CFP Faery Tales: At the Crossroads of Literature and Preternatural Belief (9/15/2026; ICMS Kalamazoo/Hybrid 5/13-15/2027)

This sounds intriguing:

Faery Tales: At the Crossroads of Literature and Preternatural Belief

deadline for submissions:
September 15, 2026

full name / name of organization:
Christine Neufeld

contact email:
cneufeld@emich.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2026/07/13/faery-tales-at-the-crossroads-of-literature-and-preternatural-belief

International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo 13-15 May 2027

Special Session (Hybrid)

While the rise of Monster studies has done much to explain the symbolic significance of preternatural creatures (faeries, djinn, elves) in medieval narrative, the recently expanded scope and regional specificity of folkloric scholarship about the history of fairy belief offers the opportunity to investigate what "veridical" faery tales (historical accounts or use in magical practices) can contribute to our understanding of medieval artistic representations of preternatural creatures and vice versa.

Recent studies by folklorists and cultural historians [Purkiss (2000); Wade (2011); Firth Green (2016); Ostling (2018); Clark (2024); Young (2026)] provide complex, fascinating accounts of folk belief that beg to be brought into conversation with the "faery tales" medievalists have long studied. While much work has been done examining the faery as a plot device in romance or metaphor in moral exempla, reading these narratives in conjunction with emerging historical documents and analyses of faery faith provides the opportunity to explore how folklore and literature mutually inform and illuminate one another.

To submit: https://icms.confex.com/icms/2027/prelim.cgi/Session/8447



Last updated July 13, 2026

CFP Horror in Tragedy / Tragedy in Horror (9/30/2026; NeMLA Newport RI 3/6-9/2027)

Horror in Tragedy / Tragedy in Horror

deadline for submissions:
September 30, 2026

full name / name of organization:
NeMLA

contact email:
gorlamia@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2026/07/07/horror-in-tragedy-tragedy-in-horror

While tragedy and horror are often treated as distinct genres, both traditions ask audiences to look steadily at what ordinarily repels them. From unburied corpses and undead monsters to violated kinship and failed agency, these spectacles produce fear, pity, disgust, and sorrow alongside fascination. This session explores what might be understood as a tragedy–horror continuum, examining the aesthetic, affective, and ritual overlaps between tragic and horrific representation across historical periods and media.

This panel welcomes interdisciplinary approaches to the relationship between tragedy and horror in theater, film, literature, television, performance, and visual culture. Possible topics include abjection, affect, taboo, pollution, spectatorship, ritual, violence, mourning, trauma, revenge, monstrosity, catharsis, embodiment, psychoanalysis, genre theory, and adaptation. Papers may address how tragedy and horror construct communal affective experiences; how art and literature shape cultural understandings of taboo and trauma; or how horror inherits, transforms, or reimagines tragic structures.

The significance of this session lies in its effort to create a space for dialogue between fields that are often separated institutionally and generically despite their shared concerns with suffering, transgression, and collective spectatorship. By bringing tragedy and horror studies into conversation, this panel seeks to reconsider the boundaries between canonical and popular forms while illuminating how these shared spectacles mediate communal encounters with what culture cannot easily assimilate.

___

Please submit abstracts by September 30, 2026 through the NeMLA portal: https://cfplist.com/nemla/User/SubmitAbstract/22290



Last updated July 7, 2026

CFP Oceanic Horror (9/30/2026; NeMLA Newport, RI 3/3-9/2027)

Oceanic Horror

deadline for submissions:
September 30, 2026

full name / name of organization:
NeMLA

contact email:
phillipzapkin@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2026/07/01/oceanic-horror


As we meet in Newport, an island at the edge of the Atlantic, this panel invites papers about ocean-based horror media. Oceans, seas, and other waterways have been central to human culture throughout history, offering both opportunities to build communities across the waves and the threat of lonely, painful death through drowning or isolation through shipwrecks. Add to these latter fears the strange (from a terrestrial perspective) and sometimes disconcerting forms of ocean life, and humanity has generated a rich body of horror stories and myths based on the ocean—from the monstrous Homeric whirlpool Charybdis, to Japanese yokai like the Nure-onna or Bake-kujira, to broadly shared myths about mermaids or sea serpents, to shark-based horror like the Jaws franchise and its imitators, to supernatural pirates like the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, to existential horror like Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse.

