CFP Here Be Monsters: General Call for Papers for the Monsters & the Monstrous Area (8/15/2022; online conference 10/20-22/2022)

Here Be Monsters: General Call for Papers for the Monsters & the Monstrous Area of the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association

2022 Annual Conference of the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association

Virtual Event to be held Thursday, 20 October, to Saturday, 22 October 2022

Proposals are due 15 August 2022


We live in an age full of monsters. We make them, yet they escape our control and have profound impacts on us, often reshaping us in their images. Our beliefs, experiences, and politics contribute much to our ideas of monsters. Depending on one’s perspective, we can find them in our homes, in our families, in our schools, in our communities, in our governments, and in the world at large. Often such monsters appear unexpectedly, but, at other times, they strike repeatedly against us and those we cherish. We also create and fear the monstrous in unknown spaces. The darkness of night, the depths of the oceans, other unexplored reaches of the planet, and the vastness of outer space are all common locations for monsters to dwell. Lastly, through media, both old and new, we encounter monsters in a multiplicity of cultural texts. Often we engage with them in printed works (such as comics, fiction, and poetry) or through performances (as in music or on stage), but, increasingly, we find the monster brought to life on the various screens we interact with each day: on computers, films, phones, tablets, and televisions.


The Monsters & the Monstrous Area of the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association (also known as NEPCA) invites proposals for 15-20-minute presentations that highlight our experiences with, reactions to, and/or reflections on the various monsters and monstrous entities (animal, human, hybrid, or preternatural) in popular culture.


This year, we are especially interested in submissions on the following topics:

• “From ‘Them’ to Now: Changing Metaphors of the Monstrous Insect” (organized by Eddie Guimont, Bristol Community College) (co-sponsored with NEPCA’s Animals and Culture Special Topics) (see the full call at https://tinyurl.com/FromThemToNow)
• H. G. Well’s War of the Worlds at 125 and its impact on popular culture (some ideas: aliens and alien invasions in popular culture or Mars and Martians in popular culture)
• Monsters in comics milestones (Archie Comics’ Sabrina the Teenaged Witch at 60, Jack Kirby’s The Demon/Etrigan at 50, Marvel Comics’ Tomb of Dracula and Werewolf by Night at 50)
• Monsters of the Past Becoming the Monsters of the Present (especially Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters: Afterlife, medieval monsters today, and The Munsters and Rob Zombie’s The Munsters)
• Northeast Monsters & the Monstrous (for example: H. P. Lovecraft and his legacy in popular culture, local lore of monsters and the monstrous in the Northeast, the New England Gothic tradition in popular culture, the New England vampire panic in popular culture, the New England witch trials in popular culture, and Stephen King and his family and their impact on horror in popular culture)
• Monsters & the Monstrous as Infestation
• Monsters & the Monstrous as Invaders/Invasion
• Monsters on screen milestones (Haxan at 100; Freaks, Island of Lost Souls, The Mummy, Murders in the Rue Morgue, and White Zombie at 90; Cat People at 80; The Curse of Frankenstein, I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, and The Incredible Shrinking Man at 65; Doctor Faustus at 55; Poltergeist, Swamp Thing, and The Thing at 40; Hellraiser and The Monster Squad at 35; Candyman at 30; and The Devil’s Advocate at 25; Hotel Transylvania at 10)
• Vampire milestones (Le Fanu’s Carmilla at 150 and Stoker’s Dracula at 125) and their impact on popular cultures
• Vampires on screen milestones (Nosferatu at 100, Vamprye at 90, Blacula at 50, The Lost Boys at 35, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Forever Knight at 30, Buffy the Vampire Slayer television show at 25; and Blood Ties and Moonlight at 15 )
• “The worst monsters are the ones we create”: Monstrosity in the Witcherverse (organized by Kris Larsen, Central Connecticut State University) (see the full call at https://tinyurl.com/MonstrosityinWitcherverse)

Send any questions on these or other topics to Michael A. Torregrossa, the Monsters & the Monstrous Area Chair, at Popular.Preternaturaliana@gmail.com. However, please submit your proposal directly into NEPCA’s conference system at https://bit.ly/CFPNEPCA22. You will need to have prepared the following: Yout Email, The type of proposal (single paper or full panel), Your Name, Your Proposed Subject Area (select “Monsters and the Monstrous” please), An Abstract (no more than 250 words), Academic Affiliation (if applicable), Scholarly Role, and Short Bio (up to 200 words), and Timing preferences for the session. The system will send you a receipt of your submission and alert the area chair of its readiness for review.

If accepted, presenters must join NEPCA for the year and pay the conference fee. This year the costs are $54.67 USD for Conference Registration & Membership Dues. Payment is expected in advance of 1 October 2022. Do connect with the area chair (at Popular.Preternaturaliana@gmail.com) or NEPCA directly via Lance Eaton, the Executive Secretary, (at northeastpopculture@gmail.com), if you are experiencing financial challenges that might impact your ability to present.


