Applications for 2023 S.T. Joshi Endowed Research Fellowship (Providence, RI 11/1/2022)

Posted from the SFRA-List


The John Hay Library at Brown University invites applications for its 2023 S.T. Joshi Endowed Research Fellowship for research relating to H.P. Lovecraft, his associates, and literary heirs. The application deadline is November 1, 2022.


The Hay Library is home to the largest collection of H. P. Lovecraft materials in the world, and also holds the archives of Clark Ashton Smith, Karl Edward Wagner, Manly Wade Wellman, Analog magazine, Caitlín Kiernan, and others. The Joshi Fellowship, established by The Aeroflex Foundation and Hippocampus Press, is intended to promote scholarly research using the world-renowned resources on H. P. Lovecraft, science fiction, and horror at the John Hay Library (projects do not need to relate to Lovecraft directly). The Fellowship provides a monthly stipend of $2,500 for up to two months of research at the library during the 2023 calendar year. The fellowship is open to students, faculty, librarians, artists, and independent scholars.


For more information and to apply, please visit https://library.brown.edu/joshi/.


Please direct questions to Heather Cole, Curator, Literary & Popular Culture Collections, heather_cole@brown.edu.

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 Stranger Worlds: H. G. Wells, Transgression and the Gothic (8/15/21, virtual UK 11/13/21)

2021 Conference Call for Papers

Call for Papers

Stranger Worlds: H. G. Wells, Transgression and the Gothic 

Saturday, 13 November 2021  

Source: http://hgwellssociety.com/statementofobjects/2021-conference-call-for-papers/

There you touch the inmost mystery of these dreamers, these men of vision and the imagination. We see our world fair and common … By our daylight standard he walked out of security into darkness, danger and death. But did he see like that?

H.G. Wells, The Door in the Wall

This year marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of Wells’s death. In a career that spanned fifty years and over a hundred books, Wells invited his readers to step across the threshold of human consciousness and to venture into realms beyond space, time and morality. His scientific romances expose the fragility of the human body and the thinness of humanity’s separation from the animal (The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau). A reviewer of The Time Machine felt that Wells’s imagination was ‘as gruesome as that of Poe’ and his short stories often dramatize gothic transgressions between the living and the dead. Later works such as The Croquet Player and The Camford Visitation see consciousness slipping its moorings and inhabiting or possessing other bodies.     

Once considered an annexe or niche in literary studies, the Gothic is now firmly established as a key mode of understanding research in, and the enormous global popularity of, genres such as horror, science fiction and fantasy. We invite applications for papers that consider the importance of the Gothic in the work of H. G. Wells. Papers need not be exclusively confined to Wells, but may also consider Wells’s gothic afterlife, reception and influence.  

Presentations will take the form of 20-minute papers, given via Zoom.   

Topics may include, but are not limited to:  

• Wells and Gothic genres and his relationship to his Gothic predecessors including Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Mary Shelley 
• Wells’s use of horror and terror in for instance, The War of the Worlds
• Gothic bodies; the Gothic across species  
• Gothic geographies  
• Returns from the dead; buried secrets; Gothic histories  
• Ghosts, monsters, apparitions and vampires  
• Transgressive behaviour and crime in Wells’s work
• Wellsian afterlives in science fiction, the graphic novel, cinema, TV, and computer games  

Please send a 250-word abstract to Dr Emelyne Godfrey juststruckone@hotmail.com by 15 August 2021.

Members: Free

Non-members: £10 Applicants will be notified by 31 August 2021. We encourage attendees to become members of the H.G. Wells Society and look forward to seeing you there.   