This panel invites papers about any aspect of oceanic horror, welcoming proposals from different literary/cultural traditions and with different theoretical focuses. By bringing together various presentations, this panel intends to enact the conference theme of empowering community by finding links between how people across cultures and times have negotiated oceanic anxieties. Because experiences of the sea are ubiquitous throughout many cultures, finding common ground in myths, legends, and stories about ocean-based terror provides a lens for identifying shared human experiences.

To paraphrase Martin Brody from Jaws, “you’re gonna need a bigger conference.”

Please submit 200-300 word abstracts through the NeMLA panel submissions page at https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/22329. Submissions are due by 30 Sept. 2026.

The NeMLA conference will be held in Newport, RI from 6-9 Mar. 2027.

CFP Promises of Monsters: Those Haunting Feminist Speculative Fiction (3/14/2026; MLA 2027)

2027 MLA CFP: The Promises of Monsters: Those Haunting Feminist Speculative Fiction

deadline for submissions:
March 14, 2026

full name / name of organization:
Ezgi Hamzaçebi / MLA 2027

contact email:
ezgi.hamzacebi@ozyegin.edu.tr

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2026/03/04/2027-mla-cfp-the-promises-of-monsters-those-haunting-feminist-speculative-fiction

This panel explores the promises and provocations of monstrous and ghostly figures in feminist and queer speculative fiction, focusing on gendered human and nonhuman bodies. We are particularly interested in how monsters articulate socially ingrained fears and anxieties about women, queer communities, and the nonhuman world, as well as the desires and apprehensions they evoke toward the impossible, the fantastic, or the supernatural. Contributors might consider how these monstrous imaginings shape, challenge, or expand the category of “us,” offering critical insights into who is included, who is excluded, and on what grounds. By interrogating these entanglements, the panel seeks to illuminate how feminist and queer speculative fiction uses the figure of the monster to question normative assumptions, open new imaginative possibilities, and rethink the ethical and social stakes of inclusion, otherness, and coexistence.

*Please submit a 250-word abstract and a brief bio by March 14.

ezgi.hamzacebi@ozyegin.edu.tr

https://mla.confex.com/mla/2027/webprogrampreliminary/Paper33661.html



Last updated March 10, 2026

CFP Don't Look Away: The Monstrous, the Gothic, and Survivance in the Worlds of Stephen Graham Jones (1/26/2026; ALA Chicago 5/20-23/2026)

American Literature Association Panel | Don't Look Away: The Monstrous, the Gothic, and Survivance in the Worlds of Stephen Graham Jones

deadline for submissions:
January 26, 2026

full name / name of organization:
Billy J. Stratton / Stephen Graham Jones Society

contact email:
billy.stratton@du.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/11/05/american-literature-association-panel-dont-look-away-the-monstrous-the-gothic-and

Don't Look Away: The Monstrous, the Gothic, and Survivance in the Worlds of Stephen Graham Jones

Organized by the Stephen Graham Jones Society

Chair: Dr. Billy J. Stratton, University of Denver

The Stephen Graham Jones Society invites proposals for a panel at the 2026 American Literature Association (ALA) meeting. We welcome submissions from emerging and established scholars investigating the vast, ever-expanding body of work by Stephen Graham Jones. This panel will focus on the recent and ongoing scholarship surrounding his horror fiction, as well as its significant pedagogical value in the contemporary classroom.

We seek proposals that examine any aspect of Jones’s profound literary, philosophical, and cultural engagements with the horrific. While we welcome all critical approaches, we are especially interested in presentations that engage with:

• Monster Theory and the Gothic: How does Jones deploy, deconstruct, or “Indigenize” traditional Gothic tropes (the haunted past, uncanny landscapes, the doubled self)? We invite papers that draw from Monster Studies or Gothic theory (including American, Southern, the Frontier Gothic, and Indigenous Gothic) to explore how his creations—from werewolves and ghosts to human slashers—challenge boundaries, embody social anxieties, and critique settler-colonial histories.
• Genre, Form, and Film Theory: We welcome analyses of his masterful manipulation of horror subgenres (the slasher, the possession narrative, the creature feature) and his deep, career-spanning intertextual dialogue with cinema. How do his narrative techniques force a new reckoning with the tropes we think we know?
• Key Themes and Motifs: Examinations of recurring concerns such as settler-colonial anxiety, Indigenous futurity and Gerald Vizenor’s conception of survivance, intergenerational trauma, the complex politics of land and place, the search for community, and the fluid, often fraught, constructions of identity and masculinity.

