CFP Gothic Maternities (Special Issue of BAS Journal, 10/1/2025)

Call for articles: GOTHIC MATERNITIES

deadline for submissions:
October 1, 2025

full name / name of organization:
West University of Timisoara/ B.A.S. Journal

contact email:
loredana.bercuci@e-uvt.ro

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/07/26/call-for-articles-gothic-maternities

A great number of Gothic fiction productions explicitly address themes such as gender roles and reproduction from diverse perspectives, which at times hold opposing viewpoints on certain aspects of these topics. The ability to gestate is often considered one of the key indicators of sexual difference. However, the subject of gestation and child-upbringing is not usually addressed in Gothic fiction, aside from iconic examples such as Rosemary’s Baby (1968). As Russ (2007: 25) has stated, these processes are often not described in many texts. Frequently, the women in these stories are either young and childless or middle-aged, with their children already grown and secure (ibid.). The reason for this may be the desire to avoid misogynistic attacks on fiction that dealt with these themes, a theory proposed by critics such as Shulamith Firestone (1970) and Jennifer Allen (1984), who concluded that pregnant women and mothers were, in a sense, biologically trapped.

However, as Adrienne Rich (1976) pointed out, in contrast to more traditional motherhood, which can be experienced as a patriarchal institution within this type of fiction, motherhood defined and centered on women can be understood as an empowering experience for women, which later paved the way for matricentric feminism (O’Reilly, 2016). In short, while motherhood as an institution is often a site of male-defined oppression, women’s own maternal experiences can become a source of power (O'Reilly, 2021). It is, therefore, essential to look into the representation of themes such as gestation, childbirth, breastfeeding, and the physical, psychological, and emotional changes that the gestating mother undergoes after childbirth, as well as the various forms of motherhood and gestating bodies (consider, for instance, the masterfully depicted confrontation between Sigourney Weaver and the creature in Alien: The Eighth Passenger, 1979).

The relationship between mothers and their progenies might be fraught with myriad uncertainties, fears, and sometimes outright hatred. These controversial aspects of childbearing, childbirth, and childrearing are addressed by countless unnatural creations, violent births, and terrified women—depicted as doubly vulnerable and trapped in situations of extreme danger (Harrington, 2018: 87). This preoccupation with maternal fear and monstrosity aligns with the Gothic tradition’s continued engagement in the Othering of the mother (Carpenter 2016: 7), providing a compelling lens for exploring the uncanny and the abject (Arnold 2013; Creed 1993; Oliver 2012). As Kristeva suggests in Powers of Horror, this process of othering reflects a deeper cultural anxiety; she (1982: 73) describes the ‘archaic mother’ as a force of ‘generative power’ that patrilineal structures try hard to suppress. As a consequence, monstrous mothers—whether phallic, castrating, all-consuming, and absent—populate the Gothic imagination, from fiction to movies and video games. Yet, despite their ubiquity, this oppressive maternal figure has often gone unnoticed or deliberately ignored by scholars. Her existence resists traditional interpretations, challenging the widely accepted idea of maternal instinct (Williams, 2025: 1).

Moreover, contemporary Gothic art, by allowing projection into other universes and times, imagining various interpersonal relationships, and questioning the boundaries of biology and gender, inevitably engages with various visions of motherhood – some utopian, while others, dystopian – thus opening the door to the exploration of new possibilities. It is in this fertile terrain that, in addition to the previously mentioned themes, other pressing issues also find space for exploration, such as reproductive biotechnology, ectogenesis, cloning, xenobiology, grafts with living beings or artificial entities, microchimerism, and a long list of others that current fiction seems eager to depict (Marinovich, 1994: 189–205; Anolik, 2003: 25–43).

Therefore, we invite writers, researchers, scholars, and all those who wish to contribute to this special issue of British and American Studies (https://bas.journals.uvt.ro/) dedicated to new visions of the Gothic.





REFERENCES

Allen, Jeffner. 1984. “Motherhood: The Annihilation of Women” in Joyce Trebilcot (ed). Mothering: Essays in Feminist Theory. Lanham: Roman and Allanheld, pp. 315–30.

Anolik, Ruth Bienstock. 2003. “The Missing Mother: The Meanings of Maternal Absence in the Gothic Mode” in Modern Language Studies, 33 (1/2), pp. 25–43. https://doi.org/10.2307/3195306

Arnold, Sarah. 2013. Maternal Horror Film: Melodrama and Motherhood. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Carpenter, Ginette. 2016. “Mothers and Others” in Avril Horner, Sue Zlosnik, Andrew Smith and William Hughes (eds.). Women and the Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 44-59.

Creed, Barbara. 1993. The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge.

Firestone, Shulamith. 1970. The Dialectics of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution. New York: Morrow.

Harrington, Erin. 2018. Women, Monstrosity and Horror Film: Gynaehorror. London: Routledge.

Kristeva, Julia. 1982. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by L.S. Roudiez, New York: Columbia University Press.

Marinovich, Sarolta. 1994. “The discourse of the other: Female gothic in contemporary women's writing” in Neohelicon 21, pp. 189–205. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02093047

O’Reilly, Andrea. 2016. Matricentric Feminism: Theory, Activism, and Practice. Coe Hill: Demeter Press.

O’Reilly, Andrea. 2021. Maternal Theory: The Essential Readings. Coe Hill: Demeter Press.

Oliver, Kelly. 2012. Knock Me Up, Knock Me Down: Images of Pregnancy in Hollywood Films. New York: Columbia University Press.

Rich, Adrienne. 1976. Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. New York: W.W. Norton.

Russ, Joanna. 2007. The Country You Have Never Seen: Essays and Reviews. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.

Williams, Sara. 2025. The Maternal Gaze in the Gothic. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.



Contributions on this topic should be submitted to the editors of the special issue (loredana.bercuci@e-uvt.ro, dana.percec@e-uvt.ro, cristina.baniceru@e-uvt.ro) and to bas.journal@gmail.com by 1 October 2025. They should observe the general instructions provided on the BAS site (https://bas.journals.uvt.ro/Instructions to authors)


Last updated July 28, 2025

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

 

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

deadline for submissions: 

June 10, 2025

full name / name of organization: 

DoctorsBhattacharya

contact email: 

bookchapters89@gmail.com

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

Call for Papers for an Edited Volume

Gothic in Bengal: Literature and Culture

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

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

The proposed collection seeks to ask:

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

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

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

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

Submission Guidelines:

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

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

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

Last updated May 28, 2025

CFP Gothic Literature: Creative Activity, Research, and Pedagogy (9/1/2025; Special Issue of Interdisciplinary Humanities)

Gothic Literature: Creative Activity, Research, and Pedagogy

deadline for submissions: 

September 1, 2025

full name / name of organization: 

Interdisciplinary Humanities

contact email: 

cuevae@uhd.edu

Call for Papers

Interdisciplinary Humanities

Special Double Issue

Gothic Literature: Creative Activity, Research, and Pedagogy

 

Interdisciplinary Humanities announces a special double issue dedicated to exploring Gothic literature's rich and diverse world. This special issue will feature creative works, scholarly research, and pedagogy with a particular focus on the New England Gothic context, although submissions on alternate Gothic traditions are encouraged for specific areas of focus outlined below. We invite papers that investigate the New England Gothic genre's literary, cultural, and historical dimensions as well as creative works that engage with, draw inspiration from, and/or reinterpret Gothic traditions for contemporary audiences.

