CFP Journal of Dracula Studies 2026 (6/1/2026)

Journal of Dracula Studies

deadline for submissions:
June 1, 2026

full name / name of organization:
Journal of Dracula Studies

contact email:
journalofdraculastudies@kutztown.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2026/04/10/journal-of-dracula-studies



The Journal of Dracula Studies is open for submissions for its upcoming 2026 issue. 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 literature including folklore, fiction, film, popular culture, and related topics. Submissions should be sent electronically (as an e-mail attachment in .docx). Please indicate the title of your submission in the subject line of your e-mail.

Please follow MLA style. Examples of papers published in the Journal are available at https://research.library.kutztown.edu/dracula-studies/. 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. Send electronic submissions to journalofdraculastudies@kutztown.edu


Last updated April 13, 2026

CFP Return to the South: The Complexities of Southern Culture in Ryan Coogler's film Sinners (7/1/2025; Special Issue Journal of American Culture)

 

Return to the South: The Complexities of Southern Culture in Ryan Coogler's film Sinners

deadline for submissions: 

July 15, 2025

full name / name of organization: 

Journal of American Culture

contact email: 

Katrina.Moore@slu.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/05/21/return-to-the-south-the-complexities-of-southern-culture-in-ryan-cooglers-film

Return to the South: The Complexities of Southern Culture in Ryan Coogler’s film Sinners. 

On April 18, Warner Brothers released Ryan Coogler’s long anticipated film Sinners. Since its release, the film has achieved both critical acclaim and popular resonance, marking a significant entry in contemporary Southern cinema. Critics and audiences praise Sinners for its nuanced treatment of inter/intra-racial dynamics, spirituality, and regional identity. In addition, the film has prompted sustained cultural discourse, and now, academic interest in the South. Its layered narrative and atmospheric rendering of the South position Sinners as a vital text for examining the complexities of Southern culture and history.

The Southern United States has long been mythologized, contested, and critically dissected; its socio-cultural historical complexities have been largely ignored. Ryan Coogler’s Sinners presents the complexities of the South and Southern culture(s) as it situates the story within the Mississippi Delta in 1932. Coogler utilizes the genre of horror and the conventions of the vampire to explore these complexities through a contemporary lens. The film situates itself at the crossroads of religion, race, history, and redemption, challenging romanticized and reductive portrayals of the American South.

The Journal of American culture is seeking contributions for a special edition titled, Return to the South: The Complexities of Southern Culture in Ryan Coogler’s film Sinners. We invite scholars, critics, and practitioners to submit papers that explore the multilayered dimensions of Sinners, with particular attention to how Coogler crafts, critiques, and complicates Southern cultural narratives. Interdisciplinary approaches, especially, are welcome, drawing from fields such as film and visual culture studies, Southern studies, African American studies, gender studies, theology, history, and cultural geography.

An abstract of 250-500 words is due July 15, 2025. If the abstract is accepted, the complete paper (3,500–7,500 words) is due October 15, 2025. Include your full name, institutional affiliation, title, and email address (not included in the 250-500 text limit) at the beginning of your abstract. Submissions and queries should be sent to Kwakiutl L. Dreher kdreher2@nebraska.edu and Katrina Moore katrina.moore@slu.edu

Topics of interest include but not limited to:

• Coogler’s directorial vision in reimagining the South
• The return to the south as a space of (re)ro(u)oting
• Identity of Cast and Director with the South
• Folklore and folk traditions in Southern Black culture
• The politics of sin, salvation, and moral ambiguity in Southern storytelling
• (Black) fe/male entrepreneurship
• Nature (birds, land, cotton, etc.)
• Lessons taught/lessons learned
• The performance of Black love and Black Joy
• Representations of kinship
• Generational trauma
• Black Southern identity and cultural resistance
• The role of religion, churches, and spiritual spaces
• Memory, land, and contested Southern geographies
• Intersections of gender, sexuality, and faith in Southern contexts
• Cinematic aesthetics of the Southern Gothic and its subversion
• Historical reckoning and the burden of legacy
• The role of sound, music, and silence in evoking Southern atmospheres
• Immigrant culture and influence/exchange on Black Southern tradition
• Dance and Spirituality
• Secular and Sacred traditions
• African/Ancestral cultural traditions in religion, dance, music, etc in Southern society
• Voodoo, Christianity and other practices
• Cultural analysis of other works by Coogler

Last updated May 28, 2025

CFP Journal of Dracula Studies 2025 (5/16/2025)

Journal of Dracula Studies

deadline for submissions: 

May 16, 2025

full name / name of organization: 

Journal of Dracula Studies

contact email: 

journalofdraculastudies@kutztown.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/03/27/journal-of-dracula-studies

The Journal of Dracula studies is open for submissions for its upcoming 2025 issue. 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 literature including folklore, fiction, film, popular culture, and related topics. For our 2025 issue we are especially interested in work looking at F.W. Murnau's 1922 film Nosferatu and its remakes/adaptations, as well as its influence on the legacy of Stoker's work and vampire literature more broadly. Submissions should be sent electronically (as an e-mail attachment in .docx). Please indicate the title of your submission in the subject line of your e-mail.

