CFP Medieval Monsters as Modern Monsters (virtual) (9/15/2024; ICMS Kalamazoo 5/8-10/2025)

Medieval Monsters as Modern Monsters: Exploring Continuums of the Monstrous (virtual)

Sponsored by Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture and Monsters & the Monstrous Area of the Northeast Popular Culture Association

Organized by Michael A. Torregrossa


60th International Congress on Medieval Studies

Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo, Michigan)

Hybrid event: Thursday, 8 May, through Saturday, 10 May, 2025

Please Submit Proposals by 15 September 2024

Session Information

Medieval monsters and ideas about them remain at the base of many of our modern conceptions of monsters and the monstrous, but few studies have explored the tracks of these ongoing traditions for representing monstrosities in the post-medieval world. It is our intention in this session to shed some light on these creations and their impact today.

We seek in this panel to unite the fields of Medieval Studies, Medievalism Studies, Monster Studies, and Popular Culture Studies to highlight the links between medieval monstrosities and their post-medieval incarnations and successors.

We hope presenters will explore both continuity and change in addressing how terrors rooted in the medieval world have been portrayed beyond the Middle Ages and/or how modern monstrosities seem to draw indirectly from medieval traditions.



Thank you for your interest in our session. Please address questions and/or concerns to the organizers at MedievalinPopularCulture@gmail.com.

Submission Information

The process for proposing contributions to sessions of papers, roundtables and poster sessions for the International Congress on Medieval Studies uses an online submission system powered by Confex. Be advised that submissions cannot be accepted through email. Rather, access the direct link in Confex to our session at https://icms.confex.com/icms/2025/paper/papers/index.cgi?sessionid=6429. You can also view the full Call for Papers list at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/call.


Within Confex, proposals to sessions of papers, poster sessions and roundtables require the author's name, affiliation and contact information; an abstract (300 words) for consideration by session organizer(s); and a short description (50 words) that may be made public. Proposals to sessions of papers and poster sessions also require a title for the submission (contributions to roundtables are untitled).


Proposers of papers or contributions to roundtables for hybrid sessions should indicate in their abstracts whether they intend to present in person or virtually.


If you need help with your submissions, the Congress offers some resources at the Particpating in the Congress page at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/participating-congress. Click to open the section labeled “Propose a Paper” and scroll down for the Quick Guide handouts.



Be advised of the following policies for participating in the Congress:


You are invited to propose one paper (as a sole author or as a co-author) for one session of papers. You may propose a paper for a sponsored or special session or for the general sessions, but not both. You may propose an unlimited number of contributions to roundtables and poster sessions, but you will not be scheduled to actively participate (as paper presenter, roundtable discussant, poster author, presider, respondent, workshop leader, demonstrator or performer) in more than three sessions.


Further details on the Congress’s Policies can be found at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/policies-guidelines.



A reminder: Presenters accepted to the Congress must register for the full event. The registration fee is the same for on-site and virtual participants. For planning, the cost for the previous year’s event is posted at the Congress’s Registration page at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/registration.


If necessary, the Medieval Institute and Richard Rawlinson Center at Western Michigan University offer limited funding to presenters. These include both subsidized registration grants and travel awards. Please see the Awards page at the Congress site for details at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/awards.


For more information on the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture, please visit our website at https://medievalinpopularculture.blogspot.com/.

For more information on the Monsters & the Monstrous Area of the Northeast Popular Culture Association, please visit our website at https://popularpreternaturaliana.blogspot.com/.

CFP Dinosaurs in Film, Literature, and the Arts Collection (9/25/2024)

Dinosaurs in Film, Literature, and the Arts

deadline for submissions:
September 25, 2024

full name / name of organization:
Rachel Carazo

contact email:
rachel.carazo@snhu.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2024/05/01/dinosaurs-in-film-literature-and-the-arts

This collection seeks essays on dinosaurs in film, literature, and the arts. The Jurassic Park franchise solidified the presence of dinosaurs in the pop cultural imagination, but there have been other media and dinosaur portrayals that have captured the public's imagination. Topics can include, but are not limited to:

-Studies of specific films

-Studies of specific novels

-Studies of special effects renderings of dinosaurs

-Artwork with dinosaurs

Chapters will be due in April 2025. Chapters should be approximately 5,000 to 7,000 words, with Chicago-style endnotes and a bibliography page.

