CFP Mothers, Mothering, and Motherhood in the King Universe (8/31/2025)

Mothers, Mothering, and Motherhood in the King Universe

deadline for submissions: 

August 31, 2025

full name / name of organization: 

Dr Conner McAleese

contact email: 

cmcaleese@dundee.ac.uk

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/05/24/mothers-mothering-and-motherhood-in-the-king-universe

Dr Conner McAleese invites proposals on representations of motherhood in any of Stephen King’s fiction.

Over the past fifty years, King’s works have been adapted, discussed, academically investigated, and, of course, read to an extent that few authors have ever been before. However, one aspect of King’s writing has yet to be given scholastic attention – the mothers of Stephen King’s fiction.

From Margaret White’s religious fanaticism in Carrie (1974) and Piper Laurie’s terrifying portrayal of the same character in Brian de Palma’s 1976 adaptation of King’s debut novel, King has obsessively and consistently employed mothers, and the tropes of motherhood, within his novels and short stories. Rachel Creed’s obsessive fear of death, and its realisation in her young son, Gage, is indicative of how generational trauma plays a significant role in Pet Sematary (1983) and in King’s wider representations of motherhood. Donna Trenton’s tragic defence of son, Tad, in Cujo (1981) demonstrates how a mother’s guilt of past betrayals can become horrific karmic punishments, at least to a mother’s mind. Wendy Torrance, and her bond with her son, Danny Torrance, in King’s The Shining (1977) and Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of the same name in 1980, have become synonymous with how King balances gender, motherhood, and the role of wife as a source of horror.

However, King’s writings on mothers and motherhood is not limited to the 20th century. New takes on mothers and mothering abound in his 21st century works. Holly Gibney’s prominence in King’s recent writings, shows King’s understanding of how the role of ‘mother’ has changed in the past twenty years. Mrs Sigsby and Maureen Alvorson of King’s The Institute (2019), too, demonstrate new and competing paradigms in which King’s mothers transcend the binary of being either wholly good or wholly evil (a common criticism of King’s writing), as more dynamic and competing representations of motherhood are shown in his works (patriotism, and mental illness in the case of Sigsby and Alvorson respectively).

This collection seeks to break new ground in our understanding of King’s prolific contributions to literature. In focussing on mothers, motherhood, and the desire to ‘mother’, this collection aims to demonstrate the compelling and deliberate use of gendered ‘nurturing’ tropes within King’s works and how their reinforcement and subversion informs his horror. Suggested topics include, but are in no way limited to:

-        Motherhood and Trauma

-        Creating horror from the need to ‘mother’ (e.g. Annie Wilkes in Misery)

-        Familial relationships/dynamics in King’s fiction (with mothers being included)

-        Generational Trauma and its effects on the mothers in King’s works (e.g. Rachel Creed’s fear of death in Pet Sematary)

-        Depictions of mothers in King’s adapted works

-        Religion and its influence on Mothering Strategies (e.g. Margaret White in Carrie and Mother Abigail in The Stand)

-        Pregnancy in King’s Fiction

-        The rejection of motherhood in King’s fiction (e.g. Holly Gibney)

-        Mental Illness in the mothers of Stephen King

-        Navigating gender through motherhood (e.g. Wendy Torrance in The Shining)

-        The recuperative function of motherhood

-        Resilience and Motherhood (e.g. Annemarie in Salem’s Lot)

-        Queer Coding mothers in King’s fiction

-        Motherhood, fear and loss (e.g. Donna Trenton in Cujo)

-        Defending children in King’s fiction (e.g. the Loser’s Club in IT)

-        Villainy and the ‘doubly deviant’ female

-        Motherhood and control (e.g. Sonia Kaspbrak from IT)

-        Incest, Sexuality and Motherhood (e.g. Deborah Hartsfield in Mr Mercedes)

-        Any writing on the mothers in Stephen King’s Fiction

 

Chapters should be between 2,500 and 4,500 words long (including endnotes and bibliography) and this proposal will be initially submitted to the Genre Fiction and Film Companions at Peter Lang (Oxford).

Please send a proposal of 250 words, together with a brief biography to Conner McAleese via cmcaleese@dundee.ac.uk by the 31st of August, 2025. All decisions will be communicated no later than the 20th of September, 2025. 

Full chapters will be due in mid-2026.

If you have any questions, no matter how informal, please do not hesitate to communicate those as early as possible.

