Dates Announced for NecronomiCon Providence 2026

The Lovecraft Arts & Sciences Council has recently announced the dates for the 2026 NecronomiCon Providence event. 

Further details and updates at https://necronomicon-providence.com/.

CFP Sixth Biennial Dr. Henry Armitage Memorial Scholarship Symposium of New Weird Fiction and Lovecraft-Related Research (5/24/2024; Providence, RI 8/15-18.2024)

The Sixth Biennial Dr. Henry Armitage Memorial Scholarship Symposium of New Weird Fiction and Lovecraft-Related Research

NecronomiCon Providence convention in Providence, RI
15-18 August, 2024
Location: Omni Hotel, Providence – Bristol/Kent Room, 3rd floor

Symposium Chairs: Dr. Elena Tchougounova-Paulson, editor of Lovecraftian Proceedings (Hippocampus Press)
Symposium Co-Chair: Prof. Dennis P. Quinn 

CALL FOR PRESENTATION ABSTRACTS:

The Dr. Henry Armitage Memorial Scholarship Symposium seeks Lovecraftian and Weird Fiction related research for the NecronomiCon Providence convention. Providence, RI, August 15-18, 2024

The Lovecraft Arts and Sciences Council (the organizer of NecronomiCon Providence) invites submissions for the upcoming Armitage Symposium, a conference that will be held within the convention. The Symposium is substantially dedicated to the life and works of the Providence-based Weird fiction writer, the father of Cosmic horror, H.P. Lovecraft, but also to his milieu, his literary contemporaries, predecessors and successors in the Weird/horror/Gothic/Neo-Gothic lore. For many decades, Lovecraft’s legacy has been the central topic for challenging discussions, and many prominent scholars have joined in debates, followed by significant textual insights, great literary discoveries, and numerous high-quality academic publications. The Armitage Symposium in 2024 will continue to explore Lovecraft’s works in relation to classic and contemporary Weird fiction, science fiction, other similar genres of horror/Gothic/Neo-Gothic literature, modern philosophy (phenomenology and epistemology), literary theory, linguistics, cultural history and cultural theory, archaeology, ethnography, etc.


Possible topics for 15-minute papers might include:

• Lovecraft’s influence on the American or, broadly, Western literary canon
• Lovecraft and Cosmic mythology
• Lovecraftian Mythos as a cultural phenomenon
• Lovecraft and religion/mysticism, and race/gender studies
• Lovecraft and Eurocentrism: origins and complexities
• Lovecraft’s correspondence as pre-blogging/travelog
• “Arkham House” and its heritage: further discoveries in its archival history
• Horror/Supernatural/Gothic fiction: its origins, historical frames and defining terms
• The works of potent and influential masters such as Dunsany, M.R. James, and Clark Ashton Smith
• Modern literary and cinematic perspectives in Lovecraftiana and the Supernatural
• Women in Lovecraftiana/Weird fiction in the past, present, and future
• Contemporary philosophy of weird, horror, and the supernatural: interpretive approaches

Traditionally, the Armitage Symposium has aimed to foster explorations and disseminations of Lovecraft’s elaborate cosmic mythology, and how this mythology was influenced by, and has come to influence, numerous other fiction writers, historians, art critics, philosophers, archivists, bibliographers of the past and the present. However, all submissions that contribute to interconnecting new linguistic and literary theoretical concepts in academic Lovecraftiana/horror studies are very welcome.

Specifically for the Armitage Symposium, we are particularly interested in submitting works from academics: undergraduates, PhD students, post-graduates, independent scholars, established researchers. Presenters should be prepared to deliver a fifteen to twenty-minute oral presentation, and are invited to submit a manuscript for possible inclusion in the peer-reviewed Lovecraftian Proceedings no. 6.

For consideration, interested scholars should submit an abstract (of around 250-300 words) in Word format along with a short bio (around 100 words) to the symposium chair, Dr Elena Tchougounova-Paulson, at tch.elena15@gmail.com.

The deadline for submissions is May 24, 2024. Early submissions are encouraged.

In addition to these talks, NecronomiCon Providence will also feature numerous traditional panels and presentations, given by many of the top names in Lovecraftian studies and the global Weird Renaissance. For more information on the Armitage Symposium, or the overall convention and the themes to be explored, please, visit our website: necronomicon-providence.com.