Abstracts and a brief bio should be submitted by September 25, 2024, to Rachel Carazo: rachel.carazo@snhu.edu



Last updated August 1, 2024

CFP H(a)unted Grad Conference (9/8/2024; 10.25/2024)

H(a)unted

deadline for submissions:
September 8, 2024

full name / name of organization:
Georgetown University English Graduate Student Association (EGSA)

contact email:
egsa@georgetown.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2024/08/07/haunted

H(a)unted

October 25, 2024

________________________________________________________________________

“O monstrous! O strange! We are haunted.”

- William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“If he looked into her face, he would see those haunted, loving eyes.”

- Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

“A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of communism.”

- Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto



Living in the present, we are often haunted by remnants of the past—especially unresolved issues from our history—and by apprehensions about the future, such as the looming fear of robots taking control over humanity. For this conference, we explore the interplay of the terms “haunted” and “hunted” and propose a new term, “h(a)unted,” to mark the generative interchanges between them.

Throughout history, the socially, politically, and economically dominant agents have often “hunted” weaker opponents to assert their power. Conversely, literature and other forms of media have provided outlets where the oppressed, “hunted” subjects can, in turn, haunt their perpetrators, thereby reversing power dynamics. Our proposed term “h(a)unted,” however, also invites us to call into question the assumed causal relationship between “haunted” and “hunted,” highlighting that these phenomena can occur simultaneously or even in potentially reversible order, with haunting preceding being hunted in certain contexts.

The English Graduate Student Association of Georgetown University seeks proposals from various disciplines and theoretical approaches addressing, but not limited to, the following questions: Who has been h(a)unted? How have experiences of h(a)unting been envisioned and represented? How have the meanings of the words “haunted” and “hunted” and their interrelations been registered in different forms of media? What is the nature of being h(a)unted? Which cultural forms and genres have most richly captured the experiences of being h(a)unted?

This conference welcomes an interdisciplinary dialogue inviting scholars in a range of fields including literary, studies, film and media studies, history, philosophy, sociology, political science, postcolonial studies, trauma studies, environmental studies, critical race studies, diaspora studies, narrative studies, and other related fields of study within the combined thematic, theoretical, and critical orientation provided by “h(a)unted.”



Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

● Memories and Traces

● Ghosts and Monsters

● Silencing and Silenced

● Borders and Boundaries

● Incompleteness in Context and Form

● Alternative Forms of Storytelling

● Balance and Imbalance

● Mythology

● Appearance and Disappearance

● Spirituality

● Aesthetic Forms

● Homecoming



Please submit (1) a 300-word abstract, including the title of your proposed paper, and (2) a 100-word bio as an attached document in an email with the subject line “Conference_[Full Name]” to egsa@georgetown.edu by September 8, 2024.

Proposals may also be considered for inclusion in Predicate, EGSA’s interdisciplinary journal in the humanities, which will be published in Spring 2025.



Last updated August 8, 2024

CFP Horror Cinema and Class Critique: Between Reaction and Revolution (9/30/2024; NeMLA 3/6-9/2025)

Horror Cinema and Class Critique: Between Reaction and Revolution

deadline for submissions:
September 30, 2024

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

contact email:
ryustealonso@stetson.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2024/08/06/horror-cinema-and-class-critique-between-reaction-and-revolution


56th NeMLA Annual Convention, March 6-9, 2025 in Philadelphia, PA

Horror’s current market(able) shock value and reinvigorated political potential for social commentary have contributed to a wave of narratives and diverse voices that, both before and behind the camera, unearth the genre’s thought-provoking aesthetics while offering fresh takes on social anxieties, fears, and traumas. In this complex landscape, class dynamics permeate horror’s texture both diegetically and extra-diegetically. On the one hand, narratives, tropes, and characters can be read according to their relation to class; on the other, an effective material critique must concentrate on the apparatus that is horror, taken as an object able to defy—or conversely, reinforce—bourgeois ways of seeing/being.