Please follow MLA style. Examples of papers published in the Journal are available at https://research.library.kutztown.edu/dracula-studies/. 

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.

Send electronic submissions to journalofdraculastudies@kutztown.edu 

Last updated March 31, 2025

CFP “Children of the Night” International Dracula Congress 2024 (8/31/2024; virtual 10/25-26/2024 & Romania 10/31-11/2/2024)

“Children of the Night” International Dracula Congress 2024

Call For Papers

October 25-26 online sessions

October 31-November 2: Brașov sessions



It is our great pleasure to invite you to 2024 double edition of "Children of the Night International Dracula Congress”. This year, participants are invited to join the ONLINE part of the Congress on October 25th and 26th, 2024 (Friday and Saturday) via Zoom.

A few days later, we will gather IN PERSON for further Halloween sessions in Brașov, Romania from October 31st to November 2nd, 2024. We have decided to hold two parts of the Congress separate from one another, so that Brașov participants were able to fully engage in academic discussions, get to know each other and discover the wonders of Transylvania outside the conference venue.

October 31st (Thursday) and November 1st (Friday) will be devoted to academic speeches and discussions, with a walking tour of Brașov and various evening activities. On November 2nd (Saturday), we will set on a one-day trip to Bran Castle, a nearby Dracula related pop-cultural tourist attraction.

Additionally, from October 30th to November 2nd, International Dracula Film Festival is taking place in Brașov and the Congress participants will be able to join chosen festival events.

We invite everyone who is interested in speaking at the 2024 conference to submit an abstract of 150 - max. 250 words plus a meaningful title indicating the planned content of your presentation to dracongress@gmail.com. The official language of the conference is English. The abstracts must be submitted by email and fit the conference main topics (please, have a look at the slider with 8 workshops on our website). Deadline for abstract’s submissions: August 31, 2024. Please, state if you intend to participate online or in person.

Also, remember to dust your Vampire/Dracula/Gothic costume for our annual Costume Contest (in person and online entries welcome!).

Conference fee

50 euro (physical participation in Brasov)

10 euro (online participation).

Listeners join free of charge.



The 2024 COTN International Dracula Congress is organised by:

Transilvania University of Brașov, Romania (Florin Nechita),

Maria Curie-Skłodowska University Lublin, Poland (Magdalena Grabias),

State University of Rio de Janeiro in Brasil (Yuri Garcia).

In collaboration with The Dracula Fan Club, Mexico (Enrique A. Palafox).



More details will be announced soon.

https://dracongress.jimdofree.com/

Journal of Dracula Studies 2023

 The latest volume of the Journal of Dracula Studies has arrived.

Journal of Dracula Studies 25 (2023)

Table of Contents

A Wild(e) Story: Vampiric Disease as Gender Transgression in Victorian England

Sophie Bradley

Bedding Down in the Monster's Den: Reading Domesticity, Masculinity and Homoeroticism within Count Dracula's Castle

Ellese Patterson

Vampiric Sideways Growth at the Fin de Siecle: The Intersection of Youth, Race, and Queerness in Florence Marryat's The Blood of the Vampire

Kelsey Shawgo

Construction of Imperial Otherness in Dracula (1897) and Dracula in Istanbul (1928)

Y. Su Kolsal

CFP Special Section: Monstrous New Orleans (6/15/2023; Popular Culture Association South, New Orleans 9/28-30/2023)

Monstrous New Orleans

deadline for submissions:
June 15, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Popular Culture Association South

contact email:
pcavampires@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/05/05/monstrous-new-orleans


New Orleans is known as one of the most haunted cities in the U.S. and as a haven for vampires (thank you, Anne Rice), but there are so many more monsters there than ghosts and vampires. With such a rich tradition of magic and the paranormal, New Orleans dazzles artists and scholars alike, inviting us all into the mysteries. To celebrate the dark depths of the city, PCAS welcomes papers or presentations that explore the monsters and the monstrous that roam the streets and psyches of New Orleans.



