CFP Rotting Corpses: Ecocritical Approaches to Death and Decomposition (9/1/2024)

Edited Collection: Rotting Corpses: Ecocritical Approaches to Death and Decomposition

deadline for submissions: September 1, 2024

full name / name of organization: Ashley Kniss, Stevenson University

contact email: ashley.anne.kniss@gmail.com

Editors: Sara Crosby, Carter Soles, and Ashley Kniss

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2024/01/12/edited-collection-rotting-corpses-ecocritical-approaches-to-death-and-decomposition

In Julia Kristeva’s seminal work, The Powers of Horror, she describes decay as the “contamination of life by death” (149). She goes on to write that “a decaying body, lifeless, completely turned into dejection, blurred between the inanimate and inorganic, a transitional swarming, inseparable lining of a human nature whose life is indistinguishable from the symbolic—the corpse represents fundamental pollution” (109). Kristeva’s work has influenced countless treatments of Gothic horror, helping to define the parameters of an unstable genre and explain why the corpse features so heavily in a genre where bodies, especially dead ones, are de rigueur. However, as scholars devote more attention to the ecoGothic and ecohorror, the role of the corpse is changing. The rotting corpse, dead or undead, is as multifaceted in ecohorror as the macro- and microinvertebrates that swarm within it. On one hand, the corpse remains a site of uncanny blurring between the familiar, human form and that which is alien, frightening, and inhuman. On the other hand, the corpse, especially when it rots, is also a site that teams with nonhuman life, a thriving ecosystem unto itself that represents potential hybridities, posthuman potentialities, and layers of transcorporeal encounters. Corpses in ecohorror rise from both biodiverse swamplands as well as petroleum-rich wells. Ecohorror’s corpses are not limited to the human, but also extend to the enormous corpses of the monsters in creature features. Ecohorror’s corpses are useful, disgusting, beautiful, and funny. Moreover, rotting corpses in ecohorror challenge the anthropocentric reactions of disgust that Kristeva outlines in The Powers of Horror, and evince new ways of conceptualizing the common materiality that binds the human and the nonhuman together.

This collection seeks essays that feature the rotting corpse in ecohorror, addressing topics such as but not limited to corpses in relation to

• Posthumanism
• Transcorporeality
• Materiality
• Disgust
• Hybridity
• Monsters
• Pop Culture
• Petrohorror
• History
• Burial Traditions
• Green Burial
• Aesthetics and Beauty of the Corpse
• Folk Traditions and the Dead
• Animal Corpses
• The gothic
• Ecohorror
• Extinction
• The Anthropocene
• Spirituality
• Race, Sex, Gender
• Nonhuman decomposition
• Mythology
• Graveyards, Cemeteries, and Crypts
• Relics and Religion
• Corpses in Videogames

Please submit a 250 word proposal/abstract to ashley.anne.kniss@gmail.com  along with your name, affiliation, and a short 50-word bio by September 1st, 2024.

Last updated January 17, 2024

CFP Gothic Studies Area (6/30/2023; MAPACA Philadelphia 11/9-11/2023)

MAPACA: Gothic Studies

deadline for submissions:
June 30, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association: Gothic Studies Area

contact email:
wsmcmasters@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/05/10/mapaca-gothic-studies



Gothic Studies CFP for MAPACA 2023: The Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association is accepting proposals until June 30 for their 2023 conference, Nov 9 - 11, in Philadelphia, PA. General guidelines can be found at mapaca.net and below. Please consider submitting to the Gothic Studies area: https://mapaca.net/areas/gothic-studies



The Gothic Studies area invites proposals which engage with the genre and culture of the Gothic as it is represented in film, television, literature, art, and society. We are especially interested in ways that the Gothic aesthetic defines itself against other predominate modes, or genres, of storytelling or culture. We also invite proposals concerned with subgenres of the Gothic across media, like the American Gothic, southern Gothic, feminine Gothic, the “weird tale,” and the ecoGothic as represented film, television, literature, music, fashion, art, and culture.

For more information and for the general CFP, visit mapaca.net



Last updated May 11, 2023

CFP Vampire Studies Area for PCA 2023 (12/20/2023; San Antonio 4/5-8/2023)

Vampire Studies (PCA/ACA National Conference) April 5-8, 2023

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/09/20/vampire-studies-pcaaca-national-conference-april-5-8-2023

deadline for submissions:
December 20, 2022

full name / name of organization:
Popular Culture Association

contact email:
pcavampires@gmail.com



Annual National Popular Culture Association Conference

CALL FOR PAPERS:

PCA CONFERENCE 5-8 APRIL 2023 IN SAN ANTONIO, TX

The Vampire Studies Area of the PCA welcomes papers, presentations, panels, and roundtable discussions that cover all aspects of the vampire as it appears throughout global culture.

We specifically welcome papers, panel presentations, or creative pieces about vampire children/young adults from fiction and film such as Claudia in Interview with a Vampire, Eli from Let the Right One In or Shorifrom Fledgling. We also look forward to submissions addressing media and advertising targeted towards children/young adults and vampirism such Mavis from Hotel Transylvania, The Count from Sesame Street, or Vampirina Ballerina.

As well as this broad theme we also encourage papers, presentations, and panels that cover any of the following:

• Children’s Products (i.e. toys like Draculara from Monster High, cereals like Count Chocula, the Ink Drinker, and Bunnicula, and Halloween-related products)
• The Non-Western Vampire (i.e. Black, Asian, Latino/a/x, African, Aboriginal)
• Vampires at the end of the world and beyond
• The vampire on legacy television shows (i.e. Dark Shadows, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Moonlight, The Vampire Diaries, The Originals)
• The vampire on recent television shows (i.e. First Kill, The Passage, Interview with the Vampire, Vampire in the Garden, Fire Bite)
• Legacy Cinematic vampires (i.e., Nosferatu, Interview with the Vampire, Near Dark, Twilight, Dracula Adaptations etc.)
• Recent Cinematic Vampires (i.e., Night Teeth, Morbius, Monster Family etc.)
• Monster Universes (i.e. A Discovery of Witches, Lost Girl, Monster High)
• Vampire Cultures and Contexts (i.e. vampire RPGs or other gaming universes, fan studies, graphic novels, Tik Tok & other social media platforms)
• Vampires and the Marginalized (i.e., race, gender, sexualities, national origin)
• Genres (i.e. Gothic Horror, Urban Fantasy, Romance, Steampunk, Early Readers, Children’s Picture Books, Young Adult, Erotica, Comedy)
• Historic and contemporary vampiric locations and geographies (i.e. cemeteries, castles, cities)
• The Horror Vampire, Byronic vs Hedonistic, or Horror vs Romantic
• Vampire Studies (i.e., the vampire in the classroom, vampire scholarship)

And anything and everything in between!