For years, we have invited scholars from various disciplines to reflect on horror from this perspective: our collective has been growing, bringing to the fore methodological tools that have successfully influenced the study of the genre through a Marxist lens. In light of the 2025 NeMLA theme, we are interested in discerning the forces that animate horror by investigating its relation to the ominous ideology of capital.

Together with the accepted discussants, we look forward to considering some pressing questions: In the current crisis of visual culture, is horror still a persuasive apparatus that employs fear to thrust dominant ideologies upon us? Or does the genre radically destabilize the imposed social order through the interpellation of fear, chaos, and violence? Could these opposing dynamics coexist, and if so, what are the contours of horror’s contradictions?

We are thrilled to accept proposals that effectively blend movie analyses with theoretical discourses that attempt to answer these inquiries. Please submit abstracts of 200-250 words in English by September 30, 2024, at https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/21191. Accepted participants must send their paper draft no later than February 1, 2025, to be shared with the collective. Essays should be between 10-15 pages, double-spaced, and include a “Works Cited” section. All participants are expected to read each other’s work before the session and provide a one-paragraph response to one person as assigned by the chairs.

If you have any questions regarding the roundtable, please contact the organizers directly: Valeria Dani (vd76@cornell.edu) and Ruth Z. Yuste-Alonso (ryustealonso@stetson.edu).


categories
film and television
interdisciplinary
popular culture
twentieth century and beyond

Last updated August 8, 2024

CFP Dark Entries: Rethinking the Horror in Folk Horror Conference (9/13/2024; online 10/11/2024)

Dark Entries: Rethinking the Horror in Folk Horror

deadline for submissions:
September 13, 2024

full name / name of organization:
Brooke Cameron and Noah Gallego

contact email:
noahrgallego@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2024/08/06/dark-entries-rethinking-the-horror-in-folk-horror

Dark Entries: Rethinking the Horror in Folk Horror

Deadline: Friday, September 13, 2024

Symposium Date: Friday, October 11, 2024

Format: Online (via Zoom, EST)

Abstract: 150 words + short biographical statement + time zone

Submit to: brooke.cameron@queens.edu.ca and noahrgallego@gmail.com

Organizers: Brooke Cameron, Ph.D. (Queens’ University at Kingston, Ontario, CA) and Noah Gallego, M.A. (California Polytechnic State University, Pomona, USA)

Keynote: Nina Martin, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Film Studies (Connecticut College, USA)



In response to revived interest in folk horror amid rumors of a new installment of the iconic film, The Blair Witch Project (1999), we are seeking proposals from interested scholars from across the disciplines and professional paths that critically engage with the genre of folk horror for a one-day online symposium.



Folk horror, according to Adam Scovell (2017:7), can be broadly understood as

• A work that uses folklore, either aesthetically or thematically, to imbue itself with a sense of the arcane for eerie, uncanny or horrific purposes.
• A work that presents a clash between such arcania and its presence within close proximity to some form of modernity, often within social parameters.
• A work which creates its own folklore through various forms of popular conscious memory, even when it is young in comparison to more typical folkloric and antiquarian artifacts of the same character. [1]

Presenters are welcome to explore the genre across multiple media, including, but not limited to: literature, film, television, video games, internet, and music.



The symposium will be held over Zoom at no cost. We will be on EST time, so, if accepted, please plan according to your respective time zones.



We expect the general time frame to be between 9:00am - 6:00pm EST, with each session lasting approximately 90 minutes; each presenter will have about 15-20 minutes to present with about 10 minutes after for Q&A. They may present a traditional paper or creative work. (A Google Slides/PPT/etc. presentation is not required but encouraged!). While we understand that under certain circumstances presenters may refrain from having their cameras on, we strongly recommend those who are able to show themselves in the spirit of fostering community.



Depending on the continuity of the content of the submissions, we may group presenters according to a common theme, but at this time, we are not accepting panel proposals. However, if you would like to be considered for a specific session, please make a note in your submission what kind of theme you would like to be a part of.



