Dracula Panel Update

I am pleased to report that our session “Bram Stoker’s Dracula: Contexts and Afterlives” has been accepted for inclusion at “Beyond the Pale: Alienation, Sites of Resistance, and Modern Ireland”: The 2014 Meeting of the New England Region of the American Conference for Irish Studies to be held at Wheaton College in Norton, MA from 21-22 November 2014.

Papers include the following:

Bram Stoker’s Dracula: Contexts and Afterlives
Sponsored by The Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Legend Area of the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association (NEPCA)
Organizer/Presider: Michael A. Torregrossa, Independent Scholar

“Using Dracula to Explore 19th-Century Reactions to Medical Theories from the Preceding Century”
Nicole Salomone, Independent Scholar

“My Revenge is Just Begun—The Evolution of Superstition and Science from Stoker’s Dracula to NBC’s Primetime Series Dracula”
Marijana Stojkovic, East Tennessee State University

“Re-fashioning Dracula: Psychic Vampires in Postwar American Culture”
Kristin Bidoshi, Union College

“A Transylvanian Count in Camelot? Investigating the Draculas of the Modern Matter of Britain”
Michael A. Torregrossa, Independent Scholar

Supernatural in Literature and Film Conference 2015 (8/31/14; Macau 3/26-28/15)

Almost missed this (it looks to be recorded incorrectly in the CFP database):

The Supernatural in Literature and Film
Location: Macau
Conference Date: 2014-03-26 (Archive)
Date Submitted: 2014-01-23
Announcement ID: 210698
https://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=210698

'The Supernatural in Literature and Film' is an international academic conference that explores the role of the supernatural in literature and film throughout history.

Deadline for Abstracts: 30 August 2014 (see cfp)

Although tales of the supernatural are as old as literature itself, they have never fallen completely out of fashion but have instead kept pace with the times. Whereas the hero of the Medieval Beowulf poem vanquished beasts from beyond Anglo-Saxon civilisation and the knights in Spenser’s Early Modern Faerie Queen fought in an allegorical Holy War, the supernatural continues to shed light on its societal context in today’s literature and film. For instance, changing cultural and scientific trends have caused Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) to mean something different from the diverse Translyvanian vampires of Murnau (1922), Universal Studios (1931), Hammer Films (1958-74), Polanski (1967), Coppola (1992), Brooks (1995), Argento (2012), and so on.

Yet the literary and cinematic supernatural cannot merely be regarded as an artistic technique for coping with human aspirations and fears; it also relates to genuine historical or contemporary religious and folk beliefs. Relative to their fictional reflections, such real-world beliefs may serve entirely different purposes—or indeed, no purposes at all.

From friendly ghosts to vengeful spirits, from dainty fairies to Lovecraftian horrors, from magic dragons to atomic monsters, the literary and cinematic supernatural has had an enduring influence on how we live our lives.

'The Supernatural in Literature and Film' will take place in the tropical city-state of Macau, a special administrative region of China, on 26-28 March 2015.

The conference will feature presentations by academics and practitioners. It will also be possible to hear talks from the conference 'Vernacular Religion, Folk Belief, and Traditions of the Supernatural' (http://www.islanddynamics.org/folkloreconference-2015.html). On 28 March, delegates can participate in a post-conference tour of beautiful Lantau Island (Hong Kong), site of Tai O fishing village and the world’s largest seated bronze Buddha.

Adam Grydehøj
Island Dynamics
Copenhagen, Denmark
Tel.: +45 53401982
Email: agrydehoj@islanddynamics.org
Visit the website at http://www.islanddynamics.org/supernaturalconference-2015.html

Dracula Panel Again (Please Respond ASAP)

Still looking for panelists:

I'm trying to organize a panel on Bram Stoker's Dracula (including its contexts, paratexts, and afterlives) for the 2014 New England Regional Meeting of the American Conference for Irish Studies. The conference meets from 21-22 November 2014 at Wheaton College. Further details at http://acisweb.org/announcement/cfp-acis-new-england-regional-nov-21-22-wheaton-college/.

Please email me, ASAP, at NEPCAFantastic@gmail.com (using "Dracula Panel" as your subject) if are interested.

Michael Torregrossa
Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Legend Area Chair
Northeast Popular Culture/America Culture Association

--

Jones's Studying Pan's Labyrinth

This is an informative text, but often reads like an introduction to film studies (perhaps that is the point of the series?) in its frequent straying from the specific film under discussion to explore larger issues related to film and film making.

Studying Pan's Labyrinth
Tanya Jones

September, 2010
Paper, 160 pages, 10 b&w
ISBN: 978-1-906733-30-8
Auteur
$15.00 / £10.50
Distributed by Columbia University Press: https://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-1-906733-30-8/studying-pans-labyrinth

Pan's Labyrinth (2006) is a film of extraordinary technical achievement and intense emotional impact, garnering acclaim from both critics and audiences alike. Such a rich cinematic text demands close scrutiny and comprehensive study. This volume guides the reader through a detailed analysis of the film, concentrating on the generation of meaning for the viewer. The book maps technical choices and how they capture human experience and political conflict. It also details the processes of production, distribution, and exhibition. Specific examples from a range of film texts enable a vivid grasp of technical vocabulary, therefore providing readers with the tools to analyze other films as well.