To have your proposal/abstract considered, please submit your proposal/abstract of approximately 250 words at the Popular Culture Association Website. We also accept complete panel proposals of 3-4 people.

We do not currently accept papers from fledgling/undergraduate scholars, but you can submit your proposal to the Undergraduate Area. We encourage you to get involved in our vibrant vampire community by joining one of our social media spaces and attending our conference events such as our business meeting. film screening, other roundtables, and sessions.

If you have questions, contact us at pcavampires@gmail.com Also, follow us on Twitter @pca_vampires or join our Facebook groups PCA Vampire Studies and Vampire Scholars.



Last updated September 20, 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 Recasting the Bygone Witch: Examining Strength in Preservation (9/30/2022; NeMLA 2023)

Recasting the Bygone Witch: Examining Strength in Preservation (NeMLA 2023)

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/06/19/recasting-the-bygone-witch-examining-strength-in-preservation-nemla-2023

deadline for submissions:
September 30, 2022



full name / name of organization:
Panel at NeMLA 2023, March 23-26, 2023, Niagara Falls NY



contact email:
ainemnorris@gmail.com



From Sabrina to Supreme, there are plentiful modern representations of the witch in popular culture, each exuding singular or group-sourced power borne from traditions of centuries-past, as manifested in literature, television, film, or local lore. But what about the lesser-known witches, those who practice and represent branches of witchcraft rarely examined within the subcultural analysis or fandom?

This panel examines portrayals of lesser-known witches and how their quiet unconventionality, even within the broader occult subculture, might inform scholarship, practice, and preservation. What can we learn by examining lesser-known witches or unconventional representations of the witch?

Approaches or lenses for papers may include (but are not limited to):

• Literature, texts, or theory
• Cultural studies
• Gender studies
• Technology or media studies
• Race and ethnicity studies
• Environmental studies
• Pop culture studies
• Local or regional examinations
• Museum studies and public history
• Historic preservation or conservation

Abstracts must be submitted before the deadline to the NeMLA website: https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/19862 (note: you will need to establish a username and password).



Information about abstract requirements is available here: https://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention/callforpapers.html



This panel is for the Northeast Modern Language Association convention, March 23-26, 2023 in Niagara Falls, NY. To learn more about NeMLA, visit https://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention.html Papers must be delivered in-person at the conference.



Please don't hesitate to send any questions to both Aíne Norris ainemnorris@gmail.com and Maria DiBenigno mdibenigno@wm.edu.


 
Last updated July 9, 2022

Thinking with the End(s) of Worlds EXTENSION (8/1/2022; journal issue)

Thinking with the End(s) of Worlds EXTENSION

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/05/10/thinking-with-the-ends-of-worlds-extension

deadline for submissions:
August 1, 2022



full name / name of organization:
Käte Hamburger Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies



contact email:
publications@capas.uni-heidelberg.de





Call for Papers Apocalyptica

Apocalyptica is an international, interdisciplinary, open-access, double-blind peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Käte Hamburger Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies (CAPAS) at Heidelberg University.

Editors: Robert Folger, Felicitas Loest and Jenny Stümer

Article length: 8,000-9,000 words

Deadline: Year-round – 8 (for our next issue)

Contact: publications@capas.uni-heidelberg.de

We are seeking original submissions that actively explore the apocalypse as a figure of thought (a practice, relationship, form, experience, aesthetic, or theme) in order to grapple with the cultural politics of disaster, catastrophe, and the (up)ending of worlds.



Thinking with the End(s) of Worlds

Are we living in the end times or has the end of the world already happened? What if the apocalypse is not simply an imagined catastrophic event to come, but a revelation, an inspiration and (perhaps) a chance for a better world?

As anthropogenic climate change, increasingly polarized politics, and accelerated nuclear arms races signal the imminence of disaster and catastrophe around the world, the idea of the apocalypse is gaining traction in popular culture, political debate and scholarly discourses.

The end of the world is increasingly featured in fiction films, TV series, music, art, video games, comics, literature, theatre, and photography. We are particularly interested in how these depictions of the apocalypse articulate our cultural politics of past and present while imagining devastating or liberatory futures. The notion of apocalyptic upheaval is met (and productively troubled/sometimes also utilized) by new social justice movements, innovative narratives, and storytelling practices that draw on (and simultaneously influence) new socio-economic discourses in an effort to put forward speculative imaginations, deconstructive epistemologies, and novel ways of conceiving ‘the end’. In these views, apocalypses and their envisioned aftermaths (also) produce emancipatory and creative potentials that engage with the possibility of plural worlds, embodied futurities, non-linear temporalities and radical difference as they are increasingly reflected in the invocation of cultural orlived experience, haunting sensibilities, and productive fantasies that employ the un/making of worlds.

Moving beyond notions of redemption or more traditional theological approaches to the end of the world, we ask: How do we make sense of/in a doomed world? How does the apocalypse help us to meet the challenges of the present while considering the often-violent legacies of the past with a view to emancipatory future(s)?

The unprecedented trials of the COVID-19 pandemic, petro-capitalism’s extraordinary expansion, technocratic and algorithmic governance and escalating surveillance, mounting social and ecological inequality, the escalation of global border regimes, aggressive risk management, and, of course, the continuity and exacerbation of gendered, raced, colonial and environmental violence in the face of these challenges give rise to new considerations of what it meant and means to live through the end of the world.

In light of these challenges, we seek submissions that grapple with the question of what it means to think with, against, and beyond the apocalypse today. What movements, politics, ideas, geographies, sensibilities, stories, and images might be considered (post)apocalyptic or invoke debates and feelings about the end of the/a world? How do apocalypses entangle temporalities of past, present, and future? How do crisis and catastrophe shape human and non-human actors and their relationships? What are we to make of the concepts of ‘world’, ‘worlds’ and ‘worlding’; or indeed, ‘the end’ and its ‘aftermath(s)’? And, how does the apocalypse as an idea help us to address escalating global as well as local challenges which (also) articulate the promise of diverse futures and (perhaps) more just,political compositions, alternative collectivities, and fuller relationships with each other and the world?