Please send abstracts of 150 words as well as a brief (100 word) biographical statement highlighting your status, institutional affiliation(s), scholarly awards or achievements, etc. to brooke.cameron@queens.edu.ca and noahrgallego@gmail.com by September 13. In your document, please also indicate your time zone so you may be slated at an appropriate time.



The status of proposals will be revealed after the deadline has passed. Presenters may expect confirmation as soon as a week after.



Please direct any and all inquiries to us. We look forward to your submissions!



[1] Scovell, Adam. 2017. Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange. Liverpool University Press.


Last updated August 8, 2024

CFP Making Madnesses in Early Modern England (8/12/2024; RSA Boston 03/20-22/2025)

Making Madnesses in Early Modern England (RSA Boston, March 20-22, 2025)

deadline for submissions:
August 12, 2024

full name / name of organization:
Avi Mendelson / RSA Conference, Boston, 2025

contact email:
amendel@brandeis.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2024/08/05/making-madnesses-in-early-modern-england-rsa-boston-march-20-22-2025

In John Ford’s raucous tragicomedy, The Lover’s Melancholy (1628), the proto-psychiatrist Corax attempts an experimental treatment on his forlorn melancholic patients: he stages a masque – acted by the allegorical figures of psychic ailments, including Dotage, Phrenitis, Hypochondria, St. Vitus’ Dance, Hydrophobia (rabies), and Lycanthropia (the delusion that you’ve transformed into a wolf) – in order to shake his afflicted clients out of their melancholic funk. Pulling from Robert Burton’s massive tome, The Anatomy of Melancholy, Ford’s play showcases the sheer variety of madnesses – even within a subgenre such as “melancholy” – that were active, endemic, and of great dramatic interest in early modern England. These madnesses, as trailblazing scholarship by Carol Thomas Neely, Bridget Escolme, and Duncan Salkeld has shown, were also imbedded within a network of other rhetorical structures – from the medical to the astrological; from political fears of sedition to witchcraft legislation; and from early modern theatre to modern dramatic reimaginings of mental health from that era.

Playwrights from the period were obsessed with mental illness – and not just Shakespeare with his well-known depictions of madness in Macbeth, King Lear, and The Comedy of Errors, among other dramas. The singing madmen in The Duchess of Malfi beg to “howl some heavy note” for the play’s harassed and tortured heroine; the rabidly jealous doctor Alibius in The Changeling rents out his medically incarcerated patients as wedding entertainment. London’s Bethlem Hospital (also known as “Bedlam”) – though intended as a charity – was often described as a space where squalor, neglect, and abuse ran rampant. In addition to Bethlem, physicians such as Richard Napier wrote extensive medical records, which we could access, of the mentally ill people he treated in Buckinghamshire. Given all of the above, this panel seeks papers that explore any way madness was portrayed in early modern England.



A list of potential questions and topics that is in no way exhaustive:

*Showing how madness intersects with other realms of subjecthood: race, class, gender, sexuality, and disability.

*Links between madness and the arts: music, theater, poetry, rhetoric, or painting.

*Reading madness through a Disability Studies lens. Is madness always a disability? Can it be an advantage?

*Connections between madness and the supernatural or preternatural: witchcraft, demonic possession, werewolves, or lunar disturbance.

*What is the relationship between madness and discourses of love/pleasure?

*Reading madness through histories of medicine, disease, emotion/affect, or dreams/visions.

*Representations of early modern doctors and “psychiatric” hospitals.

*Why do some characters fake madness in these plays? What’s the difference between real and spurious madness?

*Analyzing how early modern madness is depicted either in modern stage productions or via other media (films, paintings, graphic novels, websites, etc.).

*How can we foster a mad or mental illness positive pedagogy? Can early modernists blend historical discussions of madness, with activism and advocacy for those with mental illness?