To have your proposal/abstract considered for this special session, please submit your proposal/abstract of approximately 250 words to pcavampires@gmail.com



NOTE: In order to be considered for the Special Section: Monstrous New Orleans please follow the instructions above rather than submitting through the PCAS/ ACAS website. Everyone is invited to submit one academic paper and can, in addition, participate in a round-table discussion or creative session. Only those proposals intended for Monstrous New Orleans should be submitted as outlined above; the PCAS/ ACAS website has an online submission form for the General Call.



The conference will be held in New Orleans, Sept. 28-30, 2023.



Last updated May 9, 2023

CFP Journal of Dracula Studies for 2023 (5/1/2023)

Not sure how I missed this before.

Journal of Dracula Studies

deadline for submissions:
May 1, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Journal of Dracula Studies

contact email:
journalofdraculastudies@kutztown.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/01/23/journal-of-dracula-studies.


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 .docx). 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.

Send electronic submissions to journalofdraculastudies@kutztown.edu

Contact: Dr. Nicole McClure or Dr. Jonathan Shaw




Last updated January 26, 2023

CFP Disability and the Vampire Collection (5/31/2023)

Edited Collection -- Disability and the Vampire

deadline for submissions:
May 31, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Brooke Cameron / Queen's University

contact email:
brooke.cameron@queensu.ca

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/02/27/edited-collection-disability-and-the-vampire.

CFP: edited collection -- Disability and the Vampire

Dr. Brooke Cameron (Queen’s University), Peadar O’Dea (Maynooth University) and Adam Owsinski (Charles Darwin University) invite proposals for chapters that explore the connections between vampires and disability, from history to modern cultural and popular representations.

Project Description:

From its inception, the vampire has long been associated with disability and illness. Before it was named as “vampire” by western officials (eg the Arnold Paole case, c1726), the revenant was a figure well established in eastern folkloric traditions as a way to make sense of wasting diseases and chronic illnesses as well as the rampant and devastating effects of plague. And in naming and claiming this figure for its own literary and cultural tradition, Western officials and authors (from Germany to Britain) reproduced — if not outright invented and amplified — this narrative of the vampire as an outsider figure, an “Other” upon and through whom ableist fears and discriminatory narratives would propagate throughout the eighteenth century and after.

This edited collection is interested in scholarly work that focuses on the role of disability and illness in the cultural and literary history of the vampire. Drawing from recent work in Critical Disability Studies as well as the postmodern turn in Monster Theory, we are especially interested in essays that centre disability and illness in order to challenge this cultural history. After all, as Jack Halberstam writes in Skin Shows (1995), we have grown “suspicious of monster hunters, monster makers,” and instead sympathize with, if not root for, the vampire.

Chapters in this collection will encourage us to think about the central role that disability and illness have played in the formation of this particular Gothic monster, and will also therefore encourage us to ask who or what is the real “monster” in this history. We seek chapters on the range of disabilities and illnesses central (but also marginalized or caricatured) in the vampire’s story; and we also hope to see submissions that address this wide range of forms that encompass this cultural legacy – including submissions on vampires in literature and film, as well as chapters on folklore or Victorian science and the vampire. We also invite chapters that encourage our rethinking of the disabled vampire in the time of covid, or how the pandemic has given us yet another chance to engage with this Gothic figure and their legacy.

We have currently secured chapters on: Cripping The Count: A Disability Studies Reading of Dracula.
The Freak Show and Disgusting Cultural Transmissions
Neurodiversity and Vampire “Rules” in Late-Victorian Literature
Peter Wolf’s Deafula: Deafness through the Lens of “Monstrosity”?

We are seeking chapter proposals on–but are not limited to–the following topics:

• Chapter(s) on disability and vampirism in medical literature
• Chapter(s) on disability and the vampire scares of the 18th and 19th centuries
• Disability in nineteenth-century vampire literature, when the genre is born (?)
• Chapter(s) on disability and vampirism in modern film
• Disability and the vampire in contemporary politics, especially in light of the COVID pandemic
• The visually-impaired Vampire
• Vampirism and blood illnesses
• the vampiric “turn” and critical disability
• Vampires and transhuman abilities/ableism
• A MAD Studies approach to vampirism/ the vampire
• Disability Activism and the Vampire

Proposals of 400-500 words should be submitted along with a 60-word author biography and one-page cv to brooke.cameron@queensu.ca by 31 May 2023.

We will notify applicants of results by 31 July 2023. Following acceptance, final papers should be approximately 5,000-6,000 words long and will be due by 01 Dec 2023. Routledge has expressed interest in this collection.




