CFP Indigenous Gothic / Indigenous Horror: A Companion (10/1/2026)

Indigenous Gothic / Indigenous Horror: A Companion

deadline for submissions:
October 1, 2026

full name / name of organization:
Valerie L. Guyant / Montana State University - Northern

contact email:
valerie.guyant@msun.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2026/06/22/indigenous-gothic-indigenous-horror-a-companion

Call for Chapters

Horror has long been described as a genre about the unknown — the thing lurking just beyond the edges of civilization. But as Stephen Graham Jones (Blackfeet Nation) has written, horror uniquely allows "two timelines — the past and the present, the legacy of colonialism and the world of the story — to simultaneously exist. Not just exist, but intersect."[1] It is this capacity for temporal and cultural intersection that has made horror and the Gothic not merely accessible to Indigenous writers, but essential.

Scholars and critics have begun to recognize the emergence of what many term "Rez Gothic" — a mode of storytelling that deploys horror and the supernatural to illuminate inequity, cultural trauma, and Indigenous survival. Yet despite a proliferation of landmark texts and a genuine resurgence of Indigenous voices, the field lacks a comprehensive academic companion that accounts for the full breadth of this tradition across Nations, media, and forms. Indigenous Gothic / Indigenous Horror: A Companion aims to address that gap.

This edited collection will draw on examples from fiction, film, television, poetry, and comics to examine the ways Indigenous authors, filmmakers, and artists have engaged with and transformed the conventions of Gothic and horror across multiple traditions. We understand "Indigenous Gothic" and "Indigenous Horror" as interrelated but distinct modes, and welcome submissions that engage with either or both.

The collection is transnational: it will center the voices and creative traditions of a broad range of Native Nations within the United States, First Nations and Métis peoples of Canada, and Pacific Islander and Māori communities, among others.

In addition to academic chapters, the collection aspires to intersperse interviews with Indigenous elders and authors, allowing their voices to speak alongside and sometimes against critical interpretations. This structural choice is a form of intellectual and ethical

responsibility, one that positions community knowledge not as raw material for scholarly analysis but as expertise.

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

· Fiction by Indigenous authors working in horror or Gothic modes: Stephen Graham Jones (Blackfeet Nation); Cherie Dimaline (Métis Nation of Ontario), Empire of Wild (2019); Waubgeshig Rice (Wasauksing First Nation / Anishinaabe), Moon of the Crusted Snow (2018); Darcie Little Badger (Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas), Elatsoe (2020); or A.A. Carr (Navajo/Laguna Pueblo), Eye Killers (1995); Witi Ihimaera (Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki and associated iwi); Patricia Grace (Ngāti Toa, Ngāti Raukawa, Te Āti Awa); and Keri Hulme (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Māmoe),

· Horror and Gothic representation in Indigenous film and television, including Prey (2022, dir. Dan Trachtenberg, featuring a nearly all-Comanche cast), Reservation Dogs (FX/Hulu, co-created by Sterlin Harjo, Seminole/Muscogee Nation), Taika Waititi's (Māori/Te Whānau-ā-Apanui) work in horror-comedy including Wellington Paranormal (TVNZ, 2018–2022) and What We Do in the Shadows (2014), and Māori-inflected Gothic in New Zealand cinema.

· Comics, graphic novels, and sequential art with Indigenous Gothic content, including contributions to Marvel's Indigenous Voices anthology (featuring work by Jones and others).

· The use of ceremony, land, and the non-human as sites of horror or uncanny dread in Indigenous poetic traditions.

· Anthology fiction and the construction of an Indigenous horror canon — including Never Whistle at Night (2023, ed. Shane Hawk), Zegaajimo: Indigenous Horror Fiction (2024, ed. Nathan Niigan Noodin Adler and Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm), and related collections.

· Intersections with gender, queerness, and disability within Indigenous horror including the centering of Indigenous women and Two-Spirit characters as protagonists rather than victims.

· Pedagogical questions: how do we teach Indigenous Gothic responsibly in university classrooms, and what do Indigenous horror texts demand of non-Indigenous readers and instructors?

OF NOTE

We particularly welcome abstracts from Indigenous scholars, community members, elders, and artists.

Proposals for interview contributions in lieu of traditional academic chapters are also welcome; please include a brief note on the proposed interview subject and their community affiliation.

Ideally, the finished collection will be organized geographically. Therefore, preference will be given to a variety of texts and approaches, especially if the subject text is placed geographically near the proposer, since land and place are often important.

Strong interest has been expressed by Bloomsbury Publishing

Finished chapters will be approximately 5,000–7,000 words and should adopt a primary text or a set of closely related texts to discuss the broader subject of Indigenous Gothic and horror.

