CfP | NeMLA 2027 Seminar | Horror, Today: Genre, Mediation, Collapse
deadline for submissions:
September 30, 2026
full name / name of organization:
Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)
contact email:
vdani@hamilton.edu
source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2026/07/02/cfp-nemla-2027-seminar-horror-today-genre-mediation-collapse
NeMLA's 58th Annual Convention March 6-9, 2027 | Newport, RI
Which tools, discourses, and categories do we employ to understand horror today? How is the current regime of images and narrative control reshaping (or annihilating) our relationship with this category? How are we to rethink the instability between representation and event, the normalization of atrocity, and the breakdown of epistemology? As Eugene Thacker (2011) notes, “the world is increasingly unthinkable . . . To confront this idea is to confront an absolute limit to our ability to adequately understand the world at all.” After years of collective NeMLA conversations around cinematic horror, we look forward to receiving contributions that reflect upon horror by exploring its (algorithmically defined) diffusion and consumption. With this discussion, whose urgency lies in the accelerated mediatic (and mediated) circulation of brutality, we wish to explore the post-2023 instability of the distinction between representation, documentation, and aestheticization.
In a technological landscape increasingly saturated with horror, we are called to confront the ethics and politics of spectatorship by reconsidering the image's ontological status. In this light, horror is not reducible to affective intensity, nor to a genre: it rather functions as a structuring condition of mediation. Following this framework, we welcome interdisciplinary submissions exploring dark media that move beyond representational analysis toward critical theory, Marxism, film studies, and affective theory. Together, we strive to reflect upon the political implications hidden under regimes of continuous exposure, the new contours of horror as entertainment, and the collapse of epistemic distance.
Please submit an abstract of 200-250 words by September 30, 2026 on the NeMLA portal: https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/22586
Accepted participants must submit their paper draft no later than February 1, 2027. Essays should be between 10 and 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 seminar, please contact the organizers directly: Valeria Dani (vdani@hamilton.edu) and Ruth Z. Yuste-Alonso (ryustealonso@stetson.edu).
NeMLA's 58th Annual Convention March 6-9, 2027 | Newport, RI
Which tools, discourses, and categories do we employ to understand horror today? How is the current regime of images and narrative control reshaping (or annihilating) our relationship with this category? How are we to rethink the instability between representation and event, the normalization of atrocity, and the breakdown of epistemology? As Eugene Thacker (2011) notes, “the world is increasingly unthinkable . . . To confront this idea is to confront an absolute limit to our ability to adequately understand the world at all.” After years of collective NeMLA conversations around cinematic horror, we look forward to receiving contributions that reflect upon horror by exploring its (algorithmically defined) diffusion and consumption. With this discussion, whose urgency lies in the accelerated mediatic (and mediated) circulation of brutality, we wish to explore the post-2023 instability of the distinction between representation, documentation, and aestheticization.
In a technological landscape increasingly saturated with horror, we are called to confront the ethics and politics of spectatorship by reconsidering the image's ontological status. In this light, horror is not reducible to affective intensity, nor to a genre: it rather functions as a structuring condition of mediation. Following this framework, we welcome interdisciplinary submissions exploring dark media that move beyond representational analysis toward critical theory, Marxism, film studies, and affective theory. Together, we strive to reflect upon the political implications hidden under regimes of continuous exposure, the new contours of horror as entertainment, and the collapse of epistemic distance.
Please submit an abstract of 200-250 words by September 30, 2026 on the NeMLA portal: https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/22586
Accepted participants must submit their paper draft no later than February 1, 2027. Essays should be between 10 and 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 seminar, please contact the organizers directly: Valeria Dani (vdani@hamilton.edu) and Ruth Z. Yuste-Alonso (ryustealonso@stetson.edu).
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