CFP EXTENDED DEADLINE: Fearful Performances: Stardom, Skill, and Style of Acting in the Horror Film (10/1/2025)

EXTENDED DEADLINE: Fearful Performances: Stardom, Skill, and Style of Acting in the Horror Film

deadline for submissions:
October 1, 2025

full name / name of organization:
Steffen Hantke

contact email:
steffenhantke@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/05/04/extended-deadline-fearful-performances-stardom-skill-and-style-of-acting-in-the

CFP: Extended Deadline, October 1, 2025





Edited Collection of Critical Essays

“Fearful Performances: Stardom, Skill, and Style of Acting in the Horror Film”



Appearing in a horror film is likely to make high demands on even the most seasoned members of the acting profession. No matter if a horror film features characters in extreme states of mental or physical distress or characters who embody abject states of monstrosity or alterity, actors are facing obstacles unlike those in other cinematic genres. Just being rendered invisible under extensive make-up and prosthetics is a formidable challenge. Hence, the genre’s lore is rife with tales of actors pushing themselves—or being pushed—to the edge of mental and physical endurance in pursuit of a memorable performance. Performances in horror films can be notable for being cool and understated, or hotly and hysterically pitched. Amateurs are praised for impressive performances, as professionals are lambasted for making bad choices, chewing the scenery, or phoning it in. Actors have immersed themselves in the Method, or planted their feet squarely and simply delivered their lines. Styles vary, as horror subgenres do, as do actors’ bodies and faces and voices, as do actors’ collaborations with cinematographers and lighting technicians, makeup artists and voice coaches. Not surprisingly, then, the success of many horror films stands and falls with the intensity and credibility of an acting performance. Actors ruin horror films, or rescue them.



With the notable exception of the genre’s most enduringly popular stars, as well as the genre’s emblematic Final Girls and Scream Queens, critical analysis of actors and acting performances in horror films have largely been limited and sporadic. Is there an idiosyncratic aesthetic or performative approach to horror film acting that distinguishes it from working in other genres? How does horror film acting position itself within the larger field of professional acting on film? What are the evaluative criteria of assessing an actor’s performance in a horror film? How does an actor’s performance in a horror film engage with prosthetic or digital effects? How does an actor’s unique performance seize and interpret a character in a literary source text? At the intersection of horror film studies, star studies, and performance studies, this collection of critical essays aims to map out horror film acting in individual performances and across entire career arcs, illuminate it in larger trends and recurring tropes, and provide a cogent critical discussion that allows readers to grasp the horror film in this crucial performative dimension.



Possible topics can include, but are not limited to:


- Horror films as gateways into acting careers (first films, first performances)

- The Professionalism of horror film actors and acting

- Techniques, skills, requirements, routines, tricks, and shticks

- The aesthetics of horror film acting

- Going Slumming: “serious” actors and their forays into the horror genre

- Typecasting/casting-against-type

- Stardom and the horror film as star vehicle

- Performance styles (Method Acting, silent film acting, etc.)

- Iconic performances and performers (individual films, individual performances)

- Embodying and interpreting characters from non-cinematic source texts

- Acting performances on the edge of discomfort, for viewer and/or performer

- Underplayed and muted performances

- Acting in “quiet horror” films

- Self-conscious performances

- Acting in digital environments

- The prosthetic and make-up enhancement of the actor’s body

- Child actors

- Amateur actors

- Digital actors

- Invisible Actors (voice actors, body doubles, stunt workers)

- Embodying genre functions: “monstrosity”

- Embodying genre functions: “victimization”

- Embodying genre functions: “normality”

- The politics of evaluating horror film actors and acting

- Canonizing: the “best/worst” horror film acting performances

- Awards and accolades: acting as cultural/social/professional capital

- Polarizing/scandalizing horror film performances

- Acting in horror film subgenres (silent films, splatter films, found footage horror, torture porn, etc.)

- Representing horror film actors and acting: interviews, appearances at screenings and cons, documentaries, etc.

- The discourse on horror film acting (acting manuals and guidebooks, anecdotal writing about horror film production, autobiographical and professional writing by actors and directors, past critical writing in its canonizing function, etc.)



Given the nature and breadth of the topic, the internal organization of the anthology is not predetermined but will develop in dialogue with submitted and accepted proposals. Broadly, however, the anthology aims at a foreword and afterword, as well as four or five thematically differentiated sections, each featuring three to five essays, each at a length of 5000-7000 words. The anthology aims at covering a wide historical scope, with essays starting as early as the silent film era and including recent horror film production. Thematically, the anthology has a wide international scope, but is expected to gravitate toward U.S. and anglophone productions. The anthology does not exclude contributions that cover canonical films and performers. However, in order to avoid overlap with already existing research, it strongly favors contributions that cover either overlooked films and performers or films and performers of recent years that have not yet received critical recognition. While individual proposals on Final Girls and Scream Queens are evaluated on their individual merits, these topics are in themselves not of any primary interest given the wealth of already existing research.



Please submit a proposal/abstract of 500-1000 words, and a brief biographical blurb that lists specific examples of your published work (or a professional CV). Please email your proposal/abstract, or any questions or suggestions you might have, to Steffen Hantke at steffenhantke@gmail.com before October 1, 2025.



Steffen Hantke has edited Horror, a special topic issue of Paradoxa (2002), Horror: Creating and Marketing Fear (2004), Caligari’s Heirs: The German Cinema of Fear after 1945 (2007), American Horror Film: The Genre at the Turn of the Millennium (2010), and, with Agnieszka Soltysik-Monnet, War Gothic in Literature and Culture (2016). He is also author of Conspiracy and Paranoia in Contemporary American Literature (1994), Monsters in the Machine: Science Fiction Film and the Militarization of America after World War II (2016), and Cloverfield: Creatures and Catastrophes in Post-9/11 Cinema (2023).



