CFP Godzilla at 70 (Spec Issuse of Humanities) (expired 1/15/2024)

Sorry I missed this:

Godzilla at 70: The Giant Monster’s Legacy in Global Popular Culture

deadline for submissions: January 15, 2024

full name / name of organization: Steve Rawle/York St John University

contact email: s.rawle@yorksj.ac.uk

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/12/04/godzilla-at-70-the-giant-monster%E2%80%99s-legacy-in-global-popular-culture

Call for Papers: "Godzilla at 70: The Giant Monster’s Legacy in Global Popular Culture"

A special issue of Humanities (ISSN 2076-0787).



The 3rd of November 2024 is Godzilla’s 70th birthday, marking the anniversary of the release of Honda Ishiro’s Gojira in 1954. The film’s legacy is immense, as one of the most significant exports of Japanese culture. To mark this milestone, this Special Issue will explore that legacy and impact. The first part of the twenty-first century has witnessed a global renaissance for giant monsters. While giant monsters have been a recurring feature of classical mythology and twentieth century film and television, the early part of this century has been marked by a global expansion of popular culture expressions of gigantic monstrosity. Whether this is the resurrected figures of Godzilla and King Kong, the giant mutant dinosaurs of the Jurassic World films, the Mind Flayer in Stranger Things, or Cthulhu’s fleeting appearance in the HBO adaptation of Lovecraft Country, huge monsters have left significant footprints on mainstream popular culture.



Monarch: Legacy of Monsters has brought the “Big G” to AppleTV+, but new Japanese media have also featured strongly in this global renaissance: animated Toho features Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters (Godzilla: Kaiju wakusei, 2018), Godzilla: City on the Edge of Battle (Godzilla: Kessen Kidō Zōshoku ToshiI, 2018) and Godzilla: The Planet Eater (Godzilla: Hoshi o Kū Mono, 2018) Godzilla Singular Point (Gojira Shingyura Pointo, 2021), Kadokawa’s anime Gamera Rebirth (2023), and Production I.G.’s adaptation of Shimizu Eiichi’s Ultraman manga (2019-2023) have all been brought to international audiences by Netflix. Toho’s live action films, Shin Gojira (2016) and Godzilla Minus One (Gojira Mainasu Wan, 2023) have both received (or are about to receive) international distribution and some critical acclaim, representing a return to the nuclear-inspired roots of the first Gojira film.



This Special Issue will explore the cultural significance and fascination with mega-sized monsters in Godzilla’s wake. While smaller monsters, such as vampires, werewolves, and especially zombies, have received significant focus in many academic works, the biggest monsters have often been left less explored. This Special Issue looks to address this gap in order to explore the contemporary fascination with giant monsters, their meanings and audiences. The most famous giant monsters in popular culture—often referred to using the Japanese term kaiju (lit. strange beasts)—have generally been seen as metaphors for global cultural anxieties (Barr, 2016), problematic depictions of race (Erb, 2009), as reflections of historical environmental concerns (Rhoads and McCorkle, 2018), representations of ‘imaginations of disaster’ (Sontag, 2009; Napier, 1993) or, more conventionally, as a specifically Japanese response to the trauma of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings (Tsutsui, 2004, and many others). Contemporary depictions both extend and intensify such discourses while simultaneously reinterpreting such creatures. Therefore, this Special Issue invites contributions that engage with depictions of giant monsters in all forms of global popular culture (including, but not limited to, film, television, video games, comics and literature), with proposals looking at a range of theoretical perspectives, such as monster theory, gothic studies, ecocriticism, post-colonialism and transnationalism, critical race theory, cult media studies, fandom and audience studies, being particularly welcome.



Works cited

Barr, Jason (2016), The Kaiju Film: A Critical Study of Cinema’s Biggest Monsters. Jefferson: McFarland.

Erb, Cynthia (2009), Tracking King Kong: A Hollywood Icon in World Culture. 2nd ed. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.

Napier, Susan J. (1993), ‘Panic Sites: The Japanese Imagination of Disaster from Godzilla to Akira’, The Journal of Japanese Studies 19 (2): 327–51.

Rhoads, Sean, and Brooke McCorkle (2018), Japan’s Green Monsters: Environmental Commentary in Kaiju Cinema. Jefferson: McFarland.

Sontag, Susan (2009), ‘The Imagination of Disaster’, in Against Interpretation and Other Essays by Susan Sontag, 209–25. London: Penguin.

Tsutsui, William (2004), Godzilla on My Mind: Fifty Years of the King of Monsters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.



Submissions:

If you are interest in contributing to this issue, please send a 250-word abstract to s.rawle@yorksj.ac.uk by 15th January 2024. Please also address any queries to me at the same address.