CFP Conference series 50+ Shades of Gothic: The Gothic Across Genre and Media in US Popular Culture (3/7/21; Conference series | 50+ Shades of Gothic: The Gothic Across Genre and Media in US Popular Culture)

 

Conference series | 50+ Shades of Gothic: The Gothic Across Genre and Media in US Popular Culture

https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2020/12/11/conference-series-50-shades-of-gothic-the-gothic-across-genre-and-media-in-us-popular

 

deadline for submissions: 

March 7, 2021

 

full name / name of organization: 

PopMeC research collective and academic blog

 

contact email: 

popmec.research@gmail.com

Confirmed keynote scholars so far: Enrique Ajuria Ibarra, Xavier Aldana Reyes, Kyle Bishop, Kevin Corstorphine, Justin Edwards, Anya Heise-von der Lippe, Michael Howarth, Evert J. van Leeuwen, Elizabeth Parker + Michelle Poland, Julia Round, Christy Tidwell, Jeffrey Weinstock, Maisha L. Wester.

Please, check this page for updates on keynote talks and panels.

 

Defining the Gothic has proven to be a difficult and elusive task for scholars, possibly as this literary current often pervades cross-genre narratives and media, embracing many topics related to the very essence of human nature. Indeed, the nature of whatever it may mean to be human seems to be at the core of William Veeder’s definition the Gothic as a healing mechanism found in societies that “inflict terrible wounds upon themselves,” especially in order “to help heal the damage caused by our embrace of modernity” (1998: 21). This wide definition of the Gothic acknowledges the pervasiveness of the genre and its ramifications when it comes to reacting—“healing and transforming” (1998: 21)—to the perils of societal structures and thus confronting the manifold disruptions of social and moral codes, as well as the actual and imagined fears intrinsic to the cyclical crises our societies face. The advent of modernity represented a major concern in the post-revolutionary United States. Inspired by the literary genre that emerged in 18th century England and its subsequent evolutions, Gothic fiction became a suitable means for exploring the newfound anxieties relating to the specific configurations of the colonial societies and their challenges as new communities. Drawing on European gothic tropes and arguably starting with Charles Brockden Brown’s tales, American Gothic fiction has been popular throughout the centuries up to the present day. Furthermore, many popular culture products engage—in more or less overt ways—with gothic elements in the attempt to confront myriads of conflicts, anxieties, and epochal concerns that have marked our societies. 

 

The struggle between dictated social conventions and the repressed, multifaceted self—liable to fragmented identity and ambiguity—has been central to Gothic narratives. Hidden moral, social, and scientific aspirations emerge, often accompanied by the tension toward a liberation of repressed desires and the fear of the consequences of such liberation. Moreover, the creation of taboos and moral codes set hierarchical boundaries for society to theoretically function without disruption. Gothic characters and dynamics blur such boundaries, thus facing social and psychological dilemmas peculiar to contemporary contexts, and strugglingagainst uncertainty, mistaken self-conceptions and perceptions of reality, contradictory behaviors, feelings of guilt, and exasperation. Terror might lie in altered psychological states, be intrinsic to an incomprehensible or unacceptable alien outsider, or haunt the places where a character would naturally feel safe.

Gothic modes have also been characterized by the notions of disturbance and indulgence, or by a peculiar sense of irony and self-consciousness. An underlying presence of the supernatural and the unspeakable quality of many anxieties facilitate revelations that often remain implicit to a complex narrative structure. Gothic narratives are populated by devil figures and dreamlike sequences that blur the line between the conscious and the unconscious. The conflicts permeated by gothic modes tackle the unresolved battle between good and evil, the tension between the body and the psyche, the passage from childhood to adulthood, and the transgression of social and moral codes. The gothic panoply includes spatial tropes (isolated places, Medieval monasteries, caves, graveyards, ruins, family houses, etc.); claustrophobic urban settings or overwhelming wilderness; scientific experiments that challenge divinity and defy the boundaries of knowledge; allegoricalnon-human entities; anxieties toward the future and technocratic realities; and ambivalent stances toward the past that oscillate between fear and attraction, and are fueled by the instability of memories.