NEPCA prides itself on holding conferences that emphasize sharing ideas in a non-competitive and supportive environment. NEPCA conferences offer intimate and nurturing sessions in which new ideas and works-in-progress can be aired, as well as completed projects.

We welcome proposals from scholars of all levels, including full-time faculty, graduate students, independent scholars, junior faculty, part-time faculty, and senior scholars. We are also open to undergraduate presentations, provided a faculty member is also included as a point of reference (please include the faculty member’s name, institution, and email in the bio section when submitting).


For further details on NEPCA, please visit its site at https://nepca.blog/. The dedicated page for the conference is https://nepca.blog/conference/.

The Monsters & the Monstrous Area maintains its own site for news and resources. Please check us out at https://popularpreternaturaliana.blogspot.com/.


This call for papers can be accessed at https://tinyurl.com/HereBeMonstersNEPCA22.

CFP X-Files Companion (Essay Collection) (1/22/2021)

 This might be a repeated post.

The X-Files Companion - Reminder Call for Contributions

https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2020/12/23/the-x-files-companion-reminder-call-for-contributions

 

deadline for submissions: 

January 22, 2021

 

full name / name of organization: 

James Fenwick and Diane Rodgers, Sheffield Hallam University

 

contact email: 

j.fenwick@shu.ac.uk

 

The X-Files Companion - Call for Contributions

Chapter proposals are invited for a proposed edited companion on the seminal television series The X-Files (1993-2018, Fox), its movies, spin offs (The Lone Gunmen, Millennium), and surrounding paratextual material (books, comics, fan fiction etc).

The X-Files became a cultural touchstone of the 1990s, transforming from a cult TV show into a pop cultural phenomenon by the end of the decade. The series’ themes and stories of mistrust of the government, conspiracy, folklore, UFOlogy, faith and spirituality resonated with post-Cold War Western society: X-Files ‘mythology’ became a defining narrative arc that has influenced many television shows since.  The relationship between principle protagonists, Agents Mulder and Scully, became a source of fascination for fans (so-called ‘shippers’ that longed to see a sexual relationship develop between the characters) and the press alike (poring over offscreen rumours about lead actors David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson). The show’s prominence converged with early widespread use of the Internet, inspiring a proliferation of fan sites, while the show itself featured telecommunication enthusiasts, not least the underground hackers, The Lone Gunmen. Many of the shows slogans have entered the contemporary lexicon, from ‘trust no one’ to ‘I want to believe’.

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of The X-Files in 2023, this companion seeks to examine the content and production of the show, its reception, its use of legend and folklore, its contemporary resonance in politics and society of the twenty-first century, and its impact and legacy on film, television, the Internet and beyond. We want the companion to examine the show from as many theoretical perspectives as possible: critical; historical; political and social, as well as examining themes of folklore and legend; identity and representation; fandom; audiences; science and technology.

Proposals are sought for 6,000-word chapters. Topics may include, but are by no means limited to:

• Paranoia and conspiracy theories
• Political histories: Watergate, JFK, The Cold War, the Bush/Clinton eras
• Law and order: The X-Files in the Trump era, US politics, representation of the FBI
• Race, gender and sexuality
• Faith, religion, and spirituality
• Postcolonialism
• The X-Files and the Internet: hackers, digital spying and surveillance
• Science and Technology of The X-Files
• X-Files mythology, lore and legend
• Folklore and contemporary legend in The X-Files
• UFOlogy, aliens, flying saucers
• Beliefand scepticism
• ‘Monster of the week’
• Genre (sci-fi, horror, romance) and Intertextuality
• Production aspects: screenwriting, music, cinematography, direction, behind-the-scenes
• Location: use of space, place and landscape
• The X-Files: a series ahead of its time?
• Impact and perspectives on contemporary television
• X-Files movies (Fight the Future and I Want to Believe)
• The reboot series (season 10 and 11) and spinoffs (including The Lone Gunmen and Millennium)
• Iconographic characters: Mulder and Scully, The Cigarette Smoking Man, Deep Throat
• Comics, books, merchandise, pop culture
• Fandom, cult audiences, fan fiction and ‘shippers’

The expansive companion seeks a unifying vision and so the editors will be working closely with authors to theme and craft chapters to ensure a consistency across the collection. We want to ensure a diversity of disciplinary voices as well as the full coverage of The X-Files as a cultural phenomenon and of its production contexts.

Abstracts of 250 to 300 words should be sent to James Fenwick (j.fenwick@shu.ac.uk) and Diane Rodgers (d.rodgers@shu.ac.uk) email in the first instance, along with a short biography and details of institutional affiliation, by 22 January 2021.