Last updated June 13, 2025

CFP To Be Loved by Death: Afterlives of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles Collection (10/15/2025)

Edited collection - To Be Loved by Death: Afterlives of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles

deadline for submissions:
October 15, 2025

full name / name of organization:
Deanna Koretsky

contact email:
dkoretsk@spelman.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/07/24/edited-collection-to-be-loved-by-death-afterlives-of-anne-rices-vampire-chronicles

With the recent and highly acclaimed AMC adaptation of Interview with the Vampire and AMC’s broader acquisition of Anne Rice’s literary corpus, The Vampire Chronicles have found renewed cultural relevance. As Season 3 enters production, we invite reexaminations of the legacy and transformation of Rice’s vampiric work across media, genres, and generations.

We are seeking scholarly essays that critically engage the many adaptations, appropriations, and afterlives of Rice’s Vampire Chronicles for an edited volume in Palgrave’s Studies in Monstrosity series. We invite contributions from scholars across disciplines. 

Topics may include, but are certainly not limited to:

• AMC’s Interview with the Vampire (2022- ): approaches to race, queerness, temporality, and trauma; departures from and faithfulness to Rice’s canon; cultural impact as seen in fan engagements, rewatch podcasts, and public writing; place within AMC’s Immortal Universe.

• Of particular interest: in addition to the reimagining of Louis and Claudia as Black and expressly queer characters, we are also keen to see critical work that addresses the reimagining of Armand as Brown, as well as the show’s addition of Dubai as a touchstone setting

• Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire (1994): performance, aesthetics, reception, and the film’s place in gothic cinema.
• Michael Rymer’s Queen of the Damned (2002): casting, music, race, cult status.
• Elton John and Bernie Taupin’s Lestat (2006): Broadway reception, musical form, queer gothic sensibilities, status as commercial and critical failure.
• Adaptations and appropriations in other media: comics/graphic novels, theater, ballet, visual art, body art, etc.
• Comparative interpretations: Rice's vampires (in any iteration) in dialogue with other vampire narratives (e.g., Sinners, Suicide by Sunlight, The Originals, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Only Lovers Left Alive, Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, etc.); vampires and authors that inspired Rice (e.g., Blacula, Carmilla, Dracula’s Daughter, Byron, Polidori, Stoker, etc.)
• Tourism and cultural geographies: vampire tours in New Orleans and beyond, the commodification of Rice’s legacy, intersections of fiction, space, and local/global histories.
• Fandom and community: fan fiction, online forums, cosplay cultures, conventions, and the evolving role of fan labor in sustaining Rice’s mythos.
• Vampire Balls and immersive fan events: performance, ritual, identity play, and the gothic carnivalesque.
• Sexuality, gender, race, colonial histories and legacies, queer and trans embodiments, illness and disease, disability, neurodivergence, youth and age/ageing, world religions/religious feeling, and other key thematic preoccupations in Rice’s fiction and/or its adaptations.
• Adaptation as translation, revision, or resistance to Rice’s politics or aesthetics.

Submission Guidelines

• Abstracts of 300 words due: October 15, 2025
• Complete first draft (7,000–9,000 words, MLA style) due: May 30, 2026
• Revised final draft due: October 31, 2026

Submit abstracts to: Deanna Koretsky (dkoretsk@spelman.edu) and Alex Milsom (amilsom@hostos.cuny.edu). Please include a short bio (50–100 words) with your abstract.


Last updated August 1, 2025

CFP Haunted Cities: Spaces, Spectres, and Urban Hauntologies (7/1/2025)

 

Haunted Cities: Spaces, Spectres, and Urban Hauntologies

deadline for submissions: 

July 1, 2025

full name / name of organization: 

Editors - Marko Lukic and Irena Jurkovic/University of Zadar

contact email: 

hauntedcityspaces@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/05/26/haunted-cities-spaces-spectres-and-urban-hauntologies

Call for Papers

Haunted Cities: Spaces, Spectres, and Urban Hauntologies

Edited Collection

Cities are palimpsests of the living and the dead, spaces where, as Derrida’s concept of hauntology reminds us, the past continues to loom over the present, unsettling linear time. At the same time, these urban spaces illustrate what Henri Lefebvre calls the production of space as an always-unfinished process of conflict and memory. These spectral tensions find some of their most creative and thoroughly -explored expressions in the realm of fiction. In works such as Henry James’s The Jolly Corner (1908) and China Miéville’s The City & the City (2009) imagined haunted urban spaces reveal what David Harvey describes as spaces of uneven development, where suppressed histories seep back as phantoms. By contrast, Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves (2000)transforms a suburban home into an unnavigable space—an infinite labyrinth that echoes Jameson’s postmodern urban disorientation.

These literary haunted spaces establish a narrative and conceptual framework that cinema both inherits and expands. Film, as a visual medium, transforms abstract urban anxieties into embodied and sensory experiences, intensifying the spatial logic of literary hauntings.  From the stigmatized Cabrini-Green in Candyman (1992/2021) to the cursed Tokyo apartment blocks of Ring (1998) or Dark Water (2002), cinematic cities stage Foucault’s heterotopias, hosting parallel realities that rupture everyday geographies. Digital and alternative media intensify these hauntings with narrative forms that blur the boundaries between fiction, film, and real-world space. Silent Hill, a horror video-game franchise, reimagines rust-stained streets as psychic cartographies of guilt; urban-exploration channels like The Proper People and Exploring with Josh broadcast real-time descents into abandoned malls and hospitals, creating participatory hauntologies; Instagram “ruin porn” and TikTok ghost-hunting micro-videos circulate affective geotags that turn everyday viewers into curators of the uncanny.

Drawing on Anthony Vidler’s architectural uncanny, Mark Fisher’s weird and the eerie, and Judith Butler’s notion of grievability, this collection asks how such literary, cinematic and digital spectres animate contemporary cities, mediate collective trauma, and reconfigure the politics of place—inviting scholars to map these restless urban phantoms. We seek proposals from interested scholars from across the disciplines that critically engage with haunted and/or haunting urban spaces from the modernist period to the present-day metropolises, including imagined urban spaces of the future. Submissions may explore cities across diverse global and transnational contexts, engaging with a variety of media—from literature and film to video games and other digital platforms.