Contents (from WorldCat):

• Studying Pan's Labyrinth factsheet --
• introduction --
• narrative --
• genre --
• messages and values --
• film language --
• characterisation --
• institutions.

About the Author:
Tanya Jones is an experienced teacher of film and media studies and a senior examiner for a major examination board in the U.K. She is the author of a number of best-selling film and media studies textbooks.

Vampyr (2nd Edition) by David Rudkin

Released late last year:

Vampyr (2nd Edition)
David Rudkin
Publisher site: http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/vampyr-david-rudkin/?k=9781844576449

$17.95
Paperback (96 pages)
ISBN 9781844576449
Publication Date November 2013
Formats Paperback
Publisher British Film Institute
Series BFI Film Classics

Described by its maker as a 'poem of horror', Vampyr (1932) is one of the founding works of psychological horror cinema, adapted from a collection of gothic stories by Sheridan Le Fanu and directed by the revered Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer. Despite the fact that there is no definitive print and many English versions are marred by poor quality subtitles, the film remains a vivid,

extraordinary artwork in which the inner human state is made hauntingly visible.

In a reading as passionate as it is analytic, David Rudkin reveals how this film systematically binds the spectator – spatially and morally – into its mysterious world of the undead.

This second edition features a new foreword, discussion of the Martin Koerber and Cineteca di Bologna restoration of the film in 2008, and original cover artwork by Midge Naylor.

Contents:

Foreword

1. Carl Theodor Dreyer (1889-1968)

2. Locating Vampyr in Dreyer's Cinema and it its Sources

3. The 'Problem' of Vampyr

4. Vampyr: Towards a Reading

5. The Journey to Our Grave

Notes

Credits

About the author:

David Rudkin is a screenwriter. He has written numerous plays, including Afore Night Come (RSC dir. Clifford Williams); The Sons of Light (Newcastle Playhouse dir. Keith Hack; in further revision, RSC, dir. Ron Daniels); Ashes (London Open Space Theatre, dir. Pam Brighton) and Hansel and Gretel (RSC, dir. Ron Daniels). David Rudkin has also translated plays such as The Persians and Euripides, and he offers lectures on Adaptation for the Screen and Ibsen, amongst other topics. 

CFP Regional Gothic Collection (12/1/2014)

CFP: Regional Gothic(12/1/2014)
posted by MARY BETH HARRIS on JUL 03, 2014
CFP Edited Collection
Regional Gothic
Edited by William Hughes and Ruth Heholt
Abstracts Due: December 1, 2014
Essays Due: September 2015
Source: http://navsa.org/2014/07/03/cfp-regional-gothic1212014/

With the referendum for Scottish Independence scheduled for September 2014 and the Cornish having recently been granted minority status, questions about the dis-unity of the “United” Kingdom are prominent in the contemporary debate regarding nationalism and regional identity. Regional Gothic will explore these fractures and the darker imaginings that come from the regions of Britain.

The British regions, “imagined communities” with fragile and threatened identities and boundaries, carry their own dark sides and repressions. The Gothic preoccupation with borders, invasion, contamination and degeneration imbricates quite naturally with the different and shifting meanings that arise from writings from – and about – the scattered margins of British identity. Locality affects the Gothic and Regional Gothic seeks to explore these specificities. Gothic fictions of the regions may originate from within those territories or be imagined from elsewhere. Yet, whether coming from the inside or the outside, conceptions of the regional can powerfully inform ideas of identity and belonging. And, as Ian Duncan has pointed out, whilst this may sometimes be a positive thing, regionalism can also “register a wholesale disintegration of the categories of home, origin, community, belonging”.

The editors are seeking abstracts for chapters that address the concept of regions and the Gothic. Submissions are welcomed that address the historic specificities of regional difference and Gothic traditions, as well as inter-disciplinary studies and contemporary imaginings of the regions and the Gothic. Topics may include (but are not bound by):

• Welsh/Scottish/Irish Gothic
• Nationalism
• Cornish or Northern Gothic
• Peripheralism
• Gothic of the Islands
• Dark Tourism
• Queer identities in the regions
• Urban Gothic
• Ethnicity and the regions
• Village Gothic
• Gender and regionalism
• Suburban Gothic

Please send 300 word abstracts by December 1, 2014 to William Hughes and Ruth Heholt:w.hughes@bathspa.ac.uk and ruth.heholt@falmouth.ac.uk .Completed essays of approximately 6000 words will be required by September 2015.