Last updated December 23, 2020 

 

CFP Ray Bradbury And Horror Fiction, Special Issue of The New Ray Bradbury Review (5/1/2017)

Ray Bradbury And Horror Fiction: The New Ray Bradbury Review special issue
https://www.cfplist.com/CFP.aspx?CID=9560

Event: 03/21/2019
Abstract: 05/01/2017

Location: Indianapolis, IN, USA
Organization: Center for Ray Bradbury Studies


Ray Bradbury and Horror Fiction

The problem of genre is especially complicated when it comes to Ray Bradbury. The author of The Martian Chronicles, Dandelion Wine, The Halloween Tree, Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Illustrated Man, Fahrenheit 451, and innumerable poems, comic books, short stories, radio, TV, and movie scripts alchemically combined elements as diverse as rockets and hauntings, uncanny phenomena and freak shows, the Cthulhu mythos and common serial killers. The New Ray Bradbury Review seeks essays for a special issue dedicated to Ray Bradbury’s unique brand of horror fiction.


Bradbury began his writing career with a homemade pulp, Futuria Fantasia, modeled on Farnsworth Wright’s Weird Tales. Many of his early stories were based on Poe, including “The Pendulum” (1939) and “Carnival of Madness” (1950, revised as “Usher II” in The Martian Chronicles). Poe also is at the center of “The Mad Wizards of Mars” (1949, best known as “The Exiles” in The Illustrated Man, 1951), a story that is also populated by many of the horror and dark fantasy writers of the last two hundred years. Lovecraft’s influence is traceable as well: “Luana the Living” (a fanzine piece from 1940) and “The Watchers” (1945), a tale that centers on a Lovecraftian horror of unseen forces bent on destroying anyone who discovers their presence beneath the surface of everyday life. Concurrently, Bradbury explored aspects of the American Gothic (see, for example, his carnie tales in Dark Carnival [1947], The Illustrated Man [1951], and The October Country [1955]). His later career saw a return to gothic fantasy elements, now playfully blended with other genres in such novels as Death is a Lonely Business (1985) and A Graveyard for Lunatics (1990). Some of his early gothic fantasy was revisited in his late career with the novelized story-cycle From the Dust Returned (2001).


The New Ray Bradbury Review, produced since 2008 by the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies at Indiana University and published by Kent State University Press, seeks articles on topics including (but not limited to):


• Bradbury and the pulps
• Bradbury and the American Gothic (including circus and freak show stories)
• Bradbury and mythology
• Bradbury and the problem of genre (ways literary historians have catalogued or miscatalogued his work)
• Bradbury’s literary reputation (and similar problems faced by writers as diverse as Carson McCullers and Stephen King)
• Bradbury and the Lovecraft Circle, including Robert Bloch, August Derleth, and Frank Belknap Long
• Bradbury and the Southern California circle, including Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, William F. Nolan, George Clayton Johnson
• Bradbury and related short story writers, such as Roald Dahl, Nigel Kneale, Theodore Sturgeon, Fritz Leiber, Harlan Ellison, Neil Gaiman
• Unproduced works or adaptations, for example Bloch’s Merry-Go-Round for MGM (based on Ray Bradbury's story "Black Ferris”)
• The Halloween Tree (novel, screenplay, and/or animated adaption), Something Wicked This Way Comes (novel, stage play, and/or Disney film), The October Country or the collection Bloch and Bradbury: Whispers from Beyond
• Bradbury and literary agent/comic book editor Julius Schwartz
• Bradbury’s stories for the radio programs such as Dimension X and Suspense, TV series such as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, or horror tales adapted for EC Comics or other outlets
• Bradbury’s own adaptations for the TV series The Ray Bradbury Theater.
• The art of the animated Halloween Tree and later films such as The Nightmare Before Christmas


Proposals of up to 500 words should be submitted by May 1, 2017, to guest editor Jeffrey Kahan (vortiger@hotmail.com). Authors of selected abstracts will be notified by July 1, 2017. Full drafts (5,000 to 7,000 words) will be due by December 1, 2017. The issue is provisionally scheduled for spring 2019.