Timeline:

15th January 2024: abstract deadline

29th January 2024: acceptance notifications sent

1st August 2024: deadline for first drafts

3rd November 2024: issue launch at ‘Godzilla at 70’ symposium



Last updated December 7, 2023
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CFP Twentieth Anniversary Slayage Conference (3/15/2024; hybrid 7/18-21/2024)

Twentieth Anniversary Slayage Conference

deadline for submissions: March 15, 2024

full name / name of organization: Association for the Study of Buffy+ (ASB+)

contact email: slayage.conference@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2024/01/17/twentieth-anniversary-slayage-conference


Slayage: The International Journal of Buffy+ and the Association for the Study of Buffy+ invite proposals for the twentieth anniversary  Slayage Conference—the tenth biennial (SC10). Devoted to creative works and workers of the ‘fuzzy set’ surrounding Buffy the Vampire Slayer, SC10 will be held on the campus of California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California, on 18-21 July 2024. This twentieth anniversary conference will be organized by Local Arrangements Chair Lewis Call.

We welcome proposals of 200-300 words (or an abstract of a completed paper) on any aspect of Buffy+ television, film, comics, and web texts. The name Buffy recalls the significance of scholarly examinations of feminism, but Slayage is much more. The “plus” is meant to be a sign of inclusivity, both for scholars and texts.

The plus-mark is meant to invite analyses of not only Angel, Firefly, Dollhouse, etcetera, but also the work of all the various creators—writers, directors, actors, editors, composers, etc.-involved with those texts as well as (primarily visual) media more or less resembling Buffy (where ‘resemblance’ is likewise subject to further discussion). In other words, the plus-mark indicates the “fuzzy set” of which Buffy is the center. Drawing on Brian Attebery's description in Strategies of Fantasy, the fuzzy set is “defined not by boundaries but by a center.” Hence, a scholar applying to Slayage Conference 10 might use Buffy as a yardstick to tell us why we should consider their chosen topic to be part of this fuzzy set, which might include the following,

“high stakes TV” with a kick-ass young female lead;


movie or book series concerned with the frequent irruption of the supernatural into the mundane;


texts that feature snarky humor and linguistic play; strong characterization, an emphasis on relationships, and long story arcs spanning a season or more; moral dilemmas; stylish but affordable boots; starship captains with tight pants; or other stylistic, aesthetic, or thematic issues associated with Buffy, Angel, Firefly, etc.

Moreover, the “plus” specifically alludes to LGBTQIA+, too, one of the important touchstones of the original series. The complexities of queerness are part of the intriguingly nuanced nature of many of these texts. The conference was established to provide a venue for writing about good work, but good works are not perfect, and scholarship should strive to see clearly. LGBTQIA+ texts and scholars have been an important part of this clear-sighted assessment, and SC10 would be strengthened by further contributions in light of contemporary scholarship.

Importantly, the “plus” is meant to refer to the need to counteract a “minus”—that is, the scarcity of Latinx and Black, Indigenous, Person of Color representations in Buffy (the Original Sin of the Buffy text) as well as problematic representations in that and related texts. Since Kent Ono’s 2000 essay “To Be a Vampire on Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” scholars have been examining these matters. However, a great deal remains to be done—again, not just on Buffy but also on related texts.

Multidisciplinary approaches (literature, philosophy, political science, history, communications, film and television studies, women’s studies, religion, linguistics, music, cultural studies, art, and others) are all welcome. A proposal/abstract should demonstrate familiarity with already-published scholarship in the field, which includes dozens of books, hundreds of articles, and over twenty years of the peer-reviewed journal Slayage. Proposers may wish to consult the annotated Oxford University Press bibliography on Buffy the Vampire Slayer as well as the Slayage contents list and the bibliography housed at the ASB+ website.

An individual paper is strictly limited to a maximum reading time of 20 minutes, and we encourage, though do not require, self-organized panels of three presenters. Proposals for workshops, roundtables, or other types of sessions are also welcome. Submissions by graduate and undergraduate students are invited; undergraduates should provide the name, email, and phone number of a faculty member willing to consult with them (the faculty member does not need to attend). A limited number of hybrid slots will be provided. Proposals should be submitted online to slayage.conference@gmail.com and will be reviewed by program chairs James Rocha, Jessica Hautsch, and Rhonda V. Wilcox. Submissions must be received by March 15, 2024. Decisions will be made no later than March 31; however, a rolling response to early submissions will be provided.  Questions regarding proposals can be directed to the conference email address: slayage.conference@gmail.com.



