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faery as a plot device in romance or metaphor in moral exempla, reading these narratives in conjunction with emerging historical documents and analyses of faery faith provides the opportunity to explore how folklore and literature mutually inform and illuminate one another.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 Norm and Transgression in the Fairy-Tale Tradition Confernce (1/31/2023; Providence, RI 6/7-9/2022)

Norm and Transgression in the Fairy-Tale Tradition: (Non)Normative Identities, Forms, and Writings

deadline for submissions:
January 31, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Alessandro Cabiati / Brown University

contact email:
normandtransgression@brown.edu


source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/11/04/norm-and-transgression-in-the-fairy-tale-tradition-nonnormative-identities-forms-and

Norm and Transgression in the Fairy-Tale Tradition: (Non)Normative Identities, Forms, and Writings

Brown University, 7-9 June 2023

Conference Organisers: Alessandro Cabiati (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and Brown University) and Lewis Seifert (Brown University)



Keynote Speakers

Maria Tatar (Harvard University)

Anne E. Duggan (Wayne State University)

Laura Tosi (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)

Cristina Bacchilega (University of Hawai’i-Mānoa)



From Perrault’s representation of female disobedience in ‘Bluebeard’ to Little Red Riding Hood’s disregard of her mother’s prohibition of wandering in the forest, transgression is a key theme in fairy tales. The act of transgression is typically used as a vehicle for a moral and/or educational message which seeks to punish the transgressor and reward ‘good’ behaviour that is compliant with societal norms and values. But with the evolution of the literary fairy tale as a genre, transgression has taken many other forms and significations that go well beyond acts of disobedience or the infringement of society’s rules and expectations. Rewritings of fairy tales, including the efforts by late 19th-century Decadent writers to subvert traditional happy endings and moral meanings or postmodern feminist adaptations that challenge the patriarchal structure embedded in those fairy tales, put into question the very notions of transgression and normativity in the fairy-tale world.

It could easily be argued, moreover, that transgression of accepted cultural norms has defined the literary fairy tale as a genre ever since its development in late 17th-century France. Physical deformity and monsters, such as ogres, witches, and other villains, populate the fairy-tale universe; violent and homicidal acts are commonly represented; and transgressive relationships and comportments abound, including, for instance, the numerous tales classified as ‘unnatural love’ in the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index of folktales. In spite of the evident moralistic and allegorical meanings of fairy tales, and of the supposed acceptance of its illogical and ‘marvellous’ world as normative by the reader, the latter cannot but acknowledge the transgressive presence of topics such as cannibalism and anthropophagy in many of the tales. Recently, scholarly works in the emerging field of Queer Fairy-Tale Studies have underlined the ‘transgressive’ quality of certain traditional tales that do not conform to a heteronormative paradigm.

What can then be considered as normative, and what as transgressive, in a fairy tale? We invite proposals for papers that broadly address the above question(s), and which more narrowly consider, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• The laws of fairy land and the fairy world; breaking the law and committing crimes; investigations and trials; sentencing, punishments, and ‘fairy’ prisons; eye for an eye and the ‘poetic justice’ of fairy tales.
• The subversion of the categories of good and evil, and related notions of reward and punishment; the rejection of happy endings and ‘happily ever after’, and of moral messages and educational aims.
• Social and cultural taboos in fairy tales; prohibitions and interdictions; forbidden practices and illicit desires.
• Transgressions of the ‘once upon a time’ formula and of fairy-tale settings; fairy tales set in modern and contemporary times; the presence of science and technology in the fairy world and the intermingling of fairy tale, fantasy, and science fiction.
• Transgressions and violations of the human body; illness and physical deformity; amalgamation and equivalence of the human and the animal; posthuman figures.
• Gender rules and laws; princesses and laws of succession; adventurous heroines and rescued princes; ruling queens.
• Nonnormative identities; cross-dressing; gender fluidity; marvellous sexual metamorphoses and magical transsexuality; homo- and bisexual desire.
• Racial rules and laws; interracial relationships and marriages.
• Rewritings of traditional tales; poems, novels, and novellas with a fairy-tale plot; postmodern retellings.
• Non-Western fairy-tale traditions; translation of non-Western fairy tales in Western culture and vice versa.
• Adaptation as transgression; adaptation that becomes the norm (the Disney films); adaptation in other media, theatre, cinema, TV, comics; computer games and new technologies.