About the Symposium:

The Lovecraft Arts and Sciences Council (the organizer of NecronomiCon Providence) hosts the Armitage Symposium to showcase academic works that explore all aspects weird fiction and art, from pop-culture to literature, including the writings and life of globally renowned weird fiction writer, H.P. Lovecraft. Topics of value include the influence of history, architecture, science, and popular culture on the weird fiction genre, as well as the impact that weird and Lovecraftian fiction has had on culture.

In past years, the Armitage Symposium has aimed to foster explorations of Lovecraft’s elaborate cosmic mythology, and how this mythology was influenced by, and has come to influence, numerous other authors and artists before and since. Additionally, we promote all works that foster a greater, critical, and nuanced understanding weird fiction and art (and related science fiction, fantasy, horror, etc.).

Selected talks will be presented together as part of the Armitage Symposium, a mini-conference within the overall convention framework of NecronomiCon Providence, 15-18 August 2024. Presenters will deliver fifteen-minute oral presentations summarizing their thesis, and are invited to submit a brief manuscript for possible inclusion in a proceedings publication.

For more information on the Armitage Symposium, or the overall convention and the themes to be explored, please visit our website: necronomicon-providence.com – where we will post updates and details as they develop over the final weeks leading to the convention. In addition to these talks, NecronomiCon Providence will feature numerous traditional panels and presentations given by many of the top names in the global weird renaissance.

The 2024 CALL FOR PRESENTATION PROPOSALS can be downloaded here: Armitage-Symposium-CFA-2024.pdf

CFP Medieval Uncanny: Pearl Kibre Medieval Study 18th Annual Conference (expired 1/31/2024)

Sorry to have missed this:

The Medieval Uncanny: Pearl Kibre Medieval Study 18th Annual Conference

deadline for submissions: January 31, 2024

full name / name of organization: Pearl Kibre Medieval Study

contact email: medieval.study@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/11/10/the-medieval-uncanny-pearl-kibre-medieval-study-18th-annual-conference

What: Pearl Kibre Medieval Study 18th Annual Conference

Where: Hybrid, hosted through The Graduate Center, CUNY

When: Friday 3 May 2024

There’s a great deal of attention and sensitivity paid to continuities between the medieval period and the present day, continuities that animate projects as diverse as Geraldine Heng’s The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages to fan-studies readings of works like The Book of Margery Kempe, The Matter of Britain, and Roman de la Rose. This work (often correctly) insists that the medieval world never really went away; it was only dissolved into modernity. But despite the best efforts of scholars to make the vestiges of the Middle Ages intelligible, so many aspects of the period remain obscure, unruly, and decidedly weird. It is this weirdness that we are terming the medieval uncanny, the residue of the Middle Ages that resists simple functionalism. Following Stephanie Trigg and Carolyn Dinshaw, if we give up thinking of the medieval past as a static and knowable place, what can we do?

This conference will explore the uncanny and related terms– the weird, the abject, the spectral–  that describe the moment of rupture which can’t be assimilated by modern perspectives or previous experience, an experience common to contemporary readers and medieval ones. These are moments when a modern reader becomes very aware of the temporal and cultural distance of the Middle Ages, or when a character experiences a sudden shift from the normal to the fantastic. We also notice shifts within medievalist representations of the period, moving from technicolor epics to more somber, weirder stories. These modern adaptations use medieval culture as intertext, marshaling the medieval setting to produce a product that is truly uncanny. We welcome projects that explore these moments of distance, and what they tell us about the potential for uncanniness to be generative in the face of disconnection, unfamiliarity, or surprise.

Submissions might address the following topics:

• The weird and the eerie in lais, fabliaux, memento mori, etc.
• Mystics and unconventional relationships to devotion
• Psychoanalytic theory and medieval texts
• Human and non-human relationships
• Cousins of the uncanny (the Gothic)
• Uncanny medievalisms in film, video games, contemporary literature, etc.

Nonmedievalists, nonacademics and scholars outside the field of English are encouraged to apply. To submit your application, please fiill out the google form here.

Questions may be directed to medieval.study@gmail.com. Abstract Deadline: January 31 2024

Registration Deadline: April 1 2024

Last updated November 15, 2023

This CFP has been viewed 330 times.

