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

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

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

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

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

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

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

REGISTRATION

Registration is US$20.00 per person.

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

CALL FOR PAPERS

The CFP deadline is November 15, 2022.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Type: Call for Papers

Date: November 17, 2022

Location: New Zealand

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




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Possible topics might include, but are not limited to:

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

Contact Info:


Dr Angelique Nairn

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

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

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

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

Preternatural Environments: Dreamscapes, Alternate Realities, Landscapes of Dread

CFP for special issue of Preternature (issue 6.1)

Deadline for submissions: March 1, 2016

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Contact Info:
Richard Raiswell

Editor, Preternature

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Possible topics may include:

•          The devil as tempter

•          The devil as accuser

•          The devil as satirist

•          The devil as cultural critic

•          The devil as God’s counterpart

•          The devil as revolutionist

•          The devil as a tragic figure

•          The devil and damnation

•          The devil and salvation

•          The devil in passion plays

•          Sympathy for the devil

•          The future of devils

•          Hell on earth

•          Visions of hell

•          Eternal damnation vs. extinction



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