Last updated January 17, 2024
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CFP Dead or Alive: The Future of Zombie Studies (expired 2/15/2024)

Sorry to have missed this:

Dead or Alive: The Future of Zombie Studies Edited Collection

deadline for submissions: February 15, 2024

full name / name of organization: Tim Lanzendörfer and Marlon Lieber

contact email: tlanzend@em.uni-frankfurt.de

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2024/01/16/dead-or-alive-the-future-of-zombie-studies-edited-collection

Call for Papers for an Edited Collection

Dead or Alive: The Futures of Zombie Studies

Edited by Marlon Lieber and Tim Lanzendörfer

We are inviting abstract submissions for an edited collection entitled Dead or Alive: The Future of Zombie Studies. The proposed volume is intended to situate research into the zombie, and the figure of the zombie itself, in the wake of its apparent decline of cultural currency. If, about a decade or so ago, a large number of commentators could and did claim a “global explosion of zombie mania” (Hubner et al. 2015, 3), things have become noticeably more quiet in the 2020s. We understand this as an occasion to take stock of zombie studies and to think about what it will and can do in the future. In asking about the state of zombie studies, we ask both about the state of zombie studies and of zombie studies: both about the ostensible object and the potential disciplinary formation.

We are looking for essays that the ask the question of what the specific state of studying the zombie as a cultural figure is across media and across disciplines, how it is used now, in what contexts, what it promises for the future, and how it is related to other figures of cultural importance. These essays should go beyond individual readings of zombie fictions, even if they might well be grounded in them, and discuss the ways in which studying this singular figure offers disciplinarily relevant insights. What is the state of the zombie as a cultural figure in the first place, in a globalized cultural space where its appearances range from Korean and Senegalese cinema to Western European and American literature to globally-played videogames?

We are looking for essays that specifically hone in on the question of what it means, and will mean, to think about the work on zombies as zombies studies. These essays should pursue the possibility and desirability of institutional frameworks for the study of zombie, perhaps especially as read against (conservative) political backlash against degree programs with unconventional foci. What kinds of disciplinary locations or transdisciplinary utility exist for zombie studies? How, for that matter, might the “zombie” in “zombie studies” permit us to ask questions about the larger horizon of the danger facing the humanities (who is undead here?)? How are “zombie studies” received in public? What theoretical frameworks exist or need to be produced for zombie studies?

The proposed collection thus will intervene notably both in the presumed field of zombie studies as well as in larger constellations of thinking about the humanities. While considerable work exists reflecting on aspects of this project, the vast majority of discussions of the zombie have reflected on its cultural historical significance and meaning. Actual theoretical interventions have been rare, with a lack up until now of a truly synthetic and encompassing take on zombie studies. The proposed collection will be potentially field defining: it will set out both an agenda and a set of potential avenues forward for zombie studies, even as it critically examines the assumptions under which zombie studies are meaningful.

We are soliciting 350-400 word abstracts (plus a short biographical sketch) by February 15, 2024. We will select contributors by March 1. The currently intended publisher for this collection, if accepted, is Rutgers UP, which has already expressed an interest in seeing a submission. Full contributions should be available no later than September 15, 2024.

Please send abstracts to tlanzend@em.uni-frankfurt.de and / or lieber@em.uni-frankfurt.de.


Last updated January 17, 2024
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CFP Afterworlds: Communication and Representation of the Afterlife (Spec Issue of ECHO) (3/17/2024)

CFP - Afterworlds: Communication and Representation of the Afterlife

deadline for submissions: March 17, 2024

full name / name of organization: ECHO – Interdisciplinary Journal of Communication Languages, Cultures, Societies

contact email: rivista.echo@uniba.it

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2024/02/20/cfp-afterworlds-communication-and-representation-of-the-afterlife

Afterworlds

Communication and Representation of the Afterlife



Life after death is a fiction. It imagines a world other than our own […] Fiction is also a kind of life after death and, in contemporary culture, the afterlife finds its most pervasive and diverse manifestations in the forms of narrative fiction.

(Bennett 2012, p. 1)



Imagining, depicting, and contemplating otherworldly realms characterize the afterlife as a cross-cultural constant throughout world history, dating back to the inception of human imagination questioning the limits of existence and the potential for transcending its boundaries. However, in the last century, representations of life after death have undergone a profound transformation, intertwining ancient traditions with new perspectives, sparking a fertile and ongoing debate.

Recent reflections on death and its aftermath, encompassing interdisciplinary studies like Thanatology, have significantly expanded and revitalized the field of contemplation on the after-life. Departing from well-established narratives and supported by enduring cultural traditions, the exploration of the afterlife has expanded to encompass various 'other' and relational forms between pre- and post-death.

Literature and the arts have grappled with the challenge of narrating life after death, adopting schemes and conventions that often defy socio-cultural norms. Fictional narratives often go beyond the simplistic life/death binarism, expanding their semantic field to explore the ways and the worlds where ‘after’ and ‘before’ meet, proposing intricate relationships and spatial dimensions. While death is often considered unspeakable, attempting to translate it into narrative, images, and experiences is an anthropological constant, as “]death and dying are always culturally defined and embedded in a system of cultural beliefs and values" (Kalitzkus 2004, p. 142). It is no coincidence that the afterlife - like fiction itself (Lavocat 2016) - has often been thought of in terms of a 'territory', a real 'possible world' (Pavel 1986) with distinct nomenclatures (such as the Greco-Roman Hades, Norse Valhalla, the Bardo of Tibetan Buddhism, Christian Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise) and recognizable rules governing access and movements within its boundaries.