Last Call Armitage 2022 (6/17/2022; Providence 8/19-21/2022)

The Armitage Symposium

source: http://necronomicon-providence.com/the-armitage-symposium/

The Fifth quasi-Biennial

Dr. Henry Armitage Memorial Scholarship Symposium

of New Weird Fiction and Lovecraft-Related Research

NecronomiCon Providence convention in Providence, RI

19-21 August, 2022

Location: Omni Hotel, Providence

**ABSTRACT SUBMISSION DEADLINE EXTENDED TO JUNE 17!**

Symposium Chair: Prof. Dennis P. Quinn, Cal Poly Pomona, CA and Editor of Lovecraftian Proceedings (Hippocampus Press)
Symposium Co-Chair: Elena Tchougounova-Paulson

The 2022 CALL FOR PRESENTATION PROPOSALS can be downloaded here: Armitage-Symposium-CFA-2022-2.pdf

**ABSTRACT SUBMISSION DEADLINE EXTENDED TO JUNE 17!**

 

About the Symposium:

The Lovecraft Arts and Sciences Council (the organizer of NecronomiCon Providence) hosts the Armitage Symposium to showcase academic works that explore all aspects weird fiction and art, from pop-culture to literature, including the writings and life of globally renowned weird fiction writer, H.P. Lovecraft. Topics of value include the influence of history, architecture, science, and popular culture on the weird fiction genre, as well as the impact that weird and Lovecraftian fiction has had on culture.

In past years, the Armitage Symposium has aimed to foster explorations of Lovecraft’s elaborate cosmic mythology, and how this mythology was influenced by, and has come to influence, numerous other authors and artists before and since. Additionally, we promote all works that foster a greater, critical, and nuanced understanding weird fiction and art (and related science fiction, fantasy, horror, etc.).

Selected talks will be presented together as part of the Armitage Symposium, a mini-conference within the overall convention framework of NecronomiCon Providence, August 18-21, 2022. Presenters will deliver fifteen to twenty-minute oral presentations summarizing their thesis, and are invited to submit a brief manuscript for possible inclusion in a proceedings publication.

For more information on the Armitage Symposium, or the overall convention and the themes to be explored, please visit our website: necronomicon-providence.com – where we will post updates and details as they develop over the final weeks leading to the convention. In addition to these talks, NecronomiCon Providence will feature numerous traditional panels and presentations given by many of the top names in the global weird renaissance.

The 2022 CALL FOR PRESENTATION PROPOSALS can be downloaded here: Armitage-Symposium-CFA-2022-2.pdf

**ABSTRACT SUBMISSION DEADLINE EXTENDED TO JUNE 17!** 

 

CFP Fifth quasi-Biennial Dr. Henry Armitage Memorial Scholarship Symposium of New Weird Fiction and Lovecraft-Related Research (6/3/22; Providence, RI 8/19-21/22)

The Armitage Symposium 

Source: http://necronomicon-providence.com/the-armitage-symposium/

The Fifth quasi-Biennial

Dr. Henry Armitage Memorial Scholarship Symposium

of New Weird Fiction and Lovecraft-Related Research

NecronomiCon Providence convention in Providence, RI

19-21 August, 2022

Location: Omni Hotel, Providence

Symposium Chair: Prof. Dennis P. Quinn, Cal Poly Pomona, CA and Editor of Lovecraftian Proceedings (Hippocampus Press)
Symposium Co-Chair: Elena Tchougounova-Paulson

The 2022 CALL FOR PRESENTATION PROPOSALS can be downloaded here: Armitage-Symposium-CFA-2022-2.pdf

 
 

About the Symposium:

The Lovecraft Arts and Sciences Council (the organizer of NecronomiCon Providence) hosts the Armitage Symposium to showcase academic works that explore all aspects weird fiction and art, from pop-culture to literature, including the writings and life of globally renowned weird fiction writer, H.P. Lovecraft. Topics of value include the influence of history, architecture, science, and popular culture on the weird fiction genre, as well as the impact that weird and Lovecraftian fiction has had on culture.

In past years, the Armitage Symposium has aimed to foster explorations of Lovecraft’s elaborate cosmic mythology, and how this mythology was influenced by, and has come to influence, numerous other authors and artists before and since. Additionally, we promote all works that foster a greater, critical, and nuanced understanding weird fiction and art (and related science fiction, fantasy, horror, etc.).

Selected talks will be presented together as part of the Armitage Symposium, a mini-conference within the overall convention framework of NecronomiCon Providence, August 18-21, 2022. Presenters will deliver fifteen to twenty-minute oral presentations summarizing their thesis, and are invited to submit a brief manuscript for possible inclusion in a proceedings publication.