CFP Rethinking the Anglo-Indian Gothic (9/30/14; NeMLA Toronto 4/30-5/3/15)

NeMLA 2015: Rethinking the Anglo-Indian Gothic (30 September 2014)
full name / name of organization:
Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)
contact email:
me.makala@gmail.com
Source: http://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/node/57118

Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)
46th Annual Convention
April 30-May 3, 2015
Toronto, Ontario
Host: Ryerson University
Hotel: The Fairmont Royal York

Session Title:
Spectral Uprisings as Imperialist Critique: Rethinking the Anglo-Indian Gothic

Session Chair:
Melissa Edmundson Makala

Session Description:
This panel invites submissions that examine and reevaluate the supernatural literature that arose out of the British Raj. Exploring this area allows us to ask larger questions, such as: What is the place of Anglo-Indian Gothic within the broader genre of Imperial Gothic? Can postcolonial theory be used to interpret the colonial Indian Gothic? How is ghostly activity a form of native rebellion that reflects very real fears behind these fictional tales? How were writers influenced by the work of Kipling and why has his work dominated the genre for so long? What literary influence have Anglo-Indian women had on this genre?

In particular, this panel aims to explore how the Anglo-Indian Gothic was an important cultural statement on the anxieties that existed between the British colonizers and their native Indian subjects. The genre thus provides an alternative way of looking at the negative effects of imperialism and provides a place for subversive social commentaries disguised within an entertaining Gothic tale. Anglo-Indian Gothic writers offer glimpses into the British imperial world of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and their ghost stories offer additional insight for modern-day readers about the impact the British colonial presence had on the countries and peoples under the dominion of the Empire at its heights.

Suggested topics for this panel include: ghosts, second sight, madness, disease, violence/crime, dead/undead bodies, cultural anxiety, revenge, colonial children, the occult, reincarnation, curses, haunted dwellings, Gothic representations of the Indian Uprising, the Gothic landscape, Indian writers, reappraisals of Kipling, Anglo-Indian women writers, gender issues, and publication histories of Anglo-Indian Gothic works.

Submission Deadline: September 30, 2014

This year, NeMLA is switching to a user-based system to accept and track abstract submissions. In order to submit an abstract using the button for a CFP entry, you must sign up with NeMLA and log in. Using this new system, you can manage your personal information and review and update your abstract following submission. Signing up is free, and you only have to do it once. Interested participants can access the session information and submit abstracts by clicking on the following link:

https://nemla.org/convention/2015/cfp.html#cfp15256

Interested participants may submit abstracts to more than one NeMLA session; however, panelists can only present one paper (panel or seminar). Convention participants may present a paper at a panel and also present at a creative session or participate in a roundtable.

Please direct enquiries to Dr Melissa Makala: me.makala@gmail.com.


By web submission at 06/05/2014 - 18:15

CFP Gothic Migrations (5/31/15; Vancouver 7/28-8/1/15)

INTERNATIONAL GOTHIC ASSOCIATION BIENNIAL CONFERENCE, 2015 
GOTHIC MIGRATIONS 
July 28th to August 1st 2015 Vancouver, BC
full name / name of organization:
INTERNATIONAL GOTHIC ASSOCIATION
contact email:
whatley@sfu.ca
Source: http://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/node/57669
More information at: http://www.sfu.ca/iga2015

GOTHIC MIGRATIONS

“Gothic Migrations” will concern the origins, transits, and transformations of global gothic in its various modes and cultural manifestations.

Since its inception, Gothic has been associated with mobility. The gothic has always involved translation, adaptation, travel, diaspora, migration and their variations in the lost son or daughter, the absent father, the escaped slave or criminal, the disappeared family member, the alien, underground networks, cross border movements of cults, banditti, terrorist and other conspiratorial webs. These themes have engaged gothic works and their criticism for some time and their significance is growing in a new global economy of the gothic. As a result, the areas of gothic study have become increasingly wide ranging and now contest any singular root and any singular route of such migration. Under the theme of roots we consider the patterns of place and stability, cultural centres, home, mother or father country, belonging, neighbourhood, any ancient locus, developed systems of privilege and aristocracy, or stable gender, sexual norm, or class patterns. We also include under roots, their underlying negations in the unheimlich, the underprivileged, the criminal, the decentred, the escaped, the alien, the other, rejected sexualities, or the hybrid. Under the theme of migrations, we consider the diasporic energies of the gothic, the migratory traces of vampires, wanderers, ghosts, demons, revenants, zombies, soucouyants, other supernatural tourists, phantasmal terrorists and gothic escapees of all kinds. The conference will thus focus on the international circulation of literary, filmic, dramatic and digital Gothic, and the establishment of new and old Gothic traditions across the globe that are in search of, or have found, new homes.