In recent years, many popular culture artifacts outside of the usual terrain of horror and the Gothic have exploited Gothic modes to reveal the terrors of everyday life. Sophisticated narratives have employed gothic modes to take on disruption, questioning reality, as well as challenging the boundaries of conformity and raising issues related to xenophobia, death, social anxieties, alienation, displacement, and self-consciousness. Because of the versatility and diversity of gothic modes and their—more or less subtle—exploitation across media and popular culture products, we call for contributions fitting the thematic lines described below.

 

This is a call for presentations that will be organized thematically in different sessions, as detailed below. However, the analysis of any type of popular culture products across media is welcome. We invite presentations on gothic modes in film, (web)tv series, comics and graphic novels, video games, animation, products aimed at children and young adults, genre fiction, and theatrical performances.

Each session will be composed of a talk with a keynote speaker (30 min. approximately) followed by panels, each organized as a sequence of short presentations (each 12-15 min. maximum) and a moderated discussion among participants. Scholars at any stage of their career are welcome, and the panels will be organized accordingly.

Panels will be pre-recorded in their entirety: the presenters and moderators will agree on a date for the pre-recording, with a limited public composed of PopMeC editors. The session will be post-produced and uploaded to the PopMeC YouTube channel and social media platforms, according to the series’ calendar (to be defined, starting early April with an introductory session and streaming a new session every week). The participation in the sessions is free of charge.

 

PopMeC accepts presentation proposals (300-350 words approx.) about any aspect related to the call. The proposals will be peer-reviewed and selected on a rolling basis by our editorial team and external collaborators, who will get back to you as soon as possible. Please, send your proposal to popmec.call@gmail.com, attaching your text, inclusive of a short bio (100-120 words), name, affiliation, and email contact in a single file (.doc, .docx, .odt).

Organizing committee: Anna Marta Marini (PopMeC chief editor), Mónica Fernández (board editor), and associate editors Laura Álvarez, Paula Barba, Trang Dang, Michael Fuchs, Sofía Martinicorena.

 

THEMATIC SESSIONS:

 

1. THE HOUSE AS GOTHIC LOCUS + THE UNCANNY AND THE US FAMILY

Ever since the publication of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” in 1839, the house as a locus of all sorts of personal, sexual and spatial tensions has been a preeminent site for the Gothic in US popular culture. In a country that had purportedly left the aristocracy of the Old World and its decaying ruins behind, the ordinary site of the family house became the favored space where gothic narratives and modes could be channeled, giving rise to a long-standing tradition that explores the perils lurking in the realm of the familiar. Gothic modes have been exploited to tackle the spatial dimension, especially in relation to the idea of home and family, family trauma, the destabilization of the domestic, the uncanny, and the idea of home as a metaphor for the nation.

Deadline for presentation proposals: February 28, 2021

 

2. GOTHIC AND THE ETHNIC OTHER + BODIES AND BOUNDARIES

Gothic narratives revolving around invading non-humans and unspoken anxieties related with the assumed dangers of “racial intrusion” have been used to elaborate more or less overtly on ethnic otherness. The contact and confrontation with the ethnic other have been linked to the unwanted blurring of both metaphorical and material boundaries. The ethnic minority body has been perceived as the unsettling product of a physical and cultural miscegenation, an unstable blend evoking ambiguous representations transgressively exotic and immorally, savagely inferior altogether. At the same time, Gothic narratives protagonized by ethnic minority subjects have been created, giving voice to their own anxieties and perceptions of ethnic boundaries and xenophobic terrors. 

Deadline for presentation proposals: March 7, 2021

 

3. ECOGOTHIC

American culture has maintained a strained relationship with nature and the environment ever since the arrival of the first settlers. The vast lands that they encountered were conceptualized simultaneously as a bountiful Garden of Eden that would facilitate the colonial experience, and as a “howling wilderness” that threatened the first, precarious settlements. Environment-related anxieties have permeated into all cultural forms, often through Gothic imagery. More recently, environmental concerns have more to do with the durability of the planet and the increasingly worrying consequences of human activities upon it, often resulting in (post)apocalyptic narratives. 

