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

 

A Gathering of Horrors, Terrors, and Monstrosities

deadline for submissions: 

June 30, 2025

full name / name of organization: 

Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association

contact email: 

roland_finger@cuesta.edu

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

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

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

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

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

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

Last updated May 30, 2025

CFP Experimental Horror (7/15/2025)

 

Call for Essays: Experimental Horror Edited Volume

deadline for submissions: 

July 15, 2025

full name / name of organization: 

Erica Tortolani, Ph.D.

contact email: 

etort.phd@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/05/24/call-for-essays-experimental-horror-edited-volume

Please direct any general inquiries to Erica Tortolani at etort.phd@gmail.com.  

In Cutting Edge: Art Horror and the Horrific Avant-Garde, Joan Hawkins observes that avant-garde and experimental cinema oftentimes trade “the same images, tropes, and themes that characterize low culture” (3); low culture, in this instance, pertaining to genres like horror. Indeed, many experiments in film in video, like the horror genre, have banked on “uncomfortably visceral reaction(s)” (5), exploiting the physical limits of the body on screen. Moreover, in works like Possibly in Michigan (Condit, 1983), The Scary Movie (Ahwesh, 1993), and The Fourth Watch (Geiser, 2000), artists often utilize visual, aural, and narrative horrific elements (sometimes even referencing earlier horror films altogether) to further interrogate representational strategies in mainstream media and explore themes including bodily agency and autonomy, trauma, and memory. Conversely, the horror genre, in the hands of visionary, transgressive filmmakers, becomes experimental by design, pushing narrative, representational, and spectatorial boundaries in the process. Veronica Dolginko asserts that horror more broadly “can be seen as experimental by nature. Trying to find and craft excellent, full-force scares is a form of experimentation, and the trial and error that follows is really the only way to produce results” (n.p.). Recently, films like The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears (Cattet and Forzani, 2013), The Wolf House (León and Cociña, 2018), Friend of the World (Butler, 2020), Skinamarink (Ball, 2022), and Enys Men (Jenkin, 2022) have deliberately broken from aesthetic and narrative convention, expanding the boundaries of the genre in the process.  The experimental mode and horror genre, while widely studied as two separate entities, therefore have a significant, symbiotic relationship.

The proposed volume welcomes essays that consider any of the following topics:

1) Experimental films, videos, and/or interactive/multimedia installations that incorporate visual, aural, and/or narrative elements that relate to the horror genre;

2) Experimental films, videos, and/or interactive/multimedia installations that elicit adverse affective responses or uncomfortable visceral reactions, in the same manner as films belonging to the horror genre;

3) Feature-length (either released theatrically or via streaming video on demand) horror films that challenge linear narrative, points of identification, and/or generic tropes

Contributors are encouraged to consider the function and value of merging experimental film, video, and other visual media with the horror genre. How can we best operationalize experimental or avant-garde horror? For what purpose do filmmakers utilize horrific elements in their experimental works? How and with what impact do they manipulate horror-specific generic conventions? Why construct non-conventional horror films? What future lies ahead for experimental horror filmmaking?

Likewise, contributors may submit essays focusing on topics spanning temporal and geographic boundaries, with specific preference given to those writing about understudied and overlooked media texts. Essays on those films and other media crafted by BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and international artists (outside the US/Hollywood) are also strongly preferred.

Please submit essay abstracts (not exceeding 300 words in length) as well as a brief bio (not exceeding 150 words in length) to etort.phd@gmail.com no later than Tuesday, July 15 at 5:00 PM EST.

*** 

Some suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

Blood of the Beasts (Franju, 1949)

Dementia (VeSota, 1955)

Ursula (Williams, 1962)

Invocation of My Demon Brother (Anger, 1969); or, any works by Kenneth Anger

The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes (Brakhage, 1971)

The Third Part of the Night (Zulawski, 1971)  

Ganja & Hess (Gunn, 1973)

Tape #1 1974 (Circa) (Maughan, 1974); or, any works by Cynthia Maughan

The Virgin Sacrifice (Lawrence [as J.X. Williams], 1974)

House (Obayashi, 1977)

Eraserhead (Lynch, 1977)

Altered States (Russell, 1980)

Secret Horror (Smith, 1980)

Beneath the Skin (Condit, 1981)

Grand Mal (Ourlser, 1981)

Cherie, mir ist schlecht (Kiss, 1983)

Possibly in Michigan (Condit, 1983)

