CFP Online Midwinter Seminar 2023 Fantasy Goes to Hell: Depictions of Hell in Modern Fantasy Texts (11/15/2022; online 1/27-28/2023)

Online Midwinter Seminar 2023
Fantasy Goes to Hell: Depictions of Hell in Modern Fantasy Texts

January 27-28 (Friday evening, Saturday all day)
Via Zoom and Discord

Source and registration link: https://www.mythsoc.org/oms/oms-2023.htm

Online Midwinter Seminar
Fantasy Goes to Hell: Depictions of Hell in Modern Fantasy Texts
Co-chairs: Janet Brennan Croft and Erin Giannini

Hell in modern fantasy is usually a far cry from traditional depictions in major world religions — the dry and dusty hells of ancient Mesopotamia and the Classical world, the ambiguous Hel of the Norse, the fiery pit and everlasting torment of medieval Christianity and Islam, the purgatorial hells of reincarnative religions like Buddhism and Hinduism. How do creators of fantasy imagine Hell differently? And more importantly, why? What do these depictions have to tell us about what is hellish in our modern world?

In addition to hosting this Online Midwinter Seminar, the co-chairs will be co-editing a special issue of Mythlore, in which they intend to present selected papers presented at this seminar.

REGISTRATION

Registration is US$20.00 per person.

Since a major component of the online seminar is the discussions and other activities on Discord, we would also like to know what screen name (or "handle") you use, or would like to use, on that platform. Specifying both your real name and your Discord name helps us keep track of who is registered and who is not. However, supplying your Discord name is technically optional, especially if you do not plan on participating in any Discord activities.

CALL FOR PAPERS

The CFP deadline is November 15, 2022.

The Mythopoeic Society invites paper submissions for an online conference that focuses on the various depictions of the concept of hell in modern fantasy works. Aspects of this topic might include but are certainly not limited to any of the following:

• The mystical spiritual descent: what can be gained from a descent to hell
• The escape from hell: What is saved, and what is left behind
• The harrowing of hell: the rescue of others from hell
• The pact with hell: self-damnation or turning the tables
• The intersection of race, racism, and hell
• Hellish places: Mordor, Charn, the Upside Down, the post-apocalyptic world
• The influence of fantastic ur-texts about Hell: Aeneas’s visit in The Aeneid; Dante’s Inferno; Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus; Milton’s Paradise Lost; Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit; the art of Hieronymus Bosch; Mozart’s Don Giovanni
• “This IS the Bad Place!”: The primary world as Hell

Papers from a variety of critical perspectives and disciplines are welcome. We are interested in ANY form of media — text, graphic novels, television, movies, music and music videos, games — as long as it can be described as fantasy and includes a hell or its denizens.
Some texts to consider:

• C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce
• Charles Williams’s All Hallows’ Eve
• Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens (book and television series)
• Lois McMaster Bujold’s Five Gods series
• Music videos: Lil Nas X’s “Montero” and “Industry Baby”
• Television series: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Lovecraft Country, Supernatural, The Good Place
• Movies: Get Out, Dogma
• Tanith Lee’s Tales From the Flat Earth series (Death’s Master et seq.)
• Works by Vaclev Havel, Franz Kafka, Nikolai Gogol, George Orwell
• Neil Gaiman’s Sandman (graphic novels and television series)
• Walter Wangerin, Jr.’s Dun Cow trilogy
• Evan Dahm’s Harrowing of Hell (graphic novel)

Each paper will receive a 50-minute slot to allow time for questions, but individual papers should be timed for oral presentation in 40 minutes maximum. Two or three presenters who wish to present short, related papers may also share a one-hour slot. Participants are encouraged to submit papers chosen for presentation at the conference to the special issue of Mythlore devoted to this theme. All papers should conform to the MLA Style Manual current edition.

Proposals should be approximately 200 words in length and should be sent to both co-chairs: oms-chair@mythcon.org and oms-co-chair@mythcon.org.