 

Research Topics

We welcome submissions that engage with topics such as the following:

• Critical analysis of Gothic texts, particularly focused on those rooted in the New England Gothic tradition.
• The evolution of New England Gothic literature’s themes and motifs, including the supernatural, horror, isolation, and decay.  Of particular interest are the ways in which these phenomena integrate with conversations about Indigenous peoples, the Puritans, religious and cultural superstitions and stereotypes, clashes of diverse cultures in these contexts, etc.
• The intersection of Gothic literature with other literary genres such as horror, fantasy, science fiction, and media such as film, video games, and digital texts.  This topic is open to submissions rooted across a more holistic Gothic literature and art field.
• Comparative studies of New England Gothic with other regional Gothic traditions, such as Southern Gothic or Transatlantic Gothic.
• Exploration of how New England Gothic literature reflects and shapes cultural anxieties related to gender, race, class, or historical trauma.
• Environmental and eco-Gothic themes, particularly in relation to the landscapes of New England.
• The role of art, architecture, geography, and space in Gothic narratives.  This topic is open to submissions investigating a broad field of Gothic traditions.
• The relationship between Gothic literature and cultural theory and analysis, including religious or philosophical traditions.

Creative Works

We also invite creative submissions inspired by Gothic traditions. These may include but are not limited to:

• Short stories, flash fiction, or novel excerpts that are drawn specifically from New England Gothic themes and/or contexts.
• Poetry that evokes the New England Gothic tradition's atmosphere, tone, or imagery.
• Experimental or hybrid forms that push the boundaries of New England Gothic literature.
• Creative non-fiction or memoirs that reflect on personal encounters with New England Gothic themes, narratives, or landscapes.

Pedagogy

• Innovative teaching methods for the Gothic.
• Curriculum design and assessment strategies.
• Interdisciplinary approaches to teaching Gothic texts.
• Digital humanities and Gothic literature /culture education.

 

Editors

Volume 1: Gothic Literature: Creative Activity and Research

• Jay Burkette (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University)
• Wendy Galgan (Saint Joseph’s College of Maine)
• Megan Gannon (Ripon College)
• Darian Wharton (University of New Mexico)

 

Volume 2: Gothic Literature / Culture and Pedagogy

• Debra Bourdeau (Missouri University of Science and Technology)
• Clint Jones (Capital University)
• Mary Powell (Desert Vista High School and Grand Canyon University)
• Elissa Pugh (Concord University)

 

Important Dates

• Submission Deadline: October 1, 2025
• Notification of Acceptance: November 1, 2025

 

Review Process

All submissions will undergo a double-blind peer review process. Manuscripts will be evaluated based on originality, relevance, methodological rigor, and contribution to the field.

 

Contact Information

• Ed Cueva, Interdisciplinary Humanities Lead Editor: cuevae@uhd.edu

 Last updated March 31, 2025

CFP Gothic Imagination of Walt Disney Studios (2/12/2024)

Sorry to have missed this:

The Gothic Imagination of Walt Disney Studios: Fear, Horror and the Uncanny in the ‘Happiest Place on Earth’

deadline for submissions: February 12, 2024

full name / name of organization: Diana Sandars / University of Melbourne

contact email: sandars@unimelb.edu.au

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/12/14/the-gothic-imagination-of-walt-disney-studios-fear-horror-and-the-uncanny-in-the-

“The Gothic Imagination of Walt Disney Studios: Fear, Horror and the Uncanny in the ‘Happiest Place on Earth’.”

Editors A/Prof Allison Craven (James Cook University, Australia) and Dr Diana Sandars (University of Melbourne)

Since the 1920s, in its animated and live-action media, Walt Disney Studios has imagined dark, fearful, and horrifying characters and scenarios amidst the legendary hype of Disneyland as the ‘happiest place on earth’. While a disparate critical literature exists exploring Disney’s darkness (for instance, see Nelson; Allan; Whitley; Philips; Piatti-Farnell), this special issue seeks to examine its potential as a purveyor of Gothic. If the early cinema adapted nineteenth-century Gothic conventions in ways that are largely unchanged (Elferen), Disney’s animated films are among the earliest and most striking examples. Skeleton Dance (1929, among the Silly Symphonies) is a prototype - set in a graveyard, and combining imagery from Gothic melodrama and humour from vaudeville (Piatti-Farnell 2019) - while German Expressionist influences and the growing cultural interest in horror (Allan) became fully fledged in feature animation with the evil Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). Many Disney productions since are replete with princesses in Gothic castles (Piatti Farnell) in various states of ruin (see Ross; Swann), or dive into uncanny oceans and submarine worlds (Sandars), or Gothicise quasi-historical dramas, or encompass all range of magical households,Hoffmanesque fantasies, Radcliffian forest dalliances, and the more-than-human sublime. While critique of “Disneyfication” of fairy tales is extensive (Schickel; Zipes), the “Disneyfication” of horror and Gothic in these productions, as well as its theme parks and merchandise, remains under-recognised and under-researched.

We invite papers probing Disney(fication of) Gothic from a range of perspectives to consider its effects, aesthetic and material. Where and when, for instance, do Disney’s practices of adaptation and self-homage (Cecire) impact the Gothic canon? How do iconic creatives like Tim Burton influence Disney Gothic? Where does Disney’s grotesquerie sit within the transgressive range of “body Gothic” (Reyes) in horror literature and film? How do Goth(ic) paratexts of iconic characters in fan cultures disrupt Disney’s branding? How does Disney’s comic horror - from Skeleton Dance to Hotel Transylvania - align with Catherine Spooner’s (2017) notion of ‘happy Gothic’? When are these imaginings merely Disney-esque, and when do they speak to the hauntedness of the human condition? Can the ‘happiest place on earth’, with its ideological penchant for ‘happy endings’ (Craven; Piatti-Farnell 2018), really perpetuate or expand the ‘Gothic imagination’?

We seek abstracts of 250-300 words (plus 50-word author biographies) outlining proposed essays of 6500 words (including notes and references). Send to Allison Craven (allison.craven@jcu.edu.au); or Diana Sandars (sandars@unimelb.edu.au) by 12 February 2024.

 

Works Cited 

Allan, Robin. “European Influences on Early Disney Feature Films.” In A Reader In Animation Studies, edited by Jayne Pilling. Indiana University Press, 1997. pp 241- 60.  

Cecire, Maria Sachiko, “Reality Remixed: Neomedieval Princess Culture in Disney’s Enchanted,” in The Disney Middle Ages: A Fairy-tale and Fantasy Past, edited by Tison Pugh & Susan Aronstein. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. p243 - 259

Craven, Allison. Fairy Tale Interrupted: Feminisms, Masculinities and Wonder Cinema. Peter Lang, 2017.

Elferen, Isabella Van. Gothic Music: The Sounds of the Uncanny, University of Wales Press, 2012.  

Nelson, Thomas A. “Darkness in the Disney Look.” Literature/Film Quarterly, vol. 6, no. 2, 1978, pp. 94–103. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43795664.  

Philips, Deborah. Fairground Attractions: a Genealogy of the Pleasure Ground. Bloomsbury, 2012.

Piatti-Farnell, Lorna, ed. Gothic Afterlives: Reincarnations of Horror in Film and Popular Media. Lexington Books, 2019. 

Piatti-Farnell, “Blood Flows Freely: The Horror of Classic Fairy Tales.” In The Palgrave Handbook to Horror Literature, edited by Kevin Corstorphine & Laura Kremmel. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. pp. 91 -100.

Reyes, Xavier Aldana. Body Gothic–Corporeal Transgression in Contemporary Literature and Film. University of Wales Press, 2014

Ross, Deborah. “Escape from Wonderland: Disney and the Female Imagination.” Marvels & Tales, vol. 18, no. 1, 2004, pp. 53–66.  

Sandars, Diana. “Wayfinding and Finding a Way to Intercultural Storytelling in Moana: Charting Disney’s Gothic in an Oceanic Creation Story.” In Gothic in the Oceanic South: Maritime, Marine and Aquatic Uncanny in Southern Waters. Routledge. (Forthcoming 2024).

Schickel, Richard. The Disney Version: The Life, Times, Art and Commerce of Walt Disney. Simon and Schuster,1968.