Ghost (Takashi, 1984); or, any works by Takashi Ito

Where Evil Dwells (Turner and Wojnarowicz, 1985)

Begotten (Merhige, 1989)

Secrets of the Shadow World (Kuchar, 1988-99); or, any works by George Kuchar

Santa Sangre (Jodorowsky, 1989)

Tetsuo: The Iron Man (Shin’ya, 1989)

The Scary Movie (Ahwesh, 1993)

His Master’s Voice (Gibbons, 1994); or, any works by Joe Gibbons

Don’t – Der Österreichfilm (Arnold, 1996)

Tuning the Sleeping Machine (Sherman, 1996)

Within Heaven and Hell (Cantor, 1996)

Nocturne (Ahwesh, 1998)

The Amateurist (July, 1998)

Ice from the Sun (Stanze, 1999)

The Fourth Watch (Geiser, 2000)

Hollywood Inferno (Episode 1) (Parnes, 2001-03)

Evokation of My Demon Sister (Cantor, 2002)

Hans und Grete (de Beer, 2002); or, any works by Sue de Beer

Bataille (Provost, 2003)

Ani(fe)mal(e) (Scheurwater, 2005); or, any works by Hester Scheurwater

Monster Movie (Takeshi, 2005); or, any works by Takeshi Murata

Amer (Cattet and Forzani, 2009); or, any works by Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani

Antichrist (von Trier, 2009)

Long Live the New Flesh (Provost, 2009)

Ghost Algebra (Geiser, 2010)

Disease of Manifestation (Tzu-An, 2011) 

Berberian Sound Studio (Strickland, 2012)

A Dream of Paper Flowers (Jarman, 2015)

My House Walk-Through (PiroPito, 2016)

Hauntology Film Archives (Colectivo Los Ingrávidos, 2018-22)

The Wolf House (León and Cociña, 2018); or, any works by Cristobal León and Joaquin Cociña

Atlantics (Diop, 2019)

Friend of the World (Butler, 2020)

Enys Men (Jenkin, 2022)

Skinamarink (Ball, 2022)

Stone Turtle (Woo, 2022)

The Great Curdling (Thomas, 2022); or, any works by Jennet Thomas

Last updated May 28, 2025

CFP American Nightmares II (Return to Salem): The Biennial Symposium of the Society for the Study of the American Gothic (10/1/2025; Salem, MA 3/19-21/2026)

American Nightmares II (Return to Salem): The Biennial Symposium of the Society for the Study of the American Gothic

deadline for submissions: 

October 1, 2025

full name / name of organization: 

Society for the Study of the American Gothic

contact email: 

jschell5@alaska.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/05/23/american-nightmares-ii-return-to-salem-the-biennial-symposium-of-the-society-for-the

 Call For Proposals 

AMERICAN NIGHTMARES II: RETURN TO SALEMTHE BIENNIAL SYMPOSIUM OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF THE AMERICAN GOTHIC 

March 19th – 21st, 2026

Salem, Massachusetts 

Keynote Speaker: Victor Lavalle

Keynote Speaker: Siân Silyn Roberts 

Conference co-director: Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, Central Michigan University

Conference co-director: Jennifer Schell, University of Alaska Fairbanks

With the kind support of the American Literature Association  Please join the Society for the Study of the American Gothic for our second biennial symposium! For this intimate event, we will be returning to the site of our first symposium, the iconic and charming Hawthorne Hotel in the heart of Salem, Massachusetts  (a hotel ranked as among the most haunted hotels in America). Who doesn’t like a sequel! Proposals are welcome for individual papers, 3- or 4-person paper sessions, and 5-person roundtable sessions on any aspect of the American Gothic, including literature, film, television, gaming, music, podcasts, and new media. Proposals on topics related to the conference theme (returns, sequels, and remakes) are particularly welcome. So are proposals on keynote speaker Victor LaValle. 

• Proposals for individual papers should be 200 words and include an abbreviated CV indicating academic affiliation and relevant publications, presentations, teaching, and/or research related to the topic of the presentation.

• Proposals for 3- or 4-person paper sessions should include abstracts and abbreviated CVs for each participant.

• Proposals for 5-person roundtables should explain the focus of the roundtable, identify the contribution of each participant, and provide abbreviated CVs for all involved.

• Proposals and questions may be directed to the conference co-directors, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock (Jeffrey.Weinstock@cmich.edu) and Jennifer Schell (jschell5@alaska.edu). Please note that due to space constraints, this will be a relatively small event and audio-visual support will be limited

• THE DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS is October 1st, 2025.