Essays may explore but are not limited to the following topics:

• Urban Hauntologies: theorizing spectral temporalities, ruins, and palimpsestic geographies
• Media & Mediation: film, television, podcasts, video games, VR/AR, and YouTube series that (re)construct urban hauntings
• Literary Ghostscapes: gothic, weird, speculative, or realist narratives that map haunted streets and buildings
• Spectral Infrastructures: abandoned transit lines, sewers, data centres, smart-city dead zones, and digital afterlives
• Memory & Trauma: post-conflict or post-disaster ghosts, memorial architecture, dark tourism circuits
• Sound & Haunting: sonic ecologies, urban field recordings, auditory hauntings
• Embodied Haunting: flânerie, psychogeography, paranormal investigations, affective mapping of fear
• Decolonial & Queer Hauntings: counter-memories, suppressed histories, marginalized presences in the city
• Climate & Eco-Hauntings: rising waters, toxic ruins, and environmental spectres in urban futures
• Methodologies of the Uncanny: digital humanities (GIS, XR), ethnography, archival excavation, art practice as research

 We invite all interested scholars to send their proposal (400-500 words) and short bio (max. 200 words, including author’s academic affiliation) to hauntedcityspaces@gmail.com . Full-length essays should be 6000-8000 words (including references, notes, and citations) and follow the Harvard style guide. University of Wales Press has expressed interest in the volume as part of their Horror Studies series.

Deadline for abstracts: July 1st 2025

Notification of acceptance: July 15th 2025

Deadline for essay submission: October 15th 2025

Last updated May 31, 2025

CFP Horror Videogames - A Companion (8/31/2025)

 

Call for Papers: Horror Videogames - A Companion

deadline for submissions: 

August 31, 2025

full name / name of organization: 

University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, Surrey, UK

contact email: 

ewan.kirkland@uca.ac.uk

Call for Papers: Horror Videogames: A Companion

Editors: Dr Connor Jackson and Dr Ewan Kirkland

 

This publication – which is planned for submission to Peter Lang’s Genre Fiction and Film Companions series – aims to provide readers with an accessible yet scholarly overview of the historical, cultural, technological and aesthetic dimensions of the horror videogame, organised around an extensive series of short case studies. Accordingly, we are seeking abstracts for a series of shorter chapters presenting critical analyses of key titles in the genre’s history.

Videogames should be chosen for their popular cultural impacts, uniqueness and innovative contributions to the horror genre and videogame medium. The collection will cover a variety of time periods, platforms, development contexts, countries of origin and sub-genres. It will also feature various manifestations of horrific content; from monsters, zombies, ghosts, and eldritch abominations to psychological horror, jump scares, and fourth wall-breaking cult games. Each chapter will justify its selected case study as a noteworthy horror videogame, while also embedding its chosen text within academic discussions of genre, storytelling, design and/or affect.

The collection will be divided into several sections, which are detailed below alongside suggested entries. We welcome submission on the suggested videogames, as well as submissions on videogames that are not on our list of suggested entries. Please note that we do not require submissions on Left 4 Dead (2008) or Five Night’s at Freddy’s (2014), as these titles will be covered by the editors.

 

Sections and Suggested Entries

Early Horror Videogames: 3D Monster Maze (1981), Haunted House (1982), Carmageddon (1997), Clock Tower (1995), Alone in the Dark (1992), Doom (1993)

Canonical Horror Videogames: Resident Evil (1996), Silent Hill (1999), Fatal Frame (2001), Dead Space (2008), Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem (2002)

Horror Videogame Sequels: Silent Hill 2 (2002), Alan Wake 2 (2023), Little Nightmares II (2021), Amnesia: Rebirth (2020), Resident Evil 4 (2005)

Adaptation in Horror Videogames: Alien: Isolation (2014), Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (2017), The Walking Dead (2012), Dead Rising (2006)

Multiplayer Horror Videogames: The Outlast Trials (2024), Dead by Daylight (2016), Phasmophobia (2020)

Indie Horror Videogames: Mouthwashing (2024), Carrion (2020), Signalis (2022), Mundaun (2021), Murder House (2020)

 

Please send chapter abstracts of around 200 words (excluding references) alongside bios of up to 100 words to Connor Jackson (jacksoc1@hope.ac.uk) and Ewan Kirkland (ewan.kirkland@uca.ac.uk) by Sunday 31st August 2025 with the subject heading: “Horror Videogames Abstract”.

Abstract titles should follow the same format, with the game title and a subheading indicating the area/focus of horror to be addressed. For example, “Left 4 Dead (2008) – The Horror of Abandonment” and “Five Nights at Freddy’s (2014) - Service Industry Horror”. Full chapters should be 2,500-3,000 words (excluding references).

If you are interested in covering more than one videogame, feel free to add a list of up to 3 other titles alongside your submission. Should your submission entry be in high demand, the editors may contact you to discuss your secondary options.

Also, if you have any questions, please send them to the above-mentioned email addresses. 

 

Provisional Timeframe

CFP Deadline: Sunday 31st August 2025 

CFP Feedback by end of September 2025 

Completed Chapters by end of January 2026

Feedback with potential edits by end of April 2026 

Chapters returned by end of June 2026

Submission of final draft to editors by end of August 2026

Last updated May 29, 2025

CFP Experimental Horror (7/15/2025)

 

Call for Essays: Experimental Horror Edited Volume

deadline for submissions: 

July 15, 2025

full name / name of organization: 

Erica Tortolani, Ph.D.

contact email: 

etort.phd@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/05/24/call-for-essays-experimental-horror-edited-volume

Please direct any general inquiries to Erica Tortolani at etort.phd@gmail.com.  