Spooner, Catherine. Post-millennial Gothic: Comedy, Romance and the Rise of Happy Gothic. Bloomsbury, 2017.

Swan, Susan Z. “Gothic drama in Disney's Beauty and the Beast: Subverting Traditional Romance by Transcending the Animal‐human Paradox”. Critical Studies in Media Communication, vol. 16, no.3, 1999, pp. 350-369. 

Whitley, David. The Idea of Nature in Disney Animation. Ashgate, 2008.

Zipes, Jack. The Enchanted Screen: The Unknown History of Fairy-Tale Films. Routledge, 2011.

Last updated December 15, 2023

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CFP American Nightmares Symposium (10/31/2023; Salem, MA 3/21-24/2024)

Cross-posted from the Poe Studies Association list:


Call For Proposals

AMERICAN NIGHTMARES: THE INAUGURAL SYMPOSIUM OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF THE AMERICAN GOTHIC

March 21st – 23rd, 2024

Salem, Massachusetts



Conference director: Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, Central Michigan University

With the kind support of the American Literature Association





Proposals for individual papers, 3- or 4-person paper sessions, and 5-person roundtable sessions are solicited for AMERICAN NIGHTMARES: the inaugural symposium of the Society for the Study of the American Gothic.



This intimate event will be held at the iconic and charming Hawthorne Hotel in the heart of Salem, Massachusetts (a hotel ranked as among the most haunted hotels in America!) Author Paul Tremblay will deliver a keynote reading.



Proposals are welcome on all aspects of the American Gothic, including literature, film, television, gaming, music, podcasts, and new media. Proposals on keynote author Paul Tremblay are particularly welcome.

• Proposals for individual papers should be 200 words and include an abbreviated CV indicating academic affiliation and relevant publications, presentations, teaching, and/or research related to the topic of the presentation.
• Proposals for 3- or 4-person paper sessions should include abstracts and abbreviated CVs for each participant.
• Proposals for 5-person roundtables should explain the focus of the roundtable, identify the contribution of each participant, and provide abbreviated CVs for all involved.

Proposals and questions may be directed to the conference director, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, at Jeffrey.Weinstock@cmich.edu. Please note: due to space constraints, this will be a relatively small event and audio-visual support will be limited

THE DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS is October 31st, 2023.



Current plans call for an opening event on Thursday evening, March 21; full sessions and a keynote talk on Friday (9am-6pm); and sessions on Saturday from 9 am until 3:30 with a closing reception. Registration for the event will be $250 USD and will include two breakfasts at the hotel, two lunches at the hotel, a Friday evening reception, and a Saturday afternoon reception. (Meals and the receptions are available to all who register, regardless of whether or not you choose to stay at the hotel). A tour of “haunted Salem” will be available as an add-on.



Additional information about the Symposium and registration as it becomes available will be available on the SSAG website at http://www.americangothicsociety.com. Interested parties are invited to join the SSAG facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/groups/americangothicsociety.

CFP Fogo Congress 2023 (4/1/2023; University of León (Spain) 7/5-7/2023)

FOGO CONGRESS 2023: FOLKLORE AND GOTHIC: SUPERNATURAL PRESENCES AND ENVIRONMENTS IN EUROPE AND THE AMERICAS

Full details, the hard copy of CFP, and links to submit at the conference site: https://fogoconference.unileon.es/home/#congress. 

Who has not felt fascinated by a terrifying image?


This conference aims to open a space of dialogue to analyze the intersections of Gothic and folklore, focusing on fairy tales, the representation of nature, and the treatment of horror. What is the relevance of the ghosts, cemeteries and stormy nights that remain in our subconscious as images and spaces of fear? How can fictional horror represent the climate emergency? How can we explore literature, film and other media through the lens of the monster and the ghost? Ultimately, what is the interaction between folklore, horror and the Gothic?

Read more

In the 21st century we are still haunted by ghosts from the past, scared by creaking floors in the middle of the night, afraid of monsters lurking in the shadows. We also face more tangible dangers: we have become collectively scared of the expansion of viruses and technological advancement, represented by zombies and the rebellion of the machines in the popular imagination from an Apocalyptic perspective. Similarly, there is a constant terror inspired by the sexual violence and the constant insecurity of women in public and private spaces. Women are, still today, afraid of violence in public and private spaces. These and other dangers have brought along the gothic appropriation of the witch as an empowering figure which, from ecofeminist practices, has been linked to the loss of natural spaces and the climate emergency.

Folklore and the Gothic share a common ground based on the experimentation of fear, both in the natural environment and in enclosed and claustrophobic spaces. In these manifestations, terror materializes as extraordinary entities (Bouyer 1985; Fontea, 2008; Montaner, 2014), which are deeply ingrained in the cultures and historical moments in which they appear. The concept folk horror, coined in the 1970s, defines the fear and terror experienced by local communities though ritual (Eamon Byers, 2014). The Gothic, on the other hand, has evolved since the writer Horace Walpole added this term as subtitle in The Castle of Otranto (1764). Since then, readers have engaged with tragic stories which repeat the same Gothic formula: the presence of the heroine, the villain, the landscape and an unresolved mystery. The presence of the Gothic in Postmodernity (Catherine Spooner, 2006; Maria Beville, 2009; Abigail Lee Six, 2010; William Hughes, 2012; Fred Botting, 2013; Maria Purves, 2014; Ann Davies, 2014) and its global scope (Byron 2013; Punter 2015) demonstrate its vitality and its ability to adapt to new realities. In the last decade, the study Ecogothic helps bring together ecocriticism and the Gothic, establishing a direct relationship between fear and the effects that humankind has on the environment (Smith and Hughes, 2013).



CALL FOR PAPERS AND SUBJECT AREAS


IMPORTANT DATES: Proposal submission deadline April 1, 2023
Celebration of the Congress on July 5, 6 and 7, 2023


The organizing committee invites professors, academics, researchers, postgraduate students and artists to participate by sending proposals for presentations in the following formats:

• A single paper for a 15-20 minute presentation, summary of max. 300 words;
• A round table of 3-5 people for a 60-minute discussion, summary of max. 1000
• words;
• A complete panel of 3-4 people for a 60-minute set of presentations, summary of
• max. 1000 words;
• Any other type of artistic format or workshop that touches on the topic of the
• conference and which can take place in under 90 minutes.

Please also include a brief summary (less than 100 words) or your academic CV.

Please send your proposals before April 1, 2023 by following the following link:

SEND PROPOSAL



SUBJECT AREAS

• Horror and the Anthropocene
• Cultural Studies
• EcoGothic
• Affect Theory and Horror
• Gender Studies and Queer Gothic
• Cinema Studies and Folk Horror
• Medical Humanities and Mental Illness
• Postcolonial Studies
• Posthumanism and the Gothic
• Digital Humanities
• Bestiaries and the Preternatural
• Children’s and Teen Gothic

Registration fees will be of 15 € for undergraduate students; 80 € for postgraduate students, instructors and researchers in training; and 100 € for lecturers, professors and salaried independent researchers. More information about payment methods will be given in due course.

CFP Nightmare/s in the Long Nineteenth Century Collection (3/15/2023)

Nightmare/s in the Long Nineteenth Century (CFP for edited volume)

deadline for submissions:
March 15, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Frances Clemente/University of Oxford; Greta Colombani/University of Cambridge

contact email:
nightmaresconference@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/12/19/nightmares-in-the-long-nineteenth-century-cfp-for-edited-volume.

Nightmare/s in the Long Nineteenth Century

(CFP for edited volume)

Building on the exciting multidisciplinary conference held last May 2022 at King’s College, University of Cambridge, funded by the Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership, we would like to invite proposals for essays to be included in an edited collection titled Nightmare/s in the Long Nineteenth Century.