We encourage presentations that trace the evolution of these themes in his early experimental works (Demon Theory, All the Beautiful Sinners, The Last Final Girl), as well as his breakout horror novels (Mongrels, The Only Good Indians) to his most recent bestsellers, including the Indian Lake Trilogy (My Heart Is a Chainsaw, Don't Fear the Reaper, The Angel of Indian Lake), The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, and Killer on the Road.

Submission Guidelines:

Please submit a 250-300 word abstract and a brief C.V. to Billy J. Stratton at bstratt4@du.edu by the deadline of January 26, 2026. Include “SGJ Society ALA 2026” in the subject line of your email.

The American Literature Association’s 37th annual conference will meet in Chicago at the Palmer House from May 20-23, 2026. For further information or specific questions, please consult the ALA website at www.americanliteratureassociation.org or contact the conference director, Professor Leslie Petty, at ALA@rhodes.edu., or the Executive Director of the ALA, Professor Alfred Bendixen of Princeton University, at ab23@princeton.edu.



Last updated November 6, 2025

CFP Spectral Panels: Gothic Traditions in Comics and Graphic Novels (NeMLA Panel) – Deadline 9/30/2025

Spectral Panels: Gothic Traditions in Comics and Graphic Novels (NeMLA Panel) – Deadline 9/30/2025

Deadline for Submissions is September 30, 2025

Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)

March 5-8, 2026, Pittsburgh, PA

Source: https://americangothicsociety.com/spectral-panels-gothic-traditions-in-comics-and-graphic-novels-nemla-panel/

Gothic literature, art, and film have long trafficked in the uncanny, the monstrous, and the psychologically fractured—motifs that unsettle boundaries between self and other, life and death, reality and illusion. These elements find renewed resonance in the graphic novel, a form whose visual and often fragmented structure lends itself to the disjointed temporalities, haunting imagery, and corporeal distortions central to Gothic expression. As a hybrid medium that combines word and image, the graphic novel offers fertile ground for reimagining Gothic conventions in ways that are both formally and thematically transgressive. This panel seeks to explore the intersection of Gothic aesthetics and themes with the graphic novel form, examining how graphic narratives absorb, revise, or subvert Gothic tropes across historical and cultural contexts. The panel invites interdisciplinary proposals from scholars working in comics studies, as well as literature, visual culture, film and media studies.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Adaptations of classic Gothic texts in graphic form
• Visual and graphic representations of the haunted, abject, or monstrous body
• Fragmentation, spatial horror, and temporal disjunction in Gothic comics
• The uncanny and the visual narrative
• Queer Gothic and graphic storytelling
• Race, colonialism, and the Gothic in comics
• Gender, sexuality, and Gothic archetypes in illustrated narratives
• Horror aesthetics and panel composition
• Global perspectives on the Gothic graphic novel

Please submit your proposal to this link: https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/21724

• Title of paper
• Abstract (300 words)
• Short bio (100 words)

CFP Kafka's Fiction (Panel) (9/30/2025; NeMLA 2026 Pittsburgh/hybrid)

Kafka's Fiction (Panel)

Primary Area / Secondary Area
Comparative Literature / German

Modality
Hybrid: The session will be held in-person but a few remote presentations may be included.

Chair(s)
Adam Hartman-Whitfield (Binghamton University, SUNY)

Direct link for submissions: https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/21815

Abstract

Marking a century since the posthumous publication of The Castle in 1926, this panel aims to explore the enduring currency of Franz Kafka's fiction. His work feels uncanny today: we read of protagonists trapped in impossibly complex systems, unnavigable physical and mental spaces, and enigmatic configurations of law and justice occasioning unusual arrests and forced disappearances, all of which are described in equal parts cruelty and black humor—stories, and perhaps a tone, that resonate now more than ever. Borges once reflected that Kafka's work "modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future" (Kafka and His Precursors). We want to consider, in essence, what Kafka might mean in 2026.