For more information on the Armitage Symposium, or the overall convention and the themes to be explored, please visit our website: necronomicon-providence.com – where we will post updates and details as they develop over the final weeks leading to the convention. In addition to these talks, NecronomiCon Providence will feature numerous traditional panels and presentations given by many of the top names in the global weird renaissance.

The 2022 CALL FOR PRESENTATION PROPOSALS can be downloaded here: Armitage-Symposium-CFA-2022-2.pdf

 

NecronomiCon Providence 2021 now 2022

 A brief update on the status of NecronomiCon Providence 2021.

It appears the organizers and conference site have worked out their concerns. Per their website:

NOTE: given the very real dangers posed by the ongoing Covid-19 Pandemic, and in agreement with our local partners, we’ve decided to move the event to 2022 in order to minimize the risks involved while still bringing you the best event experience we can. We look forward to welcoming you all to Providence!

The event is now scheduled for summer 2022.

NecronimiCon Providence 2021 Updates

I just discovered some updates today on the NecronomiCon Providence event scheduled for August 2021.

At present, the convention is still scheduled as a face-to-face event, owing to its contract with the venue hotel, but it is possible that the convention will be postponed to 2022.

In related news, the academic track of NecronomiCon has been cancelled for 2021 due to travel restrictions.

Updated Thursday, 4 March 2020.

 

Supernatural Studies Open Calls (Summer/Fall 2020)

An interestng set of calls from the journal Supernatural Studies.

https://www.supernaturalstudies.com/calls-for-papers

Call for Papers, Spring 2021 Special Issue on Disease

Supernatural Studies invites submissions for a special issue, inspired by the current crisis, on supernatural engagements with disease, broadly conceived. We welcome essays that explore this theme through explicitly monstrous tropes, e.g. zombies, vampires, parasitism, haunting, and other uncanny embodiments of sickness and contagion. We also invite investigations of narratives that deploy the supernatural to engage existing cultural “maladies” that infectious diseases routinely expose and exacerbate: e.g., economic precarity, healthcare inequities, media mis/disinformation, science skepticism and denial, environmental challenges, and experiences of alienation. We encourage submissions that explore oral, written, and/or visual texts across time, place, and genre. To be as relevant as possible, this special issue will be published in Spring 2021; for guaranteed consideration, submissions should be sent by 31 October 2020 (since Halloween is canceled anyway).

Supernatural Studies is a peer-reviewed journal that promotes rigorous yet accessible scholarship in the growing field of representations of the supernatural, the speculative, the uncanny, and the weird. The breadth of “the supernatural” as a category creates the potential for interplay among otherwise disparate individual studies that will ideally produce not only new work but also increased dialogue and new directions of scholarly inquiry.

Submissions should be 5,000 to 8,000 words, including notes but excluding Works Cited, and follow the MLA Handbook, 8th ed. (2016); notes should be indicated by superscript Arabic numerals in text and pasted at the end of the article. International submissions should adhere to the conventions of U.S. English spelling, usage, and punctuation. Manuscripts should contain no identifying information, and each submission will undergo blind peer review by at least two readers. Contributors are responsible for obtaining any necessary permissions and ensuring observance of copyright. Submissions should be emailed to supernaturalstudies@gmail.com as an attached Microsoft Word file.

General Call for Papers

Supernatural Studies is a peer-reviewed journal that promotes rigorous yet accessible scholarship in the growing field of representations of the supernatural, the speculative, the uncanny, and the weird. The breadth of “the supernatural” as a category creates the potential for interplay among otherwise disparate individual studies that will ideally produce not only new work but also increased dialogue and new directions of scholarly inquiry. To that end, the editorial board welcomes submissions employing any theoretical perspective or methodological approach and engaging with any period and representations including but not limited to those in literature, film, television, video games, and other cultural texts and artifacts.

Submissions should be 5,000 to 8,000 words, including notes but excluding Works Cited, and follow the MLA Handbook, 8th ed. (2016); notes should be indicated by superscript Arabic numerals in text and pasted at the end of the article. International submissions should adhere to the conventions of U.S. English spelling, usage, and punctuation. Manuscripts should contain no identifying information, and each submission will undergo blind peer review by at least two readers. Contributors are responsible for obtaining any necessary permissions and ensuring observance of copyright. Submissions should be emailed to supernaturalstudies@gmail.com as an attached Microsoft Word file.