In Cutting Edge: Art Horror and the Horrific Avant-Garde, Joan Hawkins observes that avant-garde and experimental cinema oftentimes trade “the same images, tropes, and themes that characterize low culture” (3); low culture, in this instance, pertaining to genres like horror. Indeed, many experiments in film in video, like the horror genre, have banked on “uncomfortably visceral reaction(s)” (5), exploiting the physical limits of the body on screen. Moreover, in works like Possibly in Michigan (Condit, 1983), The Scary Movie (Ahwesh, 1993), and The Fourth Watch (Geiser, 2000), artists often utilize visual, aural, and narrative horrific elements (sometimes even referencing earlier horror films altogether) to further interrogate representational strategies in mainstream media and explore themes including bodily agency and autonomy, trauma, and memory. Conversely, the horror genre, in the hands of visionary, transgressive filmmakers, becomes experimental by design, pushing narrative, representational, and spectatorial boundaries in the process. Veronica Dolginko asserts that horror more broadly “can be seen as experimental by nature. Trying to find and craft excellent, full-force scares is a form of experimentation, and the trial and error that follows is really the only way to produce results” (n.p.). Recently, films like The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears (Cattet and Forzani, 2013), The Wolf House (León and Cociña, 2018), Friend of the World (Butler, 2020), Skinamarink (Ball, 2022), and Enys Men (Jenkin, 2022) have deliberately broken from aesthetic and narrative convention, expanding the boundaries of the genre in the process.  The experimental mode and horror genre, while widely studied as two separate entities, therefore have a significant, symbiotic relationship.

The proposed volume welcomes essays that consider any of the following topics:

1) Experimental films, videos, and/or interactive/multimedia installations that incorporate visual, aural, and/or narrative elements that relate to the horror genre;

2) Experimental films, videos, and/or interactive/multimedia installations that elicit adverse affective responses or uncomfortable visceral reactions, in the same manner as films belonging to the horror genre;

3) Feature-length (either released theatrically or via streaming video on demand) horror films that challenge linear narrative, points of identification, and/or generic tropes

Contributors are encouraged to consider the function and value of merging experimental film, video, and other visual media with the horror genre. How can we best operationalize experimental or avant-garde horror? For what purpose do filmmakers utilize horrific elements in their experimental works? How and with what impact do they manipulate horror-specific generic conventions? Why construct non-conventional horror films? What future lies ahead for experimental horror filmmaking?

Likewise, contributors may submit essays focusing on topics spanning temporal and geographic boundaries, with specific preference given to those writing about understudied and overlooked media texts. Essays on those films and other media crafted by BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and international artists (outside the US/Hollywood) are also strongly preferred.

Please submit essay abstracts (not exceeding 300 words in length) as well as a brief bio (not exceeding 150 words in length) to etort.phd@gmail.com no later than Tuesday, July 15 at 5:00 PM EST.

*** 

Some suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

Blood of the Beasts (Franju, 1949)

Dementia (VeSota, 1955)

Ursula (Williams, 1962)

Invocation of My Demon Brother (Anger, 1969); or, any works by Kenneth Anger

The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes (Brakhage, 1971)

The Third Part of the Night (Zulawski, 1971)  

Ganja & Hess (Gunn, 1973)

Tape #1 1974 (Circa) (Maughan, 1974); or, any works by Cynthia Maughan

The Virgin Sacrifice (Lawrence [as J.X. Williams], 1974)

House (Obayashi, 1977)

Eraserhead (Lynch, 1977)

Altered States (Russell, 1980)

Secret Horror (Smith, 1980)

Beneath the Skin (Condit, 1981)

Grand Mal (Ourlser, 1981)

Cherie, mir ist schlecht (Kiss, 1983)

Possibly in Michigan (Condit, 1983)

Ghost (Takashi, 1984); or, any works by Takashi Ito

Where Evil Dwells (Turner and Wojnarowicz, 1985)

Begotten (Merhige, 1989)

Secrets of the Shadow World (Kuchar, 1988-99); or, any works by George Kuchar

Santa Sangre (Jodorowsky, 1989)

Tetsuo: The Iron Man (Shin’ya, 1989)

The Scary Movie (Ahwesh, 1993)

His Master’s Voice (Gibbons, 1994); or, any works by Joe Gibbons

Don’t – Der Österreichfilm (Arnold, 1996)

Tuning the Sleeping Machine (Sherman, 1996)

Within Heaven and Hell (Cantor, 1996)

Nocturne (Ahwesh, 1998)

The Amateurist (July, 1998)

Ice from the Sun (Stanze, 1999)

The Fourth Watch (Geiser, 2000)

Hollywood Inferno (Episode 1) (Parnes, 2001-03)

Evokation of My Demon Sister (Cantor, 2002)

Hans und Grete (de Beer, 2002); or, any works by Sue de Beer

Bataille (Provost, 2003)

Ani(fe)mal(e) (Scheurwater, 2005); or, any works by Hester Scheurwater

Monster Movie (Takeshi, 2005); or, any works by Takeshi Murata

Amer (Cattet and Forzani, 2009); or, any works by Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani

Antichrist (von Trier, 2009)

Long Live the New Flesh (Provost, 2009)

Ghost Algebra (Geiser, 2010)

Disease of Manifestation (Tzu-An, 2011) 

Berberian Sound Studio (Strickland, 2012)

A Dream of Paper Flowers (Jarman, 2015)

My House Walk-Through (PiroPito, 2016)

Hauntology Film Archives (Colectivo Los Ingrávidos, 2018-22)

The Wolf House (León and Cociña, 2018); or, any works by Cristobal León and Joaquin Cociña

Atlantics (Diop, 2019)

Friend of the World (Butler, 2020)

Enys Men (Jenkin, 2022)

Skinamarink (Ball, 2022)

Stone Turtle (Woo, 2022)

The Great Curdling (Thomas, 2022); or, any works by Jennet Thomas

Last updated May 28, 2025

CFP Mothers, Mothering, and Motherhood in the King Universe (8/31/2025)

Mothers, Mothering, and Motherhood in the King Universe

deadline for submissions: 

August 31, 2025

full name / name of organization: 

Dr Conner McAleese

contact email: 

cmcaleese@dundee.ac.uk

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/05/24/mothers-mothering-and-motherhood-in-the-king-universe

Dr Conner McAleese invites proposals on representations of motherhood in any of Stephen King’s fiction.