Additional information about the Symposium and registration will be available on the SSAG website at http://www.americangothicsociety.com.  Interested parties are invited to join the SSAG facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/groups/societyforthestudyoftheamericangothic 

 

Last updated May 28, 2025

CFP Mothers, Mothering, and Motherhood in the King Universe (8/31/2025)

Mothers, Mothering, and Motherhood in the King Universe

deadline for submissions: 

August 31, 2025

full name / name of organization: 

Dr Conner McAleese

contact email: 

cmcaleese@dundee.ac.uk

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/05/24/mothers-mothering-and-motherhood-in-the-king-universe

Dr Conner McAleese invites proposals on representations of motherhood in any of Stephen King’s fiction.

Over the past fifty years, King’s works have been adapted, discussed, academically investigated, and, of course, read to an extent that few authors have ever been before. However, one aspect of King’s writing has yet to be given scholastic attention – the mothers of Stephen King’s fiction.

From Margaret White’s religious fanaticism in Carrie (1974) and Piper Laurie’s terrifying portrayal of the same character in Brian de Palma’s 1976 adaptation of King’s debut novel, King has obsessively and consistently employed mothers, and the tropes of motherhood, within his novels and short stories. Rachel Creed’s obsessive fear of death, and its realisation in her young son, Gage, is indicative of how generational trauma plays a significant role in Pet Sematary (1983) and in King’s wider representations of motherhood. Donna Trenton’s tragic defence of son, Tad, in Cujo (1981) demonstrates how a mother’s guilt of past betrayals can become horrific karmic punishments, at least to a mother’s mind. Wendy Torrance, and her bond with her son, Danny Torrance, in King’s The Shining (1977) and Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of the same name in 1980, have become synonymous with how King balances gender, motherhood, and the role of wife as a source of horror.

However, King’s writings on mothers and motherhood is not limited to the 20th century. New takes on mothers and mothering abound in his 21st century works. Holly Gibney’s prominence in King’s recent writings, shows King’s understanding of how the role of ‘mother’ has changed in the past twenty years. Mrs Sigsby and Maureen Alvorson of King’s The Institute (2019), too, demonstrate new and competing paradigms in which King’s mothers transcend the binary of being either wholly good or wholly evil (a common criticism of King’s writing), as more dynamic and competing representations of motherhood are shown in his works (patriotism, and mental illness in the case of Sigsby and Alvorson respectively).

This collection seeks to break new ground in our understanding of King’s prolific contributions to literature. In focussing on mothers, motherhood, and the desire to ‘mother’, this collection aims to demonstrate the compelling and deliberate use of gendered ‘nurturing’ tropes within King’s works and how their reinforcement and subversion informs his horror. Suggested topics include, but are in no way limited to:

-        Motherhood and Trauma

-        Creating horror from the need to ‘mother’ (e.g. Annie Wilkes in Misery)

-        Familial relationships/dynamics in King’s fiction (with mothers being included)

-        Generational Trauma and its effects on the mothers in King’s works (e.g. Rachel Creed’s fear of death in Pet Sematary)

-        Depictions of mothers in King’s adapted works

-        Religion and its influence on Mothering Strategies (e.g. Margaret White in Carrie and Mother Abigail in The Stand)

-        Pregnancy in King’s Fiction

-        The rejection of motherhood in King’s fiction (e.g. Holly Gibney)

-        Mental Illness in the mothers of Stephen King

-        Navigating gender through motherhood (e.g. Wendy Torrance in The Shining)

-        The recuperative function of motherhood

-        Resilience and Motherhood (e.g. Annemarie in Salem’s Lot)

-        Queer Coding mothers in King’s fiction

-        Motherhood, fear and loss (e.g. Donna Trenton in Cujo)

-        Defending children in King’s fiction (e.g. the Loser’s Club in IT)

-        Villainy and the ‘doubly deviant’ female

-        Motherhood and control (e.g. Sonia Kaspbrak from IT)

-        Incest, Sexuality and Motherhood (e.g. Deborah Hartsfield in Mr Mercedes)

-        Any writing on the mothers in Stephen King’s Fiction

 

Chapters should be between 2,500 and 4,500 words long (including endnotes and bibliography) and this proposal will be initially submitted to the Genre Fiction and Film Companions at Peter Lang (Oxford).

Please send a proposal of 250 words, together with a brief biography to Conner McAleese via cmcaleese@dundee.ac.uk by the 31st of August, 2025. All decisions will be communicated no later than the 20th of September, 2025. 