Possible contributions might examine the apocalypse in relation to the following themes, contexts and media (the list may serve as inspiration): 

• De/Colonial apocalypses
• Anti/Epistemologies of the apocalypse
• Anthropogenic climate change and decolonial ecologies
• Race, gender, and sexuality (queer apocalypse, apocalypse as decolonization, feminist apocalypse, anthropogenic whiteness)
• Apocalyptic temporalities (decentered futurisms, experiential histories, alternative memories)
• Cultural imaginaries, narratives, and practices (film, TV, literature, music, comics, video games, art, theatre, photography)
• Apocalypse, genre and motifs (Sci-Fi, satire, comedy, melodrama, cyberpunk, dystopia and utopia)
• Collective political imaginaries, movements and activism (indigenous resistance and postcolonial struggles, Black Lives Matter; Extinction Rebellion, Fridays for Future)
• Embodied experiences (viscerality, affect, survival)
• Apocalyptic sensibilities (ghosts and haunting, aesthetics, art)
• Elemental apocalypse (solar imaginaries, anti-imperial ontologies of water, fire, earth)
• Petrocultures, nuclear necropolitics, and securitization
• Animal studies, ecocriticism, and animacies
• Architecture and landscape (including social relations to the environment, atmospheric knowledge, and climate strategies)
• White supremacy and right-wing politics
• Algorithmic governance and technocolonialism (digital cultures, social media, surveillance)
• Border politics and global mobilities (climate migration, border-walls, ecologies)
• Pandemics and epidemics
• Conceptualizing the ‘end’ of ‘worlds’

Please submit your article (no longer than 8,000-9,000 words including abstract (250 words) and bibliography) and a short bio (50 words) by 15 July 2022 to publications@capas.uni-heidelberg.de.

We take rolling submissions year-round; however, for consideration in our upcoming issue, please adhere to the deadline of 15 July 2022.

All submissions must use author-date reference style, 12pt font and at least 1.5 line spacing. Please check our style guide prior to submission.

For further Information please contact Jenny Stümer or Michael Dunn: publications@capas.uni-heidelberg.de.

More information about Apocalyptica: https://heiup.uni-heidelberg.de/journals/apoc

CfP online: https://www.capas.uni-heidelberg.de/cfp-apocalyptica-05-2022.html


 
Last updated July 20, 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 Journal of Dracula Studies (5/1/2022)

 Journal of Dracula Studies

Source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2021/11/03/journal-of-dracula-studies

deadline for submissions: May 1, 2022

full name / name of organization: Anne DeLong/Curt Herr

contact email: Journalofdraculastudies@kutztown.edu

We invite manuscripts of scholarly articles (4000-6000 words) on any of the following: Bram Stoker, the novel Dracula, the historical Dracula, the vampire in folklore, fiction, film, popular culture, and related topics.

Submissions should be sent electronically (as an e-mail attachment in .doc or .rtf). Please indicate the title of your submission in the subject line of your e-mail.

Please follow MLA style.

Contributors are responsible for obtaining any necessary permissions and ensuring observance of copyright.

Manuscripts will be peer-reviewed independently by at least two scholars in the field.

Copyright for published articles remains with the author.

Submissions must be received no later than May 1, 2022, in order to be considered for the Fall 2021 issue.

Send electronic submissions to journalofdraculastudies@kutztown.edu

Contact: Dr. Anne DeLong or Dr. Curt Herr

Last updated November 3, 2021

CFP: Dracones in Mundo: Dragons in Literature, Film, and Pop Culture: A Series of Edited Volumes UPDATE/EXTENDED DEADLINE (7/25/21)

Dracones in Mundo: Dragons in Literature, Film, and Pop Culture: A Series of Edited Volumes UPDATE/EXTENDED DEADLINE

Source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2021/06/28/dracones-in-mundo-dragons-in-literature-film-and-pop-culture-a-series-of-edited

deadline for submissions: 

July 25, 2021

full name / name of organization: 

University of Southern Mississippi

contact email: 

rachel.carazo@snhu.edu

Dracones in Mundo: Dragons in Literature, Film, and Pop Culture: A Series of Edited Volumes UPDATE/EXTENDED DEADLINE

deadline for submissions:
July 25, 2021

full name / name of organization:
St. Thomas University

contact email:
rachel.carazo@snhu.edu

I received a great response to the last call for papers regarding the volumes on dragons. As a result, I have been better able to refine and divide results.

Below are the new details for the updated call for papers:
As the popularity of mythical creatures in films and literature grows, there is one creature that remains prominent: the dragon. Dragons have become most visible recently in the cinematic versions of The Hobbit and in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones Series). However, there are other films, such as Dragonslayer (1981), Reign of Fire (2002), Dragonheart (1996), and the How to Train Your Dragon series (2010-2019), and numerous adult and children’s literature series that feature dragons.

This call for papers will result in several themed volumes under each of these main headings:

---

 FULL VOLUME(S)

1) Wings, Wonders, and Warriors: Dragons in Children’s Literature and Graphic Novels

 

--

SEMI-FULL VOLUMES (Needing 5-8 essays)

The following two volumes need a few more essays to be considered full:

2) Dragons in Mythology 

*Working Title: Flights of the Imagination: Dragons in Mythology and Folklore

3) Dragons in Film and Television

*Working title: Heroes and Villains on 'Silver' Wings: Representations of Dragons in Film and Television

---

OPEN VOLUMES (Needing between 8-10 essays)

4) Dragons in Fiction* [due to the plethora of romance fiction with dragons/shapeshifters, I would be interested also in a separate study or at least a section of the volume about these romantic works]
5) Dragon Games and Online Culture [video games/card games etc]
6) Dragons, Posthumanism, and Animality [since the idea of the posthuman seeks to question the dominating humanistic and anthropocentric perspective upon the nonhuman world, these essays are meant to use this framework to highlight innovations or non-anthropocentric observations on dragons in literature, film, and pop culture]. Topics may include shapeshifters, corporality, affectivity, and the relationship(s) between humans and dragons.
7) The Landscapes of Dragons [these essays seek to investigate ways in which dragons are specifically tied to landscapes, images of the idyll, or images of devastation]
8) Dragons and Ecocriticism [these essays seek ways in which works with dragons remark on the environment in political and critical ways, or how dragon-related narrative can enhance valuable reflections in dialogue with current debates on ecology]
9) Dragon Riders: [even though there is a volume on general fiction, there is a specific genre built around dragon riders as well, so I encourage essays on these topics to show specific intersections between works and relationships within specific works on aspects of riding dragons]
10) Dragons in Fairy Tales/Dragons and Fairy Tale Tropes: [this volume seeks to find aspects of fairy tales or entire tales that relate to dragons/dragon lore in innovative ways/ the editor already has an essay (based on a fairy tale) related to Wings of Fire in process, but all other topics are currently open]
11) Dragons and Pop Culture: Music, Coats of Arms, Dragon Symbols, and Miscellany [this volume seeks to cover media and topics that do not easily fit into the other categories]
12) Dragons in Internet Memes: essays on memes from single films or other themes.