In light of this year’s theme of (re)generation, we ask: what might we generate in a (re)turn to Kafka at this particular moment? While any engagement with Kafka's work and its afterlives are welcome additions to this panel, we are especially interested in approaches that extend beyond disciplinary boundaries. Some potential generative approaches could include:

• Close and/or theoretical readings of Kafka's work
• Adaptations of Kafka's work into other media
• Translating Kafka's work
• Teaching Kafka's stories
• Kafka as a mode of reading the present

Description

Marking a century since the posthumous publication of The Castle in 1926, this panel aims to explore the enduring currency of Franz Kafka's fiction. We want to consider what Kafka might mean in 2026—a particularly Kafkaesque moment—from a variety of inter- and transdisciplinary perspectives.

CFP A Gathering of Horrors, Terrors, and Monstrosities (6/30/2025; PAMLA San Francisco 11/20-23/2025)

 

A Gathering of Horrors, Terrors, and Monstrosities

deadline for submissions: 

June 30, 2025

full name / name of organization: 

Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association

contact email: 

roland_finger@cuesta.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/05/29/a-gathering-of-horrors-terrors-and-monstrosities

PAMLA: A Gathering of Horrors, Terrors, and Monstrosities Panel, 11/20/25-11/23/25, San Francisco

Dark times call for dark and demonic stories. Films, graphic novels, and fiction provide compelling ways to examine the horrors, terrors, and monstrosities in our world. Deep and dark works and our fixation on them provide apocalyptic, devastating, and shocking revelations about individuals, society, and nature. While works of horror tear audiences away from realistic norms and social acceptability, they confront us with extreme embodiment, emotion, and intellectual crisis. Chilling whispers and screams beg to be heard even if we are conditioned not to hear them. Norms of decency, sensitivity, and reason are in decline but simultaneously acquire added value. Monstrosity is not just a grisly spectacle but is a message demanding our attention. This panel investigates the meaning and importance of horror, terror, and monstrosity through the study of film, graphic fiction, and literature. What do these works demand from us?

Submit proposals: https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/Home/S/19728

Conference dashboard: https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/User/DashBoard

PAMLA is the western regional affiliate of the Modern Language Association and is dedicated to the creation, advancement, and diffusion of knowledge of ancient and modern languages, literatures, media, cultures, and the arts. This year, the PAMLA is holding its annual 122nd Annual Conference in San Francisco from Nov. 20-23, 2025.

Last updated May 30, 2025

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 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 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 Snake Sisters in Literature and Film (6/25/2024; SAMLA)

Snake Sisters in Literature and Film

deadline for submissions: June 25, 2024

full name / name of organization: 96th SAMLA (South Atlantic Modern Language Association) Conference

contact email: qianyima@link.cuhk.edu.hk

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2024/06/07/snake-sisters-in-literature-and-film

Although a monster with a head of swarming snakes, Medusa has been firmly embraced as a snake sister by more women. In her 1975 essay “The Laugh of the Medusa,” Hélène Cixous pioneeringly urges women to re-visit their mythological snake sister - Medusa - who has long been (mis)construed as ugly and sinful. Cixous writes, "You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she’s not deadly. She’s beautiful and she’s laughing” (885). In current feminist terms, Medusa is often read sympathetically: “The ugliness she first experienced as an unjust punishment” is transformed into her greatest strength she “learned to use as a weapon” (Zimmerman 3). Through feminist reinterpretations, Medusa, once condemned by Athena as a snake monster, has transformed into a symbol of empowerment—a snake sister—for any woman who aspires to wield a gaze as fierce and fearless as hers.

Beyond the revolutionary Greek-origin Medusa, other snake sisters have also persisted from worldwide mythology into contemporary speculative fiction. For instance, the Chinese snake women figure “embodies both the dangerous and glamorous aspects of female sexuality and fertility” (Wang 186). White Snake emerged as a defiant female rebel in earlier premodern Chinese fantasy. Across tales from the Tang and Song Dynasties, she has been depicted as a ferocious spirit, indulging in sexual pleasures and serial killings. Though White Snake was later transformed into an angelic wife in stories since Ming times, the image of the snake rebel has been revitalized in contemporary feminist retellings, such as Hong Kong author Li Bihua’s Green Snake (1986) and Chinese American Cindy Pon’s Serpentine and Sacrifice (2015, 2016).

