CFP Gothic II Panel (6/30/2025; PAMLA San Francisco 11/20-23/2025)

PAMLA 2025 Panel (standing session): Gothic II

deadline for submissions: 

June 30, 2025

full name / name of organization: 

Melanie A. Marotta, College of William & Mary / Pacific & Ancient Modern Language Association (PAMLA 2025 Conference)

contact email: 

melaniemarotta@yahoo.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/03/24/pamla-2025-panel-standing-session-gothic-ii

Gothic writers embrace the genre for its inclusive and representational nature. The genre is, in effect, a palimpsest as it prominently features both the past and memory. The creators in the genre continue to create plots that center on women, queer, transgender, and racialized characters and create stories that address societal inequalities. The environment (the Ecogothic) also continues to be a prominent character in the genre.

This in-person panel welcomes submissions about all aspects of the gothic as seen in a variety of media forms (literature, film, television, gaming, etc.). Feel free to submit an abstract about the gothic and the conference theme (the non-binding conference theme is “Palimpsests”) or about the gothic without reference to the conference theme.

Please contact me if you have any questions. Deadline June 30 or until the Gothic II panel is filled.

The PAMLA 2025 conference is in person in San Francisco, CA, on November 20-23, 2025.

Please see the PAMLA site for more information about the conference and the theme: https://www.pamla.org/conference/2025-conference-theme/

Please submit your abstract via the PAMLA submission portal: https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/Home/CFP

*AI Statement: Authors should refrain my using generative AI in the writing of both abstracts and presentations.*

Last updated June 2, 2025

CFP A Gathering of Horrors, Terrors, and Monstrosities (6/30/2025; PAMLA San Francisco 11/20-23/2025)

 

A Gathering of Horrors, Terrors, and Monstrosities

deadline for submissions: 

June 30, 2025

full name / name of organization: 

Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association

contact email: 

roland_finger@cuesta.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/05/29/a-gathering-of-horrors-terrors-and-monstrosities

PAMLA: A Gathering of Horrors, Terrors, and Monstrosities Panel, 11/20/25-11/23/25, San Francisco

Dark times call for dark and demonic stories. Films, graphic novels, and fiction provide compelling ways to examine the horrors, terrors, and monstrosities in our world. Deep and dark works and our fixation on them provide apocalyptic, devastating, and shocking revelations about individuals, society, and nature. While works of horror tear audiences away from realistic norms and social acceptability, they confront us with extreme embodiment, emotion, and intellectual crisis. Chilling whispers and screams beg to be heard even if we are conditioned not to hear them. Norms of decency, sensitivity, and reason are in decline but simultaneously acquire added value. Monstrosity is not just a grisly spectacle but is a message demanding our attention. This panel investigates the meaning and importance of horror, terror, and monstrosity through the study of film, graphic fiction, and literature. What do these works demand from us?

Submit proposals: https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/Home/S/19728

Conference dashboard: https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/User/DashBoard

PAMLA is the western regional affiliate of the Modern Language Association and is dedicated to the creation, advancement, and diffusion of knowledge of ancient and modern languages, literatures, media, cultures, and the arts. This year, the PAMLA is holding its annual 122nd Annual Conference in San Francisco from Nov. 20-23, 2025.

Last updated May 30, 2025

CFP PAMLA 2025 Panel: Gothic (5/15/2025; PAMLA San Francisco 11/20-23/2025)

 

PAMLA 2025 Panel: Gothic

deadline for submissions: 

May 15, 2025

full name / name of organization: 

Melanie A. Marotta, College of W&M / Pacific & Ancient Modern Language Association (PAMLA 2025 Conference)

contact email: 

melaniemarotta@yahoo.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/03/24/pamla-2025-panel-gothic

Gothic writers embrace the genre for its inclusive and representational nature. The genre is, in effect, a palimpsest as it prominently features both the past and memory. The creators in the genre continue to create plots that center on women, queer, transgender, and racialized characters and create stories that address societal inequalities. The environment (the Ecogothic) also continues to be a prominent character in the genre.