The scope of the present call is still broad. All topics regarding the themes and impact of dragons in film, literature, games, and online culture will be considered. Possible topics include (non-comprehensive list):
• Dragons as non-human animals
• Dragons and the environment
• Dragon symbolism
• The intersections of childhood, gender, race, and ethnicity with dragons
• Changes in the representations of dragons over time
• Visual aspects and attributes of dragons
• Representations of good and evil in connection with dragons
Deadline for proposals: July 25, 2021
Deadline for first drafts: September 25, 2021* [this deadline may be extended for volumes outside of the first depending on how many abstracts are received and which volumes are completed first]

How to submit your proposal
I will have a co-editor for three volumes: *Posthumanism, *Landscapes, and *Ecocriticism with Stefano Rozzoni (PhD Candidate, University of Bergamo), so proposals regarding those topics should be emailed to both rachel.carazo@snhu.edu and stefano.rozzoni@unibg.it
Please send all other abstracts, a short biographical note, and the name of the volume that the paper is for to Rachel L. Carazo at rachel.carazo@snhu.edu

Last updated June 28, 2021

RIP Billie Hayes

Many performers have helped solidify the idea of the wicked witch in popular culture. Most might think of Margaret Hamilton from the Wizard of Oz or the Evil Queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but others have also made an impact on the world.

One of these was Billie Hayes who passed away this week. (See her obituary from Variety.)

She was, perhaps, best known for her role as Witchiepoo in the Sid and Marty Krofft show H. R. Puffnstuff, entertaining generations of fans with her comic antics.

But Hayes also portrayed other witches over the years, including one on an episode of Bewitched. 

CFP Dracones in Mundo: Dragons in Literature, Film, and Pop Culture: A Series of Edited Volumes (7/25/2021)

My thanks to Kristine Larsen for the heads up on this:

Dracones in Mundo: Dragons in Literature, Film, and Pop Culture: A Series of Edited Volumes UPDATE/EXTENDED DEADLINE

Source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2021/01/03/dracones-in-mundo-dragons-in-literature-film-and-pop-culture-a-series-of-edited

deadline for submissions: July 25, 2021

full name / name of organization: St. Thomas University

contact email: rachel.carazo@snhu.edu



Dracones in Mundo: Dragons in Literature, Film, and Pop Culture: A Series of Edited Volumes UPDATE/EXTENDED DEADLINE

deadline for submissions:
July 25, 2021

full name / name of organization:
St. Thomas University

contact email:
rachel.carazo@snhu.edu

I received a great response to the last call for papers regarding the volumes on dragons. As a result, I have been better able to refine and divide results.

Below are the new details for the updated call for papers:
As the popularity of mythical creatures in films and literature grows, there is one creature that remains prominent: the dragon. Dragons have become most visible recently in the cinematic versions of The Hobbit and in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones Series). However, there are other films, such as Dragonslayer (1981), Reign of Fire (2002), Dragonheart (1996), and the How to Train Your Dragon series (2010-2019), and numerous adult and children’s literature series that feature dragons.

This call for papers will result in several themed volumes under each of these main headings:

---

FULL VOLUME(S)

1) Wings, Wonders, and Warriors: Dragons in Children’s Literature and Graphic Novels



--

SEMI-FULL VOLUMES (Needing 5-8 essays)

The following two volumes need a few more essays to be considered full:

2) Dragons in Mythology

*Working Title: Flights of the Imagination: Dragons in Mythology and Folklore

3) Dragons in Film and Television

*Working title: Heroes and Villains on 'Silver' Wings: Representations of Dragons in Film and Television

---

OPEN VOLUMES (Needing between 8-10 essays)

4) Dragons in Fiction* [due to the plethora of romance fiction with dragons/shapeshifters, I would be interested also in a separate study or at least a section of the volume about these romantic works]
5) Dragon Games and Online Culture [video games/card games etc]
6) Dragons, Posthumanism, and Animality [since the idea of the posthuman seeks to question the dominating humanistic and anthropocentric perspective upon the nonhuman world, these essays are meant to use this framework to highlight innovations or non-anthropocentric observations on dragons in literature, film, and pop culture]. Topics may include shapeshifters, corporality, affectivity, and the relationship(s) between humans and dragons.
7) The Landscapes of Dragons [these essays seek to investigate ways in which dragons are specifically tied to landscapes, images of the idyll, or images of devastation]
8) Dragons and Ecocriticism [these essays seek ways in which works with dragons remark on the environment in political and critical ways, or how dragon-related narrative can enhance valuable reflections in dialogue with current debates on ecology]
9) Dragon Riders: [even though there is a volume on general fiction, there is a specific genre built around dragon riders as well, so I encourage essays on these topics to show specific intersections between works and relationships within specific works on aspects of riding dragons]
10) Dragons in Fairy Tales/Dragons and Fairy Tale Tropes: [this volume seeks to find aspects of fairy tales or entire tales that relate to dragons/dragon lore in innovative ways/ the editor already has an essay (based on a fairy tale) related to Wings of Fire in process, but all other topics are currently open]
11) Dragons and Pop Culture: Music, Coats of Arms, Dragon Symbols, and Miscellany [this volume seeks to cover media and topics that do not easily fit into the other categories]
12) Dragons in Internet Memes: essays on memes from single films or other themes.

The scope of the present call is still broad. All topics regarding the themes and impact of dragons in film, literature, games, and online culture will be considered. Possible topics include (non-comprehensive list):

• Dragons as non-human animals
• Dragons and the environment
• Dragon symbolism
• The intersections of childhood, gender, race, and ethnicity with dragons
• Changes in the representations of dragons over time
• Visual aspects and attributes of dragons
• Representations of good and evil in connection with dragons

Deadline for proposals: July 25, 2021

Deadline for first drafts: September 25, 2021* [this deadline may be extended for volumes outside of the first depending on how many abstracts are received and which volumes are completed first]

How to submit your proposal
I will have a co-editor for three volumes: *Posthumanism, *Landscapes, and *Ecocriticism with Stefano Rozzoni (PhD Candidate, University of Bergamo), so proposals regarding those topics should be emailed to both rachel.carazo@snhu.edu and stefano.rozzoni@unibg.it
Please send all other abstracts, a short biographical note, and the name of the volume that the paper is for to Rachel L. Carazo at rachel.carazo@snhu.edu



rachel.carazo@snhu.edu

Rachel Carazo



Last updated April 7, 2021
This CFP has been viewed 200 times.