This session seeks to construct an imaginary genealogy of snake sisters derived from worldwide literature and film. We welcome any studies concerning the images of snake women, from iconic figures like Medusa and White Snake to more characters. Hopefully, these snake sisters have embodied subversive female subjectivities in parallel worlds of imagination.

Submission Guidelines:
Please submit your abstract of 200-300 words, along with a short biography of 100-150 words, to this link:https://samla.ballastacademic.com/Home/S/19150 by 06/25/2024.


Last updated June 11, 2024

CFP Queer Monsters and Monstrous Queers: Abominable Others in Literature and Film (9/30/2023; NeMLA 3/7-10/2023)

Queer Monsters and Monstrous Queers: Abominable Others in Literature and Film

deadline for submissions:
September 30, 2023

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

contact email:
cylagan2@uwo.ca


source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/06/12/queer-monsters-and-monstrous-queers-abominable-others-in-literature-and-film

What makes a monster? While monsters take on multiple forms—vampires, werewolves, cannibals, demons, the undead, and the uncanny, to name a few—societies from all over the world remain collectively enamored by the mystery, danger, and grotesquerie of monsters. Monsters and monstrosity inhabit cultural imaginaries as much as historic landscapes, insofar as such concepts construct, explain, or critique “the vulnerable, pathetic fantasy we distort in our simultaneous search for love and property… [t]he mystery we eliminate to create the revolt of simple things, goods, that desire mystery” (William Carlos Williams). Queerness, as both a mode of experience and of expression, can be critically interrogated through the same lens of definitive Otherness that pervades much of the discourse around monsters and monstrosity. Some of these discourses include: embodiment and the limits of bodies; savagery and civility; xenophobia and heterogeneity; nature and abomination; and desire and disgust. This session will provide space to analyze the multiple ways that monster and queer narratives may be symptomatic, perhaps even constitutive, of the discursive manner that sociocultural views of normalcy and normativity are established.

Through an examination of diverse media sources (literature, art, film, etc.), this session aims to reflect on the strange ways that monstrosity and queerness are entwined, and how both are instrumentalized within ideological frameworks that shape the contours of our intersectional experience. In looking at the interpretive value of conceiving monsters-as-queers and queers-as-monsters, this session foregrounds the possibility of reimagining the affects of fear and fascination beyond the conventional ways that they are deployed in readings of monster and queer narratives. Of special interest are presentations that provide insight on literary and cultural representations of queer/monstrosity as phenomena that can signify co-inherence with, or resistance against, social imaginaries that perpetuate dominant discourses of biopower and normalcy. Other paper topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:

1. Subversive queer/monstrous identities in literature and film;
2. Queer horror or monstrosity auteurs; the Grotesque;
3. Queer/monstrous eroticism, pornography, or fetishization;
4. Queer/monstrous intertextuality and self-reflexivity;
5. Countercanonical readings of “classic” queer/monstrous narratives;
6. Inversions, perversions, and hybridizations

Please submit proposals of 250 to 300 words, with a bio of at most 100 words, on how you intend to address one or more of the talking points above. All proposals must be submitted by September 30, 2023 through the NeMLA portal: https://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention.html

NeMLA's 55th Annual Convention will be held in-person in Boston, MA on March 7-10, 2024.

For inquiries, you may contact Christian Ylagan at cylagan2@uwo.ca.


Last updated June 20, 2023

CFP Gothic Studies Area (6/30/2023; MAPACA Philadelphia 11/9-11/2023)

MAPACA: Gothic Studies

deadline for submissions:
June 30, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association: Gothic Studies Area

contact email:
wsmcmasters@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/05/10/mapaca-gothic-studies



Gothic Studies CFP for MAPACA 2023: The Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association is accepting proposals until June 30 for their 2023 conference, Nov 9 - 11, in Philadelphia, PA. General guidelines can be found at mapaca.net and below. Please consider submitting to the Gothic Studies area: https://mapaca.net/areas/gothic-studies



The Gothic Studies area invites proposals which engage with the genre and culture of the Gothic as it is represented in film, television, literature, art, and society. We are especially interested in ways that the Gothic aesthetic defines itself against other predominate modes, or genres, of storytelling or culture. We also invite proposals concerned with subgenres of the Gothic across media, like the American Gothic, southern Gothic, feminine Gothic, the “weird tale,” and the ecoGothic as represented film, television, literature, music, fashion, art, and culture.