Please include your contact information, institutional affiliation and a brief biography with your abstract submission at the following website:

http://www.sfu.ca/iga2015

SUGGESTED PAPERS AND PANELS

Papers and panels could consider, but are by no means limited to the following headings:

• How does the Gothic migrate?
• How might we speak of a global Gothic when one considers the logistics of time and travel?
• Generic routes/roots of the Gothic: novel to play, poetry to novel, novel to digitial game, novel to film, etc
• Gothic Time and Time-travel
• Trans-continental routes of the Gothic
• Migratory routes of vampires, zombies, and Gothic wanderers more generally
• The worldy unheimlich
• Routes with no destination
• Circuits of gothic exchange
• Invasive Gothic
• Reverse Colonisations
• Supernatural Currencies
• Home and Away
• Gothic Cultural Machines
• Global Gothic Crime
• Tropical Gothic/Temperate Gothic
• World Literary Gothic
• Drugs, Machines, and Global Vampires
• Gothic tourism
• Lines of flight
• Gothic Cultural Trauma
• Networked Gothic and digital diasporas
• Gothic maps and itineraries
• Global Gothic, nationalism and cultural imperialism
• Local to glocal Gothics
• Gothic Wars

By web submission at 07/18/2014 - 22:40

CFP Monstrous Women in the Middle Ages (9/1/14; Texas 10/3-4/14)

TEMA Conference panel: Monstrous Women in the Middle Ages (Oct 3-4, 2014)
full name / name of organization:
MEARCSTAPA
contact email:
andrea.nichols@huskers.unl.edu
Source: http://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/node/57184


In Nomadic Subjects (1994), Rosi Braidotti wrote: “Woman, as sign of difference, is monstrous.” In the medieval world, a similar notion was explored in multiple medieval cultures by works—visual, verbal, and performative—that assert the exceptionality of female bodies, communities, and practices against a male norm. In line with this year’s Texas Medieval Association (TEMA) theme “Interdisciplinarity in the Age of Relevance," MEARCSTAPA invites papers that focus upon the instances in which women are presented as either literal or figurative monsters, as found in images or texts from medieval Europe and contiguous cultures in Africa and Asia. We seek to explore, in particular, how the conjunction of gender and monstrosity introduced issues of sexualization, exoticism, or vilification revealing of larger societal anxieties. By bringing together cases from multiple disciplines, time frames, and geographies, this panel aims to provide a more global view of monstrous women and the issues that surround them.

Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words, with a brief bio, to andrea.nichols@huskers.unl.edu by September 1, 2014.

For more information on TEMA, see http://www.texasmedieval.org/
For more information on MEARCSTAPA, see http://www.mearcstapa.org/wp/


By web submission at 06/10/2014 - 21:09

CFP Eye of the Dragon: Viewing a Medieval Iconography from the Other Side (9/15/14; Kalamazoo 5/14-17/15)

CFP: The Eye of the Dragon: Viewing a Medieval Iconography from the Other Side
Location: Michigan, United States
Call for Papers Date: 2014-09-15
Date Submitted: 2014-07-20
Announcement ID: 215191

This is a CFP for the panel "The Eye of the Dragon: Viewng a Medieval Iconography from the Other Side" at the 50th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo MI, May 14-17, 2015.

From the iconic heroism of Saint George to the resolute piety of Margret of Antioch; from the arrow-shooting Bahram Gur to anonymous spear-wielding riders, slayers of dragons  have received considerable art historical attention.  Individual slayers, as well as the iconography itself have been extensively studied and critically contextualized to reveal multi-layered meanings and changing identities.  In his study on the Islamic Rider of the Gerona Beatus, O. K. Werckmeister demonstrated how, in the context of the Reconquista, the identity of the slayer could switch from good to evil, while Oya Pancaroglu argued that in Medieval Anatolia slayer images were both products and facilitators of cross-cultural exchange.  Dragons and other monsters have been under the lens of art historians, too.  Michael Camille and Debra Strickland have emphasized their roles as surrogates for social types and political adversaries.   In that sense, the victims of the slayers, though independent of the iconography, have also been studied.  However, it is difficult to say that the perspectives of the victims have received equal attention.

This panel calls for papers that will look at the slayer iconography from the position of the slain rather than the slayer.  It seeks papers that will approach the image visually and conceptually from bottom up and explore alternative and innovative interpretations.  What can this switch of gaze reveal about the relationship between the dragon and the slayer? In what novel ways can we interpret the visual asymmetry between them?  Would it correspond to actual social asymmetries, or to their subversion? Does the diagonal of the spear pin down and stabilize differences and antagonisms, or does it cut across and mediate between them?  Especially welcome are papers that move beyond Western European examples and provide comparative perspectives.

Deadline for the submission of abstracts is September 15, 2014.

Saygin Salgirli, Sabanci University: salgirli@sabanciuniv.edu

Saygin Salgirli,
Sabanci University
Orta Mahalle,Tuzla 34956,Istanbul, Turkey

Email: salgirli@sabanciuniv.edu

CFP Dracula in Popular Culture Panel (8/15/14; Norton MA 11/21-22/14)

CFP Dracula in Popular Culture Panel

I'm trying to organize a panel on Dracula in popular culture for the 2014 New England Regional Meeting of the American Conference for Irish Studies. The conference meets from 21-22 November 2014 at Wheaton College. Further details at http://acisweb.org/announcement/cfp-acis-new-england-regional-nov-21-22-wheaton-college/.