CFP Monsters in/of Children’s and Young Adult Literature and Culture (1/6/2021; PCA 6/2-5/2021)

I'm pleased to announce the call for our sponsored session for PCA:

 

Monsters in/of Children’s and Young Adult Literature and Culture

Sponsored by the Monsters & the Monstrous Area of the Northeast Popular/American Culture Association for the Children’s and Young Adult Literature and Culture Area of the Popular Culture Association

Session planned for the 2021 National Conference of the Popular Culture Association, Boston, Massachusetts, 2-5 June 2021

 

Monsters seem to be everywhere growing up, but it is only recently that studies have explored their appeal and impact on the development of children and young adults. In this session, we hope to continue this work by exploring the following themes: our need for monsters as children and/or young adults, the ways monsters of children’s and young adult literature/culture have changed over time, and how these monsters have shaped us as we grow. Proposals on monster and texts from any period or medium will be considered as long as they relate to children’s and young adult literature and culture.

Address any inquiries about the panel to the Monsters & the Monstrous Area Chair at Popular.Preternaturaliana@gmail.com.

 

Membership in the Popular Culture Association (a.k.a. PCA) will be required to present as will a registration fee. Further details and submission instructions at https://pcaaca.org/conference/submitting-paper-proposal-pca-conference. Registration rates are listed at https://pcaaca.org/conference.

Please submit your proposals into the PCA database for review (select the Children’s and YA Literature and Culture Area). Submissions should be made by 6 January 2021. At this time, PCA intends to run a face-to-face conference.

 

 

 

CFP Philosophy and Horror in Film, Literature and Popular Culture (Additional chapters) (1/3/21)

Call for Abstracts: Philosophy and Horror in Film, Literature and Popular Culture: Aesthetics, Politics, and Histories (Additional chapters) to be published by McFarland

https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2020/11/18/call-for-abstracts-philosophy-and-horror-in-film-literature-and-popular-culture

 

deadline for submissions: 

January 3, 2021

full name / name of organization: 

Subashish Bhattacharjee

contact email: 

subashishbhattacharjee@gmail.com

Call for Abstracts: Philosophy and Horror in Film, Literature and Popular Culture: Aesthetics, Politics, and Histories (extended call for abstracts) for McFarland Publishers

Edited by

Subashish Bhattacharjee (Jawaharlal Nehru University) 

and Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns (Universidad de Buenos Aires)

citeron05@yahoo.com

http://artes.filo.uba.ar/la-literatura-de-las-artes-combinadas-ii

 

We, the editors, are looking for five-six additional chapters for our book on the horror genre and philosophy. McFarland has showed interest and we expect a quick turnaround. Below, our original CFP.

In the first volume of his Horror of Philosophy trilogy—In the Dust of this Planet—Eugene Thacker calls the horror of philosophy “the isolation of those moments in which philosophy reveals its own limitations and constraints, moments in which thinking enigmatically confronts the horizon of its own possibility.” The wider genre of “horror” encompassing such genres as literature, cinema, and the arts exposes its viewers/readers/audience to a world of conflict between the selfsame subject and the of the ‘other’ which involves the element of horror. The genre has invariably aided in a metaphorical confrontation with the genre consumers’ systemic confrontation with a reality outside that of the perceived. Stephen King had produced a definition of “horror” as “the unnatural, spiders, the size of bears, the dead walking around, it’s when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm.” While the above statement does not present a wholesome definition of what could constitute a philosophy of horror, it establishes the groundwork for the same—a philosophy of horror is not a definitive introspection into the genre, or an intervention into it, but rather an attempt to amalgamate the multifarious roles of the genre into presenting a deeper understanding of human psychology while it enters into a transaction with a hyperreal/surreal “reality”. Whether we discuss, at this juncture, Mary Shelley’s manufacture—an in-human contraption—or that of Poe’s blend of the gothic or Lovecraft’s alienating cosmic horror, or, moving into the screen, the shadows of Nosferatu or the veiled sociopolitical satirical horror that is The Night of the Living Dead, horror as a genre has been an adherent to the notion of genre-bending and genre-warping in order to comprehend the realities beyond, or underlying the real.

Freud asserted that horror its based on the “other” that is rooted in the subconscious, formulating the foundations for his concept of the “uncanny” (unheimliche)—something strangely familiar—settling the genre of horror firmly within the individual recipient’s familiar milieu (one may well recall the Mariner’s fright at the spectres of his former friends rising from the dead, or how the homefront becomes a space of/for terror in Strangers, Straw Dogs, or Funny Games), or how the ‘interior’ becomes the site of the horror (Haute Tension). This psychological element of horror is highlighted and further elaborated upon by Lacan, Deleuze, Žižek, the semantic element by Derrida, or philosophers such as Noël Carroll who have endeavoured to produce a philosophical context of horror. While Carroll believes that fantasy and horror operate by challenging and dissolving perceived limits of reality and so violate our normal perspective (The Philosophy of Horror), for Žižek it is the science of psychoanalysis that pieces together our ‘dissociated knowledge’ into the truth that threatens us with madness: the kernel of reality is the horror of the real. Or we may revert to Lovecraft, for whom the ‘dissociated knowledge’ of the cosmos threatens us with its infinite possibilities. In almost all of these generic and critical/theoretical instances, the genre of horror remains loaded with meanings and critical/crucial interventions into our perceived realities—whether it is through our desire to apprehend the absent real in Dark City, or the absence of social illusions and the overpowering anxiety in Possession, the literal “angst” of Angst, the regressive obliteration of human senses of the real and fictional in The Exorcist, Evil Dead, or The Conjuring, or, if we venture into the grotesque and the macabre of gore, Cannibal Holocaust, The Human Centipede, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Hostel, Wrong Turn, or Saw, and the myriad reiterations of the above as well as the several sub-genres of horror, the genre manages to suspend the receiver’s sense of disbelief by metaphorically ‘getting under our skin’.

The proposed volume undertakes to read into this phenomenon, of horror, as a philosophical statement. We are interested in essays that look into the genre of horror and its sub-genres (body horror, disaster horror, horror drama, psychological horror, science fiction horror, slasher, home invasion, supernatural horror, gothic horror and others) across the mediums of literature, cinema, digital cultures, and the arts from a philosophically informed perspective, or those that develop a philosophical perspective of their own. Essays (within 8000 words) are to be submitted on, but not restricted to, the following themes:

• Philosophers on Horror
• Philosophies of Horror
• Horror genres/sub-genres and philosophy
• Horror and psychology/psychoanalysis
• The sociology of Horror
• The politics of Horror
• The aesthetics of Horror
• Philosophy and literatures of Horror (genres, authors)
• Philosophy and Horror cinemas (genres, directors)
• Philosophy and Horror comics
• Philosophy and Horror digital cultures (video games, digital dissemination of horror etc)
• Philosophy and Horror in the arts (performing, presentative)

 

The deadline for abstracts between 200-400 words is January, 3, 2021 (complete essays between 5000 to 8000 words long -excluding Works Cited- will be welcome as well). Please, submit your abstract with a brief biography. Queries and submissions may be directed to both, subashishbhattacharjee@gmail.com and citeron05@yahoo.com.