The collection aims to explore the rich and multifaceted theme of nightmare in the arts, thought, and culture of the long nineteenth century. From Johann Heinrich Füssli’s 1781 oil painting The Nightmare, which was to become the iconic image of a newly emergent sensibility, to the first psychoanalytic investigations culminating in the Freudian study On the Nightmare by Ernest Jones (first published in 1911), the nineteenth century was characterised by a pervasive fascination with nightmares both as frightening dreams and, in their personified form, terrifying creatures or spirits (like the incubus).

Described by Samuel T. Coleridge as “not a mere Dream” but a peculiar oneiric phenomenon taking place “during a rapid alternation, a twinkling as it were, of sleeping and waking”, in the course of the nineteenth century the nightmare raised fundamental questions about conscience, the mind, fear, the Other, and the fear of the Other.

It occupied a special place in “the mythology of the Gothic imagination” (Philip W. Martin) not only because nightmares abounded in Gothic texts but also, and more significantly, because some of the most famous works in this genre – such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) – allegedly had their origins in their author’s nightmares. As “a phenomenon of passivity, self-effacement, irrationality, terror, and erotic excess” (Lisa Downing), the nightmare also conveyed cultural anxieties about repressed and deviant aspects of sexuality, as exemplified by another Füssli’s painting, the sapphic An Incubus Leaving Two Sleeping Girls (c. 1793), and by Louis Dubosquet’s definition of the nightmare as a nervous illness similar to hysteria in his medical thesis Dissertation sur le cauchemar (1815). Additionally, the age of imperialism witnessed the rise of ‘colonial nightmares’ which haunted Western imagination and gave voice to fears of racial otherness, as can be seen in “Lukundoo”, an American short story written in 1907 by Edward Lucas White about an explorer cursed by an African witch doctor and based on the authors’ own nightmares.

We invite proposals for contributions from various disciplines across the arts & humanities, with different methodological approaches and different geographical focus areas. Topics may include but are not restricted to:



● 19th-century literary and artsitic representations of nightmares

● 19th-century psychological and medical understanding of nightmares;

● nightmares and sleep

● nightmares and the unconscious

● nightmares and the Gothic;

● nightmares, inspiration, and the creative mind;

● nightmares, eroticism, and sexuality;

● nightmares and spectral apparitions;

● nightmares and hallucinations

● nightmares, altered states of consciousness, and psychoactive substances;

●nightmares and madness;

●prophetic nightmares;

●nightmares and the fear of (racial, ethnic, social, sexual…) Otherness;

●19th-century non-Western conceptions and depictions of nightmares.



Abstracts of 500 words, together with a short bio (max. 200 words), due March 15 2023 (notification of outcome by May 2023).

Final essays of 7.000-10.000 words, due September 15 2023.



All materials to be submitted to nightmaresconference@gmail.com.



With all best wishes,



The editors,

Frances Clemente (University of Oxford)

Greta Colombani (University of Cambridge)



Last updated December 20, 2022

CFP FRAME 36.1 “Dying Wor(l)ds” (Spec. Issue, proposals by 12/7/2022)

FRAME 36.1 “Dying Wor(l)ds”

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/10/31/frame-361-%E2%80%9Cdying-worlds%E2%80%9D

deadline for submissions:
December 7, 2022

full name / name of organization:
FRAME, Journal of Literary Studies

contact email:
info@frameliteraryjournal.com



In “Land Sickness”, Nikolaj Schultz describes how he goes on vacation to “detach from the material consequences of [his] existence,” but upon arrival on a French island, he is once more faced with the material reality of existence, as the island’s coastline is eroding, caused by rising sea levels and the pressure of foreign tourism. He writes: “Neither Pareto, Marx or Bourdieu died in vain, but none of them offer a language sufficient to articulate the geo-social struggle for territory that unfolds on the island. I myself lack a language to understand what is happening.” How indeed, does one think and write about the world that is disappearing under our feet?

FRAME’s next issue is titled “Dying Wor(l)d’s” and accordingly focuses on questions of death and dying, in our world and our language. The understanding of the Anthropocene as a geological epoch has highlighted humanity’s ineffable impact on the planet we inhabit, but simultaneously, the Anthropocene continually draws attention to humanity’s inability to act upon that understanding. The cultural apathy that arises in discussions about the planet and our future illustrates our inability to think and write about such matters. We would like to invite scholars of literary studies and related fields to consider the (textual) implications of dying worlds and dying words. What happens when we, like Nikolaj Schultz, find ourselves without the vocabulary to express the loss we experience around us? Is literature able to narrate such complex matters, or is the environmental crisis also an illustration of the limits of literature—or indeed, the death of literature, brought about by the ‘poisonous gift’ that Bruno Latour titled the Anthropocene? And yet, there is a promise of global survival. Anna Tsing writes, while landscapes globally are dying, “[i]n a global state of precarity, we don’t have choices other than looking for life in this ruin” (6). How can we react to wor(l)ds dying?

Themes and topics related to these questions might include, but are not limited to:

• The death of animal species and ecosystems
• The use of death as narrator in literature
• Cultural mediation of disasters
• The human as destructive agent
• Gothic literature and its anticipation of disaster
• Cultural representation of good and evil
• The death of literature, including increased illiteracy or the death of the physical book
• (Eco)mourning
• Posthumanism or the death of the human
• The Great Dyings
• The death of Indigenous and minority languages

The above questions and concerns are only a few of the many themes that could be explored in the upcoming issue. However, we would like to stress that while FRAME encourages interdisciplinary and creative approaches, every proposal/article should show a clear connection to literary studies, as we are a literary journal first and foremost.

If you are interested in writing for FRAME, please submit a brief proposal of max. 500 words before 7 December 2022. Proposals should include a thesis statement, general structure and a preliminary reflection on the theories and discourses in which the argument will be situated. On the basis of all abstracts, contributors whose proposals are accepted will be notified by 15 December 2022, and asked to submit a draft version of the paper before 11 January 2023. Be mindful that we hold the right to reject draft versions to ensure consistency and coherence across all contributions to the issue. The deadline for the article’s first full version will be 26 February 2022, after which the editing process will begin. A regular article has a word limit of 6000 words, including bibliography and footnotes. For our Masterclass section, graduate and PhD students are invited to write up to a maximum of 4000 words. Please feel free to contact us at info@frameliteraryjournal.com, should you have any questions. More information about our journal, as well as our submission guidelines, can be found on our website: www.frameliteraryjournal.com.




categories
cultural studies and historical approaches
ecocriticism and environmental studies
journals and collections of essays
theory
world literatures and indigenous studies

Last updated November 3, 2022

Book Talk: Gothic Literature and the Supernatural in New England (8/29/2022, Norwich, CT/Zoom)

My thanks to Faye Ringel for the notice of this event:

Gothic Literature and the Supernatural in New England 

source: https://www.otislibrarynorwich.org/upcoming-events/2022/8/29/gothic-literature-and-the-supernatural-in-new-england

 

Monday, August 29, 2022 

 6:00 PM 7:00 PM 

Otis Library 

261 Main St. 

Norwich, CT 06360 (map)  

Google Calendar ICS


Otis Library presents a hybrid event offering a celebration of two new books and a chance to learn more about the supernatural in New England. This program will take place in the Community Room and Live on Zoom.

Faye Ringel, PhD., retired Professor of Humanities at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, is launching her second book on the New England Gothic. Published this year by Anthem, a scholarly press based in the UK, it was written entirely during the pandemic--a particularly appropriate time for the Gothic in literature, film, and life. Dr. Ringel will be speaking via Zoom. Copies of The Gothic Literature and History of New England: Secrets of the Restless Dead will be available for sale in the Community Room.