Please email me, ASAP (but no later than 8/15/14), at NEPCAFantastic@gmail.com if are interested using "Dracula Panel" as your subject.

Michael Torregrossa
Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Legend Area Chair
Northeast Popular Culture/America Culture Association

CFP Reanimate Earth: Liminality and Communitas in Literature of the America (Panel) (6/15/14)

Of potential interest:

Reanimate Earth: Liminality and Communitas in Literature of the Americas
Location: Georgia, United States
Call for Papers Date: 2014-11-07
Date Submitted: 2014-03-31
Announcement ID: 212657

Seeking out new growth in devastated spaces and optimism in the face of environmental despair, this panel will take on the task of enchanting readers with physical spaces in the U.S., Canada, and Latin America that have already been toxified or left for dead.   The liminal, a conception traditionally most relevant to anthropology and psychoanalysis, has the capacity to reinvigorate the relationship between culture and its more anomalous literary environments.

The possibilities for this concept are substantial, particularly when we perceive the liminal self as place, because as limen the hybridized monsters and liminal zones depicted in post-WW II literature are catalysts for environmental reanimation and a source for hope. What we propose is the observance, sorting and wise use of unclassified spaces where more than reforestation and revegetation will be needed to bring back ecological viability and biodiversity; sites of interest might include areas either flooded or desertified due to global warming, zones at the edge of leaking nuclear reactors, interstate medians, tornado-ravaged areas, aesthetic greens surrounding campuses, and graveyards.

 Possible topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• hybrid spaces and bodies

• interstitial regions and borderlands

• transnational approaches to place

• liminality as a result of globalization

• golems, zombies, and shape-shifters

• liminal communities

• post-post-apocalyptic literature and film

• ecological dead zones

• genetically modified organisms

Send 200-500 word abstracts to Lee Rozelle at rozellehl@montevallo.edu by June 15.

Lee Rozelle
University of Montevallo
Department of English
Station 6420
Montevallo, AL 35115
(205) 665-6424 (office)

3rd Global Conference: Apocalypse: Imagining the End (Oxford, UK 7/5-7/14)

Sorry to have missed this before:

3rd Global Conference: Apocalypse: Imagining the End
Location: United Kingdom
Conference Date: 2014-07-05 (in 24 days)
Date Submitted: 2013-11-13
Announcement ID: 208511

3rd Global Conference: Apocalypse: Imagining the End

Saturday 5th July – Monday 7th July 2014, Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom


Call for Presentations:
From Christian concept of the ‘Apocalypse’ to the Hindu notions of the Kali Yuga, visions of destruction and fantasies of the ‘end times’ have a long history. In the last few years, public media, especially in the West, have been suffused with images of the end times and afterward, from the zombie apocalypse (the AMC series The Walking Dead) to life after the collapse of civilization (the NBC series Revolution.) Several popular television series and video games (Deep Earth Bunker) are now based on preparing for and surviving the end of the world. Once a fringe activity, ‘survivalism’ has gone mainstream, and a growing industry supplies ‘doomsday preppers’ with all they need to the post-apocalyptic chaos. One purpose of the conference is to explore these ideas by situating them in context — psychological, historical, literary, cultural, political, and economic. The second aim of the conference is to examine today’s widespread fascination the apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic thought, and to understand its rising appeal across broad sections of contemporary society around the world.

This interdisciplinary project welcomes proposals from all disciplines and research areas, including anthropology, psychoanalysis, political economy, psychology, area studies, communal studies, environmental studies, history, sociology, religion, theology, and gender studies.

Proposals for presentations, papers, performances, reports, work-in-progress, workshops and pre-formed panels are invited on issues related to (but not limited to) the following themes:

-Decline, Collapse, Decay, Disease, Mass Death
-Survivalism and Doomsday Preppers
-Revolution
-Theories of Social Change
-Peak Oil, Resource Depletion, Global Warming, Economic Collapse
-The Second Coming/Millenarianism/Rapture
-The Hindu Kali Yuga
-Sex and Gender at the End of Time
-Ironic and/or Anti-Apocalyptic Thinking
-Utopia and Dystopia
-Intentional Communities as Communities of the End Times
-Selling the Apocalypse, Commodifying Disaster, and Marketing the End Times
-Death Tourism and Disaster Capitalism
-The Age of Terror
-Zombies, Vampires, and Werewolves in Post-Apocalyptic Fiction
-Disaster Fiction/Movies/Video Games
-History as Apocalypse
-Remembering and Reliving the Collapse of the Western Roman Empire -Post- Apocalyptic conditions
-Positive aspects of an Apocalypse, including change and transformation

In order to support and encourage interdisciplinarity engagement, it is our intention to create the possibility of starting dialogues between the parallel events running during this conference.
Delegates are welcome to attend up to two sessions in each of the concurrent conferences. We also propose to produce cross-over sessions between these groups – and we welcome proposals which deal with the relationship between visions ofthe Apocalypse and Diasporas.