Last updated March 1, 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 Here Be Monsters: General Call for Papers for the Monsters & the Monstrous Area (8/15/2022; online conference 10/20-22/2022)

Here Be Monsters: General Call for Papers for the Monsters & the Monstrous Area of the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association

2022 Annual Conference of the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association

Virtual Event to be held Thursday, 20 October, to Saturday, 22 October 2022

Proposals are due 15 August 2022


We live in an age full of monsters. We make them, yet they escape our control and have profound impacts on us, often reshaping us in their images. Our beliefs, experiences, and politics contribute much to our ideas of monsters. Depending on one’s perspective, we can find them in our homes, in our families, in our schools, in our communities, in our governments, and in the world at large. Often such monsters appear unexpectedly, but, at other times, they strike repeatedly against us and those we cherish. We also create and fear the monstrous in unknown spaces. The darkness of night, the depths of the oceans, other unexplored reaches of the planet, and the vastness of outer space are all common locations for monsters to dwell. Lastly, through media, both old and new, we encounter monsters in a multiplicity of cultural texts. Often we engage with them in printed works (such as comics, fiction, and poetry) or through performances (as in music or on stage), but, increasingly, we find the monster brought to life on the various screens we interact with each day: on computers, films, phones, tablets, and televisions.


The Monsters & the Monstrous Area of the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association (also known as NEPCA) invites proposals for 15-20-minute presentations that highlight our experiences with, reactions to, and/or reflections on the various monsters and monstrous entities (animal, human, hybrid, or preternatural) in popular culture.


This year, we are especially interested in submissions on the following topics:

• “From ‘Them’ to Now: Changing Metaphors of the Monstrous Insect” (organized by Eddie Guimont, Bristol Community College) (co-sponsored with NEPCA’s Animals and Culture Special Topics) (see the full call at https://tinyurl.com/FromThemToNow)
• H. G. Well’s War of the Worlds at 125 and its impact on popular culture (some ideas: aliens and alien invasions in popular culture or Mars and Martians in popular culture)
• Monsters in comics milestones (Archie Comics’ Sabrina the Teenaged Witch at 60, Jack Kirby’s The Demon/Etrigan at 50, Marvel Comics’ Tomb of Dracula and Werewolf by Night at 50)
• Monsters of the Past Becoming the Monsters of the Present (especially Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters: Afterlife, medieval monsters today, and The Munsters and Rob Zombie’s The Munsters)
• Northeast Monsters & the Monstrous (for example: H. P. Lovecraft and his legacy in popular culture, local lore of monsters and the monstrous in the Northeast, the New England Gothic tradition in popular culture, the New England vampire panic in popular culture, the New England witch trials in popular culture, and Stephen King and his family and their impact on horror in popular culture)
• Monsters & the Monstrous as Infestation
• Monsters & the Monstrous as Invaders/Invasion
• Monsters on screen milestones (Haxan at 100; Freaks, Island of Lost Souls, The Mummy, Murders in the Rue Morgue, and White Zombie at 90; Cat People at 80; The Curse of Frankenstein, I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, and The Incredible Shrinking Man at 65; Doctor Faustus at 55; Poltergeist, Swamp Thing, and The Thing at 40; Hellraiser and The Monster Squad at 35; Candyman at 30; and The Devil’s Advocate at 25; Hotel Transylvania at 10)
• Vampire milestones (Le Fanu’s Carmilla at 150 and Stoker’s Dracula at 125) and their impact on popular cultures
• Vampires on screen milestones (Nosferatu at 100, Vamprye at 90, Blacula at 50, The Lost Boys at 35, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Forever Knight at 30, Buffy the Vampire Slayer television show at 25; and Blood Ties and Moonlight at 15 )
• “The worst monsters are the ones we create”: Monstrosity in the Witcherverse (organized by Kris Larsen, Central Connecticut State University) (see the full call at https://tinyurl.com/MonstrosityinWitcherverse)

Send any questions on these or other topics to Michael A. Torregrossa, the Monsters & the Monstrous Area Chair, at Popular.Preternaturaliana@gmail.com. However, please submit your proposal directly into NEPCA’s conference system at https://bit.ly/CFPNEPCA22. You will need to have prepared the following: Yout Email, The type of proposal (single paper or full panel), Your Name, Your Proposed Subject Area (select “Monsters and the Monstrous” please), An Abstract (no more than 250 words), Academic Affiliation (if applicable), Scholarly Role, and Short Bio (up to 200 words), and Timing preferences for the session. The system will send you a receipt of your submission and alert the area chair of its readiness for review.

If accepted, presenters must join NEPCA for the year and pay the conference fee. This year the costs are $54.67 USD for Conference Registration & Membership Dues. Payment is expected in advance of 1 October 2022. Do connect with the area chair (at Popular.Preternaturaliana@gmail.com) or NEPCA directly via Lance Eaton, the Executive Secretary, (at northeastpopculture@gmail.com), if you are experiencing financial challenges that might impact your ability to present.