Horror writer Christa Carmen of Westerly will be present at the Library to speak about her research into Rhode Island’s Gothic history. She is the editor, along with Lauren Elise Daniels, of We Are Providence: Tales of Horror from the Ocean State which makes its debut at this event. Daniels, who grew up in Rhode Island, will be joining the discussion via Zoom from Brisbane, Australia. The new anthology features 20 scary stories by writers who live—or have lived—in Rhode Island. Dr. Ringel wrote the book’s introduction and one of the stories. Many of the authors will be joining the discussion, in person or via Zoom. Copies of this anthology will be available for sale and signing following the program.

This free program will be presented live and over Zoom. Registration is not required. If you would like to attend via Zoom, please sign up on the Otis Library website calendar or call Julie at 860-889-2365, ext. 128. 

 

UPDATE Recovering the Vampire Conference (new deadline 8/8/2022)

Recovering the Vampire (UPDATED)

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/03/16/recovering-the-vampire


deadline for submissions:
August 8, 2022



full name / name of organization:
Edge Hill University



contact email:
madeline.potter@york.ac.uk





Speakers

Professor Catherine Spooner (Lancaster University)

Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes (Manchester Metropolitan University)

and featuring a Q&A and dramatic reading by Dacre Stoker

How can vampires help us heal?

In the 125th anniversary year of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, this interdisciplinary project examines the continuing history of the vampire from the 19th century to the present and explores how the vampire can function as a cultural figure of recovery, community, and regeneration.

The cultural history of the vampire has been conventionally one of degeneration, illness, contagion, and variously embodied metaphors of anxiety. This event moves critical discourse from degeneration to regeneration, asking how the vampire functions as a metaphor for recovery (whether physical, emotional, or economic), community (fandoms, gamers, ‘goth culture’), identification and self-expression (racial identities, spirituality and religion, neurodivergence/-diversity, disability, gender and sexuality).

We welcome proposals for 15-20-minute papers, and panels. We also welcome practical or industry approaches to reinterpreting the vampire through collaborative, creative, or playful research, as well as contributions to a creative industries panel by publishers, authors, artists, heritage professionals and film-makers who work on the figure of the vampire. 

Topics can include but are not limited to: 

• Healing, trauma, recovery
• Gothic tourism / regeneration / international relations / economic growth
• Vampires and the creative economy
• Vampires and community: gaming, goth culture, fashion
• Medical humanities and the vampire
• Addiction recovery, nutrition, attitudes to feeding
• Reclaiming the vampire and neurodivergence/-diversity
• Selfhood, belonging, and ‘the outsider’
• Spiritual growth and religious experience
• Race and inclusivity / representation
• Child vampires / vampires for children
• Pedagogy and the vampire
• Laughter, comedy and Catherine Spooner’s ‘Happy Gothic’
• Adaptation

Thanks to the generosity of BAVS, BARS and Edge Hill University, we are delighted to be able to offer several PGR/ECR fee-waived bursary places for this event. If you would like to be considered, please indicate on your abstract and include a short statement (100 words max) about how the conference relates to your research.

Please send 300-word abstracts or panel proposals to Dr Madeline Potter (madeline.potter@york.ac.uk) and Dr Laura Eastlake (Laura.Eastlake@edgehill.ac.uk)

This conference will be fully accessible, with a primarily online component. Please check our website https://recoveringthevampire.wordpress.com and follow us on Twitter @VampireRecovery for updates on conference format and further info.

Deadline: 8 August 2022

Conference dates: 4-5 November 2022


 
Last updated June 21, 2022

CFP Asian Popular Culture and the Gothic (10/31/2022)

Asian Popular Culture and the Gothic

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/07/06/asian-popular-culture-and-the-gothic


deadline for submissions:
October 31, 2022



full name / name of organization:
Chulalongkorn University



contact email:
kancuta@gmail.com





Article proposals are welcome for an upcoming collection on Asian Popular Culture and the Gothic, edited by Li-hsin Hsu, Deimantas Valančiūnas and Katarzyna Ancuta. The collection is planned for submission to the Routledge Advances in Popular Culture Studies series.



Popular culture is often described as “the culture of the people,” containing cultural elements related to objects, beliefs, and practices that embody shared social meanings, and regularly produced for and consumed by mass audiences. As an object of investigation, it is mostly conceived of as a study of cultural products and media, such as literature, film, television, radio, games, comics, digital media, or fashion, that have mass accessibility and appeal. In today’s globalised world, more than ever, popular culture is increasingly diverse, expansive, dynamic, mobile, and often transnational, regardless of its point of origin.



In their introduction to the special Asian issue of The Journal of Popular Culture, published in 2016, Lisa Funnel and Yuya Kuchi remonstrate that in popular and critical imagination, “Asian Popular Culture” tends to be limited to selected East Asian genres and media, such as Japanese manga and anime, or Chinese martial arts films (2016, p. 963). Today we can safely add Korean music and television drama to this list but this does not quite change the fact that while we have seen dozens of publications focused on East Asian pop culture, large areas of popular Asian cultural production remain routinely excluded from scholarly examinations. While South Asian popular culture studies are a relatively vibrant discipline, even if the investigation here tends to be focused mostly on India and rarely goes beyond the study of popular cinema, Southeast Asian pop culture, in contrast, has so far received very limited attention, with studies examining the impact of “Japanisation” or Korean wave outshining those on local production. The field of Asian popular culture and its connection to the Gothic remains also an under-examined area.



Recent scholarship on the Gothic has extended the analysis of cultural production beyond the usual references to literature and cinema, and often includes a variety of media forms and practices of public/popular culture, such as television, video games, music, fashion etc. The term has also transcended not only its generic and historical, but also geographical boundaries, becoming a truly transnational phenomenon. The contemporary Gothic manifests in a variety of media forms way beyond the European or American contexts, and the appearance of Asia in the Gothic-related debates is not an oddity anymore. The ongoing decentralisation of Gothic studies and de-westernisation of its methodologies has opened up new possibilities for including cultural productions from diverse geographical locations, and the willingness to accept Asian Gothic as a legitimate category has rapidly increased with most edited collections and companions now carrying at least one chapter discussing Asian texts and contexts.



Asia has long been regarded as a vital hub of production and consumption of popular culture, with an extensive variety and spectrum of media forms and topics. However, the Gothic aspect of popular culture of Asia has not been addressed in a systematic and extensive way. Therefore, this collection for the first time invites papers to explore the ways Gothic manifests in popular culture and its consumption in Asia. By the term “popular culture” we imply both a variety of media forms of everyday consumption – video and digital games, comic books, television, music etc., as well as forms of everyday public culture and practices, associated with festivals, fashion, rituals, ceremonies etc. We also invite papers that explore the issues of knowledge production and cultural reception in Asia, rethinking the social and political role the Gothic might play in the circulation and transmission of popular culture in an Asian context, and how Asian popular culture might redefine or reshape the Gothic mode / aesthetics as we know it.



We invite proposals that consider the Gothic not as a fixed western-centred generic category, but as a fluid and shifting conceptual framework through which distinctive local cultural practices, historical and social traumas, anxieties, collective violent histories and diverse belief systems are expressed and discussed. In this sense, the Gothic can be read as a distinctive aesthetical and narrative practice, where conventional gothic tropes and imagery (monsters, ghosts, haunting, obscurity, darkness, madness etc.) are assessed anew, and disseminated and consumed through the many forms of popular culture. We also encourage approaches that rethink the affective power of the Gothic, and how its heterogeneous, transmedia, transcultural and transnational complexity is manifested in Asian contexts.



We are interested in examining a number of broader issues highlighting the appropriation of Gothic tropes and conventions in popular culture texts that engage with representations of colonial legacy, wars, conflicts, and historical trauma, gender / class / race issues and various forms of social critique. We would like to encourage the examination of the relationship between popular Asian Gothic texts and the audience / the marketplace, as well as the contexts of production and reception of such texts. We are keen on receiving proposals exploring the connection between Asian Pop Gothic and authorship / celebrity culture and possible political contexts related to the use of popular Gothic themes and motifs, for instance in relation to propaganda and censorship.