Please submit abstracts of 300–400 words, alongside a short biographical note (75–150 words), to Valerie Guyant at Valerie.guyant@msun.edu by October 1, 2026. Draft chapters will be expected by May 30, 2027.

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[1] Stephen Graham Jones, foreword to Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology, ed. Shane Hawk (Random House Canada, 2023).



Last updated June 22, 2026

CFP Indigeneity and Horror (Conference Panel) (7/31/19; SCMS 2020)

Do note the impending due date:

SCMS Panel: Indigeneity and Horror
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/07/08/scms-panel-indigeneity-and-horror

deadline for submissions: July 31, 2019
full name / name of organization: Murray Leeder
contact email: murray.leeder@nucleus.com

In his classic essay “An Introduction to the American Horror Film,” Robin Wood establishes the basic formula of the horror film as “normality is threatened by the monster.” He subsequently mentions that if one were to “substitute for ‘Monster’ the term ‘Indians’ . . . one has a formula for a large number of classical Westerns.” Wood’s point is to establish the flexibility of his framework but it also points in another direction: the monstrousness of the idea of Indigeneity within the colonial mindset. Today, one of the most exciting growing areas in horror cinema at the moment comes from Indigenous persons. In Canada, Jeff Barnaby (Mi’gmaq) will soon release Blood Quantum (2019), a zombie film set on the same reserve as his earlier Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013) -- which Scott Pewenofkit has suggested “may be the first truly Indigenous horror film,” dipping as it does into the representational space of the horror film (the zombie film, especially) to allegorize the real-life, genocidal horrors of the residential school system.



Only recently has scholarship emerged on distinctly Indigenous horror and Gothic literature and film; examples include Joy Porter’s chapter in The Palgrave Handbook to Horror Literature (2018), Ariel Smith’s article “This Essay Was Not Built On an Ancient Indian Burial Ground” (2014) and Gail de Vos and Kayla Lar-son’s contribution to The Horror Companion (2019). This panel asks: how does Indigenous horror contribute to or even challenge our understanding of the horror genre and of horror theory?



We seek papers for the 2020 SCMS conference in Denver. Topics may include:

• Particularities of different settler-colonialist nations (Canada, the United States of America, New Zealand, Australia, etc.) and their film industries
• The monster as a figure of Othering vs. a figure of resistance
• The relationship of Indigenous horror literature and film
• Reinterpretations of classic horror narratives are ripe for revisiting through the lens of Indigeneity
• Indigenous spins of familiar horror figures (vampire, zombie, werewolf, ghost, etc.), and conversely, settler appropriation of folkloric figures like the Wendigo
• Cycles of horror production that have favoured Indigenous characters and themes (e.g. ‘70s eco-horror)
• Genre hybridity (the Western, science fiction, fantasy, magic realism, drama, comedy, romance, etc.)
• Film festivals, funding structures, etc.

Please submit a title, an abstract (max. 2500 characters), a bio (max. 500 characters), and 3–5 bibliographic sources to murray.leeder@nucleus.com and gdrhodes@gmail.com by August 1. Responses will be given by August 13.



Murray Leeder holds a Ph.D. from Carleton University and is a Research Affiliate at the University of Manitoba. He the author of Horror Film: A Critical Introduction (Bloomsbury, 2018), The Modern Supernatural and the Beginnings of Cinema (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and Halloween (Auteur, 2014), as well as the editor of Cinematic Ghosts: Haunting and Spectrality from Silent Cinema to the Digital Era (Bloomsbury, 2015) and ReFocus: The Films of William Castle (Edinburgh University Press, 2018), as well as numerous articles and book chapters.


Gary D. Rhodes currently serves as Associate Professor of Film and Mass Media at the University of Central Florida, Orlando. He is the author of Emerald Illusions:  The Irish in Early American Cinema (IAP, 2012), The Perils of Moviegoing in America (Bloomsbury, 2012), and The Birth of the American Horror Film (Edinburgh University Press, 2018), as well as the editor of such anthologies as Edgar G. Ulmer:  Detour on Poverty Row (Lexington, 2008), The Films of Joseph H. Lewis (Wayne State University, 2012), and The Films of Budd Boetticher (Edinburgh University Press, 2017). Rhodes is also the writer-director of such documentary films as Lugosi: Hollywood's Dracula (1997) and Banned in Oklahoma (2004).  Forthcoming from Edinburgh University Press is the monograph Consuming Images:  Film Art and the American Television Commercial, coauthored with Robert Singer.


Last updated July 11, 2019