CFP- Depicting the afterlife: morality and religion in contemporary film and media (collection) (abstracts by 11/17/2024)

CFP- Chapter abstracts for the edited collection “Depicting the afterlife: morality and religion in contemporary film and media 

source: https://networks.h-net.org/node/73374/announcements/10556125/cfp-chapter-abstracts-edited-collection-%E2%80%9Cdepicting-afterlife
 
Announcement published by Angelique Nairn on Friday, July 29, 2022

Type: Call for Papers

Date: November 17, 2022

Location: New Zealand

Subject Fields: Film and Film History, Literature, Philosophy, Popular Culture Studies, Religious Studies and Theology




(For possible inclusion as part of the Routledge Advances in Popular Culture Studies series)

As Garrett (2015) contends, popular cultural representations of the afterlife are a means of imaginatively and creatively grappling with the unknown. These representations can offer explanations about life after death or the in-between, to rationalize the existential, support and challenge religious doctrines, and entertain and educate so that society might live life to the fullest or feel assured that there is something more.

According to O’Neil (2022), at their crux, these representations hinge on hope and the prospect of happiness, permeable boundaries that see a blurring of ‘here’ and ‘there,’ self-determination as key to understanding the afterlife, and acts of sacrifice and love that forge the conditions of eternal happiness. These ideas about the afterlife construct perceptions of morality and religion: what one must do now to reap the benefits once one has passed over.

These popular cultural representations, then, present “a range of narratives, consumer choices, moral dispositions and selected rituals of conduct” (Saenz, 1992, p. 43), which people “may adopt, adapt, criticize or reject as components in our implicit knowledge” (Dant, 2012, p. 24). With media such as The Good Place, Upload, The Inbetween, Afterlife of the Party, Coco, Soul, Reaper, Elsewhere, If I Stay, and Boo Bitch (to name but a few), focused on the afterlife, it seems timely to explore the messages promulgated in such texts about morality and/or religion. This is especially given media can prompt questioning and reasoning that aids self-reflection (Hawkins, 2001) and integrates people into an established order offering models of appropriate ways of being (Krijen & Verboord, 2016).

Therefore, this collection aims to explore representations of morality and/or religion in 21st-century popular cultural texts that feature and emphasize the afterlife. It asks how the afterlife is understood but moreover, how are people encouraged to live their lives? Such aims will inevitably consider what place (if any) religion has in shaping popular cultural texts and understandings of the beyond, and what perceptions of morality are favoured and guide character story arcs. Ultimately this edited collection will contribute to a continued and growing discussion on the representations of morality, religion, and the afterlife in contemporary society.

Please send 300- word abstracts, including a title and short biography to Angelique Nairn angelique.nairn@aut.ac.nz by November 17th 2022.

Please note that the edited collection will not be published before 2024.

Possible topics might include, but are not limited to:

• Moral motivation/reasoning and life after death
• Dichotomies of Heaven and Hell
• Representations of the ‘soul’
• Cultural differences in constructions of the afterlife
• Depictions/constructions of the spiritual realm
• Ghosts, the paranormal, and the afterlife
• Religious motifs in texts that feature the afterlife
• Representations of Supreme Being(s)
• Notions of suffering and reward in the afterlife

Contact Info:


Dr Angelique Nairn

Auckland University Technology
Contact Email:
angelique.nairn@aut.ac.nz

CFP The Exorcist: Studies on Possession, Influence, and Society (due date 10/31/2021)

Sorry to have missed posting this earlier:

The Exorcist: Studies on Possession, Influence, and Society

 

deadline for submissions: October 31, 2021


full name / name of organization: Revenant: Critical and Creative Studies of the Supernatural


contact email: cuevae@uhd.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2021/04/11/the-exorcist-studies-on-possession-influence-and-society


 

Special Edition of Revenant:

“The Exorcist: Studies on Possession, Influence, and Society”

Deadline for abstract submissions: October 31, 2021

Guest Editors: Edmund P. Cueva (University of Houston-Downtown) and Nadia Scippacercola (Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II)

The Exorcist, both as a book and film, has had a lasting influence beyond the world of horror. It is essentially a foundational, multivalent work: on the one hand, it helps understand and approach the theological concept and spiritual dimension of demonic possession as found in the Catholic faith, and on the other hand, it investigates domestic/public, spaces, dynamics, and spheres. Indeed, The Exorcist examines social discourse and narratives from a transformative and turbulent period of American history, sheds light on the difficulties that aging populations face in societies that do not offer adequate social safety nets, and exposes the miserable circumstances that people with mental health conditions and medically uninsured individuals and families often endure. Moreover, The Exorcist also speaks directly to the colonization and neo-colonization of archaeological sites and religions.