Full chapters will be due in mid-2026.

If you have any questions, no matter how informal, please do not hesitate to communicate those as early as possible.

 

About the Editor

Dr Conner McAleese is an early career researcher, currently working at the University of Dundee. He has published works on American Folk Horror, 21st Century American Horror Literature, and 21st Century Horror films. His Ph. D thesis deals with issues of American identity, trauma, and anxiety in horror literature written after 9/11 and the creation of the Homeland Security and PATRIOT Acts.

Last updated May 28, 2025

CFP Architectures of the Apocalypse (6/6/2025; Boston 2/26-28/2026)

 

Architectures of the Apocalypse

deadline for submissions: 

June 6, 2025

full name / name of organization: 

Irit Kleiman, Boston University

contact email: 

kleiman@bu.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/05/22/architectures-of-the-apocalypse

The word apocalypse contains a paradox. In common usage, it means, “a disaster resulting in drastic, irreversible damage to human society or the environment, esp. on a global scale; a cataclysm” (OED); but the word’s roots come from the ancient Greek for “unveiling." 

Apocalypse contains both end and beginning, annihilation and exaltation. The apocalyptic promises death and destruction, yes, but also, knowledge and transformation.  The apocalypse is above all a threshold. Thus, as an object of inquiry, apocalypse calls for the examination of perspective and perception, as much as of semiotics and the historical. 

Many readers’ associations with the word apocalypse will be to the New Testament Book of Revelation. Others might think first of more recent (post-1945) literary and cinematic imaginings of the dystopian. For others still, plagues, the fall of empires, and climate emergencies will come to the fore. The character of these apocalyptic cataclysms and revelations varies not only according to the specificities of history, religion and culture; epoch or technology; genre or medium; but also in the nature of the destruction and revelations promised. 

It is clear that we are living through yet another historical moment in which the concept of apocalypse has become both pressing and omnipresent.  How can we take the word apocalypse itself as an invitation to transcend the obvious, and access new knowledge and new ways of knowing? Do human beings need some kind of absolute limit, an absolute that makes contingent structures possible? Nearly every religion’s imagining of time's shape contains some form of projected ending. Meanwhile, contemporary astrophysics delivers its own version of the ends and beginnings of the cosmos, on equally grand scale. One question that animates this proposal is whether or how the polyvalent and multifaceted notion of apocalypse operates as a formal, necessary thought structure; that is, as a framework necessary to the human ability to think about time, knowledge, or historicity. 

This multi-day conference/workshop will bring together scholars and practitioners from a range of disciplines in order to examine the notion of “apocalypse,” with a view to the publication of their papers in a dedicated forthcoming issue of the journal Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques. Thematic strands might include:

 

• Ecology, climate, and the Anthropocene in historical perspective
• Mysticism and eschatology in world religions, including Messianic movements
• Scale and temporalities, both nano- and cosmic-, in dialogue with the natural sciences
• Human bodies as sites of historical inscription, both in archaeological and speculative contexts 
• Representations of apocalypse in the visual arts and in music 
• Narrative perspectives: fictions, genres, prophetic voices, survivor tales
• Medicine, technology, and other sometimes-secular renderings of human sin 
• Hopes and disappointments, planned-for endings that did not arrive
• Historical frames: cataclysm and cultural extinction as both fact and recurring trope

 

Please submit proposals of 350-500 words by May 31, 2025 (preferred), using this Google form: https://forms.gle/8LrkePDVcmCUJFro6;

responses by June 15, 2025. 

 

Workshop to be held in-person in Boston, USA, 26-28 February 2026, pending budgetary and other considerations. “Plan B” is a hybrid option. 

 

Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques is a peer-reviewed, bilingual English/French journal. Authors may write in either language. Texts suitable for peer-review will be due during the Spring of 2026, in view of publication in early 2027.

Last updated May 28, 2025

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 Gothic in Bengal: Literature and Culture (6/10/2025)

 

Call for Papers for an Edited Volume - Gothic in Bengal: Literature and Culture

deadline for submissions: 

June 10, 2025

full name / name of organization: 

DoctorsBhattacharya

contact email: 

bookchapters89@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/05/20/call-for-papers-for-an-edited-volume-gothic-in-bengal-literature-and-culture

Call for Papers for an Edited Volume

Gothic in Bengal: Literature and Culture

The Gothic has long been recognised as a potent mode of cultural expression, historically rooted in the anxieties, fears, and moral uncertainties of Western Europe. From its 18th-century origins in British literature, the Gothic evolved to encompass a wide range of tropes—decay, the supernatural, the haunted past, and the psychological uncanny—becoming a tool for interrogating power, identity, and transgression. While much scholarship has focused on the European and American Gothic, there is a growing need to investigate its global resonances, particularly its entanglements with postcolonial histories and vernacular traditions.