For more information and for the general CFP, visit mapaca.net



Last updated May 11, 2023

CFP Special Section: Monstrous New Orleans (6/15/2023; Popular Culture Association South, New Orleans 9/28-30/2023)

Monstrous New Orleans

deadline for submissions:
June 15, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Popular Culture Association South

contact email:
pcavampires@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/05/05/monstrous-new-orleans


New Orleans is known as one of the most haunted cities in the U.S. and as a haven for vampires (thank you, Anne Rice), but there are so many more monsters there than ghosts and vampires. With such a rich tradition of magic and the paranormal, New Orleans dazzles artists and scholars alike, inviting us all into the mysteries. To celebrate the dark depths of the city, PCAS welcomes papers or presentations that explore the monsters and the monstrous that roam the streets and psyches of New Orleans.



To have your proposal/abstract considered for this special session, please submit your proposal/abstract of approximately 250 words to pcavampires@gmail.com



NOTE: In order to be considered for the Special Section: Monstrous New Orleans please follow the instructions above rather than submitting through the PCAS/ ACAS website. Everyone is invited to submit one academic paper and can, in addition, participate in a round-table discussion or creative session. Only those proposals intended for Monstrous New Orleans should be submitted as outlined above; the PCAS/ ACAS website has an online submission form for the General Call.



The conference will be held in New Orleans, Sept. 28-30, 2023.



Last updated May 9, 2023

CFP Literary Monsters (6/15/2023; SAMLA Atlanta 11/9-11/2023)

Literary Monsters

deadline for submissions:
June 15, 2023

full name / name of organization:
SAMLA / South Atlantic Modern Language Association

contact email:
tracie.provost@mga.edu

soure: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/04/18/literary-monsters

SAMLA’s 95th annual conference, (In)Security: The Future of Literature and Language Studies, will be held at the Atlanta Marriott Buckhead Hotel & Conference Center in Atlanta, Georgia this year from November 9-11. Those accepted must be members of SAMLA to present. You can find more information at: https://samla.memberclicks.net/



Literary Monsters Panel

In today's culture, it's almost impossible to avoid "monsters." Straight from mythology and legend, these fantastic creatures traipse across our television screens and the pages of our books. Over centuries and across cultures, the inhuman have represented numerous cultural fears and, in more recent times, desires. They are Other. They are Us. This panel will explore the literal monsters--whether they be mythological, extraterrestrial, or man-made--that populate fiction and film, delving into the cultural, psychological and/or theoretical implications.



Please submit a 250-300 word abstract, a brief bio, and any A/V needs by June 15, 2023 to Tracie Provost, Middle Georgia State University, at tracie.provost@mga.edu.



Last updated April 27, 2023

CFP Tall Tales and Urban Legends in American Literature (1/3/2023; CAAS Conference, Halifax 9/22-24/2023)

Tall Tales and Urban Legends in American Literature

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/11/23/tall-tales-and-urban-legends-in-american-literature

deadline for submissions:
January 3, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Jasleen Singh, University of Toronto

contact email:
ja.singh@mail.utoronto.ca



Tall Tales and Urban Legends in American Literature

Canadian Association for American Studies (CAAS) 2023 Conference, Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, NS, September 22-24, 2023

Organized by Ross Bullen (OCAD University) and Jasleen Singh (University of Toronto)



In American Humor: A Study of National Character (1931), Constance Rourke describes the tall tale as a “scattered” genre that necessarily exists only in “fragments” (67). Embodying elements of the supernatural and the gothic, the genre typically centers around the figure of the pioneering “backwoodsman,” or “simpleton.” Moreover, the tall tale is rooted in regionalism–but in Rourke’s analysis–also ruminates on the question of the “native” or so-called “authentic” American national character at large. Tall tales, folk tales, and urban legends have had an appreciable impact on American literature and on articulations of the American national identity. As a literary strategy, the tall tale allows the author to approach serious or challenging subject matter in a way that engages a readership in both pedagogical and (provocatively) entertaining ways. Discussing William Wells Brown’s use of comedic and tall tales in his anti-slavery writing, Geoffrey Sanborn claims that “Brown concluded early in his career that white Americans strongly prefer narratives of self-making that are a little ‘off,’ in which something other than merit is at work” (9). For Brown, the naive and lucky outsider is better able to rouse his readers’ sympathy than a conventionally virtuous and heroic protagonist. Accordingly, it is the fantastical, the strange, or the “off” that can deliver the most prescient and serious critiques of American identity and national ideals. Moving beyond Rourke’s and Sanborn’s focus on the nineteenth century, in the late twentieth- and twenty-first centuries, the tall tale has morphed into multiple genres and forms, including urban legends, memes, creepypastas (online horror legends), and online folk figures like Slender Man or, more recently, Loab.