Deadline for presentation proposals: March 14, 2021

 

4. BODIES AND BOUNDARIES + GENDER, SEXUALITY AND THE GOTHIC

Body-related anxieties have often been connected to gender, sexuality, and physical otherness, as fears and struggles intrinsic to the wish for liberating repressed, unconventional, or assumedly immoral desires. Socially imposed boundaries blur, connecting with feelings of guilt, degeneration, excess, disruption. The corporeal “other” becomes the image of transgression, depravity, and the breaking of taboos related to the body in all its forms. Themes related to sexual pleasure, physical abjection, body transformation, and gender become at the same time stigmas and boundaries to cross in order to express and face one’s own true self.

Deadline for presentation proposals: March 21, 2021

 

5. CHILDREN AND YA GOTHIC STUFF

Children and YA gothic narratives have dealt with anxieties related with development, a growing awareness of the self and one’s own sexuality, the transformations within the family environment, the increasing necessity to cope with external contexts. The creation of gothic worlds—belonging to either an alternative reality or the characters’ imagination—has also been exploited as a means to represent the complex passages between different stages of life, coming-of-age experiences, and conflicts internal to the characters’ everyday life as children.

Deadline for presentation proposals: March 28, 2021

 

6. AUTOMATA, CYBER TERROR AND TECHNOCRATIC REALITIES

The extent of contemporary human reliance on technology has stirred up new embodiments of the uncanny elements found in traditional gothic horror. As a response to the fear of technological advances, anxieties about the future and parasocial relationships, robots and automata have replaced the ghouls of our nightmares. Similarly, in lieu of a haunted mansion or a labyrinth, we come to find the liminal space of our technological anxieties represented in our immaterial existence in the online realm. 

Deadline for presentation proposals: April 4, 2021

 

Presenters will be welcome to submit an article related to their presentation topic, to be peer-reviewed and published on our platform (https://popmec.hypotheses.org ISSN: 2660-8839) as part of a special section dedicated to the subject. According to the feedback and participation the series raises, we will consider proposing the publication of an edited volume collecting selected contributions.

 

You can find this call published here: https://popmec.hypotheses.org/3576

 

Last updated January 12, 2021
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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 Weird Sciences and the Sciences of the Weird (Spec Issue of Pulse 6/30/20)

Apologies for the delay in posting this:

WEIRD SCIENCES AND THE SCIENCES OF THE WEIRD
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2020/03/10/weird-sciences-and-the-sciences-of-the-weird

deadline for submissions:
June 30, 2020


full name / name of organization:
PULSE - THE JOURNAL OF SCIENCE AND CULTURE


contact email:
mbregovi@gmail.com


Recent scientific discoveries in climatology, animal cognition and microbiology have radically altered our conceptions of ourselves and the environment we live in, both on micro and macroscales. Zooming in on the human microbiome and out to the planetary ecosystem, or even further into infinite cosmic spaces, the sciences are revealing strange dynamics of human-nonhuman interconnectedness, doing away with the established anthropocentrism and the idea of human exceptionalism. Current theoretical discussions revolving around the human-environment relation have shifted their interests from discourse to matter, shedding new light on strange bodily assemblages composed of anaerobic bacteria which live in symbiotic relationships with the human body (Jane Bennett, Stacy Alaimo), other types of cognition and intelligent life apart from our own (Steven Shaviro) and, especially, the mechanisms by which human action, no matter how abstract or invisible, contributes to the global ecological transformations (Donna Haraway, Timothy Morton). The ultimate effect of these conceptual transformations is a certain sense of estrangement that is often, but not necessarily, tied to feelings of unease, horror and/or fascination. This specific affect is commonly referred to as the weird because it operates through disrupting our ordinary perception and experience, creating confusion and a sense of disorientation.