This in-person panel welcomes submissions about all aspects of the gothic as seen in a variety of media forms (literature, film, television, gaming, etc.). Feel free to submit an abstract about the gothic and the conference theme (the non-binding conference theme is “Palimpsests”) or about the gothic without reference to the conference theme.

Please contact me if you have any questions.

The PAMLA 2025 conference is in person in San Francisco, CA, on November 20-23, 2025.

Please see the PAMLA site for more information about the conference and the theme: https://www.pamla.org/conference/2025-conference-theme/

Please submit your abstract via the PAMLA submission portal: https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/Home/CFP

*AI Statement: Authors should refrain my using generative AI in the writing of both abstracts and presentations.*

Last updated April 30, 2025

CFP Geographies of Terror: The Fantastic and Quotidian (5/15/2022; PAMLA Los Angeles 11/11-13/2022)

Geographies of Terror: The Fantastic and Quotidian

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/02/17/geographies-of-terror-the-fantastic-and-quotidian

deadline for submissions:
May 15, 2022

full name / name of organization:
PAMLA

contact email:
alagji@pitzer.edu

Geographies of Terror: The Fantastic and Quotidian

Proposals invited for a special session panel at PAMLA's 2022 Conference, UCLA Luskin Conference Center and Hotel in Los Angeles, California

November 11 - 13, 2022



Panel Organizer: Amanda Lagji alagji@pitzer.edu



In connection with PAMLA’s conference theme on the geographies of the fantastic and quotidian, this panel invites papers that explore the fantastic and quotidian geographies of terror in literature. Papers are encouraged to embrace an expansive notion of geographies, including the spatial and the affective, in their examination of terrorism and literature.

The reach of terror and counter-terror networks alike is fantastic, and vast; we might contrast the global, deterritorialized networks not just of terror, but also counter-terror surveillance and security apparatuses with fiction’s depiction of the quotidian, everyday experiences of grief, paranoia, anxiety, and fear. Fiction’s exploration of these affective geographies, however, might also mobilize the “fantastic” mode, from irrealist scenes in Karan Mahajan’s The Association of Small Bombs to Viken Berberian’s strange novel The Cyclist.

This panel aims to address the following questions: how do ‘terror texts’ balance the quotidian and the fantastic in their exploration of post-9/11 security logics? To what end might ‘terror texts’ mobilize elements of the fantastic or strange to comment on domestic or global terror? The geographies of terror interact with post-Cold War geopolitics, as well as the persistence of imperial formations in the present; how might these “fantastic” histories impinge on the quotidian narration of terror in contemporary fiction? Is fiction especially good (or especially bad) at mediating the relationship between the fantastic spectacle of terror and the quotidian experiences of aftermath? Do these distinctions even hold under analysis?

Papers might address questions of genre and representation, as well as depictions of terror “sites” and the affective geographies of terror. The panel aims to be inclusive of all national/comparative literatures and time periods in its efforts to chart a long and expansive history of terror, the fantastic, and the quotidian.

Please submit proposals (max. 300 words) and a brief biography (max. 100 words) for 15 minute papers to PAMLA’s online submission system https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/ (login or create an account first) by May 15, 2022.

More details on the conference can be found here: https://www.pamla.org/pamla2022/



Last updated February 21, 2022

CFP Fantasy, Horror, and the Supernatural (7/19/19; PAMLA 2019)

Please note the impending deadline:

Fantasy, Horror, and the Supernatural
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/07/10/fantasy-horror-and-the-supernatural

deadline for submissions: July 19, 2019
full name / name of organization: Kate Watt / PAMLA
contact email: kate.watt@ucr.edu

From golems to Gollum, ghosts to Ironman, hobbits to succubi, zombies to dopplegangers, the possessed to those who wield the dark arts, the not-human, the almost-human, the was-human, the wants-to-be-human, the beyond-human, and those who use unknown powers to prey on humans have populated human culture and narrative from the beginning. Analysis from any critical perspective, exploring texts drawn from literature, film/TV, graphic novels, manga, comics, visual arts, and elsewhere, is welcome.