We welcome papers that explore any aspect of tall tales and urban legends from any period of American and African American literature or popular culture. Please send proposals to Jasleen Singh (ja.singh@mail.utoronto.ca) and Ross Bullen (rbullen@ocadu.ca) by January 3rd, 2023.

To learn more about the CAAS 2023 Conference, visit: http://american-studies.ca/conferences/



Works Cited

Rourke, Constance. American Humor: A Study of the National Character. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1931.

Sanborn, Geoffrey. Plagiarama! William Wells Brown and the Aesthetic of Attractions. New York: Columbia UP, 2016.



Last updated November 27, 2022

CFP Casas Tomadas: Monsters and Metaphors on the Periphery of Latin American Literature (9/30/2022; NeMLA 2023)

Forwarded from the MEARCSTAPA List



CALL FOR PAPERS

Casas Tomadas: Monsters and Metaphors on the Periphery of Latin American Literature

Co-Chaired by Carlos Gonzalez and Caio Cesar Esteves de Souza (Harvard University)

Monsters have always played an important role in the literature of Latin America and have managed to persist in the national imaginations from which hispano- and lusophone writers draw their own source material. Dictators, strongmen, and organized crime roam the peripheries

of language and history side by side with monsters, specters, and creatures horrible to behold. This panel will draw together scholarship exploring the ways in which monsters, of the imagination and of history, persist in the literature, politics, language, and culture of Latin America, drawing from a wide array of sources and disciplines. It will also explore the role of literature in ensuring, processing, and reimagining the ongoing survival of the monstrous, with perhaps surprising results.

NeMLA invites submissions from graduate students and welcomes academic papers from across disciplines, regardless of field or time period, covering literature, translation, cinema, theater, cultural studies, art, graphic novels, music, etc. Presentations should not exceed 20 minutes and can be given in English, Spanish, and/or Portuguese. Proposals of no more than 300 words may be submitted to by September 30, 2022.

SUBMIT YOUR ABSTRACT PROPOSAL HERE by September 30, 2022!
bit.ly/CasasTomadas

Please include an author bio of 100–150 words with the abstract.


54th NeMLA ANNUAL CONVENTION

Keynote Speaker: Anne Enright
SUBMIT YOUR ABSTRACT PROPOSAL HERE by September 30, 2022!
NIAGARA FALLS, NEW YORK
March 23-26, 2023
Location: Niagara Falls Convention Center
Hotel: Sheraton Niagara Falls
Sponsored by the University at Buffalo

CFP Monstrosity in the Witcherverse (8/15/2022; NEPCA Monsters Area - online conference 10/20-22/2022)

“The worst monsters are the ones we create”: Monstrosity in the Witcherverse

Session Organized by Kris Larsen, Central Connecticut State University

Sponsored by 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


Andrzej Sapkowski’s internationally popular Witcher series of novels and short stories uses a medievalist setting to highlight the multiple monstrosities of modern life, including violence against the environment, racism and genocide, and abuses of technology. As the tagline of the hit Netflix spinoff warns, “The worst monsters are the ones we create.” We seek papers that investigate the creative twists on the definitions of monster and monstrous in any aspects of the Witcherverse, including the source material, Netflix adaptations (both live-action and animated), Polish live-action adaptation, and computer games, as well as ‘monstrous fan’ behavior (including race-centric attacks on the Netflix showrunner for casting choices). Papers that are solely focused on the Witcherverse as well as those that analyze Sapkowski’s sub-creation in comparison to other Secondary Worlds are welcomed.



Address inquires on this call to Kris Larsen (larsen@ccsu.edu) with the subject line NEPCA Witcher. 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/MonstrosityinWitcherverse.