Submissions are accepted on a continuous basis, and those accepted for publication will be placed in the earliest possible issue according to publication schedule and needs.

 

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

This CFP has been viewed 723 times.

NecronomiCon Providence 2019

The website is now open for


NECRONOMICON PROVIDENCE
The International Festival of Weird Fiction, Art, and Academia
August 22-25, 2019

Full details at http://necronomicon-providence.com/welcome/.

Weird Fiction Review 8

Now available from Centipede Press:

Weird Fiction Review #8
http://www.centipedepress.com/anthologies/wfreview8.html

Edited by S.T. Joshi
Artwork gallery by Erol Otus.
Lengthy interview with Patrick McGrath.
History of the small press: Shasta Press by Stefan Dziemianowicz.
Several new essays and stories.
Sewn paperback.
Nearly 400 pages.

pricing: $35, on sale for $19.

 
The Weird Fiction Review is an annual periodical devoted to the study of weird and supernatural fiction. It is edited by S.T. Joshi. This eighth issue contains fiction, poetry, and reviews from leading writers and promising newcomers. This issue features fiction by John Shirley, Flannery O’Connor, Lynne Jamneck, Michael Washburn, and others, and articles by Stefan Dziemianowicz (an illustrated history of Shasta Publishing), Michael Shuman (on horror films and garage and surf music), Adam Groves (on the golden age of speculative erotic fiction), John C. Tibbetts (on John M. Barrie), Forrest J Ackerman (on Robert Bloch), as well as verse and other essays and fiction. The feature of the issue is Chad Hensley’s terrific interview with Erol Otus, the iconic artist that did so much of the Dungeons & Dragons artwork of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The front and back cover, and inside covers, are by artist Grant Griffin. The list price on this item is $35 and it is on sale for $19.

Full contents details available by visiting Centipede Press's page for the book at http://www.centipedepress.com/anthologies/wfreview8.html.

Joshi's Driven to Madness with Fright

I've been drifting in and out of Lovecraft country since the summer collecting books that appear to offer some overviews. Lovecraft and weird fiction scholar S. T. Joshi offers this interesting, self-published collection of his recent essays and reviews. It is a very informative collection with much insight into contemporary weird fiction.


Driven to Madness with Fright: Further Notes on Horror Fiction
Paperback – December 1, 2016
by S. T. Joshi (Author)

For more than 30 years, S. T. Joshi has been a pioneering critic of fantasy, horror, and supernatural fiction. This new collection of his essays and reviews covers the entire range of weird fiction, from Romantic poetry to the work of Ambrose Bierce, Ray Bradbury, and Shirley Jackson. Particularly insightful are Joshi's assessments of such contemporary writers as Ramsey Campbell, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Thomas Ligotti, and Reggie Oliver. Joshi, the leading authority on H. P. Lovecraft, also provides pungent analyses of recent works of Lovecraftian fiction by such figures as W. H. Pugmire and Darrell Schweitzer, as well as incisive reviews of recent works of Lovecraft scholarship. All in all, this book will engage, entertain, and inform all devotees of weird fiction.

For purchase at Amazon.com at https://www.amazon.com/Driven-Madness-Fright-Further-Fiction/dp/154077080X/.

CFP The Weird and the Southern Imaginary (proposals by 11/2/2015)

CFP: The Weird and the Southern Imaginary
https://networks.h-net.org/node/73374/announcements/77005/cfp-weird-and-southern-imaginary

Announcement published by James Rozier on Thursday, August 6, 2015
Type: Call for Papers
Date: November 2, 2015
Location: United States
Subject Fields: American History / Studies, Communication, Composition & Rhetoric, Cultural History / Studies, Ethnic History / Studies

Call for Papers:

The Weird & the Southern Imaginary

General Eds.: Travis Rozier & Bob Hodges



Keynote: The Weird & the Southern Imaginary will introduce the aesthetics and generic conventions of the Weird to cultural studies of the U.S. South and the region’s local, hemispheric, and (inter)national connections. Contributions from literary critics, film and popular culture scholars, philosophers, and critical theorists will consider forms of the Weird in a range of texts (literature, art, film & television, comics, music) from, about, or resonant with conceptions of different South(s).