Please submit the following materials to Avi Mendelson, at amendel@brandeis.edu, by August 12th to be considered for this panel: Your field of study; your paper title (15 words maximum); an abstract (200 words maximum); a one page abbreviated CV (.pdf or .doc upload); PhD completion date (past or expected); full name / current academic affiliation / email address. Please note that the RSA is very strict about word count, and will not accept entries that go beyond the maximum word limit.




Last updated August 8, 2024

CFP Seen and Unseen in Supernatural Literary Contexts of the Long-Nineteenth Century (8/31/2024; SAMLA 11/15-17/2024)

The Seen and Unseen in Supernatural Literary Contexts of the Long-Nineteenth Century

deadline for submissions:
August 31, 2024

full name / name of organization:
Ben P. Robertson / Troy University

contact email:
bprobertson@troy.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2024/08/05/the-seen-and-unseen-in-supernatural-literary-contexts-of-the-long-nineteenth-century


The Seen and Unseen in Supernatural Literary Contexts of the Long-Nineteenth Century
South Atlantic Modern Language Association (SAMLA) Conference
15-17 November 2024
Jacksonville, Florida, USA



From ghosts in Shakespeare’s plays to mysterious curses in the poetry of Tennyson, literary depictions of the supernatural provide important sites of division between the seen and the unseen. This panel will explore how authors from diverse cultural backgrounds leverage supernatural phenomena as critical components of their literary explorations of identity in the long nineteenth century. Ironically, that which is unseen often serves as a catalyst for transformative personal development that brings the unseen into the realm of the seen.



This panel will focus the conference theme (Seen/Unseen) on supernatural phenomena as a means of engaging in the greater conference-level discussion about the seen and the unseen, either literal or figurative.



Possible topics might include (but are not necessarily limited to) the following: Ghosts, hauntings, spiritualism, supernatural/mythical creatures, prophecies, destiny, folklore, ancestral spirits, curses, adaptations, personal identity, revelations



This panel will include traditional academic papers for presentations of approximately 15 minutes each. Please submit abstracts of about 250 words by 31 August 2024 to the session link at https://samla.ballastacademic.com/Home/S/19207. Questions may be addressed to Ben P. Robertson, Troy University, at bprobertson@troy.edu.



More information about SAMLA: https://southatlanticmla.org/



Last updated August 8, 2024

CFP Spill Your Guts! A Graduate Student Work In Progress Symposium (9/16/2024; online event 11/2024)

Spill Your Guts! A Graduate Student Work In Progress Symposium

deadline for submissions:
September 16, 2024

full name / name of organization:
Horror Studies Scholarly Interest Group (SCMS)

contact email:
horrorstudiessig@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2024/08/05/spill-your-guts-a-graduate-student-work-in-progress-symposium

Calling all graduate students working in Horror Studies! This year, the SCMS Horror SIG will be convening a graduate student symposium, and we invite proposals from graduate students outlining their primary research topic.

The goal of the symposium is to offer a collegial forum for students to share work-in-progress and receive friendly feedback and advice from Horror SIG members. We welcome students at any stage of their academic journey, and strongly encourage Masters students and early year PhD students to participate. If you are at an early stage of a project, this is the perfect opportunity to work through ideas that are still in process and unpolished in a non-judgmental environment. There is no specific theme, as long as your project is related to horror in some way.

Potential presentation topics might include, but are not limited to:

• Teaching horror/horror studies in the university
• Researching the (historical-) industrial dimensions of horror films, tv, etc.
• Indie horror, fringe horror, and mainstream horror
• The contemporary landscapes of horror
• Queer and feminist horror
• Race and horror
• Labor practices, star systems, and taste discourses around working in horror
• Generic hybrids at the box office/tv screen
• Podcasting horror
• Streaming horror
• Licensing horror: IP, copyright, etc
• Horror and the archive
• Regulating horror (horror hosts as containment strategy, gatekeeping + power, TV code, etc)
• Horror and shifting exhibition strategies/technologies (3D, the William Castle approach)
• Transmedia approaches to horror (Universal Studios, Vegas attractions, haunted theme parks, fashion, etc.)

The presentations themselves will be shorter than a typical conference paper, with 5-10 minutes per person, depending on how many submissions we are able to include.