Below is a list of themes the edited collection is willing to address. It is not an exhaustive list and is intended as a guide, not as a set of limitations. We welcome suggestions and proposals on related topics and various media forms.

• Gothic/Horror elements in B-movies and popular cinema (e.g., HK Cat III movies, Ramsay Brothers horror films, Japanese splatterpunk and tokusatsu eiga)
• Popular Asian gangster films (e.g., the Japanese yakuza/ninkyo films, HK Triad films, or Korean kkangpae films)
• Horror comedies / comic Gothic
• Gothic/Horror elements in popular / pulp fiction (e.g., supernatural romances, light novels)
• Popular Asian crime fiction (e.g., honkaku and henkaku mysteries, or gong’an crime-case fiction)
• Asian horror television series and game shows
• Serial killer television series
• Mediums, shamans and ghost detectives in supernatural crime procedurals
• Gothic cyberpunk / post-human in manga and anime
• Eco-Gothic approaches to manga and anime
• Horror comics in Asia
• Asian ghosts and monsters in popular culture
• Sentimentalism and sensationalism in Asian ghost story
• Asian pop culture adaptations of Gothic texts (e.g., Dracula in Asian texts, Japanese reworkings on Chinese zhiguai, Rebecca in India)
• Vampires in Asian music videos
• Visual Kei and post-punk / Goth music
• Gothic/Horror elements in Asian heavy metal music
• Gothic/Horror and gaming cultures
• Survival video games and survival game films and TV shows
• Horror-themed RPGs and ARGs inspired by Asian folklore
• Gothic/Horror themes in user-generated fiction and Internet-based lore
• Ghosts, curses and viral videos
• Ghost-hunting and paranormal radio broadcasts / podcasts
• Gothic/Horror in popular theatre (e.g., kabuki plays, likay, Chinese/Taiwanese opera, Tamasha, Jatra)
• Gothic/Horror in puppet theatre (e.g., budaixi, nang yai, wayang kulit, kathputli)
• Gothic traditions and (religious) festivals
• Asian Gothic folklore and urban lore
• Ghost storytelling and oral lore
• Asian Horror fandom and audiences
• Gothic Lolitas and Gothic cosplay
• Asian Goth subcultures / Gothic fashion
• Gothic/Horror-themed merchandise
• Gothic/Horror-themed attractions (e.g., haunted houses, amusement parks, escape rooms)
• Ghost tours and dark tourism
• Gothic media personalities / TV and radio hosts

Proposals of approx. 300 words accompanied with a short biographical note of max. 150 words should be sent to the editors at asianpopgothic@gmail.com by 31 October 2022.


 
Last updated July 8, 2022

CFP Gothic Adaptation: Intermedial and Intercultural Shape-Shifting (7/31/2022; Spec Issue of Humanities)

I see that the publisher requires an Article Processing Charge prior to publication. Do be aware of this before submitting.

 

Gothic Adaptation: Intermedial and Intercultural Shape-Shifting

Source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/07/07/gothic-adaptation-intermedial-and-intercultural-shape-shifting

further information: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/humanities/special_issues/gothic_adaptation

deadline for submissions:
July 31, 2022



full name / name of organization:
Jamil Mustafa / Humanities



contact email:
mustafja@lewisu.edu




The Gothic is a wide-ranging mode that comprises multiple genres, including but not limited to literature, drama, film, television, art, music, games, comics, and graphic novels. It is also a shape-shifting mode. Like vampires or werewolves, expressions of the Gothic frequently and uncannily change form, thereby calling into question the stability and desirability of fixed generic, cultural, and mediatic boundaries. Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), the most often adapted Gothic text, first took the shape of both a novel and a play before transforming into innumerable plays, operas, ballets, graphic novels, TV shows, films, comics, and games. Extending across genres and centuries alike, versions of Dracula’s story are even more multiform and long-lived than the vampire himself. They demonstrate how adaptation is the lifeblood of the Gothic, the means by which it sustains itself, evolves, and meets its moment. For this Special Issue of Humanities, we invite proposals for essays that investigate the many forms and functions of Gothic adaptation.

These essays might consider but are no means limited to the following questions. 

• How, and to what extent, might adaptation be considered a Gothic practice? How might it involve not only shape-shifting but also vampirism, hybridity, the uncanny, narrative complexity, and other key features of the Gothic?
• In transnational forms such as manga and anime, how are intermedial and intercultural Gothic adaptation related?
• How might adaptation (further) involve queer Gothic texts, and how do queer adaptations relate to their queer or heteronormative antecedents?
• Might Gothic adaptation be construed not as a one-way process, but as a conversation between or among texts? Is it possible to extrapolate a narrative that at once expresses itself within and transcends original and adapted iterations?
• How are tensions between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture explored and expressed in intermedial and/or intercultural Gothic adaptation? What happens when novels become games or comics; or, conversely, when ‘low’ forms are ‘elevated’?
• How might Gothic texts engage in a palimpsestic intertextuality of multiple media involving, for instance, film, novel, graphic novel, theatre, poetry, and serial television? How should we understand a multi-adapted text?
• Where and how do the Gothic and the Surreal intersect in an occularcentric twenty-first century that privileges the visual when adapting any text, written or otherwise?
• How might the Gothic assume a significant role in a pedagogy of adaptation? How does the study of Gothic texts in pedagogical contexts expand adaptation studies?
• In what ways have Gothic texts been the subjects of sustained and intensive cultural reworkings, retellings, and/or homogenized reiterations, and what politics underwrite such processes?

 
Last updated July 8, 2022

CFP Three centuries of the literature of fear by women authors (Spec Issue of Revista Abusões; 7/17/2022)

Three centuries of the literature of fear by women authors

source: https://www.e-publicacoes.uerj.br/index.php/abusoes/index

Editors:
Ana Paula Araujo dos Santos (UERJ, Brazil); Ana Resende (UERJ, Brazil); Anna Faedrich (UFF, Brazil); Renata Philippov (UNIFESP, Brazil)

Submissions are due by July 17, 2022
Publicado: 2022-04-12





Three centuries of the literature of fear by women authors



In Literary Women (1976), Ellen Moers defines the term “female Gothic” as those works written by women that produce fear or fear-related sensations, such as horror, terror, and disgust, in the readers. Moers makes her point by drawing on Ann Radcliffe, the most successful writer of the eighteenth century, and the Gothic machinery she used in her novels to create the sublime effect, such as dark landscapes and ruined castles—suitable spaces for supernatural apparitions. According to Mary Shelley, in Frankenstein (1831), a successful narrative depends on the intensity of the physical sensations produced, such as freezing the blood and accelerating the heartbeat.

At the turn of the nineteenth century, only the “ghosts within us” caused chills and excited the nerves, as Virginia Woolf observes in Granite and Rainbow (1928), referring to the interest in a fiction that addressed more contemporary fears rather than those explored by early Gothic literature. The literature of fear has gained a new life with the fin-de-siècle and modernist female fiction of authors such as Kate Chopin, Júlia Lopes de Almeida, Shirley Jackson, Flannery O’Connor, and Virginia Woolf herself.

Contributors may submit work that focuses on various aspects of women’s literature of fear from a transnational and transhistorical perspective, reflecting its global diversity. We invite contributions in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.




Revista Abusões
e-ISSN: 2525-4022

CFP Recycling the Gothic: Adaptations in the Romantic-Era Marketplace (Spec Issue of Literature 8/5/2022)

My thanks to Open Grave, Open Minds for the head's up on this and a number of posts today.

Special Issue "Recycling the Gothic: Adaptations in the Romantic-Era Marketplace"

main site: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/literature/special_issues/gothic_literature

Print Special Issue Flyer
Special Issue Editors
Special Issue Information
Keywords
Published Papers

A special issue of Literature (ISSN 2410-9789).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 5 August 2022.