This call invites scholarly contributions for a volume/issue exploring the Gothic in Bengal, with a focus on literature, visual culture, folklore, performance, and material history. Bengal—both as a region and as a cultural-linguistic space—offers a fertile ground for rethinking the Gothic through its own unique colonial, political, and social experiences. From the spectral presences in the stories of Rabindranath Tagore and Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay to the eerie films of Satyajit Ray and the ghostly tales of bhuter golpo, Bengal's cultural production abounds with Gothic elements that merit deeper theoretical engagement.

The proposed collection seeks to ask:

• How has the Gothic been appropriated, transformed, or hybridized in Bengali literary and cultural forms?
• What are the socio-political and historical conditions—colonialism, nationalism, Partition, urbanisation, environmental decay—that inform Gothic aesthetics in Bengal?
• In what ways do local belief systems, folklore, and vernacular traditions inflect the Gothic with regionally specific meanings?
• Can we speak of a "Bengali Gothic" or "vernacular Gothic" that challenges or reorients Anglophone theoretical paradigms?

We welcome submissions on themes and topics including, but not limited to, the following:

• The supernatural and the uncanny in Bengali short stories and novels
• Colonial hauntings and postcolonial trauma
• Gothic spaces: ruins, forests, old mansions, and urban decay
• Ghosts, spirits, and possession in Bengali folklore and religious practices
• Gender, sexuality, and repression in Bengali Gothic narratives
• The Gothic in Bengali cinema and television (e.g., Satyajit Ray, Rituparno Ghosh, contemporary horror)
• Partition, memory, and spectrality
• Translation and transnational flows of the Gothic
• Eco-Gothic and environmental anxieties in Bengal
• Children’s literature and the Gothic imagination

We welcome original essays, case studies, archival explorations, and theoretical interventions that engage critically with these and related questions. Contributions may draw from both Anglophone and vernacular sources, and interdisciplinary approaches are encouraged.

Submission Guidelines:

• Abstract: 250-300 words along with 4-5 keywords outlining the proposed paper
• Bionote: 100 words (name, affiliation, contact details, and brief research interests)
• Deadline for Abstracts: 10th June, 2025.
• Notification of Acceptance: 12th June, 2025.
• Full Paper Submission: 5th July, 2025.

The full paper must not exceed 2,500-4,000 words.
Please send abstracts and bios to bookchapters89@gmail.com.

For further enquiries, please feel free to reach out at (+91) 7980150229.

Last updated May 28, 2025

CFP Dark Tourism in Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Contexts (10/1/2025 Special Issue of From the European South)

 

CFP From the European South, 19, Fall 2026 Special Issue: Dark Tourism in Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Contexts: Topographies of Suffering, Narrative Constructions and the Consumption of Place(s)

deadline for submissions: 

October 1, 2025

full name / name of organization: 

From the European South journal

contact email: 

marilena.parlati@unipd.it

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/02/22/cfp-from-the-european-south-19-fall-2026-special-issue-dark-tourism-in-colonial

CFP From the European South, 19, Fall 2026

Special Issue: Dark Tourism in Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Contexts: Topographies of Suffering, Narrative Constructions and the Consumption of Place(s) 

Guest Editors: Eleonora Federici (University of Ferrara) and Marilena Parlati (University of Padova)

 From the European South invites submissions for a special issue dedicated to exploring dark tourism in colonial, postcolonial and decolonial contexts, with a particular focus on the role literature, language, museum culture and storytelling in general may have in representing, but also cordoning off, global topographies of suffering, such as sites of catastrophes, genocide, environmental change and neocolonial exploitation. The editors of this issue aim to critically examine the complex relationships between dark tourism and colonial legacies, postcolonial realities and imagined communities, and also the possibilities entailed by decolonization processes. We specifically seek contributions that analyze how dark tourism sites are experienced, consumed and represented, especially in relation to the Global South.