Us, Get Out, The Walking Dead, Cthulhu, It, and a wide variety of other texts would be appropriate topics.

Please submit through the PAMLA.org website directly.

PAMLA is in San Diego, November 14-17, 2019.


Last updated July 11, 2019

CFP Young Adult Literature (5/15/14; PAMLA 10/31-11/2/14)

Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association
112th Annual Conference - Riverside Convention Center, California
Friday, October 31 - Sunday, November 2, 2014

Young Adult Literature

Presiding Officer:
Shanna Shadoan, McGill University, Canada and Denver Library

Focusing on the liminal space between childhood and adulthood, the young adult literature genre offers critical insight into developmental tensions of youth, and our cultural values and preoccupations. Given the theme of “Familiar Spirits” for the conference, we invite all interested to submit papers exploring the uncanny, paranormal, and strange, as well as those that examine the familiar and ordinary as they are expressed in young adult literature today.  Discussions of the mysterious and speculative will be especially welcome, but papers on any aspect of YA are accepted.

Status:
Open (accepting submissions)
Associated Sessions
Young Adult Literature
Topic Type:
Special Session

- See more at: http://www.pamla.org/2014/topics/young-adult-literature#sthash.v4Hdfs9l.dpuf

CFP Rise of Undead Culture (5/15/14; PAMLA 10/31-11/2/14)

Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association
112th Annual Conference - Riverside Convention Center, California
Friday, October 31 - Sunday, November 2, 2014

Beyond Life: The Rise of Undead Culture

Presiding Officer:
Roland Finger, Cuesta College
The undead have forcefully risen in popular literature and media and targeted the pillars of society—identity, family, religion, and government. Normal life simultaneously loses and acquires value vis-à-vis threats from the undead. This session investigates the significance of the undead within culture, literature, and philosophy.

Status:
Open (accepting submissions)
Associated Sessions
Beyond Life: The Rise of Undead Culture.
Topic Type:
Special Session

- See more at: http://www.pamla.org/2014/topics/beyond-life-rise-undead-culture#sthash.Mk2gGCQw.dpuf

CFP Familiar in Contemporary American Gothic (5/15/14; PAMLA 10/31-11/2/14)

Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association
112th Annual Conference - Riverside Convention Center, California
Friday, October 31 - Sunday, November 2, 2014

Gothic Returns: The Familiar in Contemporary American Gothic

Presiding Officer:
Chad Luck, California State University, San Bernadino
From hauntings, to the uncanny, to dark nostalgia, the contemporary American Gothic has been closely linked to the return of the once familiar. This panel explores the nature of such “gothic returns,” considering the ways in which the genre itself relies on a complex retrospective dynamic.

Status:
Open (accepting submissions)
Associated Sessions
Gothic Returns: The Familiar in Contemporary American Gothic”
Topic Type:
Special Session

- See more at: http://www.pamla.org/2014/topics/gothic-returns-familiar-contemporary-american-gothic%E2%80%9D#sthash.GbeLuLIp.dpuf

CFP Magic and Witchcraft (5/15/14; PAMLA 10/31-11/2/14)

Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association
112th Annual Conference - Riverside Convention Center, California
Friday, October 31 - Sunday, November 2, 2014

Magic and Witchcraft

Presiding Officer:
Logan Greene, Eastern Washington University
Magic and witchcraft are powerful cultural phenomena that have gripped our imaginations throughout the centuries. The ceremonial, folk, and divinatory practices contained in these labels have continued in changing forms to the present day. This panel invites scholars in literature, history, anthropology, cultural studies, and religious studies to share their research and reflections on this topic.