The imagery associated with afterworlds extends beyond physical spaces to encompass their inhabitants. Myths, religions, literary traditions, and popular folklore are interwoven with a myriad of figures—deities, revenants, ghosts, vampires, zombies, and more. These entities collectively challenge the conventional dichotomy between life and death, prompting a reconsideration of what common sense might suggest. Speculative inquiry into the afterlife not only witnesses the semantization and signification of life after death but also serves as a lens to study the cultural systems producing these narratives. Death, as a crucial anthropological experience, becomes a prism to interrogate the ideology, conventions, hopes, fears, and anxieties of an era.

Even the process of secularization, which has notably impacted the Western world since the modern age, has not hindered artistic representations of the afterlife. In a context of profound transformation, these representations have discovered novel modes of expression. Furthermore, the upheavals of the twentieth century and the post-modern era, accompanied by various changes, have influenced the depiction of the afterlife. This transformation often takes on a completely secular and immanent perspective.

In contrast to theorists like Philippe Ariès (1975), who suggested the isolation of death in heterotopic places, in a Foucauldian sense, numerous historical and artistic events, in decentralizing the subject, have uncovered and rediscovered narratives about death and the afterlife. These narratives transcend the life/death dualism, problematizing imaginative possibilities across different media, resulting in 'other' spaces narrating 'the other beyond life' in diverse ways. The afterlife is not merely an imagined space giving substance to human fears but is also symbolically linked to passage, borders, memory, and the hope for future survival.

The aim of this issue is to delve into the diverse meanings and narrative approaches employed in depicting afterworlds within contemporary literature and the arts. Submissions that examine representations of the afterlife from a comparative standpoint, spanning various national literatures or exploring inter-art relations, will be especially welcomed. The call encourages contributions that consider these themes both synchronically and diachronically, providing a comprehensive exploration of the evolving portrayals of afterworlds across different temporal and cultural contexts.



Deadlines:

Abstract (500 words): 17th March 2024

Notification of acceptance: 14th April 2024

Article submission: 23rd June 2024

Publication: 30th November 2024

Length of articles: max 7000 words

To submit an article, write to: rivista.echo@uniba.it



Potential research lines include but are not limited to:

• Narratives of Afterlife Spaces
• Narratives Beyond Life
• Narratives of the Afterlife Influencing Attitudes Towards Death
• Autotanatographic Narratives and Narrators who Tells after Death
• Digital and Virtual Afterlife
• Multicultural Perspectives on Afterlife Narratives
• Spaces and Border Crossing
• Figures of the Afterlife and the Return of the Repressed
• Mythical (and non-mythical) Figures in Afterworlds Narratives
• Cultural Memory and Narratives of the Afterlife
• Intertextuality in Representations of the Afterlife
• Temporal Aspects in Narrating Life Beyond Death

Essential Bibliography

Bassett, D. J. 2022, The Creation and Inheritance of Digital Afterlives: You Only Live Twice. Springer International Publishing, Berlin.

Bennett, A. 2012, Afterlife and Narrative in Contemporary Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Bernabè, A. 2015, “What is a Katábasis? The Descent to the Netherworld in Greece and the Ancient Near East”, in Les Études Classiques 83 (1-4), pp. 15-34.

Burden, D., Savin-Baden, M. 2019, Virtual Humans: Today and Tomorrow (1st ed.), Chapman and Hall/CRC, London.

Carroll, E., Romano, J. 2010, Your Digital Afterlife: When Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter Are Your Estate, What's Your Legacy?, Pearson Education, London.

Danese, R. M., Santucci, A., e Torino, A. 2020, Acheruntica: La discesa agli Inferi dall'antichità classica alla cultura contemporanea. Letteratura e antropologia. Argalía, Urbino.

Doležel, L. 1998, Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds. (Parallax: Re-Visions of Culture and Society), Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.

Edmonds, R. G. 2009, Myths of the underworld journey: Plato, Aristophanes, and the “Orphic” gold tablets, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Falconer, R. 2005, Hell in Contemporary Literature: Western Descent Narratives since 1945, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh.

Frankel, R., Krebs, V. J. 2021, Human Virtuality and Digital Life: Philosophical and Psychoanalytic Investigations, Routledge, London.

Foucault, M. 1966, “Les utopies réelles ou 'lieux et autres lieux', 07/12/1966”, disponibile su Radio France, https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/les-nuits-de-france-culture/heure-de-culture-francaise-les-utopies-reelles-ou-lieux-et-autres-lieux-par-michel-foucault-1ere-diffusion-07-12-1966-2759883

Gee, E. 2020, Mapping the Afterlife. From Homer to Dante, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Ghyselinck, Z., Fabietti, E. 2023 (eds.), Necrodialogues and Media: Communicating with the Dead in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Century, De Gruyter, Berlin.