With reference to publications about dark tourism (Lennon and Foley, Dark Tourism the Attraction of Death and Disaster 2000; Sion, Death Tourism Disaster as Recreational Landscape 2014), we wish to analyse how sites associated with death and disaster (assassination, slavery, genocide, war, tragic events) become tourist attractions. Linguistic, visual and multimodal elements help to create a representation of these sites as places of memory, education, but also, quite controversially, leisure.
We are also interested in the ways in which the consumption of ‘shadow zones’ shapes these processes, both in the present and in a future-oriented perspective. We are aware that no singling out of ‘one’ memory is less than intensely debatable, since any past idea about national memory as cohesive and intrinsic has luckily often - although not everywhere - been dismantled. Thus, we would also welcome papers that help usher in discussions on the risk that memory sites (dark, in particular) may serve to reinforce overpowering ‘invented traditions’ and monolingual master narratives (see Derrida, The Monolingualism of the Other 1998).

We suggest a few potential areas of focus which include, but are not limited to:
●    The influence of literature on the experience, interpretation and discursive representation of dark tourism sites
●    The impact of colonial and postcolonial literatures on dark tourism site representation and vice versa
●    The role of fiction and non-fiction in shaping visitor expectations and experiences
●    Written narratives, on-site storytelling, multi-format (including digital) narratives in dark tourism
●    Digital consumption of dark tourism places: virtual tours and social media representations
●    Linguistic and multimodal strategies in tourism texts (on site texts; leaflets, brochures, websites, blogs, social media)
●    The role of art and tourism discourse in commemorating and interpreting sites of trauma, also in relation to reconciliation processes
●    Resistance, resurgence and/or reconciliation in dark tourism sites: mapping topographies of suffering in colonial and postcolonial contexts
●    Tourism and postcolonial memory: the commodification of traumatic pasts, and the role of dark tourism in (postcolonial) nation-building and place branding
●    Indigenous tourism and dark sites: negotiating consumption, sacredness, and resistance
●    Shadow zones: Conflicting narratives and dissonant memories in colonial, postcolonial, decolonial dark tourism sites
●    ‘Authenticity’ and staged experiences in colonial/postcolonial/neocolonial dark tourism sites
●    Intergenerational transmission of guilt, shame, and responsibility through dark tourism
●    Dissonant memories: managing, re-presenting, revisiting conflicting historical narratives
●    Indigenous cosmologies and their integration in (or exclusion from) dark tourism narratives

We welcome contributions from various disciplines, including but not limited to: anthropology, cultural studies, gender studies, geography, history, literary studies, media studies, museum and heritage studies, philosophy, political science, postcolonial studies, religious studies, sociolinguistics, sociology, translation studies, tourism studies, urban planning.

Please submit your abstract (500 words) and a brief bionote by Wednesday 1 October 2025 to both Eleonora Federici (eleonora.federici@unife.it) and Marilena Parlati (marilena.parlati@unipd.it).
Notification of acceptance will be communicated by Monday 1 December 2025, with completed papers due 1 March 2026.
FES 19 will be published in Fall 2026.

Reading List/Suggestions

Lennon, J. J., M. Foley, Dark Tourism: the Attraction of Death and Disaster, New York, Continuum, 2000
Bauman, Z., Consuming Life, London, Polity, 2007
Binik, O., The Fascination with Violence in Contemporary Society, London, Palgrave, 2020
Carrigan, A., Dark Tourism and Postcolonial Studies: Critical Intersections, Postcolonial Studies, vol. 17, 3, pp. 236-250
Dann G., The Language of Tourism. A Sociolinguistic Perspective, Wallingford, CAB International, 1996
Derrida, J., The Monolingualism of the Other, or, The Prosthesis of Origin (Cultural Memory in the Present), Stanford, Stanford UP, 1998
Hall, S. (ed.), Cultural Representation and Signifying Practices, London, Sage, 1997
Hobsbawm, E., T. Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge UP, 2012
Nora, P., Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire, Representations, Vol. 26, Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory (Spring 1989), pp. 7-24
Sion, B., ed., Death Tourism Disaster Sites as Recreational Landscape, London, Seagull, 2014
Stone, P. R., R. Hartmann, A. V. Seaton, R. Sharpley (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Dark Tourism Studies, London, Palgrave, 2018
Sturken, M., Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch, and Consumerism from Oklahoma City to Ground Zero, Durham, Duke UP, 2007
Urry, J., J. Larsen (eds), The Tourist Gaze 3.0, London, Sage, 2011
White L., E. Frew (eds), Dark Tourism and Place Identity, London, Routledge, 2013

 

PLEASE NOTE
From the European South considers all proposals on condition that they are
●    your own original work, and does not duplicate any other previously published work, including your own previously published work;
●    follow the journal’s “Author’s Guidelines” closely[https://www.fesjournal.eu/author-guidelines/];•not a translation (IT or EN) of an already published text;
●    have been submitted only to FES; it is not under consideration for peer review or accepted for publication or in press or published elsewhere;
●    contain nothing that is abusive, fraudulent, or illegal.
            