Strange modes of human-nonhuman interactions are steadily pervading contemporary theoretical thought which analyzes the weird as a specific form of affect, effect and aesthetics signaled by a sense of wrongness (Mark Fisher). In conjunction with an increasing awareness of these estranged environments, a growing tendency towards the aesthetics of the weird is visible in popular culture and contemporary art production. As a continuation of H.P. Lovecraft’s weird tradition, “the weird” is now bringing together some of the most exciting contemporary writers and filmmakers: China Miéville, Elvia Wilk, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Jeff VanderMeer, Athina Rachel Tsangari and Yorgos Lanthimos, to name just the most significant ones. Similar tendencies are also evident in TV shows such as True Detective (inspired by Thomas Ligotti’s nihilistic weird fiction), Stranger Things and the Twin Peaks revival (echoing Lovecraftian cosmic horror). The aesthetics of weird is also embraced by musicians such as Björk, Gazelle Twin, FKA Twigs and inscribed in particular new media art practices, especially bioart.

In this issue of Pulse, we aim to investigate the aesthetics, politics and ethics of the weird from various theoretical and disciplinary perspectives, particularly those within the framework of environmental humanities: ecocriticism, geocriticism, animal studies, critical plant studies, posthumanism, new materialism, actor-network theory, queer theory, xenofeminism etc. How do the sciences estrange our conceptions of the world and how is this articulated in artistic practices? Starting from the confluence of art and science, our aim is to map diverse territories of the weird in literature, film, music, television, video games, visual arts, comic books, dance, theatre and other media.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

— theory of the weird: posthumanism, speculative realism, object oriented ontology, new materialism

— cognitive and affective aspects of the weird

— the weird, supernatural and unheimlich

— New Weird and the Other

— speculative fiction, science fiction, horror and weird fiction

— intersections of the weird and grotesque, fantasy, magical realism, etc.

— Anthropocene, deep time and the weird

— animal and plant life and the weird

— multispecies ecologies, human-nonhuman entanglements

— anomalies, mutations and hybrids

— inorganic matter in arts and literature

— eerie landscapes and extinction

— weird bodies: trans-corporeality, queer, transhumanism


References:

Mark Fisher, The Weird and the Eerie, 2016, Repeater Books, London.

Julius Greve and Florian Zappe (eds.), Spaces and Fictions of the Weird and the Fantastic: Ecologies, Geographies, Oddities, 2019, Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Donna Haraway, 2016, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Duke Univ. Press

Steven Shaviro, Discognition, 2016, Repeater Books, London.



SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 30 June 2020

We welcome the submission of FULL ARTICLES (5000-6000 words) on these and related themes. We also publish BOOK REVIEWS(800-1000 words); please get in touch if there is a book you would like to review.

All articles should be prepared for blind review including the removal of authorship from the document file information. Submissions should include a cover sheet in a separately attached document containing: the paper title and short abstract (ca. 250 words) author’s name, affiliation, word count (including footnotes & references), and contact information. Article and cover sheet should be submitted in a .doc, .docx, or .odt (or similar open-source) file format. PDF submissions are also accepted but previously stated file formats are preferred where possible. References should be formatted according to Chicago style (Footnotes and Bibliography).

All articles and related material should be submitted to: submissions.pulse@gmail.com

For any inquires please feel free to contact us at pulse.scistudies@gmail.com. Please do not submit articles to this email address. For general information and to access previous issues of Pulse you can visit:

​Central and Eastern Europe Online Library: https://www.ceeol.com/search/journal-detail?id=2187

​Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/pulse.scistudies

​


Last updated March 13, 2020

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CFP 9th Slayage Conference on the Whedonverses (1/13/2020; Montreal 7/9-12/2020)

The 9th 'Slayage' Conference on the Whedonverses

Full details and submission form at https://www.scw9.ca/cfp--submit.html.

Slayage: The Journal of Whedon Studies, the Whedon Studies Association, and conveners Lorna Jowett, Cynthia Burkhead, and Kristopher Woofter solicit proposals for the ninth biennial Slayage Conference on the Whedonverses (SCW9). This conference dedicated to the imaginative universe(s) of Joss Whedon and his primary collaborators (e.g., Marti Noxon, Tim Minear, David Greenwalt, Jane Espenson, Maurissa Tancharoen, Jed Whedon, etc.) will be held on the downtown campus of Dawson College, Montréal, Québec, Canada, from 9-12 July 2020. Kristopher Woofter of Dawson College will serve as local arrangements chair.