Description: S. T. Joshi periodizes Haute Weird Fiction from 1880-1940, and China Miéville describes how the paradigm of Haute Weird Fiction, especially in its foremost practitioner H. P. Lovecraft, invokes horror, alterity, and/or awe on a cosmic scale, which seeps into the mundane experiences of cognitively ill-equipped scientific or academic protagonists. The Weird aesthetic, especially pre-World War II, is often inextricable from revanchist horrors of democracy, political revolution, miscegenation, and female or other non-normative sexualities, although Ann and Jeff VanderMeer’s recent Weird compendium stresses the “darkly democratic” aspect of a C20 and C21 Weird tradition that spans nations, genders, genres, and levels of literary status.



Representations of the U.S. South as an irrational or reactionary space draw on what Deborah Barker and Kathryn McKee describe as the southern imaginary, a fluid reservoir of topoi referencing an enduring material history of land appropriation, coercive labor practices, carceral landscapes, racial and commercial mixing, extralegal violence, and insular patriarchies. The Weird & the Southern Imaginary will explore Weird South(s), whether that means national aberrance or cosmic otherness.  For example, the first television season of True Detective melds the conservative politics and religious fervor often equated with the South to vaster hints of conspiratorial and cosmic horror in a postindustrial Louisiana swampscape.



The dark fantasy of the Weird diverges sharply from the usual monstrosities of horror and speculative fictions as well as many modes of southern representation: the gothic, the grotesque, the uncanny, the ghostly or hauntological, or the folkloric, modes with longstanding southern associations and almost as longstanding critical fatigue for Southernisits. The Weird can also bridge Southern Studies and its old associations with recent work in object-oriented ontology, ecotheory, other new materialisms, and nihilist philosophy as well as apocalyptic popular cultural fixations without ceding inquires about the production of southern alterity.



Submission Guidelines: All proposed essays should address the concepts of the Weird and the South, however understood. Essays should be written in English, but can be written about texts read or viewed in other languages. We will also accept work on texts in translation. We are looking for critical essays (5,000-8,000 words). If you are interested in contributing an essay to the collection please send us a 300-500 word abstract by November 2, 2015.



Possible Topics:  (Feel free to combine topics or propose a topic not represented in the list)

• Weird South(s) in U.S. literature
• International Weird Fiction & southern imaginary, subtly connected or not
• Race & the southern imaginary in Weird Fiction
• Political or cultural reaction & Weird South(s)
• Weird carceral practices & the southern imaginary (Franz Kafka “In the Penal Colony”)
• Environmental transformation or degradation & Weird South(s)
• The nonhuman or posthuman in southern literature (Matthew Taylor)
• Dark ecology (Timothy Morton) & southern landscapes, swampscapes, etc.
• Nihilism, extinction, or the recalcitrance of the world (Eugene Thacker) & the South(s)
• C19 South & proto-Weird Fiction
• Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, & H. P. Lovecraft
• The Weird associations of the South & the Antarctic (Poe, Herman Melville, Lovecraft)
• R. H. Barlow in Florida, his Weird Fiction, or his correspondence with Lovecraft
• Robert E. Howard in Texas, his Weird Fiction, or his correspondence with Lovecraft
• Weird Appalachia (Lovecraft, Manly Wade Hopkins’s Silver John stories, Fred Chappell)
• Henry S. Whitehead’s Weird West Indian tales
• Eudora Welty & Weird Fiction (Mitch Frye)
• Weird Fiction, modernist literary strategies, & the South (William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston “Uncle Monday”, Flannery O’Connor)
• The Weird in Latin American Boom fiction (Julio Cortázar, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel García Márquez, Augusto Monterroso), its forbearers (Jorge Luis Borges), & its successors (Junot Díaz, Jamaica Kincaid)
• Contemporary or New (South) Weird (Poppy Z. Brite, Stephen Graham Jones, Caitlín Kiernan, Joe Lansdale, Joyce Carol Oates, Jeff VanderMeer The Southern Reach Trilogy)
• Weird southern comics (Alan Moore et al. Saga of the Swamp Thing, Garth Ennis et al. Preacher)

Contact Info:

Travis Rozier, Ph.D.
Department of English & Linguistics
Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz
jamesrzr138@gmail.com


Bob Hodges, Ph.C.
Kollar Endowed Fellow
Dept. of English, U of Washington
bhodge4@gmail.com


Contact Email:
jamesrzr138@gmail.com