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Franz Potter E-Mail Website SciProfiles
Guest Editor

Arts and Humanities Department, College of Letters and Sciences, National University, San Diego, CA 92123, USA
Interests: Gothic literature; nineteenth-century Gothic chapbooks; trade Gothic; Gothic publishing industry; the author Sarah Wilkinson

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We invite submissions for a Special Issue of Literature focusing on adaptations of Gothic texts in the Romantic-era marketplace. From its inception, the Gothic tradition has been built upon a framework of familiar set themes, motifs and characterizations, such as the use of geographically and temporally displaced settings, an emphasis on terror and horror, the exploitation of the supernatural and, significantly, techniques of literary suspense. This framework was then recycled, imitated, redacted, adapted, manipulated and restructured into new and interesting novels, chapbooks, short stories and serials. As Frederick Frank in The First Gothics observed, ‘the Gothic in all its stages and mutations is a highly parasitic form; Gothics shamelessly feed on the literary remains of previous Gothic, theft of material is a universal law of composition, and the line between crafty imitation and over plagiarism is often so weak that it breaks down entirely…’ (p. xii).

This Special Issue seeks to examine adaptations of the Gothic in all forms, from the novel to the short story, chapbooks and serialized publications. It will explore the recycling of essential elements of the Gothic as a sign of activity and innovation rather than monotony and stagnation. The recycling of the Gothic, whether specific motifs and characterizations or stories themselves, reveals continual interest and engagement between the author and the reader. This distinction is important not only because it allows recycling to be seen as crucial to the growth and sustainability of the Gothic, but also because it allows the Gothic tradition to continue to be viewed in the larger context of evolving discourses.

We are interested in papers that focus on topics such as, but not limited to:

• Adaptation vs. imitation.
• The recycling of Gothic motifs and tropes.
• Chapbook adaptions of Gothic novels.
• Re-examination of authors such as Eliza Parsons, Mary Meeke, Francis Lathom, Sarah Wilkinson and Charlotte Dacre.
• Formulaic Gothic.
• Imitations of Radcliffe and Lewis.
• The critical divide between the Gothic canon and the trade Gothic.
• Gothic short stories.
• Gothic adaptations of dramas.
• Gothic chapbooks to novels.
• The Gothic in periodicals such as Marvellous Magazine or Tell-Tale Magazine.
• Gothic dramas.
• Publishers of Gothic novels and chapbooks, including Ann Lemoine and Thomas Tegg.
• Gothic book trade.
• Female authorship.

Prof. Dr. Franz Potter
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Literature is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Gothic
adaptations
chapbooks
abridgements
book trade
publishers
terror
female authorship
Ann Radcliffe
Matthew Lewis

Published Papers

This special issue is now open for submission.

CFP Update SCMLA Gothic (4/15/2022; Memphis/Hybrid 10/13-15/2022)

Gothic Panel

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/02/26/gothic-panel

deadline for submissions: April 15, 2022


full name / name of organization: South Central Modern Language Association (SCMLA)


contact email: julieanngarza@gmail.com



The Gothic Panel with SCMLA's 79th Annual Hybrid Conference held in Memphis, Tennessee from October 13-15, 2022 is accepting proposals/abstracts for the Fall 2022 Conference. The virtual conference offers options for both In Person and Virtual presentations. (Extension granted for proposals. New Deadline: April 15, 2022.)

Location: Sheraton Downtown Memphis in Memphis, Tennessee

Days: October 13-15, 2022

URL: https://www.southcentralmla.org/conference/

Contact: Professor Julie Garza-Horne, Gothic Panel Secretary, julieanngarza@gmail.com


 
Last updated March 28, 2022 

 

CFP Victorian Resurrections International Conference (5/15/2022; Vienna 9/22-24/2022)

Neat idea. Too bad there is no remote option.

Victorian Resurrections International Conference

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/02/25/victorian-resurrections-international-conference

deadline for submissions:
May 15, 2022

full name / name of organization:
University of Vienna

contact email:
sylvia.mieszkowski@univie.ac.at

Victorian Resurrections

International Conference, 22nd – 24th September 2022 (University of Vienna)

Deadline for proposals (300 words): 15th May 2022

Confirmed keynote speakers:

Ann Heilmann (University of Cardiff)
Patricia Duncker (University of Manchester)

Call for Papers

Death and resurrection as well as the fears, fantasies and fads that surround them, pervade Victorian literature and culture in a myriad of ways. From literary representations of the dead coming back to life, to cultural practices of mourning and memorialising the dead, the Victorian era betrays a striking concern with how to cope with one's mortality. Working-class literature such as penny dreadfuls fictionalised concerns about the illegal trade in corpses led by resurrection men, or body-snatchers, who exhumed corpses to sell them to medical men, most specifically, to anatomists. Gothic texts throughout the 19th century often featured reanimated corpses or the living dead. The rise of spiritualism and the popularity of mediums and séances in the second half of the century complemented upper- and upper-middle-class practices of mourning, while the working-class was confronted with the (financial) impossibility to memorialise their lost ones in what was thought 'the proper way'. Queen Victoria herself mourned Prince Albert for over four decades, famously making her servants lay out his clothes in the morning and bring hot water for his shaving, as if he were about to come back.

Twentieth- and twenty-first-century literary, cultural, and material practices are guided by a wide range of agendas – revisionist, political, nostalgic, commercial, aesthetically experimental – in their manifold recurrences to the Victorian Age. At the same time, the manifold recurrences of the Victorian age in twentieth- and twenty-first-century literary, cultural, and material practices have preserved an interest in the idea of resurrection(s) and its implications. As a cultural phenomenon neo-Victorianism, for instance, could be described as one giant resurrectionist enterprise geared towards a reimagining of the Victorian Age through a wide range of different media and genres. Driven by a desire to fill historiographical gaps, retell the lives of iconic figures or uncover the stories of side-lined, obscure or marginalized individuals, neo-Victorian appropriations are what Kate Mitchell calls "memory texts". As such, they simultaneously reflect and shape our perceptions of the Victorian Age by creating specific versions of that past; by selecting which stories are being (re)told and whose voices are being recovered or made heard. These acts of remembrance often serve our need to constitute or reaffirm our social and cultural identities through the idea of a shared past and a common set of values. Neo-Victorian recoveries and (re)assessments of the 19th century are hardly ever 'innocent'. Instead, they are ideologically charged and reflect the concerns of our present, how we position ourselves with regard to the past, and how our meaning-making activates texts selectively. Neo-Victorian texts and practices participate in the project of producing and consolidating but also revising our cultural memory of the 19th century, contributing to the rich spectrum of Victorian after-lives and after-images in our society.

Topics for papers may touch on but are not limited to:

• the Gothic (the undead, re-awakened mummies etc.)

• resurrection men and body-snatching practices

• Victorian cultural practices surrounding death (spiritualism, séances, mediums)

• Victorian memorial cultures

• neo-Victorian literature's resurrective practices

• the Empire, ancient cultures & translatio imperii (Egypt; Assyria; Greece; Rome)

• 20th/21st century costume drama

• 20th/21st century re-imaginings of Queen Victoria and other iconic Victorian figures

• critical revivals (e.g. the fin-de-siècle Scottish Revival)

• the re-discovery and/or re-evaluation of forgotten Victorian texts

• the re-discovery and/or re-evaluation of forgotten or marginalized Victorian figures

• resurrection of forgotten Victorian traditions and/or social movements

• dark tourism (or thanatourism) in connection with the Victorian era

• (neo-)Victorian literature and biofiction

• Religion/spirituality in (neo-)Victorian literature and biofiction

• neo-Victorianism and cultural memory

• Victorian life writing / writing Victorian lives

• Victorian and neo-Victorian resurrective practices and fame/obscurity

• Victorian afterlives and reputations

Those interested in contributing should send 300-word abstracts for 20-minute papers in English by 15th May 2022 to Sandra Mayer (Sandra.Mayer@oeaw.ac.at) and Sylvia Mieszkowski (sylvia.mieszkowski@univie.ac.at), and include a short bio-bibliographical note (approx. 100 words).