Hayes, E. T. 1994 (ed.), Images of Persephone: Feminist Readings in Western Literature, University Press of Florida, Gainesville.

Herrero de Jáuregui, M. 2023, Catábasis: el viaje infernal en la Antigüedad, Alianza Editorial, Madrid.

Holtsmark, E.B. 2001, “The Katabasis theme in modern cinema”, in M. Winkler (ed.), Classical Myth and Culture in the Cinema, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 23–50.

Kalitzkus, V. 2004, “Neither Dead-Nor-Alive Organ Donation and the Paradox of ‘Living Corpses’”, in A. Fagan, Making Sense Of Dying and Death, Rodopi, New York.

Klapcsik, S. 2012, Liminality in Fantastic Fiction: A Poststructuralist Approach. McFarland, Jefferson.

Lavocat, F. 2016, Fait et fiction. Pour une frontière, Éditions du Seuil, Paris.

Linàres Sanchez, J.J. 2020, El tema del viaje al mundo de los muertos en la Odisea y su tradición en la literatura occidental, Universidad de Murcia.

Mbembe A. 2003, “Necropolitics”, in Public Culture, vol. 15, n. 1, Duke University Press, pp. 11-40.

Moreman, C. M. 2017, The Routledge Companion to Death and Dying, Routledge, London.

Pavel, T. G. 1986, Fictional Worlds, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

Puglia, E., M. Fusillo, S. Lazzarin, e A. M. Mangini 2018 (a cura di), Ritorni Spettrali. Storie e Teorie Della Spettralità Senza Fantasmi, Il Mulino, Bologna.

Savin-Baden, M. 2021, Digital Afterlife and the Spiritual Realm, Chapman and Hall/CRC, London.

Sisto, D. 2020, La morte si fa social. Immortalità, memoria e lutto nell'epoca della cultura digitale, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino.

Sisto, D. 2020, Ricordati di me: La rivoluzione digitale tra memoria e oblio, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino.

Smith, E.L. 2001, The Descent to the Underworld in Literature, Painting, and Film, 1895-1950: The Modernist Nekyia, Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston.

Sozzi, M. 2009, Reinventare la morte. Introduzione alla tanatologia, Laterza, Bari.

Tanaseanu-Döbler, I., Ryser, G., Lefteratou, A., and Stamatopoulos, K. 2016 (eds.), Reading the way to the netherworld: Education and the representations of the beyond in later Antiquity, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen.

Wagner, R. 2012, Godwired: Religion, Ritual, and Virtual Reality, Routledge, London.

Weinmann, F. 2018, “Je Suis Mort”: Essai Sur La Narration Autothanatographique, Éditions du Seuil, Paris.

Wolf, M. J.P. 2012, Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation, Routledge, London.



ECHO – Revue Interdisciplinaire de Communication. Langages, cultures, sociétés

CFP numéro 6/2024



Last updated February 21, 2024
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CFP Metamorphosis, Transformation, and Transmutation (Spec Issue of Cerae) (3/31/2024)

Metamorphosis, Transformation, and Transmutation

deadline for submissions: March 31, 2024

full name / name of organization: Cerae Journal

contact email: editorcerae@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/12/06/metamorphosis-transformation-and-transmutation

Shifting – or transforming – between states of being is a feature of human and animal societies as well as of the wider living world and the cosmos. This act of shifting is experienced through both natural and unnatural processes and can be seen in all areas of life, from the reproductive cycles of organisms, to epochal changes undergone by entire societies, and everything in between. But transformations can also refer to distortions of reality, both deliberate and accidental, magical or real, as much as they can reflect genuine changes to an individual, an institution, a landscape, or even a society. Understanding how one thing becomes another was arguably a feature of much of medieval and early modern intellectual history – from Isidore to Aquinas, Albertus Magnus to Descartes and Newtown – and whole schools of thought could be founded and even wars fought over the differences.

Topics may include, but are not limited to the following:

• Agricultural/environmental transformations;
• Alchemy/medicine/science;
• Literary and historiographical transformation;
• Magical, mystical, and shapeshifting transformations;
• Metamorphosis in relation to animals and plants;
• Political and economic transformation/metamorphosis;
• Shifting between states such as life stages, death or rites of passage;
• Spiritual transformations;
• The body as a site of transformation.

There is no geographic or disciplinary limitation for submissions, which can consider any aspect of the medieval or early modern world or its reception.

We invite submissions of both full-length essays (5000-8000 words) and varia (up to 3000 words) that address, challenge, and develop these ideas. Ceræ particularly encourages submissions from postgraduate and early career researchers, and there is a $200 AUD annual prize for the best postgraduate/ECR essay. Submissions should be sent to the editor (editorcerae@gmail.com), and submissions should follow the guidelines found on our submissions page (https://ceraejournal.com/submissions-2/). Please visit our Volume 11 page for further details on the submissions process (https://ceraejournal.com/volume-11-2024/).