                    
                                   

Last updated May 26, 2025

CFP Blood and Bile: Perspectives from the humanities, art and gaming culture on Blasphemous (7/16/2025)

 

CFP Blood and Bile: Perspectives from the humanities, art and gaming culture on Blasphemous

deadline for submissions: 

July 16, 2025

full name / name of organization: 

Jonas Müller-Laackman; Victoria Mummelthei / c:hum

contact email: 

victoria.mummelthei@fu-berlin.de

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/05/19/cfp-blood-and-bile-perspectives-from-the-humanities-art-and-gaming-culture-on

In the fictional world of ‘Cvstodia’, a nameless ‘penitent’ traverses a world in which the ‘miracle’ - a divine entity - is worshipped through physical torment and suffering in a gloomy body horror style. In doing so, ‘Blasphemous’ transforms the established conventions of the ‘souls-like’ genre: the difficulty typical of the genre and the cyclical approach to failure are theologically charged. The progress made by defeating boss enemies is enhanced by sacred weapons and rituals, while the level design is recontextualised as a spiritual pilgrimage. These elements are embedded in an elaborate ecclesiastical infrastructure and open up multiple levels of analysis, e.g:

    • Theological: Guilt, atonement and redemption as a cyclical game system
    • Cultural-historical: appropriation of Andalusian religiosity
    • Aesthetic: Transformation of Christian iconography into pixel art
    • Narrative: Hagiographic narrative traditions as a game world
    • Ludic: Integration of religious practices in game mechanics
    • Psychological: Religious guilt induction as a game experience

With our planned diamon open access collective volume, we not only want to explore these levels of analysis, but also challenge the academic publishing tradition itself. The aim is not to collect isolated individual analyses, but to develop a conversation about the cultural significance and transformative power of games using the example of the Blasphemous games.

Instead of a collection of classic long papers, we would like to try out new approaches with you and take so-called ‘interdisciplinarity’ to the extreme. This call explicitly addresses interested parties from all academic disciplines (whether institutional or independent), from the gaming industry and gaming culture as well as creative professionals. If in doubt, please get in touch with your ideas and suggestions.

Conditions for participation in the anthology

    • Willingness to work collaboratively and to transcend academic publishing conventions
    • Willingness to work with and on unconventional contributions

Possible formats (summarised length approx. 4500 words, can be discussed)

    • Thematic tandems (joint long paper)
    • Annotated analyses (analysis and additional commentary by another person) 
    • Documented discussions (for AV: transcription is printed)
    • Thesis-answer (thesis is formulated, justified and answered by another person)
    • Discussion of video essays
    • Video essays (transcription/script is printed)
    • Performances/artistic discussion (scripts, concept, concept sketches, etc. are printed)
    • Long paper (if absolutely necessary, supplemented by a short answer)
    • Other (feel free to be creative)

Please send your proposals (German or English) to jonas.mueller-laackman@sub.uni-hamburg.de AND victoria.mummelthei@fu-berlin.de by July 16, 2025.

Tentative schedule

July 16, 2025: Deadline for the submission of proposals or expressions of interest (max. 150 words) and short self-introduction (max. 4 sentences, no CV) in a PDF. All interested parties will receive read-only access to all submitted proposals and ideas.
July 21, 2025, 10:00 CEST: Meeting (online) to consolidate, find and assign topics.
August 18, 2025: Deadline for abstracts (max. 1 page). All contributors will again have access to the abstracts.
September 15, 2025: Deadline review phase abstracts
October 6, 2025, 10:00 CEST: Meeting (online) to present the topics
January 31, 2026: Deadline writing phase
March 15, 2026: Deadline review phase Contributions. These reviews and responses will appear in the anthology

Planned publication: Q3-2026

Please note that participation in the anthology requires participation in the online sessions.

