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF THE AMERICAN GOTHIC

March 21st – 23rd, 2024

Salem, Massachusetts



Conference director: Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, Central Michigan University

With the kind support of the American Literature Association





Proposals for individual papers, 3- or 4-person paper sessions, and 5-person roundtable sessions are solicited for AMERICAN NIGHTMARES: the inaugural symposium of the Society for the Study of the American Gothic.



This intimate event will be held at the iconic and charming Hawthorne Hotel in the heart of Salem, Massachusetts (a hotel ranked as among the most haunted hotels in America!) Author Paul Tremblay will deliver a keynote reading.



Proposals are welcome on all aspects of the American Gothic, including literature, film, television, gaming, music, podcasts, and new media. Proposals on keynote author Paul Tremblay are particularly welcome.

• Proposals for individual papers should be 200 words and include an abbreviated CV indicating academic affiliation and relevant publications, presentations, teaching, and/or research related to the topic of the presentation.
• Proposals for 3- or 4-person paper sessions should include abstracts and abbreviated CVs for each participant.
• Proposals for 5-person roundtables should explain the focus of the roundtable, identify the contribution of each participant, and provide abbreviated CVs for all involved.

Proposals and questions may be directed to the conference director, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, at Jeffrey.Weinstock@cmich.edu. Please note: due to space constraints, this will be a relatively small event and audio-visual support will be limited

THE DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS is October 31st, 2023.



Current plans call for an opening event on Thursday evening, March 21; full sessions and a keynote talk on Friday (9am-6pm); and sessions on Saturday from 9 am until 3:30 with a closing reception. Registration for the event will be $250 USD and will include two breakfasts at the hotel, two lunches at the hotel, a Friday evening reception, and a Saturday afternoon reception. (Meals and the receptions are available to all who register, regardless of whether or not you choose to stay at the hotel). A tour of “haunted Salem” will be available as an add-on.



Additional information about the Symposium and registration as it becomes available will be available on the SSAG website at http://www.americangothicsociety.com. Interested parties are invited to join the SSAG facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/groups/americangothicsociety.

Upcoming Film - Thanksgiving

Another trailer for an upcoming film. Mundane horror in this (I think).

Upcoming Film - No One Will Save You

 A few posts on upcoming films and shows.  

CFP Queer Monsters and Monstrous Queers: Abominable Others in Literature and Film (9/30/2023; NeMLA 3/7-10/2023)

Queer Monsters and Monstrous Queers: Abominable Others in Literature and Film

deadline for submissions:
September 30, 2023

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

contact email:
cylagan2@uwo.ca


source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/06/12/queer-monsters-and-monstrous-queers-abominable-others-in-literature-and-film

What makes a monster? While monsters take on multiple forms—vampires, werewolves, cannibals, demons, the undead, and the uncanny, to name a few—societies from all over the world remain collectively enamored by the mystery, danger, and grotesquerie of monsters. Monsters and monstrosity inhabit cultural imaginaries as much as historic landscapes, insofar as such concepts construct, explain, or critique “the vulnerable, pathetic fantasy we distort in our simultaneous search for love and property… [t]he mystery we eliminate to create the revolt of simple things, goods, that desire mystery” (William Carlos Williams). Queerness, as both a mode of experience and of expression, can be critically interrogated through the same lens of definitive Otherness that pervades much of the discourse around monsters and monstrosity. Some of these discourses include: embodiment and the limits of bodies; savagery and civility; xenophobia and heterogeneity; nature and abomination; and desire and disgust. This session will provide space to analyze the multiple ways that monster and queer narratives may be symptomatic, perhaps even constitutive, of the discursive manner that sociocultural views of normalcy and normativity are established.

Through an examination of diverse media sources (literature, art, film, etc.), this session aims to reflect on the strange ways that monstrosity and queerness are entwined, and how both are instrumentalized within ideological frameworks that shape the contours of our intersectional experience. In looking at the interpretive value of conceiving monsters-as-queers and queers-as-monsters, this session foregrounds the possibility of reimagining the affects of fear and fascination beyond the conventional ways that they are deployed in readings of monster and queer narratives. Of special interest are presentations that provide insight on literary and cultural representations of queer/monstrosity as phenomena that can signify co-inherence with, or resistance against, social imaginaries that perpetuate dominant discourses of biopower and normalcy. Other paper topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:

1. Subversive queer/monstrous identities in literature and film;
2. Queer horror or monstrosity auteurs; the Grotesque;
3. Queer/monstrous eroticism, pornography, or fetishization;
4. Queer/monstrous intertextuality and self-reflexivity;
5. Countercanonical readings of “classic” queer/monstrous narratives;
6. Inversions, perversions, and hybridizations

Please submit proposals of 250 to 300 words, with a bio of at most 100 words, on how you intend to address one or more of the talking points above. All proposals must be submitted by September 30, 2023 through the NeMLA portal: https://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention.html

NeMLA's 55th Annual Convention will be held in-person in Boston, MA on March 7-10, 2024.

For inquiries, you may contact Christian Ylagan at cylagan2@uwo.ca.


Last updated June 20, 2023

CFP Villainous Science: Cloning, Experimentation, and Hybridization in Transmedia Cultures and Storytelling (8/14/2023; NEPCA online 10/12-14/2023)

Villainous Science: Cloning, Experimentation, and Hybridization in Transmedia Cultures and Storytelling

Monsters & the Monstrous Area Special Session

Organizer: Michael A. Torregrossa, Monsters & the Monstrous Area Chair

2023 Annual Conference of the Northeast Popular Culture Association

Online: 12-14 October 2023

Objective

For this event, NEPCA’s Monsters & the Monstrous Area invites proposals for papers for sessions focused on the concept of Villainous Science: Cloning, Experimentation, and Hybridization in Transmedia Cultures and Storytelling. Further details are included below.

Please see the shared Google Doc for the full call with a list of suggested topics: https://tinyurl.com/Villainous-Science-NEPCA-2023.




Through these sessions on Villainous Science: Cloning, Experimentation, and Hybridization in Transmedia Cultures and Storytelling, we are looking to promote interdisciplinary perspectives on cloning, experimentation, and hybridization centered around issues of adaptation, appropriation, and transformation as revealed through aspects of transmediality. Submissions might include perspectives from art, comics, film, game, gender, literary, popular culture, and/or religious studies as well as approaches through ecocritical, philosophical, and/or sociological lenses. Papers should focus on some aspect of the ways cloning, experimentation, and hybridization have been represented over time (from their origins in history or creative texts) and in multiple incarnations as shown in their various adaptations in different contemporary (trans)media, including animation, comics, exhibitions, fiction, films, games and gaming (either live-action or electronic/video), graphic novels, illustration, manga, merchandise, performance, television programing, tourist attractions, virtual reality, and the visual arts. Ideas about cloning, experimentation, and hybridization might be revealed in a variety of genres, such as fantasy, horror, Gothic, science fiction, thrillers, and the Weird.




Please see the shared Google Doc for the full call with a list of suggested topics: https://tinyurl.com/Villainous-Science-NEPCA-2023.

Submission Information

The 2023 Northeast Popular Culture Association (a.k.a. NEPCA) will host its annual conference this fall as a virtual conference from Thursday, October 12-Saturday, October 14. Thursday’s session will be held in the late afternoon-evening (EST), Friday’s session will be held mid-afternoon into the evening (EST), and Saturday’s session will be from morning until midday (EST).