The Exorcist has much to offer as the foci for extensive and sustained research in the humanistic disciplines. This Special Edition of Revenant aims to start a new conversation on The Exorcist according to three dimensions: 1) to go back to the roots of the concept of possession, 2) to assess the cultural impact of the book and film, and 3) to present new scholarly developments about the book and film. Potential topics include but are not limited to: 

• possession in antiquity – literary accounts
• possession in antiquity – anthropological, psychological, archaeological data and observations
• antiquity as a bridge between medieval and/or modern religious views of possession
• possession in post-classical – pre-modern times
• the influence of ancient literature and thought on the book and movie
• possession in the modern age
• similarities differences between Western and non-Western possession (ancient, post-classical, and modern) – literary accounts; anthropological, psychological, archaeological data and observations
• possession in the arts
• possession and witches
• mysticism and altered state of consciousness
• psychology/psychiatry and possession
• the influence of the book and movie(s)
• the persistence of the popularity of the book and movie

For articles and creative pieces (such as poetry, short stories, flash fiction, videos, comics, artwork, and music) please send a 500-word abstract and a short biography by October 31st, 2021. If your abstract is accepted, the full article (maximum 7000 words, including Harvard referencing) and the full creative piece (maximum 5000 words if a written piece) will be due April 30th, 2022. Reviews of books, films, games, events, and art related to The Exorcist will be considered (800-1,000 words in length). Please send full details of the title and medium you would like to review as soon as possible. Further information, including Submission Guidelines, are available at the journal website: www.revenantjournal.com. Inquiries are welcome and, along with all submissions, should be directed to cuevae@uhd.edu and nadia.scippacercola@gmail.com.

Last updated April 15, 2021 

 

CFP Inklings and Horror: Fantasy's Dark Corners (11/15/2021; Zoom February 2022)

Online Winter Seminar
The Inklings and Horror: Fantasy's Dark Corners 

https://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/ows-2022.htm

February 4-5, 2022 (Friday evening, Saturday all day)

Via Zoom and Discord 

Online Winter Seminar
The Inklings and Horror: Fantasy's Dark Corners

Registration: ($20 fee, see the website)

Sponsored by The Writers of the Rohirrim, a Mythopoeic Society Discussion Group, we invite you to embrace the darkness of those long winter nights and participate in The Inklings and Horror: Fantasy's Dark Corners.

Tentative Schedule:

Friday evening, 5 pm or later, we will have Discord chats, gaming, possibly a digital break-out room, and other ideas that we can come up with. Then papers occur on Saturday with closing activities in the evening.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Downloadable PDF

The Mythopoeic Society invites paper submissions for an online conference that focuses on the connections between and among Inkling authors and the literary tropes of the horror sub-genre of speculative fiction, to be held through Zoom and Discord February 4-5, 2022. Aspects of this topic might include any of the following as well as other approaches not mentioned here: 

• the utopian and dystopian dimensions of fantasy worlds, including those of the Inklings, that include horrific elements
• the role of fear in idealized world building, including the works of the Inklings
• the demonic and the angelic, with reference to the works of one or more of the Inklings
• monstrosity, gore, and/or body horror (possibly contrasted with otherness and/or beauty)
• the redeemable and the unredeemable
• the appeal of dread in Inkling fantasy and in horror examples
• the horrific within the fantastic and the fantastic within the horrific, including in the works of the Inklings
• the horror of otherness within the sameness of the fantastic
• horrific race and/or gender elements in fantastic narratives, including those of the Inklings
• horror as the despoliation of the fantastic
  

Papers from a variety of critical perspectives and disciplines are welcome.