Please send an abstract of around 300 words for a 20-minute paper, along with a biographical note and your affiliation, to normandtransgression@brown.edu by 31 January 2023. Outcomes will be communicated by 28 February 2023. For regular updates on the conference, please visit the conference website.

We plan to produce a Special Issue or an Edited Volume including a selection of papers presented at the conference.

The conference is planned as an in-person event, but contingency plans are in place to hold the conference online should it become necessary due to the changing nature of the pandemic.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 101025123.



Last updated January 16, 2023

CFP Fairies: A Companion (6/30/21)

This sounds like a great idea:

Fairies: A Companion

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2021/03/03/fairies-a-companion

deadline for submissions: June 30, 2021


full name / name of organization: Simon Bacon and Lorna Piatti-Farnell


contact email: lorna.piatti-farnell@aut.ac.nz




Stories about fairies and the fae have long populated the imagination of many cultures around the world. Fairy histories have been the focus of much scholarly debate, and so has the figure of the fairy as a cultural icon.

Fairies and the fae have also gained a noticeable importance in the 21st century, bringing with them an increased cultural focus on traditional beliefs and indigenous identities. Indeed, while the connection to the folkloristic and the literary remains strong—with the multiple re-incarnations Tinkerbell from Peter Pan taking centerstage here—fairies have also found renewed life in modern and contemporary re-imaginings.

Film and television, as well as recent SVOD platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime, have provided a fertile arena for fairies to grow in influence and representation, especially considering their continued centrality in the cross-century genres of paranormal romance and fantasy. From the highly sexualities creatures of True Blood (2008–2014) to the ethnically diverse groups portrayed in Carnival Row (2019), from the gender-swap production of A Midsummer Nights Dream (2020) to the portrayal of Billy Porter as a gender neutral Fairy Godmother in Cinderella (2021), these re-envisionings give the old tropes of classic fairy texts new life.

Merging old lore with contemporary socio-cultural and socio-historical politics, the newly re-vamped fairies operate as central figures in the evolution of identity politics. Alongside this lies is an obvious connection to the environment, where fairies become representative and protectors of the eco-system, though not just as preservers of the past but as augers of a future where humanity and the planet can survive together. In their multiple incarnations, fairies prove how the magical can be returned into the everyday.

In answer to the evolutionary portrayals of fairies and the fae in our cultures, histories, and narratives, the editors welcome chapter proposal for selection and inclusion into Fairies: A Companion. The volume will be part of the Fiction, Genre and Film Companions for Peter Lang, Oxford.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Fairies and folklore
• Fairies and history
• Fairies and narrative genres
• Fairy tales, and tales about fairies
• Fairies and magic
• Fairies and gender
• Fairies and body politics
• Fairies and diversity
• Fairies and ethnicity/race
• Fairies and national identities
• Fairies and ecology
• Fairies and religion
• Fairies and food
• Fairies and politics
• Fairies and tradition
• Fairies and the Gothic
• Fairies and horror
• Fairies in media and popular culture
• Fairy and cosplay and lifestyle (from carnival to Halloween)
• Fairies in children’s literature and media
• Fairies in games, gaming and roleplay
• Fairy songs, music and performance
• Fairies, in/post-humanity, and hybridity
• Fairy merchandise
• Transformations in fairy representation
• Transnational and intercultural cultural approaches to fairies

The editors invite abstracts of 300 words on or around any of the above topics. Final essays will be 3,000 words in length.

The deadline for submission of abstracts is June 30, 2021. Please email your abstracts (together with a short bio, 100 words max) for consideration to both editors: Simon Bacon, baconetti@googlemail.com; and Lorna Piatti-Farnell, lorna.piatti-farnell@aut.ac.nz.



Last updated March 4, 2021

CFP Female Tricksters (9/15/15; Kalamazoo 2016)

Also from MEARCSTAPA-L:

CFP: Kalamazoo 2016: Female Tricksters
Session Sponsors: MEARCSTAPA (Monsters: the Experimental Association for the Research of Cryptozoology Through Scholarly Theory and Practical Application) and the American Society of Irish Medieval Studies (ASIMS).
Session Organizers: Sarah L. Higley (University of Rochester), Larissa Tracy (Longwood University), and Asa Simon Mittman (Chico State University).
Session Presider: Sarah L. Higley (University of Rochester)

The trickster, who conquers by cunning and not force, inhabits a complex moral/ethical world and seems to provoke a culture already steeped in cruelty and punishment in order to enact his/her own cruelty and punishment. The trickster in the “Beast Epic” gratifies his brute desires at the expense of others for fun and sadism, and is often punished for doing so in order to restore order to a damaged cultural body, but also to expose its injustices and hypocrisies. It has been suggested by Joan Acocella in the New Yorker that that the only kind of creature that can’t be a trickster is a woman, and yet medieval literature is rife with female tricksters of all kinds—particularly in fabliaux and Celtic fairy lore where the hero is defeated by a woman’s underhanded magic or rewarded by his ability to deal with her.