Please make your submissions to the Area Chair, Michael A. Torregrossa, by 14 August 2023, using NEPCA’s automated system accessible from the conference information page at https://nepca.blog/2023-annual-conference/. Please address any questions to the Area Chair at popular.preternaturaliana@gmail.com.



Accepted papers will also be considered (with revision) for an essay collection to be part of the new book series “Villains and Creatures” edited by Antonio Sanna.



The registration costs are as followed: Standard price: $50 + $5.20 Eventbrite fee or Updated & Lifetime Members & Past NEPCA Presidents: $15.00 + $2.85 Eventbrite fee. (“Updated members” are people who have paid the membership dues after 11/1/2022 (that is, after the last conference.)

We recognize that while this makes the conference more accessible in terms of cost, it still may be prohibitive to some. In that case, we strongly encourage folks to complete this Request for 2023 Conference Access. Please review the explanation at the top and complete the form by no later than Sunday, September 10, 2023, by 11:59 pm EST. People will be notified by Wednesday, September 13 about their status.



Thanks for your interest.

Again, please address any questions and/or concerns to the Area Chair at popular.preternaturaliana@gmail.com.

CFP Dying of Laughter: Horror Spoofs and Parody (9/13/2023)

Dying of Laughter: Horror Spoofs and Parody

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/06/21/dying-of-laughter-horror-spoofs-and-parody.

deadline for submissions:
September 13, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Reece Goodall, University of Warwick

contact email:
r.a.goodall@warwick.ac.uk



A young woman played by a big-name actress is home alone, making popcorn. She receives a phone call from a mysterious man, who wants to know her favourite scary movie. When she asks why the caller wants to know her name, he provides a terrifying answer: “I want to know who I’m looking at.” But, no sooner has this wham line been uttered than the tension turns to comedy – we cut to the killer, enjoying a spread of Carmen Electra in Playtime magazine. This is the beginning to the successful Scary Movie, evoking the canonical Scream in a parodic manner in order to produce audience laughter. A further four Scary Movie films followed, which were all commercially successful if increasingly critically derided, and this series is just one example that demonstrates an audience for horror parody.

Despite a proven interest from viewers, scholarship has been slow to dig deep into parody on our screens. Specifically, although writing on parody has acknowledged the ways that parody and spoof texts play with genre more generally, there is space for focused work taking up the question of how parody operates within particular genres. This is, in part, because there have been very few major academic studies of parody as a mode in visual media in its own right, with the exception of Wes Gehring’s Parody as Film Genre (1999) and Dan Harries’ Film Parody (2000). Neil Archer has written about parody in English media (2017), and Simon Bacon has edited a collection on spoof and comedic depictions of the vampire (2022), but there is still room for a much-needed collection on the theoretical and industrial intersections between parodies/spoofs and the horror genre.

The horror genre is an interesting target for parodising and spoofing, and the resultant texts often sit in a novel place on the affectual scale – they send up texts designing to make you scream in order to make you laugh. Horror visual media has consistently been spoofed and parodised throughout its history, proving a rich well of material for comedy writers and directors. Major comedy stars (such as Mel Brooks, Leslie Nielsen and Gene Wilder) have been involved with this particular mode, and it has even been able to draw on canonical actors such as Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr.

The collection will be the first to provide a sustained interrogation of the relationship between parodies/spoofs and the horror genre, exploring an underdiscussed but significant part of the genre corpus. It will bring together writing on major canonical spoofs and underdiscussed films, as well as expanding the scholarly writing on horror spoofs into non-Hollywood and non-Anglophone films and other forms of media.

Suggested topics for this proposed collection include, but are not restricted to:

• Re-evaluations of canonical horror spoof and parody texts (Abbott and Costello Meet... series, Carry On Screaming!, Young Frankenstein, Scary Movie)
• Evaluations of underdiscussed horror spoofs and parodies (Student Bodies, Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Stan Helsing)
• Theoretical discussions of the relationship between a horror film/subgenre and its parody
• Horror parodies/spoofs and genre theory
• Representations of gender in horror spoofs and parodies
• Representations of race in horror spoofs and parodies
• Horror spoofs and parodies on television (The Simpsons ‘Treehouse of Horror’ episodes, Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window, The Scooby-Doo Project) and other forms of media (Silence! The Musical)
• Horror spoofs and parodies in a non-Hollywood context (What We Do In The Shadows, Shaun of the Dead), particularly those emerging from non-Anglophone media systems (Au secours!, Bad Trip 3D, Il mio amico Jekyll)
• Audience engagement with horror spoof and parody
• Industrial analysis of horror spoof and parody
• Canonical comedy stars (Abbott and Costello, Mel Brooks, Leslie Nielsen) and horror spoofs/parodies
• Marlon Wayans and spoof horror (Scary Movie, Scary Movie 2, A Haunted House)
• Post-modernism, irony, and the horror spoof/parody

Please send an abstract of no more than 300 words and an academic bio of no more than 100 words to Reece Goodall (r.a.goodall@warwick.ac.uk) by 13 September 2023. All notifications of acceptance will be emailed no later than 27 September 2023. If an abstract is accepted, essays can be expected to be between 6,000 and 7,000 words in length (including references). University of Wales Press has expressed interest in the volume as part of their Horror Studies series.

Further inquiries should be sent to Reece Goodall (r.a.goodall@warwick.ac.uk).



Last updated June 27, 2023

New Book: Penny Dreadful and Adaptation: Reanimating and Transforming the Monster

Penny Dreadful and Adaptation: Reanimating and Transforming the Monster

Editors: Julie Grossman and Will Scheibel

Palgrave Macmillan, 2023

Available from SpringerLink in print, as an ebook, and as individual chapters. Full details at https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-12180-7. 


Experiments with recent interdisciplinary methodologies to understand the mechanisms of adaptation more broadly


Conceptualizes adaptation beyond the traditional dyad of literature and screen media


Explores the relationship between text, context, and intertext to understand how meaning is made and remade


Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture (PSADVC)

About this book

This edited collection is the first book-length critical study of the Showtime-Sky Atlantic television series Penny Dreadful (2014-2016), which also includes an analysis of Showtime’s 2020 spin-off City of Angels. Chapters examine the status of the series as a work of twenty-first-century cable television, contemporary Gothic-horror, and intermedial adaptation, spanning sources as diverse as eighteenth and nineteenth-century British fiction and poetry, American dime novels, theatrical performance, Hollywood movies, and fan practices. Featuring iconic monsters such as Dr. Frankenstein and his Creature, the “bride” of Frankenstein, Dracula, the werewolf, Dorian Gray, and Dr. Jekyll, Penny Dreadful is a mash-up of familiar texts and new Gothic figures such as spiritualist Vanessa Ives, played by the magnetic Eva Green. As a recent example of adapting multiple sources in different media, Penny Dreadful has as much to say about the Romantic and Victorian eras as it does about our present-day fascination with screen monsters.