 

About the Editor

Dr Conner McAleese is an early career researcher, currently working at the University of Dundee. He has published works on American Folk Horror, 21st Century American Horror Literature, and 21st Century Horror films. His Ph. D thesis deals with issues of American identity, trauma, and anxiety in horror literature written after 9/11 and the creation of the Homeland Security and PATRIOT Acts.

Last updated May 28, 2025

CFP Monstrous Mother in Literature (Spec Issue Esferas Literarias) (7/15/2024)

Monograph: The monstrous mother in Literature

deadline for submissions:
July 15, 2024

full name / name of organization:
Esferas Literarias

contact email:
almudena.nido@ui1.es

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2024/04/15/monograph-the-monstrous-mother-in-literature

CALL FOR PAPERS: Esferas Literarias nº 7 (2024)

Monograph: The monstrous mother in Literature

The role of the mother is sacred to many cultures since prehistoric times, as it is regarded as the main generative and nurturing power for the origin of life as well as the main agent for childcare. This maternal role is therefore not only defined by biology and birthing, but also by social constructs that focus on the expected role of woman as carer, protector, and nurturer of any child. However, as the first experience the subject has of a distinctive other, the maternal body constitutes the most foreign, unknowable space in human experience. In fact, the womb is considered in itself a threshold that marks a relation of energy and space in the biological processes between two bodies that imply that one is created and/or dependant from the other. Even if endowed by society of these positive features, the maternal body contains the possibility of death, horror, rejection, and disgust. This ambiguity and potential transgression of normative and clear-cut borders recall the figure of the monster in both the symbolic and the physical manifestations. It may also entail how the mother's presence and behaviours are perceived as monstrous by others due to social and ethical conventions of what constitutes to be human and/or to be a mother.

We ask contributors to explore the representations in literature of monstrous mothers and monstrous forms of mothering that do not comply with normative embodiment or social conventions about the idea of mother. Articles may respond to some of the following thematic lines, but these are not restrictive:

• Representations of deviant and abnormal motherhood: This could include representations of mother figures who deviate or subvert in any way the normative physical embodiment or the dominant cultural ideals that expect them to be feminine, compassionate, caring, selfless, self-sacrificing, etc. We are interested in contributions that analyse representations of the monstrous mother as a symbol of generative power/untamed nature, as non-human, animal hybrid, inorganic, uncaring, violent, etc.
• Reproductive horrors and the monstrous body: this includes representations of any biological process that pertains to the maternal body and associates it with the abject. We are interested in contributions which explore narratives that feature menstruation, pregnancy, birth, miscarriage, abortion, death, etc., and relate it to the monstrous body and the experience of mothering.
• The relationship between monstrous mothers and space: We are interested in contributions which explore the possible relationship between the monstrous mother and the spaces where the child-mother dyad takes place or is expected to take place. This could include human habitations like the haunted mansion, or natural spaces like the cave.

Contributions can focus on the figure of the monstrous mother in any literary form, genre or subgenre, produced in any language or cultural context.

The proposed topics can be approached from diverse theoretical perspectives (Cohen’s monster theses; monster theory; psychoanalysis; affect theory; disability studies; race, cultural, postcolonial and decolonial studies; queer studies; women’s and gender studies; ecocriticism, among others).

The articles can be written in English or Spanish.

Articles must follow the guidelines of the journal and must be submitted through the journal’s website: https://journals.uco.es/index.php/Esferas/about/submissions


Last updated April 16, 2024

EXTENDED Carmilla’s Sisters – Female Vampires in Literature, Film and Popular Culture (4/15/2022; Bordeaux, France/online 10/7-8/2022)

EXTENDED DEADLINE 

Carmilla’s Sisters – Female Vampires in Literature, Film and Popular Culture

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2021/12/20/carmilla%E2%80%99s-sisters-%E2%80%93-female-vampires-in-literature-film-and-popular-culture

deadline for submissions:
April 15, 2022

full name / name of organization:
Université Bordeaux Montaigne

contact email:
nicolas.labarre@u-bordeaux-montaigne.fr



International conference, to be held in Bordeaux, France, on October 7-8, 2022

While the format is not set in stone, we will strongly consider holding online panels.