This session engages the challenge set forth by Acocella to locate and examine female tricksters in medieval culture. What role does the female trickster/monster play in it? The Morrígan of The Táin takes multiple animal shapes, as does Cerridwen of Welsh tradition. Acocella mentions Alison of The Miller’s Tale, but not the Wife of Bath or her model, La Vieille of Roman de la Rose; nor Dame Sirith; nor the monstrous loathly ladies in Irish and Middle English literature; nor the ugly, otherworldly woman in The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel who brings down the hapless Conaire. Hags and widows are relentlessly portrayed as “cunning women.” Women of the Old French fabliaux beguile and trick their witless spouses and lovers through a variety of means. In short, female tricksters abound in the medieval literary traditions all over the world.

MEARCSTAPA and ASIMS invite 20-minute papers from any field or theoretical approach and on any subject relating to the topic of medieval female tricksters. Please send abstracts of 300 words and a brief bio to session organizers Sarah L. Higley (sarah.higley@rochester.edu) and Larissa Tracy (kattracy@comcast.net) by Sept. 15, 2015.

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

Jones's Studying Pan's Labyrinth

This is an informative text, but often reads like an introduction to film studies (perhaps that is the point of the series?) in its frequent straying from the specific film under discussion to explore larger issues related to film and film making.

Studying Pan's Labyrinth
Tanya Jones

September, 2010
Paper, 160 pages, 10 b&w
ISBN: 978-1-906733-30-8
Auteur
$15.00 / £10.50
Distributed by Columbia University Press: https://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-1-906733-30-8/studying-pans-labyrinth

Pan's Labyrinth (2006) is a film of extraordinary technical achievement and intense emotional impact, garnering acclaim from both critics and audiences alike. Such a rich cinematic text demands close scrutiny and comprehensive study. This volume guides the reader through a detailed analysis of the film, concentrating on the generation of meaning for the viewer. The book maps technical choices and how they capture human experience and political conflict. It also details the processes of production, distribution, and exhibition. Specific examples from a range of film texts enable a vivid grasp of technical vocabulary, therefore providing readers with the tools to analyze other films as well.

Contents (from WorldCat):

• Studying Pan's Labyrinth factsheet --
• introduction --
• narrative --
• genre --
• messages and values --
• film language --
• characterisation --
• institutions.

About the Author:
Tanya Jones is an experienced teacher of film and media studies and a senior examiner for a major examination board in the U.K. She is the author of a number of best-selling film and media studies textbooks.

Diestro-Dópido's Pan's Labyrinth

An informative new guide to the film:

Pan's Labyrinth
Mar Diestro-Dópido
Series: BFI Film Classics

25 Oct 2013
Paperback
9781844576418
104 pages

Guillermo del Toro's cult masterpiece, Pan's Labyrinth (2006), won a total of 76 awards and is one of the most commercially successful Spanish-language films ever made. Blending the world of monstrous fairytales with the actual horrors of post-Civil War Spain, the film's commingling of real and fantasy worlds speaks profoundly to our times.

Immersing herself in the nightmarish world that del Toro has so minutely orchestrated, Mar Diestro-Dópido explores the cultural and historical contexts surrounding the film. Examining del Toro's ground-breaking use of mythology, this book resists a definitive reading of the film – instead exposing the techniques, themes and cultural references that combine in Pan's Labyrinth to spawn an uncontainable plurality of meanings, which only multiply on contact with the viewer.

This special edition features an exclusive interview with del Toro and original cover artwork by Santiago Caruso.


CONTENTS

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Horror(s) of War
2. Vidal and Amnesia
3. Ofelia and Memory
4. The End...
Coda: Interview with Guillermo del Toro
Notes
Credits
Bibliography


Mar Diestro-Dópido is a film critic based in London. She is a regular contributor to, and researcher for, Sight & Sound, and has written for Little White Lies, Dazed & Confused and Vertigo, as well as various academic books and journals.