We welcome proposals of 200-300 words (or an abstract of a completed paper) on any aspect of the following topics.

Whedon's Work:
Whedon’s television and web texts (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, Dollhouse, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and [who knows?] The Nevers, and the "reboot" of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, produced by Monica Owusu-Breen);
his films (Serenity, The Cabin in the Woods, Marvel’s The Avengers, Much Ado About Nothing, Avengers: Age of Ultron);
comics (e.g. Fray, Astonishing X-Men, Runaways, Sugarshock!, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel: After the Fall, Angel & Faith, and the Buffy and Angel comics from Boom! Studios); or any element of the work of Whedon and his collaborators.

The Post-Whedon TV Landscape: With the idea that ‘Whedon studies’ might include a range of creative work by Whedon collaborators and others influenced by his work, exclusive of Whedon’s involvement, proposals may address
series like Veronica Mars (Rob Thomas), Grimm (David Greenwalt), iZombie (Rob Thomas, Diane Ruggiero), Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa), Lucifer (Tom Kapinos), Stranger Things (Ross and Matt Duffer), and others;
paratexts, fandoms, or Whedon’s extracurricular—political and activist—activities, such as his involvement with Equality Now.

​Presentations may come from any disciplinary perspective: literature, history, communications, film and television studies, women’s and gender studies, queer and trans studies, religion, linguistics, music, cultural studies, genre studies, and others. In other words, multidisciplinary discussions of the text, the social context, the audience, the producers, the production, and more are all appropriate. A proposal/abstract should demonstrate familiarity with already-published scholarship in the field, which includes dozens of books, hundreds of articles, and nearly twenty years of the blind peer-reviewed journal, Slayage.

An individual paper is strictly limited to a reading time of 18-20 minutes, and we encourage, though do not require, self-organized panels of three presenters. Proposals for workshops, roundtables, or other types of sessions are also welcome. Submissions by both graduate and undergraduate students are invited; undergraduates should provide the name, email, and phone number of a faculty member willing to consult with them (the faculty member does not need to attend). Proposals should be submitted online through this SCW9 webpage (see below) and will be reviewed by program chairs Rhonda V. Wilcox and Cynthia Burkhead, and local arrangements chair, Kristopher Woofter.

Proposal Format: Proposals of 250-300 words for individual papers should include a title, projected thesis, identification of the corpus, and sense of the theoretical approach. Proposals for workshops, roundtables, or other types of sessions should include a title, a description of the session's organizing theme, and a list of the names, affiliations, and contact info of potential presenters; proposals for the papers that comprise the session would be sent individually by potential presenters, indicating their presentation as part of a proposed session.

Submissions must be received by Monday, 13 January 2020. Decisions will be made by Monday, 2 March 2020.
​
​
Questions regarding proposals can be directed to Slayage ​editor Rhonda V. Wilcox at the conference email address: slayage.conference@gmail.com.

CFP Tropical Gothic (Spec Issue of eTropic) (12/30/2018)

'Tropical Gothic'
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/07/02/tropical-gothic

deadline for submissions:
December 30, 2018

full name / name of organization:
eTropic journal

contact email:
etropic@jcu.edu.au


CALL FOR PAPERS special issue ‘Tropical Gothic’


Submission Deadline: 30 December 2018



‘TROPICAL GOTHIC’

‘The Gothic’ is undergoing a resurgence in academic and popular cultures. Propelled by fears produced by globalization, the neoliberal order, networked technologies, post-truth and environmental uncertainty – tropes of ‘the gothic’ resonate. The gothic allows us to delve into the unknown. It calls up unspoken truths and secret desires.

Across the tropics, the gothic manifests in specific ways according to spaces and places, and in relation to cultures and their encounters, crossings and interminglings.