The deadline for themed submissions is 31 March 2024.


Last updated December 7, 2023
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CFP Medieval Uncanny: Pearl Kibre Medieval Study 18th Annual Conference (expired 1/31/2024)

Sorry to have missed this:

The Medieval Uncanny: Pearl Kibre Medieval Study 18th Annual Conference

deadline for submissions: January 31, 2024

full name / name of organization: Pearl Kibre Medieval Study

contact email: medieval.study@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/11/10/the-medieval-uncanny-pearl-kibre-medieval-study-18th-annual-conference

What: Pearl Kibre Medieval Study 18th Annual Conference

Where: Hybrid, hosted through The Graduate Center, CUNY

When: Friday 3 May 2024

There’s a great deal of attention and sensitivity paid to continuities between the medieval period and the present day, continuities that animate projects as diverse as Geraldine Heng’s The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages to fan-studies readings of works like The Book of Margery Kempe, The Matter of Britain, and Roman de la Rose. This work (often correctly) insists that the medieval world never really went away; it was only dissolved into modernity. But despite the best efforts of scholars to make the vestiges of the Middle Ages intelligible, so many aspects of the period remain obscure, unruly, and decidedly weird. It is this weirdness that we are terming the medieval uncanny, the residue of the Middle Ages that resists simple functionalism. Following Stephanie Trigg and Carolyn Dinshaw, if we give up thinking of the medieval past as a static and knowable place, what can we do?

This conference will explore the uncanny and related terms– the weird, the abject, the spectral–  that describe the moment of rupture which can’t be assimilated by modern perspectives or previous experience, an experience common to contemporary readers and medieval ones. These are moments when a modern reader becomes very aware of the temporal and cultural distance of the Middle Ages, or when a character experiences a sudden shift from the normal to the fantastic. We also notice shifts within medievalist representations of the period, moving from technicolor epics to more somber, weirder stories. These modern adaptations use medieval culture as intertext, marshaling the medieval setting to produce a product that is truly uncanny. We welcome projects that explore these moments of distance, and what they tell us about the potential for uncanniness to be generative in the face of disconnection, unfamiliarity, or surprise.

Submissions might address the following topics:

• The weird and the eerie in lais, fabliaux, memento mori, etc.
• Mystics and unconventional relationships to devotion
• Psychoanalytic theory and medieval texts
• Human and non-human relationships
• Cousins of the uncanny (the Gothic)
• Uncanny medievalisms in film, video games, contemporary literature, etc.

Nonmedievalists, nonacademics and scholars outside the field of English are encouraged to apply. To submit your application, please fiill out the google form here.

Questions may be directed to medieval.study@gmail.com. Abstract Deadline: January 31 2024

Registration Deadline: April 1 2024

Last updated November 15, 2023

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CFP Gothic Imagination of Walt Disney Studios (2/12/2024)

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The Gothic Imagination of Walt Disney Studios: Fear, Horror and the Uncanny in the ‘Happiest Place on Earth’

deadline for submissions: February 12, 2024

full name / name of organization: Diana Sandars / University of Melbourne

contact email: sandars@unimelb.edu.au

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/12/14/the-gothic-imagination-of-walt-disney-studios-fear-horror-and-the-uncanny-in-the-

“The Gothic Imagination of Walt Disney Studios: Fear, Horror and the Uncanny in the ‘Happiest Place on Earth’.”

Editors A/Prof Allison Craven (James Cook University, Australia) and Dr Diana Sandars (University of Melbourne)

Since the 1920s, in its animated and live-action media, Walt Disney Studios has imagined dark, fearful, and horrifying characters and scenarios amidst the legendary hype of Disneyland as the ‘happiest place on earth’. While a disparate critical literature exists exploring Disney’s darkness (for instance, see Nelson; Allan; Whitley; Philips; Piatti-Farnell), this special issue seeks to examine its potential as a purveyor of Gothic. If the early cinema adapted nineteenth-century Gothic conventions in ways that are largely unchanged (Elferen), Disney’s animated films are among the earliest and most striking examples. Skeleton Dance (1929, among the Silly Symphonies) is a prototype - set in a graveyard, and combining imagery from Gothic melodrama and humour from vaudeville (Piatti-Farnell 2019) - while German Expressionist influences and the growing cultural interest in horror (Allan) became fully fledged in feature animation with the evil Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). Many Disney productions since are replete with princesses in Gothic castles (Piatti Farnell) in various states of ruin (see Ross; Swann), or dive into uncanny oceans and submarine worlds (Sandars), or Gothicise quasi-historical dramas, or encompass all range of magical households,Hoffmanesque fantasies, Radcliffian forest dalliances, and the more-than-human sublime. While critique of “Disneyfication” of fairy tales is extensive (Schickel; Zipes), the “Disneyfication” of horror and Gothic in these productions, as well as its theme parks and merchandise, remains under-recognised and under-researched.