Publisher: Berlin Universities Publishing
Editors: Jonas Müller-Laackman (Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg) ; Victoria Mummelthei (Freie Universität Berlin)

Also see the record here: Müller-Laackman, J., & Mummelthei, V. (2025). [Call for Participation] Blut und Galle: Perspektiven aus Wissenschaft, Kunst und Gaming-Kultur auf die Blasphemous-Spiele. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15462758

Last updated May 26, 2025

CFP UPDATE “A Day”: 2nd Annual Goth Music and Subculture Conference (7/11/2025; online 4/16/2025)

DEADLINE EXTENDED: “A Day”: 2nd Annual Goth Music and Subculture Conference

deadline for submissions: 

July 11, 2025

full name / name of organization: 

Noah Gallego, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

contact email: 

noahrgallego@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/02/01/deadline-extended-%E2%80%9Ca-day%E2%80%9D-2nd-annual-goth-music-and-subculture-conference

“A Day”: 2nd Annual Goth Music and Subculture Conference

 

NEW Deadline: July 11, 2025 

Conference Date: August 16, 2025 

Format: Online (via Zoom, Pacific)

Abstract: 150 words + 100 word biographical statement + Time Zone

Submit to: Noah Gallego, California State Polytechnic University @ noahrgallego@gmail.com 

Contact: Noah Gallego @noahrgallego@gmail.com

 

The Goth Music and Subculture Conference is coming back from the grave for another round of critical discussion! Due to the success of the inaugural conference last August, this sophomore installment will continue to critically engage the music and other artifacts from the goth music genre and subculture. 

Last year we commemorated the 45th anniversary of the release of the definitive goth single, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” by the ur-goth band, Bauhaus, as well as the 68th death-day of the Count himself. This year, in 2025, we will commemorate two anniversaries: the 40th anniversary of the release of seminal Dutch darkwave Clan of Xymox’s self-titled debut album (1985) as well as the release of the Northern English goth industrial group The Sisters of Mercy’s debut album, First and Last and Always (1985). 

1985 was a pivotal year in the goth subculture as both of these bands opened new doors to goth music production, with Xymox and the Sisters becoming pioneers in the darkwave and industrial subgenres, respectively. While the primary topics of inquiry for this conference are COX and TSOM, interested parties are welcome to explore other bands and discographies; they are especially encouraged to explore non-canonical as well as contemporary acts. 

Below is a list that is illustrative but certainly not exhaustive of topics that prospective candidates are encouraged to explore:

 

Criticism: 

• Gender, sexuality, queerness
• Disability 
• Monstrosity and Abjection
• Class 
• Race
• Postcolonialism, Decoloniality, (Neo-)Orientalism
• Religion, spirituality, the occult, theology 
• Ecocriticism 
• Nonhuman/Transhuman/Posthuman (Animals, cyborgs, A.I.)
• Feminism 
• Trauma and psychoanalysis 
• Rhetoric  
• Memory, hauntology, and the archive

 

Intersections:

• Goth and literary influences 
• Goth and popular culture (film, television, comics, video games, etc.)
• Goth and/as performance (theatre, drag)
• Goth and Internet culture 
• Goth and fashion 
• Goth and festival culture (concerts, goth nites, graves, dance)
• Goth and musicology
• Goth outside of the West 

 

Please send abstracts of150 words to Noah Gallego @ noahrgallego@gmail.com, along with a short biographical statement (100 words) and time zone in order to best approximate presentation times for speakers. B.N. If certain obligations require you to be slated at a specific time that day, please also include those suggested times in your submission so you may be placed appropriately.

There are no pre-formed panels, but if you would like to submit a proposal for a special topics session, please do! A minimum of 2 papers would be required. Otherwise, you will be placed in a panel at the discretion of the organizer on the basis of theme and cohesion. 

Candidates may expect a notification of acceptance, acceptance with revision, or rejection up to a week following the deadline. Presenters should aim to create papers/presentations of approximately 10-15 minutes in length.

The conference will be held on the 69th death-day of The Count on August 16, 2025. The symposium will be free and held online over Zoom. The estimated time slot is 9:00 am - 5:00 pm Pacific. 

*NOTE ABOUT PUBLISHING PAPERS: There are currently no plans to publish the accepted papers. However, depending on the success of the symposium, I am certainly open to the possibility of (co-)editing a collection or special issue based on the papers presented. If you would like to collaborate on this project, please let me know!

**NOTE ABOUT AUDIO: Because Zoom can sometimes compromise the efficacy of audio, we recommend to refrain from including live play from your presentations. We understand this may sound counterintuitive for a conference primarily about music but because we are working in a virtual environment where things are certain to go awry, we want to preemptively minimize any technical difficulties that may arise. You are welcome to include links to playlists of the tracks or artist(s) you will be discussing, however! We apologize for the inconvenience, but we appreciate your understanding. 

Last updated May 22, 2025