Over the past fifty years, King’s works have been adapted, discussed, academically investigated, and, of course, read to an extent that few authors have ever been before. However, one aspect of King’s writing has yet to be given scholastic attention – the mothers of Stephen King’s fiction.

From Margaret White’s religious fanaticism in Carrie (1974) and Piper Laurie’s terrifying portrayal of the same character in Brian de Palma’s 1976 adaptation of King’s debut novel, King has obsessively and consistently employed mothers, and the tropes of motherhood, within his novels and short stories. Rachel Creed’s obsessive fear of death, and its realisation in her young son, Gage, is indicative of how generational trauma plays a significant role in Pet Sematary (1983) and in King’s wider representations of motherhood. Donna Trenton’s tragic defence of son, Tad, in Cujo (1981) demonstrates how a mother’s guilt of past betrayals can become horrific karmic punishments, at least to a mother’s mind. Wendy Torrance, and her bond with her son, Danny Torrance, in King’s The Shining (1977) and Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of the same name in 1980, have become synonymous with how King balances gender, motherhood, and the role of wife as a source of horror.

However, King’s writings on mothers and motherhood is not limited to the 20th century. New takes on mothers and mothering abound in his 21st century works. Holly Gibney’s prominence in King’s recent writings, shows King’s understanding of how the role of ‘mother’ has changed in the past twenty years. Mrs Sigsby and Maureen Alvorson of King’s The Institute (2019), too, demonstrate new and competing paradigms in which King’s mothers transcend the binary of being either wholly good or wholly evil (a common criticism of King’s writing), as more dynamic and competing representations of motherhood are shown in his works (patriotism, and mental illness in the case of Sigsby and Alvorson respectively).

This collection seeks to break new ground in our understanding of King’s prolific contributions to literature. In focussing on mothers, motherhood, and the desire to ‘mother’, this collection aims to demonstrate the compelling and deliberate use of gendered ‘nurturing’ tropes within King’s works and how their reinforcement and subversion informs his horror. Suggested topics include, but are in no way limited to:

-        Motherhood and Trauma

-        Creating horror from the need to ‘mother’ (e.g. Annie Wilkes in Misery)

-        Familial relationships/dynamics in King’s fiction (with mothers being included)

-        Generational Trauma and its effects on the mothers in King’s works (e.g. Rachel Creed’s fear of death in Pet Sematary)

-        Depictions of mothers in King’s adapted works

-        Religion and its influence on Mothering Strategies (e.g. Margaret White in Carrie and Mother Abigail in The Stand)

-        Pregnancy in King’s Fiction

-        The rejection of motherhood in King’s fiction (e.g. Holly Gibney)

-        Mental Illness in the mothers of Stephen King

-        Navigating gender through motherhood (e.g. Wendy Torrance in The Shining)

-        The recuperative function of motherhood

-        Resilience and Motherhood (e.g. Annemarie in Salem’s Lot)

-        Queer Coding mothers in King’s fiction

-        Motherhood, fear and loss (e.g. Donna Trenton in Cujo)

-        Defending children in King’s fiction (e.g. the Loser’s Club in IT)

-        Villainy and the ‘doubly deviant’ female

-        Motherhood and control (e.g. Sonia Kaspbrak from IT)

-        Incest, Sexuality and Motherhood (e.g. Deborah Hartsfield in Mr Mercedes)

-        Any writing on the mothers in Stephen King’s Fiction

 

Chapters should be between 2,500 and 4,500 words long (including endnotes and bibliography) and this proposal will be initially submitted to the Genre Fiction and Film Companions at Peter Lang (Oxford).

Please send a proposal of 250 words, together with a brief biography to Conner McAleese via cmcaleese@dundee.ac.uk by the 31st of August, 2025. All decisions will be communicated no later than the 20th of September, 2025. 

Full chapters will be due in mid-2026.

If you have any questions, no matter how informal, please do not hesitate to communicate those as early as possible.

 

About the Editor

Dr Conner McAleese is an early career researcher, currently working at the University of Dundee. He has published works on American Folk Horror, 21st Century American Horror Literature, and 21st Century Horror films. His Ph. D thesis deals with issues of American identity, trauma, and anxiety in horror literature written after 9/11 and the creation of the Homeland Security and PATRIOT Acts.

Last updated May 28, 2025

CFP Return to the South: The Complexities of Southern Culture in Ryan Coogler's film Sinners (7/1/2025; Special Issue Journal of American Culture)

 

Return to the South: The Complexities of Southern Culture in Ryan Coogler's film Sinners

deadline for submissions: 

July 15, 2025

full name / name of organization: 

Journal of American Culture

contact email: 

Katrina.Moore@slu.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/05/21/return-to-the-south-the-complexities-of-southern-culture-in-ryan-cooglers-film

Return to the South: The Complexities of Southern Culture in Ryan Coogler’s film Sinners. 

On April 18, Warner Brothers released Ryan Coogler’s long anticipated film Sinners. Since its release, the film has achieved both critical acclaim and popular resonance, marking a significant entry in contemporary Southern cinema. Critics and audiences praise Sinners for its nuanced treatment of inter/intra-racial dynamics, spirituality, and regional identity. In addition, the film has prompted sustained cultural discourse, and now, academic interest in the South. Its layered narrative and atmospheric rendering of the South position Sinners as a vital text for examining the complexities of Southern culture and history.