Contents

Front Matter

Pages i-xviii



Introduction

Julie Grossman, Will Scheibel

Pages 1-11



Welcome to the Night: Issues of Reading and Media

The Medium Is the Model

Thomas Leitch

Pages 15-30

The Adaptive Marketing of Penny Dreadful: Listening to The Dreadfuls

Christine Becker

Pages 31-47

Penny Dreadful and Frankensteinian Collection: Museums, Anthologies, and Other Monstrous Media from Shelley to Showtime

Mike Goode

Pages 49-67



Anatomy of a Monster: Horror and the Gothic in Literature and on the Screen

In the House of the Night Creatures: Penny Dreadful’s Dracula

Joan Hawkins

Pages 71-86

Vampirism, Blood, and Memory in Penny Dreadful and Only Lovers Left Alive

Luciana Tamas, Eckart Voigts

Pages 87-104

“The Dead Place”: Cosmopolitan Gothic in Penny Dreadful’s London

Kendall R. Phillips

Pages 105-120

Adapting the Universal Classic Monsters in Penny Dreadful: An Uncanny Resurrection

Will Scheibel

Pages 121-137



The Monster Unbound: Theatrical Performance, Western Dime Novels, and TV Noir

Penny Dreadful and the Stage: Lessons in Horror and Heritage

Shannon Wells-Lassagne

Pages 141-155

Ethan Chandler, Penny Dreadful, and the Dime Novel; or, Dancing with American Werewolves in London

Ann M. Ryan

Pages 157-176

Dreadful Noir, Adaptation, and City of Angels: “Monsters, All, Are We Not?”

Julie Grossman, Phillip Novak

Pages 177-193



Meanings of Monstrosity: Identity, Difference, and Experience

Penny Dreadful’s Palimpsestuous Bride of Frankenstein

Lissette Lopez Szwydky

Pages 197-215

Predators Far and Near: The Sadean Gothic in Penny Dreadful

Lindsay Hallam

Pages 217-232

“All Those Sacred Midnight Things”: Queer Authorship, Veiled Desire, and Divine Transgression in Penny Dreadful

James Bogdanski

Pages 233-252

Borderland Identities in Penny Dreadful: City of Angels

Seda Öz

Pages 253-267



Back Matter

Pages 269-282

About the editors

Julie Grossman is a professor of English and Communication and Film Studies at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, NY, USA. Her monographs include Literature, Film, and Their Hideous Progeny (2015), Ida Lupino, Director (with Therese Grisham, 2017), Twin Peaks (with Will Scheibel, 2020), and The Femme Fatale (2020). She is co-editor (with R. Barton Palmer) of the essay collection Adaptation in Visual Culture (2017) and (with Marc C. Conner and R. Barton Palmer) Screening Contemporary Irish Fiction and Drama (2022).

Will Scheibel is an associate professor of English at Syracuse University, USA, where he teaches film and screen studies. He is the author of Gene Tierney: Star of Hollywood’s Home Front (2022) and, with Julie Grossman, co-author of Twin Peaks (2020).

New Book: The Medial Afterlives of H.P. Lovecraft: Comic, Film, Podcast, TV, Games

The Medial Afterlives of H. P. Lovecraft: Comic, Film, Podcast, TV, Games

Editors: Tim Lanzendörfer and Max José Dreysse Passos de Carvalho

Palgrave Macmillan, 2023

Available from SpringerLink in print, as an ebook, and as individual chapters.

More details at https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-13765-5.


This book is the first to sustainedly engage with the whole breadth of adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft


Includes not just film and TV, but also comics, podcasts, video games, and board games


Develops an affordance-based theory of adaptation by recourse to the example of Lovecraft

About this book

Medial Afterlives of H.P. Lovecraft brings together essays on the theory and practice of adapting H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction and the Lovecraftian. It draws on recent adaptation theory as well as broader discourses around media affordances to give an overview over the presence of Lovecraft in contemporary media as well as the importance of contemporary media in shaping what we take Lovecraft’s legacy to be. Discussing a wide array of medial forms, from film and TV to comics, podcasts, and video and board games, and bringing together an international group of scholars, the volume analyzes individual instances of adaptation as well as the larger concern of what it is possible to learn about adaptation from the example of H.P. Lovecraft, and how we construct Lovecraft and the Lovecraftian today in adaptation. Medial Afterlives of H.P. Lovecraft is focused on an academic audience, but it will nonetheless hold interest for all readers interested in Lovecraft today.

Contents

Front Matter

Pages i-xxvi



Theory

Lovecraft, the Lovecraftian, and Adaptation: Problems of Philosophy and Practice

Max José Dreysse Passos de Carvalho, Tim Lanzendörfer

Pages 3-25

Disseminating Lovecraft: The Proliferation of Unsanctioned Derivative Works in the Absence of an Operable Copyright Monopoly

Nathaniel R. Wallace

Pages 27-44

When Adaptation Precedes the Texts: The Spread of Lovecraftian Horror in Thailand

Latthapol Khachonkitkosol

Pages 45-60



Comics

Conveying Cosmicism: Visual Interpretations of Lovecraft

Rebecca Janicker

Pages 63-75

The Problematic of Providence: Adaptation as a Process of Individuation

Per Israelson

Pages 77-99

Twice Told Tale: Examining Comics Adaptations of At the Mountains of Madness

Tom Shapira

Pages 101-119



Film and TV

Image, Insoluble: Filming the Cosmic in The Colour Out of Space

Shrabani Basu, Dibyakusum Ray

Pages 123-137

The Threshold of Horror: Indeterminate Space, Place and the Material in Film Adaptations of Lovecraft’s The Colour Out of Space (1927)

Gerard Gibson

Pages 139-158

Cthulhoo-Dooby-Doo!: The Re-animation of Lovecraft (and Racism) Through Subcultural Capital

Christina M. Knopf

Pages 159-172

Dispatches from Carcosa: Murder, Redemption and Reincarnating the Gothic in HBO’s True Detective

Patrick J. Lang

Pages 173-189

Lovecraft Country: Horror, Race, and the Dark Other

Dan Hassler-Forest

Pages 191-204

The Lovecraftian Festive Hoax: Readers Between Reality and Fiction

Valentino Paccosi

Pages 205-220



Podcasts

“In My Tortured Ears There Sounds Unceasingly a Nightmare”: H. P. Lovecraft and Horror Audio

Richard J. Hand

Pages 223-240

The Lovecraft Investigations as Mythos Metatext

Justin Mullis

Pages 241-259



Video Games

Head Games: Adapting Lovecraft Beyond Survival Horror

Kevin M. Flanagan

Pages 263-277

The Crisis of Third Modernity: Video Game Adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft in The Sinking City

Erada Adel Almutairi, Tim Lanzendörfer

Pages 279-293

Authorship Discourse and Lovecraftian Video Games

Serenay Günal, Colleen Kennedy-Karpat

Pages 295-314



Analog Games

Challenging the Expressive Power of Board Games: Adapting H.P. Lovecraft in Arkham Horror and Mountains of Madness

Torben Quasdorf

Pages 317-337

Playing the Race Card: Lovecraftian Play Spaces and Tentacular Sympoiesis in the Arkham Horror Board Game

Steffen Wöll, Amelie Rieß

Pages 339-357



Back Matter

Pages 359-367

About the editors

Tim Lanzendörfer is research assistant professor of American Studies at Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany. He has published widely in contemporary literature and media. His most recent books are the forthcoming Utopian Pasts and Futures in the Contemporary American Novel (2023) and the Routledge Companion to the British and North American Literary Magazine (2021).