NEPCA prides itself on holding conferences that emphasize sharing ideas in a non-competitive and supportive environment. NEPCA conferences offer intimate and nurturing sessions in which new ideas and works-in-progress can be aired, as well as completed projects.

We welcome proposals from scholars of all levels, including full-time faculty, graduate students, independent scholars, junior faculty, part-time faculty, and senior scholars. We are also open to undergraduate presentations, provided a faculty member is also included as a point of reference (please include the faculty member’s name, institution, and email in the bio section when submitting).


For further details on NEPCA, please visit its site at https://nepca.blog/. The dedicated page for the conference is https://nepca.blog/conference/.

The Monsters & the Monstrous Area maintains its own site for news and resources. Please check us out at https://popularpreternaturaliana.blogspot.com/.


This call for papers can be accessed at https://tinyurl.com/HereBeMonstersNEPCA22.

UPDATE Recovering the Vampire Conference (new deadline 8/8/2022)

Recovering the Vampire (UPDATED)

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/03/16/recovering-the-vampire


deadline for submissions:
August 8, 2022



full name / name of organization:
Edge Hill University



contact email:
madeline.potter@york.ac.uk





Speakers

Professor Catherine Spooner (Lancaster University)

Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes (Manchester Metropolitan University)

and featuring a Q&A and dramatic reading by Dacre Stoker

How can vampires help us heal?

In the 125th anniversary year of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, this interdisciplinary project examines the continuing history of the vampire from the 19th century to the present and explores how the vampire can function as a cultural figure of recovery, community, and regeneration.

The cultural history of the vampire has been conventionally one of degeneration, illness, contagion, and variously embodied metaphors of anxiety. This event moves critical discourse from degeneration to regeneration, asking how the vampire functions as a metaphor for recovery (whether physical, emotional, or economic), community (fandoms, gamers, ‘goth culture’), identification and self-expression (racial identities, spirituality and religion, neurodivergence/-diversity, disability, gender and sexuality).

We welcome proposals for 15-20-minute papers, and panels. We also welcome practical or industry approaches to reinterpreting the vampire through collaborative, creative, or playful research, as well as contributions to a creative industries panel by publishers, authors, artists, heritage professionals and film-makers who work on the figure of the vampire. 

Topics can include but are not limited to: 

• Healing, trauma, recovery
• Gothic tourism / regeneration / international relations / economic growth
• Vampires and the creative economy
• Vampires and community: gaming, goth culture, fashion
• Medical humanities and the vampire
• Addiction recovery, nutrition, attitudes to feeding
• Reclaiming the vampire and neurodivergence/-diversity
• Selfhood, belonging, and ‘the outsider’
• Spiritual growth and religious experience
• Race and inclusivity / representation
• Child vampires / vampires for children
• Pedagogy and the vampire
• Laughter, comedy and Catherine Spooner’s ‘Happy Gothic’
• Adaptation

Thanks to the generosity of BAVS, BARS and Edge Hill University, we are delighted to be able to offer several PGR/ECR fee-waived bursary places for this event. If you would like to be considered, please indicate on your abstract and include a short statement (100 words max) about how the conference relates to your research.

Please send 300-word abstracts or panel proposals to Dr Madeline Potter (madeline.potter@york.ac.uk) and Dr Laura Eastlake (Laura.Eastlake@edgehill.ac.uk)

This conference will be fully accessible, with a primarily online component. Please check our website https://recoveringthevampire.wordpress.com and follow us on Twitter @VampireRecovery for updates on conference format and further info.

Deadline: 8 August 2022

Conference dates: 4-5 November 2022


 
Last updated June 21, 2022

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

EXTENDED DEADLINE 

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

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

deadline for submissions:
April 15, 2022

full name / name of organization:
Université Bordeaux Montaigne

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



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

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



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

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

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

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

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

¤ The female vampire figure, between exploitation and empowerment. 

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

¤ Isolated figure or serial type. 

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

¤ The female vampire and gender stability. 

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

¤ Global figure v. local figures. 

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

¤ The Carmilla hypothesis. 

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

¤ The figural approach: imagining the female vampire. 

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

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



Scientific committee:

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




Last updated April 5, 2022

CFP Recovering the Vampire Conference (6/17/2022; UK/online 11/4-5/2022)

Recovering the Vampire

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/03/16/recovering-the-vampire

deadline for submissions:
June 17, 2022

full name / name of organization:
Edge Hill University

contact email:
madeline.potter@york.ac.uk




Speakers

Professor Catherine Spooner (Lancaster University)

Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes (Manchester Metropolitan University)

and featuring a Q&A and dramatic reading by Dacre Stoker

How can vampires help us heal?