The Southern United States has long been mythologized, contested, and critically dissected; its socio-cultural historical complexities have been largely ignored. Ryan Coogler’s Sinners presents the complexities of the South and Southern culture(s) as it situates the story within the Mississippi Delta in 1932. Coogler utilizes the genre of horror and the conventions of the vampire to explore these complexities through a contemporary lens. The film situates itself at the crossroads of religion, race, history, and redemption, challenging romanticized and reductive portrayals of the American South.

The Journal of American culture is seeking contributions for a special edition titled, Return to the South: The Complexities of Southern Culture in Ryan Coogler’s film Sinners. We invite scholars, critics, and practitioners to submit papers that explore the multilayered dimensions of Sinners, with particular attention to how Coogler crafts, critiques, and complicates Southern cultural narratives. Interdisciplinary approaches, especially, are welcome, drawing from fields such as film and visual culture studies, Southern studies, African American studies, gender studies, theology, history, and cultural geography.

An abstract of 250-500 words is due July 15, 2025. If the abstract is accepted, the complete paper (3,500–7,500 words) is due October 15, 2025. Include your full name, institutional affiliation, title, and email address (not included in the 250-500 text limit) at the beginning of your abstract. Submissions and queries should be sent to Kwakiutl L. Dreher kdreher2@nebraska.edu and Katrina Moore katrina.moore@slu.edu

Topics of interest include but not limited to:

• Coogler’s directorial vision in reimagining the South
• The return to the south as a space of (re)ro(u)oting
• Identity of Cast and Director with the South
• Folklore and folk traditions in Southern Black culture
• The politics of sin, salvation, and moral ambiguity in Southern storytelling
• (Black) fe/male entrepreneurship
• Nature (birds, land, cotton, etc.)
• Lessons taught/lessons learned
• The performance of Black love and Black Joy
• Representations of kinship
• Generational trauma
• Black Southern identity and cultural resistance
• The role of religion, churches, and spiritual spaces
• Memory, land, and contested Southern geographies
• Intersections of gender, sexuality, and faith in Southern contexts
• Cinematic aesthetics of the Southern Gothic and its subversion
• Historical reckoning and the burden of legacy
• The role of sound, music, and silence in evoking Southern atmospheres
• Immigrant culture and influence/exchange on Black Southern tradition
• Dance and Spirituality
• Secular and Sacred traditions
• African/Ancestral cultural traditions in religion, dance, music, etc in Southern society
• Voodoo, Christianity and other practices
• Cultural analysis of other works by Coogler

Last updated May 28, 2025

CFP Gothic in Bengal: Literature and Culture (6/10/2025)

 

Call for Papers for an Edited Volume - Gothic in Bengal: Literature and Culture

deadline for submissions: 

June 10, 2025

full name / name of organization: 

DoctorsBhattacharya

contact email: 

bookchapters89@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/05/20/call-for-papers-for-an-edited-volume-gothic-in-bengal-literature-and-culture

Call for Papers for an Edited Volume

Gothic in Bengal: Literature and Culture

The Gothic has long been recognised as a potent mode of cultural expression, historically rooted in the anxieties, fears, and moral uncertainties of Western Europe. From its 18th-century origins in British literature, the Gothic evolved to encompass a wide range of tropes—decay, the supernatural, the haunted past, and the psychological uncanny—becoming a tool for interrogating power, identity, and transgression. While much scholarship has focused on the European and American Gothic, there is a growing need to investigate its global resonances, particularly its entanglements with postcolonial histories and vernacular traditions.

This call invites scholarly contributions for a volume/issue exploring the Gothic in Bengal, with a focus on literature, visual culture, folklore, performance, and material history. Bengal—both as a region and as a cultural-linguistic space—offers a fertile ground for rethinking the Gothic through its own unique colonial, political, and social experiences. From the spectral presences in the stories of Rabindranath Tagore and Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay to the eerie films of Satyajit Ray and the ghostly tales of bhuter golpo, Bengal's cultural production abounds with Gothic elements that merit deeper theoretical engagement.

The proposed collection seeks to ask:

• How has the Gothic been appropriated, transformed, or hybridized in Bengali literary and cultural forms?
• What are the socio-political and historical conditions—colonialism, nationalism, Partition, urbanisation, environmental decay—that inform Gothic aesthetics in Bengal?
• In what ways do local belief systems, folklore, and vernacular traditions inflect the Gothic with regionally specific meanings?
• Can we speak of a "Bengali Gothic" or "vernacular Gothic" that challenges or reorients Anglophone theoretical paradigms?

We welcome submissions on themes and topics including, but not limited to, the following:

• The supernatural and the uncanny in Bengali short stories and novels
• Colonial hauntings and postcolonial trauma
• Gothic spaces: ruins, forests, old mansions, and urban decay
• Ghosts, spirits, and possession in Bengali folklore and religious practices
• Gender, sexuality, and repression in Bengali Gothic narratives
• The Gothic in Bengali cinema and television (e.g., Satyajit Ray, Rituparno Ghosh, contemporary horror)
• Partition, memory, and spectrality
• Translation and transnational flows of the Gothic
• Eco-Gothic and environmental anxieties in Bengal
• Children’s literature and the Gothic imagination

We welcome original essays, case studies, archival explorations, and theoretical interventions that engage critically with these and related questions. Contributions may draw from both Anglophone and vernacular sources, and interdisciplinary approaches are encouraged.

Submission Guidelines:

• Abstract: 250-300 words along with 4-5 keywords outlining the proposed paper
• Bionote: 100 words (name, affiliation, contact details, and brief research interests)
• Deadline for Abstracts: 10th June, 2025.
• Notification of Acceptance: 12th June, 2025.
• Full Paper Submission: 5th July, 2025.

The full paper must not exceed 2,500-4,000 words.
Please send abstracts and bios to bookchapters89@gmail.com.

For further enquiries, please feel free to reach out at (+91) 7980150229.