Max José Dreysse Passos do Carvalho is a graduate student of American Studies at Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany. His research and forthcoming publications concentrates on game studies and philosophy.

CFP Demystifying Mystic Falls: Race and Racism in The Vampire Diaries Franchise Collection (7/31/2023)

One more for the night:

Demystifying Mystic Falls: Race and Racism in The Vampire Diaries Franchise

deadline for submissions:
July 31, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Deanna P. Koretsky, Spelman College

contact email:
dkoretsk@spelman.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/05/08/demystifying-mystic-falls-race-and-racism-in-the-vampire-diaries-franchise

Demystifying Mystic Falls: Race and Racism in The Vampire Diaries Franchise

From the time it premiered on The CW in 2009, The Vampire Diaries was duly castigated in the media for uncritically tiptoeing around Civil War “lost cause” mythology and overtly tokenizing its Black characters. As the public later learned, minoritized actors were also treated poorly behind the scenes. Still, the series became a cultural juggernaut, boasting two successful spin-offs (The Originals and Legacies), reviving the book series on which the show was based, and inspiring a cottage industry of franchise-related institutions and conventions that, as of 2023, is just beginning to take off.

Although vampire narratives have long been read as vehicles of social disruption, The Vampire Diaries and its spin-offs consistently privilege white, heteropatriarchal social orders. With the cancellation of Legacies last June presumably marking the end of The Vampire Diaries’ extended universe, the time is right to assess the franchise as a whole and reflect on what it tells us about the culture that continues to eagerly embrace it.

To that end, essays are invited for an edited volume exploring the role that race and racism play in the narrative worlds of The Vampire Diaries, The Originals, and Legacies, as well as the real world that consumes them. This volume will explore how race intersects with other identity categories (gender, sexuality, disability, class, etc.) on television and in the book series; how it structures power and agency in the storyworlds and behind the scenes; how it permeates the fan cultures associated with the franchise; and how ongoing fascination with the series reflects the tumultuous years of the Obama and Trump presidencies, the coronavirus pandemic, the racial uprisings of 2020, and beyond.

Possible topics may include (but are certainly not limited to):

• The relationship between the undead, social death, and racial politics
• Black witches, Native American spirits, Confederate and Viking vampires, and other overtly racialized monsters and heroes
• The series’ rewritings of local and global racial histories
• The role of race in the series’ fan cultures, especially in the rise of franchise-inspired businesses and conventions in the small Southern towns where the shows were shot
• How The Vampire Diaries reflects/challenges depictions of race in other popular vampire narratives, such as its immediate contemporaries Twilight and True Blood, and its clearest predecessor, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• How media and fan critiques shaped the franchise’s treatment of minoritized characters and actors within a single series or across all three

For consideration, please submit a 300-word abstract, reference list of 3-5 peer-reviewed sources, and 50-word author biography with current affiliation and email address to dkoretsk@spelman.edu

Final essays should be between 5000 and 7000 words and follow the Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed. Please use 12 pt. Times New Roman font (including endnotes), double space throughout, with 1-inch margins all around.



Projected schedule (subject to change):

Abstract/Bio/References July 31, 2023

Acceptance Notice August 31, 2023

First Draft December 30, 2023

First Edit May 31, 2024

Final Version July 31, 2024




Last updated May 9, 2023

CFP Gothic Studies Area (6/30/2023; MAPACA Philadelphia 11/9-11/2023)

MAPACA: Gothic Studies

deadline for submissions:
June 30, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association: Gothic Studies Area

contact email:
wsmcmasters@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/05/10/mapaca-gothic-studies



Gothic Studies CFP for MAPACA 2023: The Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association is accepting proposals until June 30 for their 2023 conference, Nov 9 - 11, in Philadelphia, PA. General guidelines can be found at mapaca.net and below. Please consider submitting to the Gothic Studies area: https://mapaca.net/areas/gothic-studies



The Gothic Studies area invites proposals which engage with the genre and culture of the Gothic as it is represented in film, television, literature, art, and society. We are especially interested in ways that the Gothic aesthetic defines itself against other predominate modes, or genres, of storytelling or culture. We also invite proposals concerned with subgenres of the Gothic across media, like the American Gothic, southern Gothic, feminine Gothic, the “weird tale,” and the ecoGothic as represented film, television, literature, music, fashion, art, and culture.

For more information and for the general CFP, visit mapaca.net



Last updated May 11, 2023

CFP Fright Nights: Live Halloween Horror Events Collection (7/24/2023)

Fright Nights: Live Halloween Horror Events

deadline for submissions:
July 24, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Kieran Foster/Cassie Brummitt

contact email:
kieran.foster@nottingham.ac.uk

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/05/04/fright-nights-live-halloween-horror-events

Fright Nights: Live Halloween Horror Events

CALL FOR CHAPTERS: EDITED COLLECTION



Editors: Kieran Foster, University of Nottingham (UK), and Cassie Brummitt, University of Nottingham (UK)



Horror’s origins - with its roots in folklore, mythology and the oral tradition - stretch much further back in time than screen media, and beyond even ‘canonical’ literature such as Frankenstein and Dracula. However, in the 20th century and beyond, horror as a media genre has become big business, especially in the screen industries where horror film and television franchises have become globally-exploited intellectual properties ripe for spin-offs, sequels, remakes, transmedia world-building and merchandising (Fleury and Mamber 2019, Harris 2010, Mee 2022).



What remains less explored in extant scholarly literature, which this edited collection intends to address, is the phenomenon of space and place within horror’s commercial logics. Importantly, the past few decades have seen a rise in immersive, interactive environments that draw on horror imagery as an indelible part of the attraction. Events such as escape rooms, immersive experiences and fan-led celebratory events enable horror intellectual property to escape the confines of the big and small screen to pervade cultural spaces globally (Kennedy 2018, Ndalianis 2010). These physical, participatory, often visceral environments have implications for the ways in which horror properties are materialised, remediated, and engaged with.



These kinds of immersive attractions are no more popular than at Halloween, where it has become increasingly common to see both branded and non-branded horror events take place across the globe. For example, in the UK, pop-up ‘scream parks’ such as York Maze’s ‘HallowScream’, or theme park events such as ‘Fright Nights’ at Thorpe Park, draw on non-branded horror, folklore and supernatural imagery. Meanwhile, internationally, events such as ‘Halloween Horror Nights’ (at Universal Studio sites in Orlando, Hollywood, Singapore and Japan) and ‘Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party’ (at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom in Orlando and Disneyland Paris) exploit branded iconography, IP, and franchises.



Horror’s preoccupation with the abject and the visceral offers arguably unique opportunities to translate cultural fears into a physically inhabitable and interactable experience. Seeking to address this important phenomenon, this edited collection will examine Halloween-focused horror events as an under-explored but sizable part of horror media’s global creative and commercial logics, both historically and contemporarily.



We are seeking abstracts of up to 250 words in response to this theme (plus author biography up to 100 words). The form of contributions can be flexible, whether a standard chapter, an interview (for example, with a practitioner, an industry professional, or fans), an autoethnographic piece, or another creative means of exploring the topic.