In the 125th anniversary year of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, this interdisciplinary project examines the continuing history of the vampire from the 19th century to the present and explores how the vampire can function as a cultural figure of recovery, community, and regeneration.

The cultural history of the vampire has been conventionally one of degeneration, illness, contagion, and variously embodied metaphors of anxiety. This event moves critical discourse from degeneration to regeneration, asking how the vampire functions as a metaphor for recovery (whether physical, emotional, or economic), community (fandoms, gamers, ‘goth culture’), identification and self-expression (racial identities, spirituality and religion, neurodivergence/-diversity, disability, gender and sexuality).

We welcome proposals for 15-20-minute papers, and panels. We also welcome practical or industry approaches to reinterpreting the vampire through collaborative, creative, or playful research, as well as contributions to a creative industries panel by publishers, authors, artists, heritage professionals and film-makers who work on the figure of the vampire. Topics can include but are not limited to:

• Healing, trauma, recovery
• Gothic tourism / regeneration / international relations / economic growth
• Vampires and the creative economy
• Vampires and community: gaming, goth culture, fashion
• Medical humanities and the vampire
• Addiction recovery, nutrition, attitudes to feeding
• Reclaiming the vampire and neurodivergence/-diversity
• Selfhood, belonging, and ‘the outsider’
• Spiritual growth and religious experience
• Race and inclusivity / representation
• Child vampires / vampires for children
• Pedagogy and the vampire
• Laughter, comedy and Catherine Spooner’s ‘Happy Gothic’
• Adaptation

Thanks to the generosity of BAVS, BARS and Edge Hill University, we are delighted to be able to offer several PGR/ECR fee-waived bursary places for this event. If you would like to be considered, please indicate on your abstract and include a short statement (100 words max) about how the conference relates to your research.

Please send 300-word abstracts or panel proposals to Dr Madeline Potter (madeline.potter@york.ac.uk) and Dr Laura Eastlake (Laura.Eastlake@edgehill.ac.uk)

This conference will be fully accessible, with a primarily online component. Please check our website https://recoveringthevampire.wordpress.com and follow us on Twitter @VampireRecovery for updates on conference format and further info.

Deadline: 17 June 2022

Conference dates: 4-5 November 2022




Last updated March 18, 2022

CFP Southern Gothic Area at PCAS/ACAS 2022 (6/1/2022; New Orleans 10/13-15/2022)

CFP: Southern Gothic Area at PCAS/ACAS 2022

Source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/03/03/cfp-southern-gothic-area-at-pcasacas-2022

deadline for submissions:
June 1, 2022

full name / name of organization:
Popular Culture/ American Culture Association in the South

contact email:
SouthernGothicPCAS@gmail.com

CALL FOR PROPOSALS: THE SOUTHERN GOTHIC AT PCAS/ ACAS 2022

Submission deadline: June 1, 2022; Notification of acceptance by July 1, 2022



Despite the difficulty in defining what exactly the Southern Gothic is, it nevertheless is one of the most prominent ways the South is represented in media and culture. From Flannery O’Connor to The Originals, Truman Capote to True Detective, and William Faulkner to The Walking Dead, whether categorized as a form, a style, or a genre, the Southern Gothic is bound up with regional cultural anxieties regarding shifting discourses of race, class, gender, sexuality, and geographic identity itself. From its most stereotypical depictions to more nuanced, complex interpretations, the Southern Gothic shapes the wider perception of regional identities in ways that invite our contemporary scholarly engagement.

To this end, the Southern Gothic area of the Popular Culture / American Culture Association in the South (PCAS/ ACAS) invites proposals for individual presentations, roundtable discussions, or full panels of 3-4 papers at the 2022 PCAS/ ACAS Annual Conference, to be held October 13 - 15, 2022 in New Orleans, LA.

Topics might include (but are in no way limited to):

• the Southern Gothic in film, TV, and literature
• adaptation(s) of Southern Gothic literature
• the Southern Gothic in new media (games, podcasts, graphic novels, etc.)
• the emergence of “Southern noir” as a subgenre
• race, class, gender, and/ or sexuality in the Southern Gothic
• Southern true crime as a cultural phenomenon
• documentary and the Southern Gothic
• Global elements of/ approaches to the Southern Gothic
• Southern Gothic tourism
• monsters in the Southern Gothic: vampires, zombies, ghosts, etc.
• mental health narratives in the Southern Gothic
• specificity—or generality—in Southern Gothic geographies
• the Southern Gothic in popular music
• pedagogical approaches to/ uses of the Southern Gothic
• the spectre of history in the Southern Gothic
• sites of intersection between the Southern Gothic and other genres/ modes

PCAS/ ACAS is dedicated to working toward equity, diversity, and inclusion both within our organization and in academia at large. As such, we encourage submissions by underrepresented and marginalized scholars based upon race, gender, sexuality, and employment status (e.g., graduate students and non-tenure track or unaffiliated/independent scholars).