Each paper will receive a 50-minute slot to allow time for questions, but individual papers should be timed for oral presentation in 40 minutes maximum. Two or three presenters who wish to present short, related papers may also share a one-hour slot. Participants are encouraged to submit papers chosen for presentation at the conference to Mythlore, the refereed journal of the Mythopoeic Society. All papers should conform to the MLA Style Manual current edition.

Paper abstracts (250 word maximum), along with contact information, should be sent to the Papers Coordinator, Online Winter Seminar, at the following email address by 15 November, 2021: mythiccircle@mythsoc.org. Please include your AV requests and the projected time needed for your presentation.

CFP Preternatural Environments: Dreamscapes, Alternate Realities, Landscapes of Dread (proposals by 3/1/2016)

Preternatural Environments: Dreamscapes, Alternate Realities, Landscapes of Dread
Announcement published by Richard Raiswell on Thursday, August 27, 2015
https://networks.h-net.org/node/73374/announcements/80115/preternatural-environments-dreamscapes-alternate-realities

Type: Call for Publications
Date: March 1, 2016
Location: Prince Edward Island, Canada
Subject Fields: Anthropology, Art, Art History & Visual Studies, Cultural History / Studies, Environmental History / Studies, Geography

Preternatural Environments: Dreamscapes, Alternate Realities, Landscapes of Dread

CFP for special issue of Preternature (issue 6.1)

Deadline for submissions: March 1, 2016

This special issue of Preternature seeks papers that examine elements and/or depictions of the preternatural in all sorts of environments. Scholars are increasingly drawing attention to the importance of spaces and their contexts, the stories we tell about them, and our interactions with them. This volume focuses on preternatural aspects of natural and unnatural environments such as dreamscapes, alternate worlds, and eerie landscapes.

Papers should investigate the connections between preternatural environments and literary, historical, anthropological, and artistic forms of understanding. Topics might include, but are not limited to:

• Defining the “preternatural environment” / preternatural aspects of an environment.
• Superstition and spaces.
• Demonic domains.
• Artistic representations of preternatural environments across the ages.
• Aspects of the uncanny in various physical settings.
• The pathetic fallacy and narrative theory.
• “Unnatural” landscapes and environments.
• Bridging natural and preternatural spaces.
• Preternatural ecology and ecocriticism.
• Connections between material environments, literary narratives, and the preternatural.
• Eerie landscapes as characters or significant presences in literature, history, and culture.
• How preternatural environments inform human behaviour, or how behaviour informs preternatural environments.

Preternature welcomes a variety of approaches, including narrative theory, ecocriticism, and behavioral studies from any cultural, literary, artistic, or historical tradition and from any time period. We particularly encourage submissions dealing with non-Western contexts.

Contributions should be 8,000 - 12,000 words, including all documentation and critical apparatus. For more information, see http://www.psupress.org/journals/jnls_submis_Preternature.html

or submit directly at https://www.editorialmanager.com/preternature/default.aspx.

(First-time users: click on “Register” in the menu at upper left.)

Preternature is published twice annually by the Pennsylvania State Press and is available through JSTOR and Project Muse. This periodical is also indexed in the ATLA Religion Database® (ATLA RDB®), www: http://www.atla.com.

Contact Info:
Richard Raiswell

Editor, Preternature

Contact Email:
rraiswell@upei.ca
URL: http://www.editorialmanager.com/preternature/default.aspx

CFP Hell Studies: Presenting and Representing Hell (9/15/2015; Kalamazoo 5/12-15/2016)

Hell Studies: Presenting and Representing Hell (ICMS Kalamazoo 2016)
full name / name of organization:
Societas Daemonetica
contact email:
burleyr@bc.edu

The Societas Daemonetica is accepting proposals for fifteen- to twenty-minute papers for the Hell Studies session Presenting and Representing Hell, to be held at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University, May 12-15, 2016.