Topics may include but are not limited to:

• Issues of labour in Halloween horror events
• Marketing and promotional discourses of Halloween horror events
• Franchising and intellectual property in Halloween horror events
• Immersion and interactivity
• Halloween horror events as film, media or literary tourism
• Notions of play and lusory attitudes to Halloween horror events
• Performance and emotion in Halloween horror events
• Audience engagement and experience
• Fan studies of horror events
• Narratives and storytelling
• Industrial relationships, logics and practices

Please send your abstract and bio to Dr. Kieran Foster (kieran.foster@nottingham.ac.uk) and Dr. Cassie Brummitt (cassie.brummitt@nottingham.ac.uk). The deadline for abstracts is July 24th 2023.



Last updated May 9, 2023

CFP A24 and Horror Cinema Collection (6/15/2023)

A24 and Horror Cinema

deadline for submissions:
June 15, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Todd Platts Piedmont Virginia Community College

contact email:
toddkplatts@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/03/30/a24-and-horror-cinema

Since its formation in 2012, A24 has curated a distinctive horror (and horror adjacent) oeuvre with films like Tusk (2014), The Witch (2016), Green Room (2016), The Monster (2016), The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2016), It Comes at Night (2017), A Ghost Story (2017), The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017), Hereditary (2018), Slice (2018), High Life (2019), Midsommmar (2019), The Lighthouse (2019), In Fabric (2019), Saint Maud (2021), False Positive (2021), The Green Knight (2021), Lamb (2021), X (2022), Men (2022), Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022), and Pearl (2022) many of which have been termed post- and elevated horror among other problematic and highly contested sobriquets.

Despite occupying a central position in the production of cinematic horror, A24 has elided academic scrutiny. To date, there exists a small scattering of studies that partially focus on a company that has grown in prominence and commands significant attention from the business and trade press. To fill this gap, proposed collection will offer the first in-depth academic analysis of A24’s horror films.

Suggested topics for this proposed collection include but are not restricted to: 

• A24’s business model (e.g., budgeting, marketing, theatrical releasing, nontheatrical releasing, distribution)
• A24’s production history and/or promotional strategies
• Essays documenting A24’s use of auteurism or director profiles (e.g., Ari Aster, David Lowery, Ti West)
• Essays on significant standalone films (e.g., It Comes at Night, A Ghost Story, Saint Maud)
• A24’s relation to elevated horror
• A24 films and the audience

Please send a 150–300 word abstract and a 50–100 word academic biography to Todd Platts (toddkplatts@gmail.com) by June 15, 2023.

Preference will be given to proposals received by June 15, 2023. All notifications of acceptance will be emailed no later than June 30, 2023. If an abstract is accepted, essays can be expected to be between 6,000 and 7,500 words in length (including references). Edinburgh University Press has expressed interest in the volume as part of their 21st Century Horror series.

Further inquiries should be sent to Todd Platts (toddkplatts@gmail.com).



Last updated April 4, 2023

CFP Special Section: Monstrous New Orleans (6/15/2023; Popular Culture Association South, New Orleans 9/28-30/2023)

Monstrous New Orleans

deadline for submissions:
June 15, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Popular Culture Association South

contact email:
pcavampires@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/05/05/monstrous-new-orleans


New Orleans is known as one of the most haunted cities in the U.S. and as a haven for vampires (thank you, Anne Rice), but there are so many more monsters there than ghosts and vampires. With such a rich tradition of magic and the paranormal, New Orleans dazzles artists and scholars alike, inviting us all into the mysteries. To celebrate the dark depths of the city, PCAS welcomes papers or presentations that explore the monsters and the monstrous that roam the streets and psyches of New Orleans.



To have your proposal/abstract considered for this special session, please submit your proposal/abstract of approximately 250 words to pcavampires@gmail.com



NOTE: In order to be considered for the Special Section: Monstrous New Orleans please follow the instructions above rather than submitting through the PCAS/ ACAS website. Everyone is invited to submit one academic paper and can, in addition, participate in a round-table discussion or creative session. Only those proposals intended for Monstrous New Orleans should be submitted as outlined above; the PCAS/ ACAS website has an online submission form for the General Call.



The conference will be held in New Orleans, Sept. 28-30, 2023.



Last updated May 9, 2023

CFP Literary Monsters (6/15/2023; SAMLA Atlanta 11/9-11/2023)

Literary Monsters

deadline for submissions:
June 15, 2023

full name / name of organization:
SAMLA / South Atlantic Modern Language Association

contact email:
tracie.provost@mga.edu

soure: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/04/18/literary-monsters

SAMLA’s 95th annual conference, (In)Security: The Future of Literature and Language Studies, will be held at the Atlanta Marriott Buckhead Hotel & Conference Center in Atlanta, Georgia this year from November 9-11. Those accepted must be members of SAMLA to present. You can find more information at: https://samla.memberclicks.net/



Literary Monsters Panel

In today's culture, it's almost impossible to avoid "monsters." Straight from mythology and legend, these fantastic creatures traipse across our television screens and the pages of our books. Over centuries and across cultures, the inhuman have represented numerous cultural fears and, in more recent times, desires. They are Other. They are Us. This panel will explore the literal monsters--whether they be mythological, extraterrestrial, or man-made--that populate fiction and film, delving into the cultural, psychological and/or theoretical implications.



Please submit a 250-300 word abstract, a brief bio, and any A/V needs by June 15, 2023 to Tracie Provost, Middle Georgia State University, at tracie.provost@mga.edu.



Last updated April 27, 2023

CFP Casas Tomadas: Monsters and Metaphors on the Periphery of Latin American Literature (7/30/2023)

Call for Book Chapters: "Casas Tomadas: Monsters and Metaphors on the Periphery of Latin American Literature"

deadline for submissions:
July 30, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Carlos A. Gonzalez

contact email:
cgonzalez@g.harvard.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/04/24/call-for-book-chapters-casas-tomadas-monsters-and-metaphors-on-the-periphery-of-latin

Vernon Press invites book chapters for an edited volume on the subject of "Casas Tomadas: Monsters and Metaphors on the Periphery of Latin American Literature."

Editor: Carlos A. González (Harvard University)

Monsters have always played an important role in the literature of Latin America, and have managed to persist in the national imaginations from which hispano- and lusophone writers draw their own source material. Dictators, strongmen, and organized crime roam the peripheries of language and history side by side with monsters, specters, and creatures horrible to behold.
This edited volume will draw together scholarship exploring the ways in which monsters, of the imagination and of history, persist in the literature, politics, language, and culture of Latin America, drawing from a wide array of sources and disciplines. It will also explore the role of literature in ensuring, processing, and reimagining the ongoing survival of the monstrous, with perhaps surprising results. It aims to explore the several manifestations of monsters and monstrosity in literature, arts, film and other Latin American media, by investigating the ever-changing forms they assume from early modernity to the present.
We welcome submissions that examine the ways in which monsters and monstrosity have been, and continue to be, depicted across temporal and geographical lines.

Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Monsters and monstrosity in myth and folk-lore
• The literary and artistic representation of monsters through time
• The subversion of the monster trope in contemporary art and literature
• The representation of monstrous Others
• The intersection of race, class, sexuality, and gender in the representation of monsters and monstrosity
• The ethics of monsters or monstrous others

We encourage submissions from scholars of all backgrounds and levels of experience. Particularly welcome are interdisciplinary and transcultural contributions which highlight the subversive power of monsters, as well as challenging the category of monstrosity as a whole.