To propose a presentation (of 20 minutes or less) or a roundtable discussion for the Southern Gothic Area, please send the following to Area Chair Stephanie Graves at SouthernGothicPCAS@gmail.com by June 1:
Name of presenter(s), institutional affiliation (if any), & email address for each presenter
Type of submission (individual paper, roundtable, or full panel)
Presentation abstract (250 words or fewer)
Indication if you need access to A/V (not all rooms have A/V available)

Submission deadline is June 1, 2022; notifications of acceptance will be sent by July 1, 2022.



NOTE: In order to be considered for the Southern Gothic Area, please follow the instructions above rather than submitting through the PCAS/ ACAS website.

Everyone is invited to submit one academic paper and can, in addition, participate in a round-table discussion or creative session. Only those proposals intended for the Southern Gothic area should be submitted as outlined above; the PCAS/ ACAS website has an online submission form for the General Call.




Last updated March 8, 2022

CFP Carmilla’s Sisters – Female Vampires in Literature, Film and Popular Culture (3/31/2022; Bordeaux 10/7-8/2022)

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

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

deadline for submissions:
March 31, 2022

full name / name of organization:
Université Bordeaux Montaigne

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



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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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



Scientific committee:

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



Last updated March 15, 2022

CFP My Wild Heart Bleeds: 150 Years of Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla (6/1/22; online 9/3/22)

My Wild Heart Bleeds: 150 Years of Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla

deadline for submissions: June 1, 2022


full name / name of organization: Romancing the Gothic Project


contact email: sam@romancingthegothic.com

 

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/01/21/my-wild-heart-bleeds-150-years-of-sheridan-le-fanus-carmilla

official site: https://romancingthegothic.com/2022/01/19/rtgs-second-conference-my-wild-heart-bleeds-150-years-of-sheridan-le-fanus-carmilla/




This year’s Romancing the Gothic online conference celebrates the ‘birth’ of Carmilla, one of the most enduring vampiric figures, re-written and re-imagined over the years in fiction, film, web-series, podcasts, animated series and RPGs. This conference focuses on and celebrates Carmilla and its legacy, particularly the sapphic reclamation and queer celebration of its main character.

This conference welcomes creative and critical papers on a range of topics connected to Carmilla, including:

• Sheridan Le Fanu and his wider writings and legacy
• The history of the (female) vampire
• The queer Gothic and horror
• Adaptations and reiminagings of Carmilla
• Gothic reimaginings
• Gothic explorations of love and desire
• The sapphic vampire
• The sapphic Gothic
• Queering the vampire
• Sexuality in Victorian literature
• Queer desire and transgression
• Queering the supernatural
• The Gothic and romance

We are interested in interdisciplinary papers and works from a range of disciplines including: queer studies, cultural studies, literature studies, Gothic studies, folklore studies, history, sociology, philosophy etc.



As usual with a Romancing the Gothic conference, there will be extra events including author roundtables, workshops and a social event. Keep your eye peeled for news.



We are accepting panel and individual paper proposals. There are two types of paper

• 10 minute ‘Lightning talk’ – This is a short talk to introduce a theme, or area of research or interest.
• 20 minute paper – This is a 20 minute paper on a topic of your choice. There are three talks to a panel, and you may submit an individual paper or panel proposal.

Please submit a 150-250 word abstract with short bio to sam@romancingthegothic.com by 1st June.

We welcome papers from both academics and non-academics with expertise of any type in the fields indicated above (critical, creative, professional, personal). For those who are unfamiliar with writing abstracts and academic conference applications, there will be a zoom tutorial to answer any questions on April 4th. Please email with a request for the link if you would like to join.

Last updated January 31, 2022 

 

CFP 6th Vampire Academic Conference (2/28/22; Cardiff 6/15-17/22)

Call for Papers: ‘Vampires through the Ages’ (USW and IVFAF)

DECEMBER 8, 2021 by JAMESRENDELL

Source: https://rendellj1.wordpress.com/2021/12/08/call-for-papers-vampires-through-the-ages-usw-and-ivfaf/


Submission deadline: Monday February 28th, 2022.

The International Vampire Film and Arts Festival and University of South Wales present The 6th Vampire Academic Conference ‘Vampires Through the Ages’ 15th-17th June 2022, Insole Court Mansion, Cardiff, Wales.

The University of South Wales, in association with the IVFAF, calls for papers by scholars interested in presenting their researched essays on vampire literature, film, folklore, theatre, games, graphic novels, lifestyle, fashion, music and wider art in the sixth annual Vampire Academic Conference (VAC) that runs alongside the festival in Cardiff. 