Feel free to contact the editors with any questions you may have about the project and please feel free to share this announcement with any colleague who may be interested in the volume.

 

Subashish Bhattacharjee is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of North Bengal, India. He edits the interdisciplinary online journal The Apollonian, and is the Editor of Literary Articles and Academic Book Reviews of Muse India. His doctoral research, on the cultures of built space, is from the Centre for English Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, where he has also been a UGC-Senior Fellow. His recent publications include Queering Visual Cultures (Universitas, 2018), and New Women's Writing (Cambridge Scholars, co-edited with GN Ray, 2018).

 

Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns (PHD) is an Assistant Professor at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA) - Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (Argentina)-. He teaches courses on international horror film and is director of the research group on horror cinema “Grite.” He has published chapters in the books To See the Saw Movies: Essays on Torture Porn and Post 9/11 Horror, edited by John Wallis, Critical Insights: Alfred Hitchcock, edited by Douglas Cunningham, A Critical Companion to James Cameron, edited by Antonio Sanna, and Gender and Environment in Science Fiction, edited by Bridgitte Barclay, among others. He has authored a book about Spanish horror TV series Historias para no Dormir and edited James Wan: Critical Essays for McFarland (forthcoming 2021).

https://publicaciones.uca.es/alegorias-televisivas-del-franquismo-narcis...

 

 

Last updated November 19, 2020

CFP Critical Approaches to Horror in Doctor Who (abstracts by 1/4/2021)

Critical Approaches to Horror in Doctor Who - Chapters Sought
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2020/08/03/critical-approaches-to-horror-in-doctor-who-chapters-sought

deadline for submissions:
January 4, 2021


full name / name of organization:
Robert F. Kilker / Kutztown University


contact email:
kilker@kutztown.edu




Although Doctor Who creator Sydney Newman wanted his show to be educational and avoid so-called “bug-eyed monsters,” the popularity of the Daleks in the second serial ensured that it would be better known for scaring kids into hiding behind the sofa. Adaptable as the science-fiction program is to fit a variety of other genres (e.g. the Western, screwball comedy, romance, period drama), horror dominates its cultural memory and ongoing practice. While there have been some critical essays over the years examining this aspect of the show, no book has been devoted to a more sustained examination of the generic work of horror in Doctor Who. This edited collection will remedy that absence.



More specifically, this book will serve as a thoughtful examination of the ways Doctor Who operates in the horror genre, in its complication of generic definitions, its ideological work, and its relation to fandom. Emerging and advanced scholars are invited to submit chapters exploring broadly an aspect of horror in classic and/or modern Doctor Who,as well as in-depth examinations of particular episodes. I am especially interested in having the following subtopics and/or episodes represented within the collection but welcome submissions on other matters as well:

• Body horror
• Fear of technology
• Fan experience (hiding behind the sofa, etc.)
• Folk horror
• Possession stories
• Gothic horror
• Ecohorror
• The monstrous feminine
• Vampires, werewolves, mummies
• Zombies
• Recurring monsters (Daleks, Cybermen, Weeping Angels, etc.)
• Pastiches of classic horror films
• Influence on the horror film tradition
• Alien invasion narratives
• The Terrible Child
• “Terror of the Autons”
• “The Daemons”
• “The Green Death”
• “The Ark in Space”
• “Pyramids of Mars”
• “The Seeds of Doom”
• “The Robots of Death”
• “The Talons of Weng-Chiang”
• “Horror of Fang Rock”
• “Kinda”/“Snakedance”
• “Ghost Light”
• “Blink”
• “Midnight”
• “Night Terrors”
• “The God Complex”
• “Listen”
• “Mummy on the Orient Express”
• “Heaven Sent”
• “Oxygen”
• “The Haunting of Villa Diodati”

Please submit abstracts of approximately 500 words along with a brief bio to Robert F. Kilker at kilker@kutztown.edu by January 4, 2021. Articles will be limited to 6,000 words (this includes notes and bibliography).



Abstracts due: January 4, 2021

Articles due: May 28, 2021

Edited articles due: October 15, 2021

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me (kilker@kutztown.edu).

 

Last updated August 6, 2020 

 

CFP Not Dead, But Dreaming: Reading Lovecraft in the 21st Century (11/30/2019)

CFP: Not Dead, But Dreaming: Reading Lovecraft in the 21st Century
In CFP On September 5, 2019
https://www.fantastic-arts.org/2019/cfp-not-dead-but-dreaming-reading-lovecraft-in-the-21st-century/

Edited Volume CFP

Not Dead, But Dreaming: Reading Lovecraft in the 21st Century

In the one hundred and twenty-nine years since his birth, H. P. Lovecraft’s reputation has grown beyond all expectation. Not only has he influenced generations of readers, but he has also influenced scores of people in areas such as filmmaking, television, comics, music, and literary theory. Because interest in Lovecraft continues to grow, our intention is to explore some of the reasons why he has become so influential—and so indispensable—since the early 1990s. From his stories of human degeneration that started with “The Tomb” and “Dagon” to the cosmic horror that culminated in The Shadow out of Time and “The Haunter of the Dark,” the less than 20 years that Lovecraft devoted to a career in fiction produced narratives that remain popular among a growing number of readers who follow his work from multiple areas of interest. Additionally, Lovecraft’s literary production in general has also become increasingly relevant from an academic perspective since at least the 1990s. In this volume, we want to reflect on the possible reasons for Lovecraft’s expanding popularity and the significance of his legacy as we entered the digital age. Consequently, we are interested in research that focuses on the significance of Lovecraft’s work from the 1990s to the present day.

Possible topics to explore in the work of Lovecraft and its connection with the 1990s to the present might include, but are not limited to:

• The Anthropocene
• Influence in videogames
• Lovecraft Adaptations, including his influence on film and art in general
• Lovecraft’s philosophical thought
• Lovecraft’s poetry
• Lovecraft related RPGs and LARs
• Lovecraftian families
• Object Oriented Ontology
• Posthumanism
• Postmodernism

Please send a proposal of about 500 words, for chapters of 6000-7000 words, and a short biography to Tony Alcala antonio.alcala@tec.mx or Carl Sederholm csederholm@gmail.com, by 30 Nov 2019.

Contributors can expect to be selected and notified by 15th December 2019. The deadline for submission of completed articles will be 30 May 2019.