Please submit a 250-word abstract and a brief biography to Carlos A. González, cgonzalez@g.harvard.edu, by July 30th, 2023.

Full papers should be no longer than 8.000 words and will be due by Nov 30th, 2023. All submissions will be peer-reviewed.

We look forward to receiving your submissions and engaging in a rich and thought-provoking exchange on the topic of monstrosity and monsters in Latin American culture, literature, and the arts.



Last updated April 27, 2023

CFP Medieval Monstrosities Online Symposium (9/15/2023; online 10/27/2023)

Medieval Monstrosities

deadline for submissions:
September 15, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Illinois Medieval Association

contact email:
mwgeorge.51@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/05/10/medieval-monstrosities

Illinois Medieval Association Annual Symposium: Medieval Monstrosities

October 27, 2023, 3:00 pm via Zoom

The Illinois Medieval Association is now accepting proposals for our annual Halloween session: Medieval Monstrosities. This session is part of our annual Symposium, which runs online throughout the year. Topics are open to any work on the Middle Ages involving the monstrous, supernatural, strange, and/or bizarre. The Symposium aims to engage all disciplines and geographical areas of medieval studies. The session will be free and online, and papers presented at the session are eligible for submission to Essays in Medieval Studies, IMA's annual, peer-reviewed proceedings volume, published annually by the West Virginia University Press and available via Project Muse. The session is online via Zoom and completely free.

To submit, please send a proposal by August 20 of no more than 300 words to mwgeorge.51@gmail.com. Include your name, institutional affiliation (if any), the title of the proposed paper, and your proposal narrative.



Last updated May 12, 2023

CFP: “Death, Sickness, and Plagues in 19th-century British Literature” Collection (proposals by 5/1/2023)

Call for Book Chapters: “Death, Sickness, and Plagues in 19th-century British Literature”

deadline for submissions:
May 1, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Editor

contact email:
reyam.rammahi@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/02/15/call-for-book-chapters-%E2%80%9Cdeath-sickness-and-plagues-in-19th-century-british-literature

Vernon Press invites book chapter proposals for the forthcoming edited volume “Death, Sickness, and Plagues in 19th-century British Literature”, edited by Reyam Rammahi.

Much research has already been done on some of the themes of interest to this volume, especially in relation to Victorian literature and its depiction of womanhood and sickness. Still, with the continuing and growing interest in race and gender studies, more is yet to be explored. The importance of this volume lies in its focus on critical issues for today’s literary studies such as race, gender, and the apocalypse and the interconnectedness of these issues. The volume is aimed at including such voices that tackle readings of such political implications in unprecedented ways. As more studies continue to emerge that apply postcolonial and feminist theories, for instance, to the works of the nineteenth century, this collection aims to combine such readings under the specified theme to provide a connection among a number of literary works through issues of illness, race, gender, and politics. Whether in the Brontë sisters’ works or Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or other works, less known or less discussed, we welcome studies that include such issues as the East/West binary, race, and oppositions between warring political, religious, and social factions, to name a few. Proposals that would especially be welcomed are those that tackle race and gender topics. We welcome proposals that tackle the following topics:

• Death, illness, and race
• Sickness of individuals representing sickness of nations
• Sickness and women
• Motherhood and sickness
• Madness, suicide, and Victorian heroines
• Female illness and the patriarchy
• Apocalypse
• The plague of people and nations
• Literary responses to plagues, epidemics, and pandemics

Please submit a one-page proposal and a short bio by May 1st, 2023 to Reyam Rammahi at reyam.rammahi@gmail.com.




Last updated February 22, 2023

CFP Versions of the Afterlife Conference (7/1/2023; online 12/7/2023)

VERSIONS OF THE AFTERLIFE (online conference)

deadline for submissions:
July 1, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland

contact email:
kbronkk@amu.edu.pl

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/04/17/versions-of-the-afterlife-online-conference

VERSIONS OF THE AFTERLIFE

7th December 2023

Online Conference



Call for Papers

Between Matthew’s description of heaven as a wedding (22 1-14) - most memorably delivered by Jesus in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ - and Jean Paul Sartre’s verdict that “hell is other people,” there is not only a gap of centuries but also cultures and religions.[1] Despite their disparity, however, both conceptualizations render the fundamental human anxiety related to the weighty question of “what comes next?” They point to the necessity of envisaging the unfamiliar through the familiar, thereby taming the terrifying void.

Versions of the afterlife, therefore, are not only related to the need to imagine the hereafter in the sense of Heaven, Hell and Purgatory (for the Catholics), but also to the contemporary notions of “post-theory”, such as post-humanism and the ideas of postmodernism, post-feminism, post-colonialism and post-nationalism.

The aim of this conference organized by the Faculty of English at Adam Mickiewicz University, in Poznan, Poland – and co-hosted with the Faculty of Philosophy, AMU, and the Poznań Chapter of the Agder Academy of Social Sciences and Letters – is to explore and discuss the literal, the literary and the metaphorical meanings of the notion of “the afterlife”. We welcome papers representing the humanities in their conceptualizations and literary reifications of the religious, medical and political “hereafters”.

Literature (in English) / Art

• Literary narratives on the hereafter across cultures and religions
• Saints’ lives and visions
• Theatre and the drama of/on the hereafter
• Gothic literature and the visions of the afterlife
• Literary visions and versions of post-apocalyptic reality
• Artistic representations of the afterlife: Imaging the hereafter
• The afterlives of theory: post-humanism and the ideas of postmodernism, post-feminism, etc.
• The afterlives of ideologies, doctrines, political systems as represented in literary works (post-nationalism, post-colonialism, etc.)
• The afterlives of literary texts and their authors: adaptations, rewritings, etc.

Medical Humanities / Social Sciences (in literary texts in English)

• The moment of passing
• The mystery of one’s body shutting down
• Marketing death and the life after death
• Out-of-body experience
• End-of life dreams and visions versus science

Theology / Ethics (in literary texts in English)

• Versions of the afterlife from the earliest records to contemporary times across cultures and religions
• Ars moriendi (good endings vs bad endings)
• Secular / atheist alternatives for life after death

300-400 word abstracts should be sent to BOTH afterlifewaconference@gmail.com and kbronkk@amu.edu.pl by 1st July 2023. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by the end of August 2023. There will be no fees for conference participation, but active and passive participants need to register in advance.




[1] Sartre, Jean Paul. Huit-Clos [Przy Drzwiach Zamknietych]. Dramaty: Muchy, Przy Drzwiach Zamkniętych, Ladacznica z Zasadami, Niekrasow, translated by Jerzy Lisowski. Warszawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy 1956.



Last updated April 27, 2023

CFP Adapting the X-Men: Essays on the Transmedia Children of the Atom (7/1/2023)

Adapting the X-Men: Essays on the Transmedia Children of the Atom

deadline for submissions:
July 1, 2023

full name / name of organization:
John Darowski

contact email:
adaptingsuperheroes@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/04/03/adapting-the-x-men-essays-on-the-transmedia-children-of-the-atom

CFP for Adapting the X-Men: Essays on the Transmedia Children of the Atom

Deadline for submission: July 1, 2023



Full name/name of organization:

John Darowski



Publisher: McFarland & Company, Inc.