What to send:
Proposals will also be considered on any related theme. 300 word proposals should be submitted by Friday 14th February 2014. If a proposal is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper of no more than 3000 words should be submitted by Friday 16th May 2014. Proposals should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in programme, c) email address, d) title of proposal, e) body of proposal, f) up to 10 keywords.
E-mails should be entitled: Apocalypse3 Proposal Submission.

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs

Sheila Bibb: scbibb@inter-disciplinary.net
Rob Fisher: apoc3@inter-disciplinary.net

The conference is part of the ‘Ethos’ series of research projects, which in turn belong to the Critical Issues programmes of ID.Net. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and challenging. All proposals accepted for and presented at the conference must be in English and will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected proposals may be developed for publication in a themed hard copy volume(s). All publications from the conference will require editors, to be chosen from interested delegates from the conference.

Inter-Disciplinary.Net believes it is a mark of personal courtesy and professional respect to your colleagues that all delegates should attend for the full duration of the meeting. If you are unable to make this commitment, please do not submit a proposal for presentation.

For further details of the conference, please visit: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/ethos/apocalypse-imagining-the-end/call-for-papers/

Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network and we are not in a position to be able to assist with conference travel or subsistence.

Priory House
149B Wroslyn Road
Freeland, Oxfordshire OX29 8HR
United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0)1993 882087
Fax: +44 (0)870 4601132
Email: apoc3@inter-disciplinary.net
Visit the website at http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/critical-issues/ethos/apocalypse-imagining-the-end/call-for-papers/

CFP Films of Jess Franco (7/30/14)

The Films of Jess Franco (Edited Volume)
Publication Date: 2014-07-30
Date Submitted: 2014-04-06
Announcement ID: 212836

Call for Papers

Edited Volume: The Films of Jess Franco

Editors: Antonio Lázaro-Reboll (University of Kent) and Ian Olney (York College of Pennsylvania)


Jesús “Jess” Franco (1930-2013) is one of the most prolific and madly inventive filmmakers in the history of cinema.  His remarkable career spanned more than half a century and produced almost two hundred films shot in Spain and across Europe.  He is best known as the director of jazzy, erotically-charged horror movies featuring mad scientists, lesbian vampires, and women in prison, but dabbled in a multitude of genres from comedy to science-fiction to pornography.  Although he made his career in the ghetto of low-budget exploitation cinema, he managed to create a body of work that is deeply personal, frequently political, and surprisingly poetic.  Franco’s offbeat films command a devoted cult following; they have even developed a mainstream audience in recent years, thanks to their release on DVD and Blu-Ray.  To date, however, they have received relatively little scholarly attention.  The Films of Jess Franco seeks to address this neglect by bringing together original essays on Franco and his movies written from a variety of different theoretical perspectives by noted scholars around the world.  Ultimately, its aim is to encourage a reassessment of this critically undervalued director and his significant contributions to popular European cinema.



The editors of this proposed volume invite original essays on any aspect of Jess Franco’s work; all theoretical approaches are welcome.  Possible topics might include:


Franco as Horror Auteur
Gender and/or Race in Franco’s Films
Queer Franco
The Franco Soundtrack
Franco’s Non-Horror Films
Late Franco (Films of the 1990s and 2000s)
Franco as Spanish Filmmaker
Franco as Transnational Filmmaker
Franco and the Art Film
Franco’s Influences
Sex and Eroticism in Franco’s Films
Franco and Film Adaptation
Performance and Stardom in Franco’s Films
The Politics of Franco’s Films
The Cult of Franco
Franco’s Legacy


Please send abstracts of 500 words to Antonio Lázaro-Reboll (a.lazaro-reboll@kent.ac.uk) and Ian Olney (iolney@ycp.edu) by July 30, 2014.  Final essays will be due January 30, 2015.  Essays should be 6,000-8,000 words in length and should follow MLA guidelines for citation and documentation.

Ian Olney
English & Humanities Dept.
York College of Pennsylvania
York, PA 17403
(717) 815-6446
Email: iolney@ycp.edu

CFP 2014 Victorians Institute Conference (6/15/14; Charlotte, NC 10/24-25/14)

CFP DEADLINE EXTENDED: 2014 Victorians Institute Conference
Location: North Carolina, United States
Conference Date: 2014-06-15 (in 4 days)
Date Submitted: 2014-05-14
Announcement ID: 213763
The Mysteries at Our Own Doors

The 43rd Meeting of the Victorians Institute

Proposals Due: 6/15/2014 (NEW DEADLINE)

Conference Dates: October 24-25, 2014
Location: Charlotte, NC

Sponsored by Winthrop University

 Please send 300-500 word proposals for papers and a 1-page c.v. to Casey Cothran via email at viconf@winthrop.edu  by June 15, 2014.