Status:
Open (accepting submissions)
Associated Sessions
Magic and Witchcraft
Topic Type:
Special Session

- See more at: http://www.pamla.org/2014/topics/magic-and-witchcraft#sthash.BWVpg7Ze.dpuf

CFP Children's Animation and After-Life Narratives (5/15/14; PAMLA 10/31-11/2/14)

112th Annual Conference - Riverside Convention Center, California
Friday, October 31 - Sunday, November 2, 2014

Reanimating the Child: Children's Animation and After-Life Narratives

Presiding Officer:
David Boyd, Metropolitan State University of Denver

The first decade of the twenty-first century has seen a tremendous influx of children's animation from both the United States and Japan that dwell on death. This brand of animation examines, firstly, how children contemplate and process death, and secondly, reveals how the image of the child can be associated or conflated with the figure of the undead other. While Japanese illustrators and animators have produced many more examples of this type of children's media (specifically through the genre they call yokai shonen or "adventurous ghost stories"), American alternatives may also include The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy (2003-2008), ParaNorman (2012), and Frankenweenie (2012). In these stories, a child either dies and becomes a supernatural hero, or experiences loss and acquires supernatural powers that allow him/her to interact with the undead. The popularity of this mode seems to address not just a child's perception of loss, death and grieving, but also more expansive post-human anxieties concerning finitude, agency, and otherness.

Status:
Open (accepting submissions)
Associated Sessions
Reanimating the Child: Children's Animation and After-Life Narratives
Topic Type:
Special Session

- See more at: http://www.pamla.org/2014/topics/reanimating-child-childrens-animation-and-after-life-narratives#sthash.vhU68ITI.dpuf

CFP Spirits in Latin American Horror Films (5/15/14; PAMLA 10/31-11/2/14)

Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association
112th Annual Conference - Riverside Convention Center, California
Friday, October 31 - Sunday, November 2, 2014

Spiritual Manifestations in Latin American Indigenous Horror Films

Presiding Officer:
Mari-Eve Monette, McGill University
Because horror films combine realism and the phantasmagorical, Latin American indigenous cinematographers have increasingly embraced this genre to transmit oral myths and legends that reflect their belief in different spiritual dimensions and manifestations. This special session seeks to explore how the horror filmic genre empowers these indigenous oral traditions.

Status:
Open (accepting submissions)
Associated Sessions
Spiritual Manifestations in Latin American Indigenous Horror Films
Topic Type:
Special Session
- See more at: http://www.pamla.org/2014/topics/spiritual-manifestations-latin-american-indigenous-horror-films#sthash.opLSjITE.dpuf

Gothic (5/15/14; PAMLA 10/31-11/2/14)

Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association
112th Annual Conference - Riverside Convention Center, California
Friday, October 31 - Sunday, November 2, 2014

The Gothic

Presiding Officer:
Cheryl Edelson, Chaminade University of Honolulu
Given the recent popularity of the Twilight series of novels and films, television programs such as True Blood and Grim, and numerous remakes of Gothic “classics” such as Frankenstein and Dracula, it is clear that Gothic motifs of haunting, ghosts, the undead, and the supernatural are still “alive and well” in contemporary culture. This panel will bring together critical responses to Gothic texts and their various iterations.

Status:
Open (accepting submissions)
Associated Sessions
The Gothic
Topic Type:
Special Session

- See more at: http://www.pamla.org/2014/topics/gothic#sthash.q85Ii7qK.dpuf

CFP Television Studies (5/15/14; PAMLA 10/31-11/2/14)

Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association
112th Annual Conference - Riverside Convention Center, California
Friday, October 31 - Sunday, November 2, 2014

Television Studies

Presiding Officer:
Russell McDermott, New York University
Proposals for papers are invited on any subject relating to the study of Television. Papers that  relate to the conference theme, "Familar Spirits," and explore the ghostly, ghastly, the uncommon and uncanny, the profound and the paranormal are especially welcome, but proposals on any topic related to television will be considered and appreciated.