Contact Email: vortiger@hotmail.com
Website: http://bradbury.iupui.edu/news/call-papers-new-ray-bradbury-review-special-issue
 

CFP Space Horror in Film (collection) (8/25/2015)

This sounds like a great idea:

CFP: Essays on Space Horror in Film, 1950s - 2000s Abstract Submission Deadline: August 25, 2015
Sunday, June 14, 2015
https://networks.h-net.org/node/13784/discussions/72546/cfp-essays-space-horror-film-1950s-2000s-abstract-submission

Call for Papers

Essays on Space Horror in Film, 1950s – 2000s

Abstract Submission Deadline: August 25, 2015

In 1979, the word A L I E N was spelled out across the top of an ominous movie poster, conveying a sense of foreboding of something unknown. An eerie yellow light seeped out of the egg-shaped space pod with the tagline: In space no one hears you scream. Audiences were drawn along with the Nostromo crew as they explored the mysterious abandoned ship on LV-426 and encountered a new and hostile alien species. It was one of the first movies to successfully combine science fiction and horror in an interstellar setting, spawning several inferior imitations in the 1980s while also inspiring standout films that furthered the genre, such as Event Horizon (1997), Pitch Black (2000), Sunshine (2007), and Europa Report (2013). While it may have seemed like space horror was a new genre after the release of Ridley Scott’s film, the genre has a rich history that took hold of movie audience-goers almost thirty years prior with the space horror films that could best be classified as invasion films. With a plethora of films, much has been written about science fiction, horror or on individual films (mostly the Alien franchise), yet surprisingly, little analysis can be found on space horror as its own genre in cinema. Essays for this anthology will seek to deconstruct and analyze the genre via the films from 1950s through the present offerings with the goal of exploring and bridging the gap of critical analysis that currently exists between science fiction and the horror genres. The intended audience is expected to include individuals studying and/or curious to increase their understanding of science fiction, horror and of course, space horror.

There are several themes worth exploring when analyzing space horror, utilizing any number of theoretical framework of your choosing. Here is a brief list of ideas, which is by no means exhaustive:

• Claustrophobia,  Outer Space fears (Pandorum, Dark Star, Europa Report, The Black Hole)
• The influence of slasher films (Alien, Event Horizon, Jason X, Sunshine, Leprechaun 4: In Space)
• Psychological (2001: A Space Odyssey, Solaris, Sunshine, Moon)
• Body Horror and/or transformation (Supernova, Event Horizon, Hellraiser: Bloodline, Slither)
• Final girl (Alien, Prometheus, Dead Space: Downfall)
• Paranormal/Occult (Event Horizon, Hellraiser: Bloodline, Dracula 3000, Ghosts of Mars)
• Cold War fears (most invasion films of the 1950s – 1970s)
• Doppelganger (Event Horizon, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Thing, Moon)
• Compare/Contrast maleficent vs. animal “aliens” (Xenomorphs in Alien franchise vs. alien species encountered in Pitch Black, Apollo 18, Europa Report for example)
• Alien abduction (Communion, Fire In The Sky, Extraterrestrial)
• Found footage (Europa Report, Apollo 18)
• Sacrifice of self and/or self-destruct sequence (Alien franchise, Event Horizon, Critters 4, The Last Days on Mars)
• Role of AI, robotics and/or the concept of “uncanny valley” (Alien franchise, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Prometheus, Dracula 3000)
• Bram Stoker and Space Vampires (Dracula 3000, Planet of the Vampires, Lifeforce)
• Exploring Literary roots such as H.P. Lovecraft, H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury, etc. 

I am accepting up to two abstracts in order to assemble the most cohesive arrangement of essays that will provide a well-rounded exploration and representation of this little discussed genre. The deadlines are as follows:

• August 25, 2015: Abstract of 300-500 words, 1 page CV, preliminary draft bibliography
• September 1, 2015: Notification of acceptance/rejection (editor will send comprehensive style sheet)
• January 31, 2016: Essays due of 5,000-8,000 words in length (earlier submissions welcomed and encouraged)
• February 1 - April 20, 2016: Essays will be edited and returned to the author for review and revision. The final version of the essay, author’s release and a brief contributor’s bio is due to the editor by April 20, 2016
• June 1, 2016: Manuscript  is received by the publisher

Accepted essays received on or before January 31st will continue through the editing process. The editor will utilize Microsoft Word’s tracking function to record all edits and return the edited version back to the author for final correction.

The final manuscript will be delivered to the publisher June 1, 2016. Contributors will receive a complimentary book copy when published, which is anticipated for late 2016.

Please direct all correspondence to:

Michele Brittany, Editor

Email: SpaceHorrorFilms@gmail.com

Blog: http://spacehorrorfilms.blogspot.com

Website: www.spacehorrorfilms.com

Michele Brittany is an independent popular culture scholar residing in Southern California and is the editor of James Bond and Popular Culture: Essays on the Influence of the Fictional Superspy (2014, McFarland & Company). She is the James Bond, Espionage and Eurospy Area Chair for the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association’s annual conference. She is a West Coast Correspondent for Bleeding Cool and writes daily on all things spy related at her blog, Spy-Fi & Superspies. She annually presents at the SWPACA and has presented at Wondercon Anaheim as part of the Comic Arts Conference series. She is also an academic member of the Horror Writer’s Association in Los Angeles.

Michele Brittany, Editor
Independent Scholar
Email: spacehorrorfilms@gmail.com
Visit the website at http://www.spacehorrorfilms.com