Last updated May 28, 2025

CFP Blood and Bile: Perspectives from the humanities, art and gaming culture on Blasphemous (7/16/2025)

 

CFP Blood and Bile: Perspectives from the humanities, art and gaming culture on Blasphemous

deadline for submissions: 

July 16, 2025

full name / name of organization: 

Jonas Müller-Laackman; Victoria Mummelthei / c:hum

contact email: 

victoria.mummelthei@fu-berlin.de

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/05/19/cfp-blood-and-bile-perspectives-from-the-humanities-art-and-gaming-culture-on

In the fictional world of ‘Cvstodia’, a nameless ‘penitent’ traverses a world in which the ‘miracle’ - a divine entity - is worshipped through physical torment and suffering in a gloomy body horror style. In doing so, ‘Blasphemous’ transforms the established conventions of the ‘souls-like’ genre: the difficulty typical of the genre and the cyclical approach to failure are theologically charged. The progress made by defeating boss enemies is enhanced by sacred weapons and rituals, while the level design is recontextualised as a spiritual pilgrimage. These elements are embedded in an elaborate ecclesiastical infrastructure and open up multiple levels of analysis, e.g:

    • Theological: Guilt, atonement and redemption as a cyclical game system
    • Cultural-historical: appropriation of Andalusian religiosity
    • Aesthetic: Transformation of Christian iconography into pixel art
    • Narrative: Hagiographic narrative traditions as a game world
    • Ludic: Integration of religious practices in game mechanics
    • Psychological: Religious guilt induction as a game experience

With our planned diamon open access collective volume, we not only want to explore these levels of analysis, but also challenge the academic publishing tradition itself. The aim is not to collect isolated individual analyses, but to develop a conversation about the cultural significance and transformative power of games using the example of the Blasphemous games.

Instead of a collection of classic long papers, we would like to try out new approaches with you and take so-called ‘interdisciplinarity’ to the extreme. This call explicitly addresses interested parties from all academic disciplines (whether institutional or independent), from the gaming industry and gaming culture as well as creative professionals. If in doubt, please get in touch with your ideas and suggestions.

Conditions for participation in the anthology

    • Willingness to work collaboratively and to transcend academic publishing conventions
    • Willingness to work with and on unconventional contributions

Possible formats (summarised length approx. 4500 words, can be discussed)

    • Thematic tandems (joint long paper)
    • Annotated analyses (analysis and additional commentary by another person) 
    • Documented discussions (for AV: transcription is printed)
    • Thesis-answer (thesis is formulated, justified and answered by another person)
    • Discussion of video essays
    • Video essays (transcription/script is printed)
    • Performances/artistic discussion (scripts, concept, concept sketches, etc. are printed)
    • Long paper (if absolutely necessary, supplemented by a short answer)
    • Other (feel free to be creative)

Please send your proposals (German or English) to jonas.mueller-laackman@sub.uni-hamburg.de AND victoria.mummelthei@fu-berlin.de by July 16, 2025.

Tentative schedule

July 16, 2025: Deadline for the submission of proposals or expressions of interest (max. 150 words) and short self-introduction (max. 4 sentences, no CV) in a PDF. All interested parties will receive read-only access to all submitted proposals and ideas.
July 21, 2025, 10:00 CEST: Meeting (online) to consolidate, find and assign topics.
August 18, 2025: Deadline for abstracts (max. 1 page). All contributors will again have access to the abstracts.
September 15, 2025: Deadline review phase abstracts
October 6, 2025, 10:00 CEST: Meeting (online) to present the topics
January 31, 2026: Deadline writing phase
March 15, 2026: Deadline review phase Contributions. These reviews and responses will appear in the anthology

Planned publication: Q3-2026

Please note that participation in the anthology requires participation in the online sessions.

Publisher: Berlin Universities Publishing
Editors: Jonas Müller-Laackman (Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg) ; Victoria Mummelthei (Freie Universität Berlin)

Also see the record here: Müller-Laackman, J., & Mummelthei, V. (2025). [Call for Participation] Blut und Galle: Perspektiven aus Wissenschaft, Kunst und Gaming-Kultur auf die Blasphemous-Spiele. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15462758

Last updated May 26, 2025

CFP Horror Studies Special Issue: Women and Horror (8/1/2025)

 

Horror Studies Special Issue: Women and Horror

deadline for submissions: 

August 1, 2025

full name / name of organization: 

Melanie A. Marotta and Miranda Corcoran

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/04/07/horror-studies-special-issue-women-and-horror.

contact email: 

mamarotta@wm.edu

This special issue of Horror Studies aims to address female empowerment (cis- and transgender women) in literary and cinematic horror from 2010 to the present. The issue will showcase horror media (literature, films, television, and gaming) created by women. An intersectional approach should be applied to analyses, stressing categories of race, gender, sexuality, class and/or age in submissions. While we are interested in submissions focused on various forms of horror media, we are eager to receive submissions that foreground literary texts.

The recent proliferation of horror media created by (and often for) women suggests that horror is being enacted as a space of transformative justice. In effect, the reconfiguration of the monstrous-feminine, a concept developed by scholar Barbara Creed, and new understandings of the abject, alongside a notable repositioning of the viewer’s/voyeur’s gaze, signify a shift in both the production and consumption of horror literature and film and a decentering of white heteronormative patriarchal constructions of women.

In Teen Film (2011), Catherine Driscoll considers the character categorization with regard to adolescent female characters in horror cinema. Poignantly, Driscoll identifies that in many male created horror cinema contributions the leads are often adolescent young women. She furthers her critique of adolescent-led horror by asserting that “Teen horror is particularly useful for thinking about how recognition, familiarity and identification work in teen film because horror must operate on the border between what we know and what we don’t or, in fact, what can never be known” (83). Highlighting that children’s and Young Adult literary contributions incorporate “motifs, characters, themes, and tropes” originating in adult-directed works, Jessica R. McCort’s introduction to her collection, Reading in the Dark: Horror in Children’s Literature and Culture (2018), centers on the emotional reactions to be felt by young readers, namely fear and enjoyment.