Status:
Open (accepting submissions)
Associated Sessions
Television Studies
Topic Type:
Standing Session

- See more at: http://www.pamla.org/2014/topics/television-studies#sthash.nrHfLzNF.dpuf

CFP Familiar Spirits (5/15/14; PAMLA 10/31-11/2/14)

Another great sounding conference:

Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association
112th Annual Conference
http://www.pamla.org/2014

Friday, October 31, 2014 to Sunday, November 2, 2014
Riverside Convention Center
Riverside, California
Riverside Convention Center
Our 2014 PAMLA Conference will be held at the beautiful, brand-new Riverside Convention Center, in Riverside, California. Downtown Riverside is a hidden gem of Southern California, less than an hour’s drive from LA and about 90 minutes from San Diego. With its historic Mission Inn and many fine restaurants, boutiques, and museums, its almost-always lovely fall weather, and its proximity to so much of Southern California’s natural beauty and cultural sites, Riverside is a truly lovely and relaxing site for our conference.

We are planning some very special events for Halloween and the entire conference, including our special conference theme, “Familiar Spirits.” As part of this theme, in addition to many regular standing sessions not focused on the theme, we invite you to propose papers on magic, conjuring, spirits, hauntings, Spiritualism, and manifestations as well as presentations that treat the familiar, familial, and the commonplace in relation to the paranormal, strange, and uncanny. We anticipate rich and vibrant discussions that defamiliarize the known and draw near the mysterious.

The deadline to propose a paper (or two—although our PAMLA rules only allow you to present one paper at the conference, you may propose more than one, and then decline an offer should you be accepted more than once) is Thursday, May 15, at midnight. There are more than 100 approved sessions you can propose a paper to, and a few more may appear as if by magic in the coming days.

Questions about special session topics may be sent to heidis@uic.edu. Questions about conference planning and logistics may be sent to svonkin@netzero.net.

- See more at: http://www.pamla.org/2014#sthash.jCOAeAoM.dpuf

Temporality of Magic (5/15/14; PAMLA 10/31-11/2/14)

CPF PAMLA Conference, 2014 Special Session: “That Old Black Magic”: Temporality of Magic
full name / name of organization:
Sören Fröhlich / University of California, San Diego
contact email:
sfrohlic@ucsd.edu

Recent scholarship in the ‘temporal turn’ has raised fundamental questions in the intersection of time and cultural representations (). However, this scholarship frequently side-steps cultural representations of time as malleable and non-rational, as well as supernatural temporalities. Thinking alongside the 2014 PAMLA Conference theme “Familiar Spirits,” this panel invites papers that consider the relation between magic and time.

What happens when we consider that at once relative and all-pervasive dimension of time through the lens of the imagination, the cultural, and the irrational? Whose time is it that counts, and how can it be manipulated? This panel invites discussions of time in representation of magic including, but not limited to literature, art, film, and history.

Topics might consider questions like:

Is there a connection between legacies of racism, sexism, or gender discrimination and time?
Does time differ in the conception of magic across disciplines?
How do religious and magical notions of time cooperate or clash?
Can temporal changes associated with trauma and anxieties be represented through magic?
How are nostalgia and magic related temporally?
What characterizes magic temporality or the temporality of magic?
Which questions about time does the historiography of magic offer?
How can narrative dimensions of time be manipulated to convey a sense of magic?
How do magical manipulations of time relate to retrospective or futuristic projections?
Can time be the different between good and bad magic?

To submit, please follow the directions on

http://www.pamla.org/2014/topics/“-old-black-magic”-temporality-magic

Note: PAMLA proposals cannot be submitted by email. In order to fill out a paper proposal, proposers simply:
1. register at and log in to the PAMLA clearinghouse form at http://www.pamla.org/2014,
2. fill out a paper proposal, including a paper title, a brief abstract and long proposal (max. 50 and 500 words, respectively), and
3. indicate whether the use of a laptop connected to a projector is needed.

For further detail on the proposal submission procedure, please visit:
http://www.pamla.org/2014/guidelines-and-procedures,
or email: Sören Fröhlich, University of California, San Diego (sfrohlic@ucsd.edu).

By web submission at 04/01/2014 - 18:19