Representations of Hell appear throughout the Middle Ages, in textual descriptions, manuscript illuminations, portal sculpture, wall paintings - indeed, in nearly every representational medium across Europe from the 5th century to the 15th. How is Hell represented? How are its occupants characterized? From the cold and serpent-filled Hell of the Blickling Homilies to the fiery and torturous one that adorns the façade of Autun, the presentation and representation of Hell has been done in many ways and, it would appear, to many ends. This session seeks to bring scholars from various disciplines together to discuss the ways in which “the other place” is offered up to medieval audiences for consumption, and the insights which can be derived from its study. Despite the vast literature on Hell and its related topics – populated by the likes of J. B. Russell, Henry Ansgar Kelly, Jacques Le Goff, Eileen Gardiner, and so many more – there remains a great deal more to study and address. New scholarship, like Philip Almond's well-received new biography of the Devil published just last year, is constantly being published, adding to our understanding of this dynamic field. With this session, we hope to provide an interdisciplinary forum for new ideas and new perspectives on the looming historical spectre of Hell and what it meant for the people at the time.

We welcome papers from literary, art historical, historical, theological, and interdisciplinary perspectives -- all treatments of the topic are welcome. Please send proposals of no longer than 250 words along with a completed Participant Information Form (http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html) to Richard Ford Burley (burleyr@bc.edu) by September 15, 2015. Preliminary inquiries and other questions are also welcome.


By web submission at 08/11/2015 - 22:52

CFP Hermeneutics of Hell Collection (proposals by 9/1/15)

Call for Submissions: The Hermeneutics of Hell (Essay Collection; 09/01/15;03/15/16)
https://networks.h-net.org/node/13784/discussions/72983/call-submissions-hermeneutics-hell-essay-collection-090115031516
Discussion published by Gregor Thuswaldner on Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Call for Submissions: The Hermeneutics of Hell: Devilish Visions and Visions of the Devil in World Literature

“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors, and hail a materialist or magician with the same delight.”  C. S. Lewis.  The Screwtape Letters

For centuries, the biblical account of Satan has inspired countless authors worldwide. Medieval texts dealing with devils often combined biblical and pagan imageries. But it wasn’t until the early Baroque era when the devil in world literature became more individualistic. Since then, authors from around the world have been drawn to the devil as a literary figure. Often times, the devils created by Milton, Goethe, Chateaubriand, Byron, Lermontov, Strindberg, C.S. Lewis, Mahfouz and many others differ significantly from biblical texts and the literal interpretation of the Satan in the Old Testament. Even though the topic of hell seems to have lost its appeal on pulpits, it is still alive and well in literature.

This collection of essays aims to analyze devilish visions and visions of the devil and the different roles devils have assumed in world literature. What makes devils attractive literary figures? What are the functions of the devils? What are the underlying theologies? How do the literary devils differ from biblical images? Why are we as readers still fascinated by literary manifestations of the devil?


Possible topics may include:

•          The devil as tempter

•          The devil as accuser

•          The devil as satirist

•          The devil as cultural critic

•          The devil as God’s counterpart

•          The devil as revolutionist

•          The devil as a tragic figure

•          The devil and damnation

•          The devil and salvation

•          The devil in passion plays

•          Sympathy for the devil

•          The future of devils

•          Hell on earth

•          Visions of hell

•          Eternal damnation vs. extinction



Email your 250 word abstracts by September 1, 2015 to Dan Russ and Gregor Thuswaldner at dkruss47@gmail.com and Gregor.Thuswaldner@gordon.edu  If selected for the essay collection, the finished assays are due by March 15, 2016.

CFP The Supernatural Revamped collection (2/1/15)

Sorry to have forgotten about this:

CFP: The Supernatural Revamped (collection of essays)
Posted on October 28, 2014 by Public Information Officer
CFP: The Supernatural Revamped (collection of essays)
http://www.fantastic-arts.org/2014/cfp-the-supernatural-revamped-collection-of-essays/

The Supernatural Revamped: From Timeworn Legends to 21st Century Chic
Editors: Barbara Brodman and James E. Doan, Nova Southeastern University

Project Overview
Editors Brodman and Doan are seeking original essays for their third of a series of books on legends and images of the supernatural in film, literature and lore from early to modern times and from peoples and cultures around the world. Their first two volumes, The Universal Vampire: Origins and Evolution of a Legend (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013) and Images of the Modern Vampire: The Hip and the Atavistic (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013), finalist for a prestigious Bram Stoker book award, dealt exclusively with the vampire legend. This volume is more inclusive, with emphasis placed on the evolution of a broad spectrum of timeworn images of the supernatural into their more modern—even chic—forms.