In theoretical examinations often the body takes center stage. In Searching for Sycorax: Black Women’s Hauntings of Contemporary Horror, Kinitra D. Brooks takes on the theme of consumption and race in both literary and cinematic media. Robin R. Means Coleman and Mark H. Harris in The Black Guy Dies First (2023) identify character tropes about Black women frequently found in horror including those originating from American enslavement (for example, the Seductress is connected to the Jezebel). Cayden Mark Gardner and Willow Catelyn Maclay (Corpses, Fools, Monsters: The History and Future of Transness in Cinema; 2024) enact the May Test for trans cinema as much of what has been released about the gender non-conforming body causes anguish for transgender viewers. Recent scholarship concerned with embodiment, such as Erin Harrington’s Women, Monstrosity and Horror Film: Gynaehorror (2016) and Sunny Hawkins’ Deleuze and the Gynesis of Horror: From Monstrous Births to the Birth of the Monster (2022), employs diverse theories of corporeality to explore cinematic representations of the reproductive body. Indeed, Barbara Creed herself, revisiting the topic in her follow-up study, Return of the Monstrous-Feminine: Feminist New Wave Cinema (2022), has argued that in recent feminist cinema, the monstrous-feminine is “in revolt against male violence and corrosive patriarchal values including misogyny, racism, homophobia, and anthropocentrism” (2).

Drawing on this profusion of exciting scholarship, the special issue will center women who create horror across various media formats, with a particular emphasis on literature, in order to explore how the genre is being deconstructed and reconfigured to challenge ingrained ideas about gender, sex, race, desire, and the body.

In the realm of literature, impactful horror fiction by and about cis- and transgender women has included The Devourers (Indra Das, 2015), Her Bodies and Other Parties (Carmen Maria Machado, 2017), Our Share of Night (Mariana Enríquez, 2019), Tender is the Flesh (Agustina Bazterrica, 2020), Mexican Gothic (Silvia Moreno-Garcia, 2020), Five Little Indians (Michelle Good, 2020), Tell Me I’m Worthless (Alison Rumfitt, 2021), Manhunt (Gretchen Felker-Martin, 2022), The Reformatory (Tananarive Due, 2023), She is a Haunting (Trang Thanh Tran, 2023), Our Wives Under The Sea (Julia Armfield, 2023), Bad Cree (Jessica Johns, 2023), and The Lamb (Lucy Rose, 2025).

Since the early 2010s, there has been a surge in horror cinema written and/or directed by women. Notable examples include Jennifer’s Body (written by Diablo Cody and directed by Karyn Kusama, 2009), American Mary (the Soska Sisters, 2014), The Babadook (Jennifer Kent, 2014), A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Ana Lily Amirpour, 2014), The Lure (Agnieszka Smoczyńska, 2015), Raw (Julia Ducournau, 2016), Saint Maud (Rose Glass, 2019), Candyman (Nia DaCosta, 2021), Pearl (co-written by lead performer Mia Goth, 2022). In 2024 alone, new releases included women-led horror films like The Substance (Coralie Fargeat), Lisa Frankenstein (directed by Zelda Williams and written by Diablo Cody), and I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun).

Possible topics may include but are not limited to:

● Madness, trauma, ‘hysteria’, or mental illness
● Corporeality, embodiment, body horror, or the body as a site of resistance
● Female or feminised monsters, i.e., witches, vampires, mermaids, sirens, etc.
● The environment (EcoHorror), nature, and anthropocentrism
● Cinematography, the female gaze, and bodies on screen
● Ageism and the ageing body
● Fatphobia and fat bodies
● Consumption and the grotesque
● Mothers, motherhood, pregnancy, and the maternal
● Adolescence and transformation
● Gynehorror and menstruation
● Religion and the supernatural
● Sexual violence, exploitation, (rape) revenge
● Indigenous horror and MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women)
● Colonialism and neocolonialism
● The Black body and racism intersectionality
● Female social justice movements (including #MeToo and the Pussyhat protests)
● Classism, precarity, the neoliberal economy, and capitalism
● Transgender identities and bodies, body dysphoria, transphobia
● Sex, desire, transgression and “monster fucking”
● Sex work
● Social justice and activism
● Slasher films and the Final Girl characterization

Please send abstracts of 500 words and a brief CV to: mamarotta@wm.edu and miranda.corcoran@ucc.ie by August 1, 2025.

Once abstracts have been accepted, completed submissions of 5,000-6,000 words (including notes and references) are due by December 1, 2025.

The Horror Studies journal is double-blind peer-reviewed.

For further information, please see Intellect’s Information for Journal Editors and Contributors. Contributors are required to use the Intellect Style Guide for referencing.

Please direct inquiries to mamarotta@wm.edu and miranda.corcoran@ucc.ie

AI Statement: Authors should refrain my using generative AI in the writing of both abstracts and articles. If AI is used for other purposes (i.e., compiling graphs and charts), this should be stated at the end of the submission or in the footnotes. 

About the editors:

Melanie A. Marotta is a Visiting Assistant Teaching Professor in English and Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the College of William & Mary. Her monograph, African American Adolescent Female Heroes: The Twenty-First-Century Young Adult Neo-Slave Narrative, was published by the University Press of Mississippi and part of the Children’s Literature Association Series (2023). Recently, she has had publications in The Lion and the Unicorn, College Literature, and The Routledge Handbook for Transgender Literature.

Miranda Corcoran is a lecturer in twenty-first-century literature at University College Cork. She is the author of Witchcraft and Adolescence in American Popular Culture: Teen Witches, published in 2022 by the University of Wales Press. She currently the Chair of the Irish Association for American Studies and a co-editor of the journal Shirley Jackson Studies.

Last updated April 30, 2025