 Henry James once said of Wilkie Collins: “To Mr. Collins belongs the credit of having introduced into fiction those most mysterious of mysteries, the mysteries which are at our own doors.” Indeed, through the fiction of Collins (and others) the Victorian Era saw the rise of the detective novel as an art form.  Moreover, it also produced a wealth of poems, novels, and prose works that concerned themselves with mysteries, secrets, enigmas, and the unknown. Sensing that they stood on a threshold, that the shadowy borders of new knowledge and understanding lay almost within reach--at their “own doors,” as James said--Victorian authors struggled with a variety of mysteries arising from their interests in science, religion, the occult, mesmerism, identity, sexuality, race, class, and the Empire. We invite papers on any of these topics. Papers or panels on poetry, prose, nonfiction, or visual art are welcome, as are presentations on the pedagogy of teaching Victorian literature.

Possible topics might address detective fiction; poetic mysteries; spiritualists and mesmerists; mysteries of gender and sexuality; the mysterious Other; death; crime; ghosts, vampires or monsters; religion; Victorian science and medicine; industry and technology; archeology and paleontology; illustrations and media adaptations; language and hybridity; history and discovery; new worlds and cultures; travel and empire; pseudonyms; biography; photography; music; journalism; the mysteries of unveiling Victorian literature and culture to undergraduates; how Victorian mysteries can be discovered and solved in online classrooms, and other topics related to Victorian studies.

The keynote speaker is Marlene Tromp, Professor of English and Women’s Studies and Dean of Arizona State University’s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences. https://newcollege.asu.edu/directory/marlene-tromp

Selected papers from the conference will be refereed for the Victorians Institute Journal annex at NINES.

Limited travel subventions will be available from the Victorians Institute for graduate students whose institutions provide limited or no support. More information about the travel awards and the application process will be posted to www.vcu.edu/vij.

Please visit www.vcu.edu/vij for information about the conference, the Victorians Institute, and the Victorians Institute Journal.


Casey A. Cothran
Winthrop University
Rock Hill, SC

Email: viconf@winthrop.edu
Visit the website at http://www.vcu.edu/vij

CFP Fourth International Edgar Allan Poe Conference (6/1/14; New York 2/26-3/1/14)

UPDATE Fourth International Edgar Allan Poe Conference
full name / name of organization:
Poe Studies Association and Penn State Lehigh Valley Continuing Education
contact email:
bac7@psu.edu
Fourth International Edgar Allan Poe Conference
full name / name of organization:
Poe Studies Association and Penn State Lehigh Valley Continuing Education
contact email:
rxk3@psu.edu and bac7@psu.edu

Proposals are invited for the Fourth International Edgar Allan Poe Conference to be held in New York City, February 26-March 1, 2015. Email 250-word abstracts, subject heading “2015 Poe Conference,” to Barbara Cantalupo bac7@psu.edu by June 1, 2014.


By web submission at 05/26/2014 - 15:57

CFP Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu Bicentenary Conference (6/15/14; Dublin 10/15-16/14)

[UPDATE] Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu Bicentenary Conference 15-16 October
full name / name of organization:
Trinity College Dublin
contact email:
cavalliv@tcd.ie

‘He stands in the absolutely first rank as a writer of ghost stories.’
– M.R. James

Best known for his Gothic masterpiece Uncle Silas and the vampire story ‘Carmilla’, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu was a prolific writer, whose extensive output included historical, sensation, and horror novels, poems and ballads, numerous stories of the supernatural, political journalism, and a verse-drama. However, while his name is well known to aficionados of the horror genre, much of his work still remains in the dark.
On the occasion of the bicentenary of Le Fanu’s birth, this conference intends to bring together established scholars and emerging researchers, in order to shed new light on some of Le Fanu’s less famous fiction and celebrate his influential contribution to the Gothic genre.

We are calling for papers on any aspect of the life and work of J. S. Le Fanu. While we welcome new research on Le Fanu’s best known work, we wish to attract papers that engage with those texts which are less frequently read and studied, with the author himself, and with the legacy that he has left.
Abstracts of 300 words for 20-minute papers should be submitted, together with a brief biography, to Valeria Cavalli at cavalliv@tcd.ie. More details will be available, in due course, at www.josephsheridanlefanu.wordpress.com.

The deadline for submissions is 15th JUNE 2014.


By web submission at 05/26/2014 - 10:55

Update on Werewolves, Wolves and the Gothic?

The post expired about a year ago. Might anybody have an update on the progress of the collection?

Werewolves, Wolves and the Gothic
full name / name of organization:
University of Sheffield
contact email:
john.miller@sheffield.ac.uk
Werewolves, Wolves and the Gothic

Edited by Robert McKay & John Miller (University of Sheffield, UK)

The window blind blew back with the wind that rushed in, and in the aperture of the broken panes there was the head of a great, gaunt gray wolf (Bram Stoker, Dracula)

Wolves lope across the gothic imagination. Signs of a pure animality opposed to the human, they become, in the figure of the werewolf, liminal creatures that move between the human and the animal: humans in animal form and animals in human form. They are metonyms of forbidding landscapes, an unsettling howl in the distance; more intimately, their imposing fangs and gaping mouths threaten a monstrous consumption. The gothic wolf is singular, anomalous but gothic wolves form a demonic multiplicity, a pack. Wolves and werewolves function as a site for working out or contesting complex anxieties of difference: of gender, class, race, space, nation or sexuality; but the imaginative and ideological uses of wolves also reflect back on the lives of material animals, long demonized and persecuted in their declining habitats across the world. Wolves, then, raise unsettling questions about the intersection of the real and the imaginary, the instability of human identities and the worldliness and political weight of the Gothic.