We invite papers probing Disney(fication of) Gothic from a range of perspectives to consider its effects, aesthetic and material. Where and when, for instance, do Disney’s practices of adaptation and self-homage (Cecire) impact the Gothic canon? How do iconic creatives like Tim Burton influence Disney Gothic? Where does Disney’s grotesquerie sit within the transgressive range of “body Gothic” (Reyes) in horror literature and film? How do Goth(ic) paratexts of iconic characters in fan cultures disrupt Disney’s branding? How does Disney’s comic horror - from Skeleton Dance to Hotel Transylvania - align with Catherine Spooner’s (2017) notion of ‘happy Gothic’? When are these imaginings merely Disney-esque, and when do they speak to the hauntedness of the human condition? Can the ‘happiest place on earth’, with its ideological penchant for ‘happy endings’ (Craven; Piatti-Farnell 2018), really perpetuate or expand the ‘Gothic imagination’?

We seek abstracts of 250-300 words (plus 50-word author biographies) outlining proposed essays of 6500 words (including notes and references). Send to Allison Craven (allison.craven@jcu.edu.au); or Diana Sandars (sandars@unimelb.edu.au) by 12 February 2024.

 

Works Cited 

Allan, Robin. “European Influences on Early Disney Feature Films.” In A Reader In Animation Studies, edited by Jayne Pilling. Indiana University Press, 1997. pp 241- 60.  

Cecire, Maria Sachiko, “Reality Remixed: Neomedieval Princess Culture in Disney’s Enchanted,” in The Disney Middle Ages: A Fairy-tale and Fantasy Past, edited by Tison Pugh & Susan Aronstein. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. p243 - 259

Craven, Allison. Fairy Tale Interrupted: Feminisms, Masculinities and Wonder Cinema. Peter Lang, 2017.

Elferen, Isabella Van. Gothic Music: The Sounds of the Uncanny, University of Wales Press, 2012.  

Nelson, Thomas A. “Darkness in the Disney Look.” Literature/Film Quarterly, vol. 6, no. 2, 1978, pp. 94–103. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43795664.  

Philips, Deborah. Fairground Attractions: a Genealogy of the Pleasure Ground. Bloomsbury, 2012.

Piatti-Farnell, Lorna, ed. Gothic Afterlives: Reincarnations of Horror in Film and Popular Media. Lexington Books, 2019. 

Piatti-Farnell, “Blood Flows Freely: The Horror of Classic Fairy Tales.” In The Palgrave Handbook to Horror Literature, edited by Kevin Corstorphine & Laura Kremmel. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. pp. 91 -100.

Reyes, Xavier Aldana. Body Gothic–Corporeal Transgression in Contemporary Literature and Film. University of Wales Press, 2014

Ross, Deborah. “Escape from Wonderland: Disney and the Female Imagination.” Marvels & Tales, vol. 18, no. 1, 2004, pp. 53–66.  

Sandars, Diana. “Wayfinding and Finding a Way to Intercultural Storytelling in Moana: Charting Disney’s Gothic in an Oceanic Creation Story.” In Gothic in the Oceanic South: Maritime, Marine and Aquatic Uncanny in Southern Waters. Routledge. (Forthcoming 2024).

Schickel, Richard. The Disney Version: The Life, Times, Art and Commerce of Walt Disney. Simon and Schuster,1968.

Spooner, Catherine. Post-millennial Gothic: Comedy, Romance and the Rise of Happy Gothic. Bloomsbury, 2017.

Swan, Susan Z. “Gothic drama in Disney's Beauty and the Beast: Subverting Traditional Romance by Transcending the Animal‐human Paradox”. Critical Studies in Media Communication, vol. 16, no.3, 1999, pp. 350-369. 

Whitley, David. The Idea of Nature in Disney Animation. Ashgate, 2008.

Zipes, Jack. The Enchanted Screen: The Unknown History of Fairy-Tale Films. Routledge, 2011.

Last updated December 15, 2023

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CFP Rotting Corpses: Ecocritical Approaches to Death and Decomposition (9/1/2024)

Edited Collection: Rotting Corpses: Ecocritical Approaches to Death and Decomposition

deadline for submissions: September 1, 2024

full name / name of organization: Ashley Kniss, Stevenson University

contact email: ashley.anne.kniss@gmail.com

Editors: Sara Crosby, Carter Soles, and Ashley Kniss

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2024/01/12/edited-collection-rotting-corpses-ecocritical-approaches-to-death-and-decomposition