Gothic studies that provide particularly interesting arenas of analysis include: culture, ritual, mythology, film, architecture, literature, fashion, art, landscapes, places, nature, spaces, histories and spectral cities. ‘Tropical Gothic’ may include subgenres such as: imperial gothic, orientalism in gothic literature, colonial and postcolonial gothic. In contemporary society neoliberal connections with the tropics and gothic may be investigated. In popular culture, tropical aspects of gothic film, cybergoth, gothic-steampunk, gothic sci-fi, goth graphic novels, and gothic music may be explored.

The eTropic journal is indexed in Scopus, Ulrich's and DOAJ. Publication is in 2019.

Instructions for authors: https://journals.jcu.edu.au/etropic.

Equiries, please contact: etropic@jcu.edu.au.

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)

CFP Critical Essays on Arthur Machen (9/1/2018)

Collection on Arthur MACHEN [EXTENSION OF DEADLINE]
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/06/07/collection-on-arthur-machen-extension-of-deadline

deadline for submissions: September 1, 2018

full name / name of organization: Dr. Antonio Sanna

contact email: isonisanna@hotmail.com



Critical Essays on Arthur Machen

edited by Antonio Sanna


In spite of his prolific production of novels, short stories and essays, Arthur Machen (1863-1947) is one of those Victorian and twentieth-century writers whose works have been unjustly forgotten by contemporary readers and scholars. Machen was an ardent believer in mysticism and the occult, an admirer of the medieval world and a pioneer in psychogeography. His literary works have influenced celebrated writers such as H.P. Lovecraft, Charles Williams and Jorge Luis Borges and they are still pleasurable and valuable sources of entertainment. However, nowadays he is mainly remembered for his 1894 novella“The Great God Pan”, whereas his equally-successful volumes The Three Impostors (1895), The Hill of Dreams (1907), The Terror (1917), The Secret Glory (1922) and The Green Round (1933) as well as his short stories (“The Inmost Light”, “The White People”, “The Bowmen” and “N”, to mention merely a few) are rarely mentioned in studies on the English literature of the late-Victorian period and the first half of the twentieth century.

This anthology will explore Machen’s heterogeneous oeuvre from multidisciplinary perspectives. This volume seeks previously-unpublished essays that explore the English writer’s production. I am particularly interested in interdisciplinary approaches to the subject that can illuminate the diverse facets of the writer’s work. There are several themes worth exploring when analyzing Machen’soeuvre, utilizing any number of theoretical frameworks of your choosing. I request the chapters 1) to be based on formal, academic analysis and 2) to be focused mainly on the writer’s works (though comparisons with other authors’ works are more than welcome).

Contributions may include (but are not limited to) the following topics:

• Machen’s autobiographies
• The supernatural
• The seen and the unseen
• Representations of madness
• Representations of childhood, parenting and ageing
• Machenand fairy tales
• Gender and queer readings
• Machenand philosophy
• Exploration of dreams and the subconscious
• Fear of the Other
• The problem of evil
• Biblical interpretations
• Cultural studies and popular culture
• Class consciousness
• Science, science fiction and mystery
• Machen and the occult
• Machen and psychogeography
• Machen’s legacy

The anthology will be organized into thematic sections around these topics and others that emerge from submissions. I am open to works that focus on other topics as well and authors interested in pursuing other related lines of inquiry. Feel free to contact me with any questions you may have about the project and please share this announcement with colleagues whose work aligns with the focus of this volume.

Please submit a 300-500 word abstract of your proposed chapter contribution, a brief CV and complete contact information to Dr. Antonio Sanna (isonisanna@hotmail.com) by the 1st of September, 2018. Full chapters of 4000-6000 words would be due upon signing a contract with a publisher. Note: all full chapters submitted will be included subject to review.