CFP Withcraft Hysteria: Performing Witchcraft in Contemporary Art and Pop Culture (proposals by 10/1/2018)

CFP: WITCHCRAFT HYSTERIA: Performing Witchcraft in Contemporary Art and Pop Culture
https://www.fantastic-arts.org/2018/cfp-witchcraft-hysteria-performing-witchcraft-in-contemporary-art-and-pop-culture/
August 14, 2018

Type:
Call for Papers

Date:
October 1, 2018

Location:
California, United States

Subject Fields:
Art, Art History & Visual Studies, Cultural History / Studies, Popular Culture Studies, Theatre & Performance History / Studies, Women’s & Gender History / Studies

WITCHCRAFT HYSTERIA. Performing witchcraft in contemporary art and pop culture.

We seem to be living in bewitched times. Witches are everywhere, or rather: victims of alleged witch hunts pop up all over the place, preferable on Twitter or other social media. Pop-stars perform as witches, like Katy Perry in her performance at the 2014 Grammy awards, where she appeared in a cowl before a crystal ball, while later dancing with broomsticks as poles. Beyoncé’s visual album “Lemonade” (2016) made several explicit references to black witchcraft rituals. Azealia Banks proclaimed in the same year on Twitter that she practiced “three years worth of brujería” (brujería, Spanish: witchcraft) and tweeted––while cleaning the blood-smeared room used for her animal sacrifices––“Real witches do real things”. Marina Abramovic’s performance piece “Spirit Cooking” (1996) was used in the ominous Pizzagate conspiracy theory of 2016, accusing Abramovic and the Hillary Clinton campaign in practicing witchcraft rituals and occult magic. Clinton and other influential women in politics–such as Nany Pelosi and Maxine Waters––get labeled as witches and Sarah Palin partakes in a ritual to secure her electoral win and “save her from witchcraft”. Meanwhile, thousands of people coordinate binding spells against political leaders (#bindtrump) and Silvia Federici’s seminal book “Caliban and the Witch” moved from the bookshelf to the bedside table for many art professionals.

The title “Witchcraft Hysteria” follows the inscription on the monument dedicated 1992 to the Salem Witch Trials (1692), that were informed by European-US-American witchcraft discourses of their time and in turn were highly influential on today’s discussions.

For this publication, we want to investigate the revival and the current interest in the figure of the witch and the performance of witchcraft in contemporary art, visual culture and pop culture. The figure of the witch as icon of historical significance and present relevance in art and politics has only gained in its cultural impact. Our project focuses on performance strategies of “performing witchcraft” in a contemporary context, focusing on the last two decades.

Relevant paper topics may consider, but are not limited to:

• The figure of the witch in contemporary art and culture
• Contextualizing Witchcraft Hysteria in Theater, Film, Television, Streaming Media, Social Media, etc. in their historical representations and current manifestations
• Witchcraft (Hysteria) and Performance Studies
• Witchcraft and feminist (art) practice
• Practicing Witchcraft as political protest
• The politics of being (labeled) a witch
• Queer-Feminist perspectives on Witchcraft
• (Intersectional) Questions of Gender, Class and Race and Witchcraft

Schedule

Proposals (500 words): October 1, 2018

Final Papers Due: January 16, 2018 [I assume this is an error for 1/16/2019]

Submission of Final Revised Papers for Publication: March 4, 2018 [likewise, I assume this is an error for 3/4/2019].

Publication: Summer, 2018 [again, I assume this is an error for Summer 2019]

Please submit a 500-word proposal and a 200-word biography to both editors: Johanna Braun (johannabraun@g.ucla.edu) and Katharina Brandl (katharina.brandl@unibas.ch) by October 1, 2018.

Contact Info:
Katharina Brandl

University of Basel, Switzerland

Johanna Braun
Erwin Schrödinger Research Fellow at University of California, Los Angeles

Contact Email:
johannabraun@g.ucla.edu

CFP American Ecogothic (9/30/2018; NeMLA 2019)

American Ecogothic, NeMLA
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/06/29/american-ecogothic-nemla

deadline for submissions: September 30, 2018

full name / name of organization: Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)

contact email: caitlin.duffy@stonybrook.edu


Leslie Fiedler describes American fiction as “bewilderingly and embarrassingly, a gothic fiction… a literature of darkness and the grotesque in a land of light and affirmation” (Love and Death in the American Novel, 29). However, for settlers within the early colonies and citizens of the young republic, the wilderness of the supposed New World not only represented material promise, but also unknown danger. This panel proposes a move away from the more common “land of light and affirmation” reading of American nature towards an ecogothic approach. Despite recent attention paid to the intersections between gothic and ecocritical studies, there continues to be an unfortunate dearth in scholarship focusing on the specifically American ecogothic. This scarcity is surprising given the important role played by nature in the formation of the American gothic mode. Three major critical works focused on the American ecogothic include Tom J. Hillard’s and Kevin Corstorphine’s essays within Ecogothic (2013) and Ecogothic in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (2017), edited by Dawn Keetley and Matthew Wynn Sivils. In the introduction to their volume, Keetley and Sivils note that, given its unwavering fixation with the wilderness, “American gothic literature has always been ecogothic” (6).

This panel invites papers that interrogate gothic depictions of landscapes and wilderness in American fiction (including, but not limited to, literature, film, television, and video games) from any time period. In particular, we seek papers that work towards a definition of the American ecogothic as a national mode or style. Papers that utilize the ecogothic lens to support, challenge, or problematize current conceptions of the American gothic are especially welcome. We also encourage papers that explore the American ecogothic temporally by tracing transformations or continuations of its fictional appearance across time.

All proposals must be submitted through the NeMLA portal by September 30th and should be no more than 300 words.

The 50th annual NeMLA conference will take place on March 21-24, 2019 in Washington, DC. For more information: http://www.buffalo.edu/nemla.html

Please email any questions you may have to caitlin.duffy@stonybrook.edu.

CFP Re-Visions of Eden: The Idea of the Midwestern Gothic (9/1/2018)

Another great idea for a collection:

Re-Visions of Eden: The Idea of the Midwestern Gothic
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/06/14/re-visions-of-eden-the-idea-of-the-midwestern-gothic

deadline for submissions: September 1, 2018

full name / name of organization: Brandi Homan & Julia Madsen

contact email: mwgothicscholar@gmail.com



In the American cultural imagination, the Midwest embodies the “home” or “heart” of the nation associated with frontier and rural values of promise, fertility, order, and stability, according to Joanna Jacobson in “The Idea of the Midwest.” Jacobson argues that the Midwest has come to symbolize the quintessentially “American,” speaking to “the impulse to invent a myth of commonality rooted in the physical landscape at the center of the continent and for the insufficiency of that myth as a response to the conditions of urban industrial culture.” While the idea and image of the Midwest in American culture serve as resources of recovery and refuge from the ill effects of urban industrialism, it is increasingly evident that these visions of a pastoral, rural middlescape illuminate the necessity for a more comprehensive, critical view of the region. The Midwestern Gothic complicates the Midwest’s role in myths of progress, drawing attention to vital sociopolitical and economic concerns of the region, including deindustrialization and economic disparity, crime, addiction, mental illness, racism, sexism, homophobia, and isolation. In this sense, the Midwestern Gothic counterintuitively articulates the region as the “wound” of the United States, a place ravaged by the nation’s myths and ideals.