The symposium will take place online in November, 2024, date to be determined.

You do not have to be a member of SCMS or the Horror SIG to participate.

Please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words along with a bio of no more than 100 words to horrorstudiessig@gmail.com by 16th September.




Last updated August 8, 2024

CFP The Films of George A. Romero Collection (11/30/2024)

Call For Papers: The Films of George A. Romero

deadline for submissions:
November 30, 2024

full name / name of organization:
Sue Matheson

contact email:
smatheson@ucn.ca

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2024/07/11/call-for-papers-the-films-of-george-a-romero.

A Critical Companion to George A. Romero



Part of the Critical Companion to Popular Directors series edited by Adam Barkman and Antonio Sanna



Dubbed “The Godfather of Horror” and the “Father of the Modern Movie Zombie,” maverick filmmaker, George A. Romero is known for his horror and independent films. Credited with the invention of zombie culture, The Dead series, beginning in 1968 with Night of the Living Dead and ending in 2009 with Survival of the Dead, has revolutionized the possibilities of horror. Romero’s collaborations with Stephen King—which produced Creepshow (1982) and its comic tribute to 1950s gruesome EC comics, and The Dark Half (1993), a serious psychological study—are also well-known. His versatile career also includes the lesser-known romantic comedy, There’s Always Vanilla (1971); the action drama Knightriders (1981); and revolutionary genre films such as Season of the Witch(1972), The Crazies (1973), and Martin(1977). Marked with satire, his indie horror contains complex ideas, uncomfortable truths about human nature, and social and political critiques. His better-known works have been taught in courses on the history of the horror genre, while many others deserve critical reexamination as this counterculture director’s career did fluctuate between the commercial and his authorial voice.

This anthology seeks previously unpublished essays that explore George A. Romero’s entire body of work. It is open to submissions on films belonging to The Dead seriesfranchise (including George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead [2007] and Survival of the Dead [2009]) and his collaborations with Stephen King, but will particularly welcome interdisciplinary approaches that can illuminate overlooked and underappreciated films like There’s Always Vanilla (1971), Season of the Witch (1972), The Crazies (1973), The Amusement Park (1975), Martin (1977), Knightriders (1981), Monkey Shines (1988), Two Evil Eyes (1990), and Bruiser (2000). Submissions on Romero’s short films Romero’s Elegy (1963), The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar (1990), and Jacaranda Joe (1994) are also particularly welcomed.



This volume will be interdisciplinary in scope, including approaches from philosophy, literary studies, film studies, gender studies, history, psychology, hauntology, ecology, etc. The chapters will be peer-reviewed, scholarly, and written at a high academic level.

Contributions could include, but are not limited to, the following topics:



• Thematic and structural analysis of one or more films

• Visual style

• Notions of evil

• Photography and cinematography

• The supernatural

• Romero as an auteur

• Romero and franchises

• Soundscapes and music

• The American family

• Film as philosophy/philosophy in film

• Failed parenthood

• comedy, black humor, and irony

• Social and cultural contexts

• American youth

• Influences

• Landscapes as sites of horror

• Literary adaptations

• Exploration of the sub- and unconscious

• Class, sexuality, gender and queer readings



This anthology will be organized into thematic sections around these topics and others that emerge from submissions. It is open to works that focus on other topics as well. Prospective authors are well to contact the editor with any questions, including potential topics not listed above. Please share this announcement with anyone you believe would be interested in contributing to this volume. Please submit a 300-400 word abstract of your proposed chapter contribution, a brief CV / bio, current position, affiliation, and complete contact information to Sue Matheson (smatheson@ucn.ca) by the 30th of November 2024. Full chapters of 6,000-7,000 words are likely due in May/June 2025 after signing a contract with the publisher (in the ongoing Critical Companion to Popular Directors series edited by Adam Barkman and Antonio Sanna, published by Lexington Books at Bloomsbury, which will count 13 volumes by the end of 2024).



Note: Acceptance of a proposed abstract does not guarantee the acceptance of the full chapter


Last updated July 15, 2024