Nearly thirty years after the publication of Nina Auerbach’s seminal study Our Vampires, Ourselves, we felt the 150th anniversary of J. S. Le Fanu’s Carmilla provided an opportunity to revisit vampire fictions centred on female figures – as yet a largely unchartered territory. Despite a few pages devoted to Carmilla and queer vampires – in The Vampire Book by Gordon J. Melton, 1999, Le miroir obscur. Histoire du cinéma des vampires, by Stéphane du Mesnildot, 2013, or the catalogue of the 2019 exhibition at the Cinémathèque Française –, the centrality of Dracula and male vampires still remains prevalent in critical literature.

Yet, contrary to a received notion, female vampires abound in literature, film, television series, comics, as an unsettling presence that undermines the majestic supremacy of the vampire count, thus perhaps testifying to the latter’s “obsolescence” (to borrow Robin Wood’s formula).

With its multiple film adaptations, Le Fanu’s text still challenges readers in many ways, contemporary readers being sensitive to LGBTQI+ issues and to the aftermath of the #MeToo wave. The historical Countess Báthory also haunts literary and filmic memories, and calls for still other questions, as a power figure that already inspired Bram Stoker himself in Dracula’s Guest, the first chapter of Dracula, later suppressed by the author.

The vampire-woman is omnipresent in art cinema (Les lèvres rouges, Harry Kümel, 1971; Leonor, Juan Luis Bunuel, 1975), blockbusters (the Underworld franchise), European classics (Hammer films, Roger Vadim), Hollywood classics (Near Dark, Kathryn Bigelow, 1987). In a recent study on gender in vampire films, Claude-Georges Guilbert – commenting on the prevalence of women writers in vampire literature – claimed that the female vampire embodies the « future » of the genre. Will participants in this conference prove him right?

The organizing committee will welcome all propositions about female vampires in literature, cinema, comics, with particular attention to those addressing the following issues:

¤ The female vampire figure, between exploitation and empowerment. 

From Carmilla onwards, female vampires have fulfilled apparently conflicting functions. They are often young, eroticised vampires, and they announce all manner of transgression. In the same movement, they are often at the centre of narratives, they initiate action and are autonomous and admired characters, worshiped by devoted fans – one can think of Vampirella in Warren comics or Lady Dimitrescu in the Resident Evil Village video game. How do authors and publics negotiate this tension? Does this amount to reading the texts against the grain or is this reading actually inscribed in the cultural objects themselves?

¤ Isolated figure or serial type. 

Dracurella and the several other daughters of Dracula suggest that many female can be seen in terms of variants of a dominant male type – as an instance of the minimal differentiation that defines the culture industries. Do serial types actually predominate over isolated figures? Is there a way to measure this? Can the female vampire exist independently from this logic of derivation?

¤ The female vampire and gender stability. 

Even more so than her male counterpart, the female vampire is characterised by sexual ambiguity. Oversexualised, often hyperfeminised, she is nevertheless also a creature who seduces, penetrates, rarely without violence. The lesbian romance of Carmilla – but also the ambiguous fascination exerted by the historical figure of Countess Élisabeth Báthory – once more offers a prototype of this subversion of gendered roles. How does this uncertainty manifest itself in the texts or in their reception? Is the female vampire necessarily queer?

¤ Global figure v. local figures. 

Along the 20th century, the English-speaking cultural industries have largely colonised the visual imaginations of fantasy and horror. How does the female vampire feature in this tension between a globalised culture and local variations with their specific traditions? What are the histories and media specificities? Should we view the female vampire as a figure of the glocal?

¤ The Carmilla hypothesis. 

Sheridan Le Fanu’s novella haunts every question addressed in this call for papers. We will then welcome propositions examining the specific place of Carmilla in the emergence of the figure of the female vampire, through the circulation of the original text but also through the elaboration of an “adaptation network” (Kate Newell). Could we map out the apparitions of the female vampire in popular culture? How would Carmilla feature in that space?

¤ The figural approach: imagining the female vampire. 

Female vampires and related figures (harpies, sirens, sphinges, animal-women) : genesis and transformations of such figures in the pictorial tradition since the XIXth century (Munch, Khnopff, Mossa, Philip Burne-Jones), circulation of forms. Variants and typologies in literature from John Keats (Lamia) and Rudyard Kipling (“A Fool There Was”) to Tanith Lee (Sabella or the Blood Stone, 1980), Anne Rice (Pandora, 1998) and Octavia E. Butler (Fledgling, 2005) – through Paul Féval (La Vampire, 1856).