Contact email: adaptingsuperheroes@gmail.com

Call for Papers: Adapting the X-Men: Essays on the Transmedia Children of the Atom

The editor of Adapting the X-Men is seeking abstracts for essays that could be included in the upcoming collection. Essays should examine the practices of adaptation among the various Marvel comic books featuring mutants and media, including by not limited to: film, television, animation, novels, video games, podcasts, etc. Essays should focus on stories featuring issues of adaptation and influence theory, evolving cultural context, or formalists aspects of telling existing stories in new mediums. Analysis must apply critical theory, such as cultural, technical, narratological, economic, or others, to explore the form, function, and/or intersectionality of the X-Men, adaptation, and culture.



The proposed volume is intended to be scholarly but accessible in tone and approach. Essays should focus on adaptations of X-Men as a team or individual characters (i.e. Wolverine, Jean Grey, Charles Xavier, etc.), enemies (i.e. Magneto, etc.), or characters closely associated with Marvel’s mutants (i.e. Deadpool). Topics should be limited in scope, focusing on characters or story and examining the transmedia migration from one medium to another (e.g. comic books to animated series) or comparing and contrasting works within a single medium (e.g. The Dark Phoenix Saga in X-Men: The Last Stand [2006] and X-Men: Dark Phoenix [2019]). Comic book adaptations of X-Men texts created for other media as well as unproduced scripts may also be considered.



Specific dynamics/topics the editor is hoping to address include:

• Issues of representation and the mutant metaphor (related to gender, race, sexuality, disability, etc.)
• Continuity and aesthetics of X-Men animated series
• Performative voice in podcasts and audiobooks
• Convergence and divergence of comic book, film, and animation fandom communities (including fan fiction and cosplay)
• History, ludology, and/or narratology of X-Men video games
• Business of failed pilots and unmade franchise scripts
• Serialization and intertextuality in the X-Men film universe
• Transition of image to text in X-Men novels
• Translation and localization in X-Men anime and manga
• The art of action figures as adaptation

Those interested are asked to send an abstract (200-500 words) as well as a short bio to the editor, John Darowski, at: adaptingsuperheroes@gmail.com. The deadline for proposals is July 1, 2023. All proposals will be adjudicated by June 15, 2023, with first drafts of accepted chapters due in Fall 2023. Completed essays should be 15-20 double-spaced pages in MLA format.


Last updated April 4, 2023

CFP Transmedia Monsters and Villains Book Series (9/15/2023)

Transmedia Monsters and Villains

deadline for submissions:
September 15, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Dr. Antonio Sanna

contact email:
isonisanna@hotmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/03/23/transmedia-monsters-and-villains

TRANSMEDIA MONSTERS AND VILLAINS

This new series aims to cover the fascinating subject of monsters and villains through an interdisciplinary perspective represented by fields as different as literary, film, religious, gender and art studies as much as philosophy and sociological and ecocritical approaches. Each volume will focus on a single figure (or group of figures) and examine it in its multiple incarnations, from their origins in myth, folklore and history as well as in a literary text, to their various adaptations in different media, including comics, graphic novels, cinema, TV, exhibitions, the visual arts, merchandise and tourist attractions. Most welcome will also be an approach to the subject that transcends genres and thus examine the single monsters and villains as they are presented in horror fiction, thriller, science fiction, etc.

We welcome both edited collections and monographs, but the essential requirements of the volumes will be their interdisciplinarity and their focus on the issues of adaptation and transmediality. Proposals may include (but are certainly not limited to) the following figures:

• Dracula
• Frankenstein’s creature
• The werewolf
• The mummy
• Zombies
• Witches and wizards
• The Golem
• Doppëlgangers
• Hybrids, clones and experiments
• Mad scientists
• Serial killers
• Cannibals
• Aliens
• Ghosts
• Spirits
• Gods, demi-gods and mythological creatures (from any mythology)
• Dinosaurs
• Machines, cyborgs and androids
• Dragons
• Underwater creatures
• Underground creatures
• Shapeshifters
• Mutants, mutations and freaks
• Tyrants, dictators and warlords (including historical figures)
• Orcs, ogres and trolls
• Folklore figures
• Clowns
• Statues, dolls, puppets and animated objects
• Satan, demons and Biblical figures
• Personifications of Death

We will gladly welcome any queries by prospective authors/editors for the preparation of a proposal. Please contact Dr. Antonio Sanna (isonisanna@hotmail.com).

Antonio Sanna is a "Cultore della materia" at the University of Sassari, Italy, and the co-editor of the Lexington Books series "Critical Companions to Contemporary Directors".


Last updated March 23, 2023

CFP Journal of Dracula Studies for 2023 (5/1/2023)

Not sure how I missed this before.

Journal of Dracula Studies

deadline for submissions:
May 1, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Journal of Dracula Studies

contact email:
journalofdraculastudies@kutztown.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/01/23/journal-of-dracula-studies.


We invite manuscripts of scholarly articles (4000-6000 words) on any of the following: Bram Stoker, the novel Dracula, the historical Dracula, the vampire in folklore, fiction, film, popular culture, and related topics.

Submissions should be sent electronically (as an e-mail attachment in .docx). Please indicate the title of your submission in the subject line of your e-mail.

Please follow MLA style.

Contributors are responsible for obtaining any necessary permissions and ensuring observance of copyright. Manuscripts will be peer-reviewed independently by at least two scholars in the field. Copyright for published articles remains with the author.

Send electronic submissions to journalofdraculastudies@kutztown.edu

Contact: Dr. Nicole McClure or Dr. Jonathan Shaw




Last updated January 26, 2023

CFP Creature Redux: Considering the Pasts, Presents, and Futures of Chimera in Fiction and Popular Culture (3/31/2023)

Creature Redux: Considering the Pasts, Presents, and Futures of Chimera in Fiction and Popular Culture

deadline for submissions:
March 31, 2023

full name / name of organization:
academic anthology edited by Samantha Baugus and Ayanni Cooper

contact email:
creatureredux@gmail.com


source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/01/04/creature-redux-considering-the-pasts-presents-and-futures-of-chimera-in-fiction-and.

Call for Papers - Creature Redux: Considering the Pasts, Presents, and Futures of Chimera in Fiction and Popular Culture

Animals are the quotidian absolute Other. They are not inherently horrifying, dangerous, or invasive; nor do they have designs to usurp or subjugate humanity. In his lecture-turned-book The Animal That Therefore I Am, Derrida critiques the use of the word “animal” to describe an almost limitless array of creatures. “Animal” becomes a catch-all term for everything that is otherwise than human–and not the biological entity, but a specific, constructed hegemonic entity.

Similarly, monsters and monstrosity are oft used to delineate the limits of “the human” or “the normal.” And yet, the boundaries around what makes a monster are in constant flux, adjusting to fit the time and place of a monster’s creation. As Jeffery Jerome Cohen famously states in Monster Theory: Reading Culture, monsters are “an embodiment of a certain cultural moment—of a time, a feeling, and a place.” “Monster,” then, becomes a term to understand not only the creature it describes, but the people wielding it as well.