CFP Ray Bradbury And Horror Fiction, Special Issue of The New Ray Bradbury Review (5/1/2017)

Ray Bradbury And Horror Fiction: The New Ray Bradbury Review special issue
https://www.cfplist.com/CFP.aspx?CID=9560

Event: 03/21/2019
Abstract: 05/01/2017

Location: Indianapolis, IN, USA
Organization: Center for Ray Bradbury Studies


Ray Bradbury and Horror Fiction

The problem of genre is especially complicated when it comes to Ray Bradbury. The author of The Martian Chronicles, Dandelion Wine, The Halloween Tree, Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Illustrated Man, Fahrenheit 451, and innumerable poems, comic books, short stories, radio, TV, and movie scripts alchemically combined elements as diverse as rockets and hauntings, uncanny phenomena and freak shows, the Cthulhu mythos and common serial killers. The New Ray Bradbury Review seeks essays for a special issue dedicated to Ray Bradbury’s unique brand of horror fiction.


Bradbury began his writing career with a homemade pulp, Futuria Fantasia, modeled on Farnsworth Wright’s Weird Tales. Many of his early stories were based on Poe, including “The Pendulum” (1939) and “Carnival of Madness” (1950, revised as “Usher II” in The Martian Chronicles). Poe also is at the center of “The Mad Wizards of Mars” (1949, best known as “The Exiles” in The Illustrated Man, 1951), a story that is also populated by many of the horror and dark fantasy writers of the last two hundred years. Lovecraft’s influence is traceable as well: “Luana the Living” (a fanzine piece from 1940) and “The Watchers” (1945), a tale that centers on a Lovecraftian horror of unseen forces bent on destroying anyone who discovers their presence beneath the surface of everyday life. Concurrently, Bradbury explored aspects of the American Gothic (see, for example, his carnie tales in Dark Carnival [1947], The Illustrated Man [1951], and The October Country [1955]). His later career saw a return to gothic fantasy elements, now playfully blended with other genres in such novels as Death is a Lonely Business (1985) and A Graveyard for Lunatics (1990). Some of his early gothic fantasy was revisited in his late career with the novelized story-cycle From the Dust Returned (2001).


The New Ray Bradbury Review, produced since 2008 by the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies at Indiana University and published by Kent State University Press, seeks articles on topics including (but not limited to):


• Bradbury and the pulps
• Bradbury and the American Gothic (including circus and freak show stories)
• Bradbury and mythology
• Bradbury and the problem of genre (ways literary historians have catalogued or miscatalogued his work)
• Bradbury’s literary reputation (and similar problems faced by writers as diverse as Carson McCullers and Stephen King)
• Bradbury and the Lovecraft Circle, including Robert Bloch, August Derleth, and Frank Belknap Long
• Bradbury and the Southern California circle, including Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, William F. Nolan, George Clayton Johnson
• Bradbury and related short story writers, such as Roald Dahl, Nigel Kneale, Theodore Sturgeon, Fritz Leiber, Harlan Ellison, Neil Gaiman
• Unproduced works or adaptations, for example Bloch’s Merry-Go-Round for MGM (based on Ray Bradbury's story "Black Ferris”)
• The Halloween Tree (novel, screenplay, and/or animated adaption), Something Wicked This Way Comes (novel, stage play, and/or Disney film), The October Country or the collection Bloch and Bradbury: Whispers from Beyond
• Bradbury and literary agent/comic book editor Julius Schwartz
• Bradbury’s stories for the radio programs such as Dimension X and Suspense, TV series such as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, or horror tales adapted for EC Comics or other outlets
• Bradbury’s own adaptations for the TV series The Ray Bradbury Theater.
• The art of the animated Halloween Tree and later films such as The Nightmare Before Christmas


Proposals of up to 500 words should be submitted by May 1, 2017, to guest editor Jeffrey Kahan (vortiger@hotmail.com). Authors of selected abstracts will be notified by July 1, 2017. Full drafts (5,000 to 7,000 words) will be due by December 1, 2017. The issue is provisionally scheduled for spring 2019.


Contact Email: vortiger@hotmail.com
Website: http://bradbury.iupui.edu/news/call-papers-new-ray-bradbury-review-special-issue