Conference warming: 22nd September 2022

Conference dinner: 23rd September 2022

Conference fees:
• full fee: € 60
• reduced fee (PhD students): € 30

For practical and organisational information about Victorian Resurrections please check from mid-May 2022 onwards: http://anglistik.univie.ac.at/victorian-resurrections/



Last updated February 28, 2022

CFP Haunted Hibernia: Conjuring the Contemporary Irish Gothic (5/1/2022; Ireland 10/28-29/2022)

Haunted Hibernia: Conjuring the Contemporary Irish Gothic

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/02/20/haunted-hibernia-conjuring-the-contemporary-irish-gothic

deadline for submissions:
May 1, 2022

full name / name of organization:
Carlow College

contact email:
hauntedhibernia@gmail.com

Date of conference: 28th-29th October 2022.

In the period following the collapse of the Celtic Tiger in 2008, Irish society and culture began to take on a distinctly Gothic hue. In popular discourse, the landscapes of recessionary Ireland were figured as uncanny, gothicized spaces, haunted by ‘ghost estates’ and ‘zombie banks’, and preyed upon by vampiric ‘vulture funds’. At the same time, deeply disturbing aspects of Ireland’s history were further exposed in a plethora of government commissions documenting the shocking scale and extent of the abuses committed by the church and state, including: the 2009 Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (the ‘Ryan Report’), the 2013 Magdalen Commission Report (the ‘Quirke Report’), and (the more problematic) 2021 Report of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation. These profoundly disturbing revelations regarding the country’s past have resonated, in a deeply troubling manner, with more recent societal crises, such as the ongoing issue of homelessness and child poverty, the inhumane treatment of individuals in direct provision, the fight for reproductive autonomy, and the rise of domestic violence in the wake of the ongoing Covid pandemic. Given the psychologically discomfiting and socially unsettling effect of these overlapping contexts and anxieties, it is unsurprising that the Gothic has proved an especially apposite prism for the artistic representation of Ireland’s post-Celtic-Tiger dispensation.

This conference seeks to explore the myriad ways that the Gothic has been deployed to interrogate the social, economic, and political transformations that have occurred in Ireland since the end of the Celtic Tiger, and to exhume the associated historical trauma engendered by these changes. It will also examine how the contemporary scene has generated and precipitated new variations and hybridizations of Gothic literature and media. We welcome papers that engage with the Gothic in a wide variety of forms and media, including fiction, poetry, drama, film, tv, visual art, music, digital media and storytelling, and the broader field of popular culture.



The conference will also host plenary speaker, Dr. Sorcha Ní Fhlainn, Senior Lecturer and founding member of the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University.



Potential topics include but are not limited to:

• The Gothic and gender/sexuality: The Gothic as a lens through which we engage with the politicised female body and ownership/possession of the female body in 21st century Ireland.
• The use of the Gothic as a mode of progressive social and political protest.
• The Gothic as a vehicle to signify and disclose economic/financial crisis in Post-Celtic Tiger Ireland.
• Gothic tropes and motifs (the monstrous, the spectral, the uncanny, the haunted house) in contemporary Irish artistic culture.
• Contemporary artistic engagement with an older Irish Gothic tradition
• The aesthetic evolution/re-invention of the Gothic in contemporary Irish art and literature
• Eco Gothic and Eco horror in and Irish context
• The Gothic in Contemporary Irish Children’s Literature
• The Covid pandemic and the Gothic.
• Narratives of Gothic imprisonment/entrapment in contemporary Ireland, both literal and structural.
• The Gothic as a response to Ireland’s ongoing mental health crisis.
• Representations of home and homelessness in contemporary Irish Gothic.
• Constructions of domesticity and the domestic space in contemporary Irish Gothic.
• Specters of imperialism in contemporary Ireland.

Proposals (300 words) and a brief biography should be sent to hauntedhibernia@gmail.com by 1st May 2022.



Last updated February 21, 2022

CFP Stranger Worlds: H. G. Wells, Transgression and the Gothic (8/15/21, virtual UK 11/13/21)

2021 Conference Call for Papers

Call for Papers

Stranger Worlds: H. G. Wells, Transgression and the Gothic 

Saturday, 13 November 2021  

Source: http://hgwellssociety.com/statementofobjects/2021-conference-call-for-papers/

There you touch the inmost mystery of these dreamers, these men of vision and the imagination. We see our world fair and common … By our daylight standard he walked out of security into darkness, danger and death. But did he see like that?

H.G. Wells, The Door in the Wall

This year marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of Wells’s death. In a career that spanned fifty years and over a hundred books, Wells invited his readers to step across the threshold of human consciousness and to venture into realms beyond space, time and morality. His scientific romances expose the fragility of the human body and the thinness of humanity’s separation from the animal (The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau). A reviewer of The Time Machine felt that Wells’s imagination was ‘as gruesome as that of Poe’ and his short stories often dramatize gothic transgressions between the living and the dead. Later works such as The Croquet Player and The Camford Visitation see consciousness slipping its moorings and inhabiting or possessing other bodies.     

Once considered an annexe or niche in literary studies, the Gothic is now firmly established as a key mode of understanding research in, and the enormous global popularity of, genres such as horror, science fiction and fantasy. We invite applications for papers that consider the importance of the Gothic in the work of H. G. Wells. Papers need not be exclusively confined to Wells, but may also consider Wells’s gothic afterlife, reception and influence.  

Presentations will take the form of 20-minute papers, given via Zoom.   

Topics may include, but are not limited to:  

• Wells and Gothic genres and his relationship to his Gothic predecessors including Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Mary Shelley 
• Wells’s use of horror and terror in for instance, The War of the Worlds
• Gothic bodies; the Gothic across species  
• Gothic geographies  
• Returns from the dead; buried secrets; Gothic histories  
• Ghosts, monsters, apparitions and vampires  
• Transgressive behaviour and crime in Wells’s work
• Wellsian afterlives in science fiction, the graphic novel, cinema, TV, and computer games  

Please send a 250-word abstract to Dr Emelyne Godfrey juststruckone@hotmail.com by 15 August 2021.

Members: Free

Non-members: £10 Applicants will be notified by 31 August 2021. We encourage attendees to become members of the H.G. Wells Society and look forward to seeing you there.   

CFP Romancing the Gothic (3/31/21)

Came acoss this a while ago but forgot to post it. My apologies.

Romancing the Gothic 

Source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2020/12/04/romancing-the-gothic


deadline for submissions: March 31, 2021


full name / name of organization: Romancing the Gothic Project


contact email: hollyhirst84@gmail.com




Romancing the Gothic is online education project which offers free classes on the Gothic, horror, folklore, queer literature, romance and hidden histories. We are an interdiscplinary project with scholars taking part from many different fields and from all over the world. We have a regular audience as well as open sign-ups. To find out more about the project - see the website - https://romancingthegothic.com



We are looking to put together our 2021 schedule for Saturday Classes/Talks, Sunday Talks and Monthly Writing and Creative workshops. We are looking for scholars willing to submit on a variety of topics including: Horror and Gothic film and literature, National Traditions of Supernatural Literature, Demonologies, Intersections of Medicine and Literature, Queer Gothic and Horror. For a full list of requested talks see the website - https://romancingthegothic.wordpress.com/2020/12/05/call-for-talks-class...



This is an opportunity to engage with an international audience and interact with a growing network of scholars from all areas of academic life. It is also a good opportunity for both experienced and inexperienced presenters and speakers as full support is offered prior to the talk being given.



Please follow the link provided above for further details. Send a title and abstract (100-300 words) to sam@romancingthegothic.com


Last updated January 17, 2021