Drawing a bridge between the study of animals and monsters, this collection turns toward the chimera. As a proper noun, Chimera are figures in Greek mythology. However, the term has transformed to, a) suggest any blend of persons, places, or things (though frequently creatures) that is an amalgamation of different elements or to, b) dismiss something as a flight of fancy, entirely unrealistic. Across time, the chimera has maintained a presence in literature and, in our modern era, has become entwined with cutting-edge scientific research. Yet, while stories of chimera abound and are even becoming a complex, biological reality, the chimera resists classification and rejects taxonomy. She instead creeps, leaps, and breathes fire through staid categories, forced boundaries, and comfortable assumptions. And she does not always do it nicely.

This collection aims to combine the meanings of chimera in our own chimerical creation–monster, animal, mythological, fantastical–to propose a “neither this nor that,” but an “all of the above.” Though we look to center fictional representations of chimera, we encourage writers to think broadly about the figure and what she could be or represent across genres and time. Additionally, this collection could be considered posthuman and posthumanist–rejecting the Cartesian definition of the individual and the traditional binaries–but rather than something that comes after, the chimera is something that comes through. The chimera extends from the past to the future, evolving and mutating along the way.

Through this collection, we look to investigate junctions, crossings, and mixtures of creatures that push, challenge, and distort the boundaries of the human in numerous ways. What the human is, has been, or could be is a question that possesses serious and highly relevant implications in our contemporary moment. How does the chimera’s inherent hybridity complicate our understanding of the familiar and the other? We seek analyses that center the idea of the chimera in fictional texts of any medium, genre, place, or time period. 

Some topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Animals becoming monsters
• Body horror and the chimera
• Chimera across genre/chimerical-genres
• Chimera across time
• Hybrids, transformations, and blends
• Kaiju as chimera
• Mythological origins and histories of chimera
• Pets as chimera
• Pop-culture franchises as chimera; the chimera and the crossover event
• Post-subject chimera, the chimera after “humanism”
• Realistic depictions of chimeras in fiction
• Robo-chimera; the machine animal; or the animal as machine
• The legacy of H.G. Well’s The Island of Dr. Moreau
• The posthuman as chimera
• The sliding scale of anthropomorphism
• Time/place/space as chimera

Please send chapter proposals to creatureredux@gmail.com no later than March 31st, 2023. We welcome proposals from scholars, researchers, and practitioners of all levels and particularly encourage early-career scholars and scholars without university affiliation to apply.

Additionally, we’re looking to produce a short, companion podcast series for Creature Redux that interfaces with collected essays. The series might consist of interviews with contributors or conversations around points of connection between essays, but will ultimately evolve and take shape based on the pieces we receive and interest from authors/publishers. Please know that this podcast will not be a requirement of participation.

Please include the following with your chapter proposal:

Name


Preferred email contact


Institutional Affiliation, if applicable


A 350 - 500 word abstract of the proposed essay


Working title for your essay


A brief, 150-word biography

Chapter proposals are due no later than March 31st, 2023. If the essay is accepted to the collection, we anticipate complete chapter drafts of approximately 5000-7000 words will be due in October 2023. All drafts should be in MLA format, reflecting the 9th edition updates. The editors, Dr. Samantha Baugus and Dr. Ayanni C. H. Cooper, are happy to receive questions, queries, and concerns at creatureredux@gmail.com.




Last updated January 9, 2023

CFP Fogo Congress 2023 (4/1/2023; University of León (Spain) 7/5-7/2023)

FOGO CONGRESS 2023: FOLKLORE AND GOTHIC: SUPERNATURAL PRESENCES AND ENVIRONMENTS IN EUROPE AND THE AMERICAS

Full details, the hard copy of CFP, and links to submit at the conference site: https://fogoconference.unileon.es/home/#congress. 

Who has not felt fascinated by a terrifying image?


This conference aims to open a space of dialogue to analyze the intersections of Gothic and folklore, focusing on fairy tales, the representation of nature, and the treatment of horror. What is the relevance of the ghosts, cemeteries and stormy nights that remain in our subconscious as images and spaces of fear? How can fictional horror represent the climate emergency? How can we explore literature, film and other media through the lens of the monster and the ghost? Ultimately, what is the interaction between folklore, horror and the Gothic?

Read more

In the 21st century we are still haunted by ghosts from the past, scared by creaking floors in the middle of the night, afraid of monsters lurking in the shadows. We also face more tangible dangers: we have become collectively scared of the expansion of viruses and technological advancement, represented by zombies and the rebellion of the machines in the popular imagination from an Apocalyptic perspective. Similarly, there is a constant terror inspired by the sexual violence and the constant insecurity of women in public and private spaces. Women are, still today, afraid of violence in public and private spaces. These and other dangers have brought along the gothic appropriation of the witch as an empowering figure which, from ecofeminist practices, has been linked to the loss of natural spaces and the climate emergency.

Folklore and the Gothic share a common ground based on the experimentation of fear, both in the natural environment and in enclosed and claustrophobic spaces. In these manifestations, terror materializes as extraordinary entities (Bouyer 1985; Fontea, 2008; Montaner, 2014), which are deeply ingrained in the cultures and historical moments in which they appear. The concept folk horror, coined in the 1970s, defines the fear and terror experienced by local communities though ritual (Eamon Byers, 2014). The Gothic, on the other hand, has evolved since the writer Horace Walpole added this term as subtitle in The Castle of Otranto (1764). Since then, readers have engaged with tragic stories which repeat the same Gothic formula: the presence of the heroine, the villain, the landscape and an unresolved mystery. The presence of the Gothic in Postmodernity (Catherine Spooner, 2006; Maria Beville, 2009; Abigail Lee Six, 2010; William Hughes, 2012; Fred Botting, 2013; Maria Purves, 2014; Ann Davies, 2014) and its global scope (Byron 2013; Punter 2015) demonstrate its vitality and its ability to adapt to new realities. In the last decade, the study Ecogothic helps bring together ecocriticism and the Gothic, establishing a direct relationship between fear and the effects that humankind has on the environment (Smith and Hughes, 2013).



CALL FOR PAPERS AND SUBJECT AREAS


IMPORTANT DATES: Proposal submission deadline April 1, 2023
Celebration of the Congress on July 5, 6 and 7, 2023


The organizing committee invites professors, academics, researchers, postgraduate students and artists to participate by sending proposals for presentations in the following formats:

• A single paper for a 15-20 minute presentation, summary of max. 300 words;
• A round table of 3-5 people for a 60-minute discussion, summary of max. 1000
• words;
• A complete panel of 3-4 people for a 60-minute set of presentations, summary of
• max. 1000 words;
• Any other type of artistic format or workshop that touches on the topic of the
• conference and which can take place in under 90 minutes.

Please also include a brief summary (less than 100 words) or your academic CV.

Please send your proposals before April 1, 2023 by following the following link:

SEND PROPOSAL



SUBJECT AREAS

• Horror and the Anthropocene
• Cultural Studies
• EcoGothic
• Affect Theory and Horror
• Gender Studies and Queer Gothic
• Cinema Studies and Folk Horror
• Medical Humanities and Mental Illness
• Postcolonial Studies
• Posthumanism and the Gothic
• Digital Humanities
• Bestiaries and the Preternatural
• Children’s and Teen Gothic

Registration fees will be of 15 € for undergraduate students; 80 € for postgraduate students, instructors and researchers in training; and 100 € for lecturers, professors and salaried independent researchers. More information about payment methods will be given in due course.