In Julia Kristeva’s seminal work, The Powers of Horror, she describes decay as the “contamination of life by death” (149). She goes on to write that “a decaying body, lifeless, completely turned into dejection, blurred between the inanimate and inorganic, a transitional swarming, inseparable lining of a human nature whose life is indistinguishable from the symbolic—the corpse represents fundamental pollution” (109). Kristeva’s work has influenced countless treatments of Gothic horror, helping to define the parameters of an unstable genre and explain why the corpse features so heavily in a genre where bodies, especially dead ones, are de rigueur. However, as scholars devote more attention to the ecoGothic and ecohorror, the role of the corpse is changing. The rotting corpse, dead or undead, is as multifaceted in ecohorror as the macro- and microinvertebrates that swarm within it. On one hand, the corpse remains a site of uncanny blurring between the familiar, human form and that which is alien, frightening, and inhuman. On the other hand, the corpse, especially when it rots, is also a site that teams with nonhuman life, a thriving ecosystem unto itself that represents potential hybridities, posthuman potentialities, and layers of transcorporeal encounters. Corpses in ecohorror rise from both biodiverse swamplands as well as petroleum-rich wells. Ecohorror’s corpses are not limited to the human, but also extend to the enormous corpses of the monsters in creature features. Ecohorror’s corpses are useful, disgusting, beautiful, and funny. Moreover, rotting corpses in ecohorror challenge the anthropocentric reactions of disgust that Kristeva outlines in The Powers of Horror, and evince new ways of conceptualizing the common materiality that binds the human and the nonhuman together.

This collection seeks essays that feature the rotting corpse in ecohorror, addressing topics such as but not limited to corpses in relation to

• Posthumanism
• Transcorporeality
• Materiality
• Disgust
• Hybridity
• Monsters
• Pop Culture
• Petrohorror
• History
• Burial Traditions
• Green Burial
• Aesthetics and Beauty of the Corpse
• Folk Traditions and the Dead
• Animal Corpses
• The gothic
• Ecohorror
• Extinction
• The Anthropocene
• Spirituality
• Race, Sex, Gender
• Nonhuman decomposition
• Mythology
• Graveyards, Cemeteries, and Crypts
• Relics and Religion
• Corpses in Videogames

Please submit a 250 word proposal/abstract to ashley.anne.kniss@gmail.com  along with your name, affiliation, and a short 50-word bio by September 1st, 2024.

Last updated January 17, 2024

CFP Celebrating 215 years of Edgar Allan Poe (8/2/2024; online 10/5-6/2024)

CFP: Celebrating 215 years of Edgar Allan Poe

deadline for submissions: August 2, 2024

full name / name of organization: Noah Gallego

contact email: eap215conference@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2024/01/09/cfp-celebrating-215-years-of-edgar-allan-poe

Deadline: August 2, 2024

Conference Date(s): October 5-6, 2024

Format: Online (via Zoom)

Abstract: 200 words + short biographical statement + timezone

Submit to: eap215conference@gmail.com 

Ring in the Halloween season by celebrating the life and works of the U.S.’s grandfather of Goth, Edgar Allan Poe! Scholars from across all disciplines are invited to convene for a (tentatively) two-day conference on the weekend of his 215th deathday where we will critically examine the Tomahawk’s works, including his poetry, prose, novel, and essays. (Other media such as theatrical, televised, or cinematic adaptations of his work may also be considered, provided they relate back to the author’s legacy and work. For instance, any of the Universal Studios adaptations or Scott Cooper’s loosely biographical The Pale Blue Eye (2022) or the recent Mike Flanagan production The Fall of the House of Usher (2023) may be explored).

Lenses through which to consider presentations may include but are not limited to:

• Orientalism
• Psychoanalysis
• Feminism
• Marxism
• Gothic
• Corporeality 
• Other-than-human
• Gender, sexuality, and/or queerness
• Spatiality and Temporality
• Race
• Narratology
• New Materialism
• Disability
• Trauma
• Monstrosity and Abjection
• Religion, spirituality, the occult, and theology
• Ecocriticism 
• Rhetoric and Poetics

Please submit abstracts of 200 words as well as any and all inquiries to eap215conference@gmail.com. Please also provide a short biographical note of up to 100 words in addition to your timezone in order to best arrange presentation times for those outside of PST. This conference will be held online at no charge. The Zoom link will be sent out the week prior. 

Last updated January 17, 2024

Journal of Dracula Studies 2023

 The latest volume of the Journal of Dracula Studies has arrived.

Journal of Dracula Studies 25 (2023)

Table of Contents

A Wild(e) Story: Vampiric Disease as Gender Transgression in Victorian England

Sophie Bradley

Bedding Down in the Monster's Den: Reading Domesticity, Masculinity and Homoeroticism within Count Dracula's Castle

Ellese Patterson

Vampiric Sideways Growth at the Fin de Siecle: The Intersection of Youth, Race, and Queerness in Florence Marryat's The Blood of the Vampire

Kelsey Shawgo

Construction of Imperial Otherness in Dracula (1897) and Dracula in Istanbul (1928)

Y. Su Kolsal