This Year’s main themes:

• Nosferatu 100 years later;
• Vampires in Media;
• Symphony of Horror: Vampires, Setting, and Folklore

Possible topics may include:

• Ghetto or gentrified gore: the vampire and urban space
• (Dis)ability and the monstrous
• Fans’ fangs: Vampire fandom, subcultures, and participatory practices
• Liminal beings: the vampire and teen/young adult media
• Beyond Transylvania: Global and transnational vampires
• Casting shadows: Vampire, acting, and stardom
• Draculaughs: The vampire as comedy monster
• From the coffin to the digital tomb: twenty-first century adaptation of the vampire story
• Race and Vampires
• Season’s greetings: the vampire and cultural festivals
• In the past: Folklore and Vampires
• In the Now: The History of the Modern Vampire
• Feminism and Vampires
• Queer Theory in Vampires
• Don’t go Into the Woods: Eco-Criticism and Vampires

However, the VAC is not limited to these themes. The two overriding criteria for papers delivered at the conference are:

• They must be about vampires &
• They must be interesting

This major interdisciplinary international conference aims to examine and expand debates around vampires in all their many aspects. We therefore invite researchers from a range of academic backgrounds to re/consider vampires as a phenomenon that reaches across multiple sites of production and consumption, from literature and film to theatre and games to music and fashion and beyond. What accounts for this Gothic character’s undying popular appeal, even in today’s postmodern, digital, commercialized world? How does vampirism circulate within and comment upon mass culture?

We invite papers in genre theory & history, popular fiction, media culture, television theory, adaptation, journalism, comic studies, the transformative arts and other areas of film, literary and cultural studies to explore and expand the significance of the vampire as a figure of fascination across popular culture in shifting historic and social contexts.

We are delighted to announce that our keynote speakers for the event are Professor Stacey Abbott (University of Roehampton) and Kim Newman.

We welcome proposals for conference papers of 20 minutes but also for pre-formed panels (of 3×20-minute papers), roundtable discussions, or formats that allow for the presentation of praxis (installations, lecture performances, for instance). We also want to support undergraduate scholarship: any current UG students interested in attending the VAC would be eligible for special, 10–15-minute presentation panels to facilitate their participation in an international conference at the undergraduate level.

Please send a 300-500-word abstract, along with a short biography and indication of the format of your proposed presentation to: jelinej@scf.edu by Monday February 28th, 2022. You will be notified of your acceptance by March 15th, 2022. If you are looking for a virtual choice, please state this in your proposal. If submitting a full panel proposal, the moderator should send a 50-word summary statement outlining the panel’s title and central topic, along with all three proposals. Accepted submitters must confirm their commitment to attend and present a finished written paper in a talk lasting approximately 20 minutes at the conference in Cardiff. It must be their own original work.

Presenters must register by purchasing a Delegate ticket. For more information on conference registration and location, visit www.ivfaf.com

The VAC runs in tandem with the Vampire Creative Congress, which focuses on the creative industries and featuring talks about filmmaking, writing, games etc. The wider festival includes literature and film strands and includes guest talks. There’s also a programme of theatre performances and parties, including the spectacular Vampire Ball. For more details, go to www.ivfaf.com.

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 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 Northeastern Monsters (8/1/21; NEPCA virtual 10/21-23/21)

Here's the second special call for NEPCA 2021:


Northeastern Monsters

Session Proposed for the 2021 Conference of the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association

Sponsored by the Monsters & the Monstrous Area

Virtual event, Thursday, 21 October, through Saturday, 23 October 2021.

Proposals due by 1 August 2021.



The Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association (a.k.a. NEPCA) prides itself on holding conferences that emphasize sharing ideas in a non-competitive and supportive environment. We welcome proposals for presentations of 15-20 minutes in length, from researchers at all levels, including undergraduate and graduate students, junior faculty, and senior scholars, as well as independent scholars. NEPCA conferences offer intimate and nurturing sessions in which new ideas and works-in-progress can be aired, as well as completed projects.

For this session, we’re looking for papers that explore and highlight the Northeast’s contributions to monster lore, including authors, events, individuals, locations, and, of course, monsters.



If you are interested in joining this session, please submit the following information into NEPCA’s online form at http://bit.ly/PopCFP2021.

• Proposal Type (Single Presentation or Panel
• Subject Area (select the “Monsters and the Monstrous” from the list)
• Working Title
• Abstract (250 words)
• Short bio (50-200 words)

Address any inquiries to the area chairs: Michael A. Torregrossa at popular.preternaturaliana@gmail.com.

Presenters are also required to become members of NEPCA for the year.