The Midwestern Gothic tradition has a vibrant lineage in American literature, including authors like Sherwood Anderson, Toni Morrison, Sinclair Lewis, Bonnie Jo Campbell, and Ander Monson. This edited volume seeks critical, academic essays on the Midwestern Gothic in American literature and culture. In particular, this edited volume looks to establish the Midwestern Gothic as genre, exploring relationships with other regional gothics and the American gothic broadly speaking. It is also interested in critical essays on particular authors or works associated with the Midwestern Gothic tradition, including Sherwood Anderson, Toby Altman’s Arcadia, Indiana, Frank Bill, Sam Shepard’s Buried Child, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Harmony Korine’s Gummo, Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son, Sinclair Lewis, Edgar Lee Masters, Ander Monson, Toni Morrison, Donald Ray Pollock, C.S. Giscombe’s Prairie Style, Michael Lesy’s Wisconsin Death Trip, Laird Hunt’s Indiana, Indiana, James Wright, and others.


This edited volume is particularly interested in original contributions of between 3,000 and 6,000 words on topics including, but not limited to:

• Intersections with other regional American gothics (e.g., the Southern Gothic, Great Plains Gothic, etc.)
• The Midwestern Gothic and popular culture
• Race, class, and gender politics in the Midwestern Gothic
• Grotesque, uncanny, and abject domestic spaces in the Midwestern Gothic
• Histories and myths of place and region
• Community formation politics and identity politics
• The Midwest and frontierism
• Deindustrialization and economic disparity
• The opioid crisis, addiction, and mental illness
• Pastoral/post-pastoral studies
• The decline of the Rust Belt
• Rural studies
• The dark side of Midwestern “niceness”
• Current politics of the Midwest
• Documentary and non-fiction approaches to the Midwestern Gothic
• Visual studies in the Midwestern Gothic (film, photography, and multimedia)

Please submit abstracts of 300-500 words to Dr. Brandi Homan and Julia Madsen at mwgothicscholar@gmail.com by September 1, 2018. Selections will be made by December 1, 2018. Final essays (of 3000-6000 words) are due March 1, 2019.

CFP Journal of Dracula Studies (expired for 2018 volume)

Sorry to have missed this for the year, but the journal would now be accepting for 2019:

[UPDATE] DEADLINE EXTENDED to June 1, 2018
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/05/02/update-deadline-extended-to-june-1-2018

deadline for submissions:
June 1, 2018

full name / name of organization:
Journal of Dracula Studies

contact email:
journalofdraculastudies@kutztown.edu



We invite manuscripts of scholarly articles (4000-6000 words) on any of the following: Bram Stoker, the novel Dracula, the historical Dracula, the vampire in folklore, fiction, film, popular culture, and related topics.

Submissions should be sent electronically (as an e-mail attachment in .doc or .rtf). Please indicate the title of your submission in the subject line of your e-mail. Send electronic submissions to journalofdraculastudies@kutztown.edu.

Please follow the updated MLA style. Contributors are responsible for obtaining any necessary permissions and ensuring observance of copyright. Manuscripts will be peer-reviewed independently by at least two scholars in the field. Copyright for published articles remains with the author.

CFP Theorizing Zombiism: Toward a Critical Theory Framework Conference (9/1/2018; Dublin 7/25-27/2019)

Theorizing Zombiism: Toward a Critical Theory Framework
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/04/13/theorizing-zombiism-toward-a-critical-theory-framework

deadline for submissions: September 1, 2018

full name / name of organization: University College Dublin, Ireland

contact email: theorizingzombiism@gmail.com



Theorizing Zombiism: Toward a Critical Theory Framework

University College Dublin

UCD Humanities Institute

25-27 July 2019


The rising academic interest in the zombie as an allegory for cultural and social analysis is spanning disciplines including, humanities, anthropology, economics, and political science. The zombie has been used as a metaphor for economic policy, political administrations, and cultural critique through various theoretical frameworks. The zombie has been examined as a metaphor for capitalism, geopolitics, globalism, neo-liberal markets, and even equating Zombiism to restrictive aspects of academia.


The zombie as a cultural figure has its beginnings in allegorical folk tales related to the experience of the Haitian slave. Roger Lockhurst, Zombies: A Cultural History, examines these folk tales concerned with the horrific existence of slavery as told through the enigmatic zombi, which was quickly assimilated into western film and pulp fiction. Early films such as White Zombie, mark the induction of the savage zombies into western culture. George A. Romero transformed the zombie narrative into a survival story reflecting aspects of human society. This long standing tradition of the zombie genre is the basis for the successful series The Walking Dead. However, the rise of popular forms of the Zombie narrative, I, Zombie and the Netflix Original Santa Clarita Diet shifts the focus to the first person experience of the Zombie.


The evolution of the zombie narrative in both culture and academics indicates its adaptability and viability as a distinct framework for critical theory. This conference aims to investigate the possibility of developing a singular theoretical framework to evaluate culture and society through the zombie narrative trope. Contributors are encouraged to provide discipline specific, and interdisciplinary, examinations of the zombie with the purpose of formulating an overall theoretical structure of Zombiism.


Potential Topics both discipline specific and non-discipline specific, but not limited to:

• Nationalism through the zombie narrative films: Rec (Spain), Le Horde (France), Cockneys vs Zombies (England), Dead Meat (Ireland), Ravenous (Canada), etc.
• Zombie phenomenology/philosophy/phsychoanalysis
• Globalization, Refugees, and Migration.
• Pedagogical Zombiism.
• Gender and the Undead.
• Zombies in Popular Culture: Re-evaluating the function of horror in society.
• Expanding Praxis: Evaluating the expanding Zombie trope into other art forms and fields.
• The Zombification of History: Re-telling historical events through Zombiism and other horror tropes (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, etc).
• Undead digital objects and issues of digital curation/Undead archival objects.
• Legal Zombiism: Law and Legislation that refuses to die.
• Ecocritcal Zombiism.
• Science/Science Fiction: The science of Zombiism/The Zombification of science.
• Zombiism and visual culture and art history.

Send abstracts of 300 words for consideration to theorizingzombiism@gmail.com by 1 Sept, 2018.

Website: https://theorizingzombiism.wordpress.com

Conference organizers: Scott Hamilton (UCD), Conor Heffernan (UCD)