Each chapter in the collection will focus on one of the following categories of supernaturals:
1. Revenants (vampires, ghosts, zombies, etc.)
2. Demons and Angels
3. Shape Shifters
4. Earthbound Supernaturals (trolls, dwarves, yetis, chupacabras, etc.)
5. Fairy Folk (elves, fairies, leprechauns, etc.)

Abstract Due Dates
Preference will be given to abstracts received before February 1, 2015. Late submissions will be accepted until April 1, 2015. Abstracts should be no longer than 300 words.
Final manuscripts of 3,000-4,000 words should be submitted in Chicago Style.
Contact us and send abstracts to: brodman@nova.edu or doan@nova.edu

CFP Devilish Visions and Visions of the Devil in World Literature (7/1/14; 11/7-8/14)

"The Hermeneutics of Hell: Devilish Visions and Visions of the Devil in World Literature"
Location: Massachusetts, United States
Date Submitted: 2014-04-12
Announcement ID: 212994

2014 Northeast Regional Conference of Christianity and Literature
 "The Hermeneutics of Hell: Devilish Visions and Visions of the Devil in World Literature"
November 7-8, 2014
Gordon College, Wenham, MA

“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors, and hail a materialist or magician with the same delight.”  C. S. Lewis.  The Screwtape Letters

For centuries, the biblical account of Satan has inspired countless authors worldwide. Medieval texts dealing with devils often combined biblical and pagan imageries. But it wasn’t until the early Baroque era when the devil in world literature became more individualistic. Since then, authors from around the world have been drawn to the devil as a literary figure. Often times, the devils created by Milton, Goethe, Chateaubriand, Byron, Lermontov, Strindberg, C.S. Lewis, Mahfouz and many others differ significantly from biblical texts and the literal interpretation of the Satan in the Old Testament. Even though the topic of hell seems to have lost its appeal on pulpits, it is still alive and well in literature.

This conference aims to analyze devilish visions and visions of the devil and the different roles devils have assumed in world literature. What makes devils attractive literary figures? What are the functions of the devils? What are the underlying theologies? How do the literary devils differ from biblical images? Why are we as readers still fascinated by literary manifestations of the devil?

Possible topics may include:

•          The devil as tempter

•          The devil as accuser

•          The devil as satirist

•          The devil as cultural critic

•          The devil as God’s counterpart

•          The devil as revolutionist

•          The devil as a tragic figure

•          The devil and damnation

•          The devil and salvation

•          The devil in passion plays

•          Sympathy for the devil

•          The future of devils

•          Hell on earth

•          Visions of hell

•          Eternal damnation vs. extinction


Email your 250 word abstracts by July 1, 2014 to NECCL@gordon.edu  Graduate students are encouraged to apply for a CCL grant. http://www.christianityandliterature.com/Travel_Grant_recipients  The conference organizers, Dan Russ and Gregor Thuswaldner (Gordon College), cannot offer contributors compensation for conference- or travel expenses. Select contributions will be considered for publication in an edited collection.  Location of the conference: Gordon College, Wenham, MA. Gordon College is located just 25 miles north of Boston on Boston's historic North Shore.


Gregor Thuswaldner, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of German and Linguistics
Fellow, Center for Faith and Inquiry
Gordon College
255 Grapevine Road
Wenham, MA 01984
USA

Tel: (978) 867 4350
Fax: (978) 867 3300


Email: neccl@gordon.edu

Monster (Super)Heroes and (Super)Villains

Here's a mixed group of shows featuring monsters as superhero-like heroes and villains. Details on all five shows can be found on their respective Wikipedia pages.