Communication proposals (about 200 words, along with a brief biographical note) should be sent to Jean-François Baillon (Jean-Francois.Baillon@u-bordeaux-montaigne.fr) and Nicolas Labarre (nicolas.labarre@u-bordeaux-montaigne.fr) by March 31, 2022.



Scientific committee:

Mélanie Boissonneau (Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle) – Marjolaine Boutet (Université de Picardie Jules Verne) – David Roche (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3) –– Yann Calvet (Université de Caen) – Matt Jones (De Montfort University, UK) –– Hélène Frazik (Université de Caen) – Jean-François Baillon (Université Bordeaux Montaigne) – Nicolas Labarre (Université Bordeaux Montaigne) - Dr Matt Melia (Kingston University London, UK)




Last updated April 5, 2022

CFP Varieties of the Monstrous Feminine in American Literature (9/30/2018; NeMLA 2019)

“Varieties of the Monstrous Feminine in American Literature”
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/07/01/%E2%80%9Cvarieties-of-the-monstrous-feminine-in-american-literature%E2%80%9D

deadline for submissions:
September 30, 2018

full name / name of organization:
Mary Balkun/Seton Hall University

contact email:
mary.balkun@shu.edu



NeMLA 2019

The monstrous female is a staple of the literary imagination. The Medusa, the witch, the Sirens, the succubus/vampire, the she-devil, the madwoman, the coquette, the cross-dresser—these are just some versions of this trope that can be identified from the earliest periods to the present day. Some figures represent the ways women have been marginalized as “other” and the impact of that designation, while others represent ways that outsider positions can become a locus of power. This roundtable will explore various manifestations of the monstrous feminine trope, specifically in American literature and culture. It will consider questions such as: Who defines monstrosity? How can it be construed as positive as well as negative? How does the monstrous feminine manifest in different time periods and locations (urban vs. rural, east vs. west vs. midwest, north vs. south)? Does the monstrous feminine always have to be female?

Proposals of 300 words should be submitted by Sept. 30, 2018 via the NeMLA portal https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/CFP.

CFP Edited Collection on Young Adult Gothic Fiction (7/16/2018)

Edited Collection on Young Adult Gothic Fiction
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/05/22/edited-collection-on-young-adult-gothic-fiction

deadline for submissions: July 16, 2018

full name / name of organization: Dr Michelle Smith and Dr Kristine Moruzi

contact email: Michelle.Smith@monash.edu



Call for Papers: Edited Collection on Young Adult Gothic Fiction

The twenty-first century has seen a marked increase in the Gothic themes of liminality, monstrosity, transgression, romance, and sexuality in fiction for young adults. While Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series (2005-2008) is the most well-known example of Gothic young adult fiction, it is part of a growing corpus of hundreds of novels published in the genre since the turn of the millennium. During this period, the Gothic itself has simultaneously undergone a transformation. The Gothic monster is increasingly presented sympathetically, especially through narration and focalisation from the “monster’s” perspective. In YA Gothic, the crossing of boundaries that is typical of the Gothic is often motivated by a heterosexual romance plot in which the human or monstrous female protagonist desires a boy who is not her “type”. In addition, as the Gothic works to define what it means to be human, particularly in relation to gender, race, and identity, contemporary shifts and flashpoints in identity politics are also being negotiated under the metaphoric cloak of monstrosity.

Yet the Gothic also operates within young adult fiction to enable discussions about fears and anxieties in relation to a variety of contemporary concerns, including environmentalism, human rights, and alienation. Catherine Spooner suggests that the Gothic takes the form of a series of revivals. In the proposed collection we seek to explain what the current Gothic revival in YA fiction signifies and call for papers engaging with any aspect of Gothic fiction published for young adults since 2000.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• The Gothic and the posthuman
• The paranormal romance
• The monstrous feminine
• The adolescent body
• The evolution of canonical monsters including the vampire, the werewolf, the witch
• Postfeminism and the Gothic
• The Gothic and race
• Gothic spaces
• Gothic historical fiction

The editors are currently preparing a proposal for a university press Gothic series, in which the publisher has already expressed preliminary interest.

Please submit abstracts of up to 300 words and a biographical note of up to 150 words to both Dr Kristine Moruzi (kristine.moruzi@deakin.edu.au) and Dr Michelle Smith (michelle.smith@monash.edu) by 16 July 2018.

Full papers of 6000 words will be due by 1 December 2018.