We welcome proposals for chapters on any aspect of wolves, werewolves and the Gothic on page or screen in any historical period for a collection of essays to be submitted to The University of Wales Press series of Gothic Literary Studies. We are particularly interested in proposals that seek to read gothic wolves in the context of material histories of (for example) human/animal relations; environmental development; empire and globalization; and gender and sexuality.

Please send chapter abstracts of 500 words along with a short biography to Robert McKay (r.mckay@sheffield.ac.uk) and John Miller (john.miller@sheffield.ac.uk) by July 31st, 2013. Completed essays will be 6500 words in length and will be commissioned in September 2013 for delivery in the autumn of 2014.

Topics and approaches may include, but are not restricted to:

Lycanthropy/metamorphosis
Real and imaginary wolves
Animal ethics and the anthropomorphic imagination
Monstrosity
Fangs, mouths, the oral and the abject
Lupine presences and gothic spaces
Wolves and the Postcolonial Gothic
Captivity/escape
Wolf to Man – gothic politics from Plautus to Hobbes to Agamben
Gothic wolves, capital and globalization
Sublimity
Natural and unnatural histories
Wolf packs/lone wolves: multitudes and singularities
Ecocritical readings
Zoonosis
She-wolves, he-wolves and gender criticism
Wolfish appetite
Howling and gothic soundscapes
Queer readings
Dogs/wolves; ferity/ferocity
Wolves in sheep’s clothing
Wolves and psychoanalysis from Freud to Deleuze and Guattari
Reforming the Gothic: comic (or teen) werewolves


By web submission at 05/09/2013 - 09:11

CFP Devilish Visions and Visions of the Devil in World Literature (7/1/14; 11/7-8/14)

"The Hermeneutics of Hell: Devilish Visions and Visions of the Devil in World Literature"
Location: Massachusetts, United States
Date Submitted: 2014-04-12
Announcement ID: 212994

2014 Northeast Regional Conference of Christianity and Literature
 "The Hermeneutics of Hell: Devilish Visions and Visions of the Devil in World Literature"
November 7-8, 2014
Gordon College, Wenham, MA

“There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors, and hail a materialist or magician with the same delight.”  C. S. Lewis.  The Screwtape Letters

For centuries, the biblical account of Satan has inspired countless authors worldwide. Medieval texts dealing with devils often combined biblical and pagan imageries. But it wasn’t until the early Baroque era when the devil in world literature became more individualistic. Since then, authors from around the world have been drawn to the devil as a literary figure. Often times, the devils created by Milton, Goethe, Chateaubriand, Byron, Lermontov, Strindberg, C.S. Lewis, Mahfouz and many others differ significantly from biblical texts and the literal interpretation of the Satan in the Old Testament. Even though the topic of hell seems to have lost its appeal on pulpits, it is still alive and well in literature.

This conference aims to analyze devilish visions and visions of the devil and the different roles devils have assumed in world literature. What makes devils attractive literary figures? What are the functions of the devils? What are the underlying theologies? How do the literary devils differ from biblical images? Why are we as readers still fascinated by literary manifestations of the devil?

Possible topics may include:

•          The devil as tempter

•          The devil as accuser

•          The devil as satirist

•          The devil as cultural critic

•          The devil as God’s counterpart

•          The devil as revolutionist

•          The devil as a tragic figure

•          The devil and damnation

•          The devil and salvation

•          The devil in passion plays

•          Sympathy for the devil

•          The future of devils

•          Hell on earth

•          Visions of hell

•          Eternal damnation vs. extinction


Email your 250 word abstracts by July 1, 2014 to NECCL@gordon.edu  Graduate students are encouraged to apply for a CCL grant. http://www.christianityandliterature.com/Travel_Grant_recipients  The conference organizers, Dan Russ and Gregor Thuswaldner (Gordon College), cannot offer contributors compensation for conference- or travel expenses. Select contributions will be considered for publication in an edited collection.  Location of the conference: Gordon College, Wenham, MA. Gordon College is located just 25 miles north of Boston on Boston's historic North Shore.


Gregor Thuswaldner, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of German and Linguistics
Fellow, Center for Faith and Inquiry
Gordon College
255 Grapevine Road
Wenham, MA 01984
USA

Tel: (978) 867 4350
Fax: (978) 867 3300


Email: neccl@gordon.edu

Updated CFP Journal of Dracula Studies (6/1/14)

Apologies for having missed this:

[UPDATE] DEADLINE EXTENDED to June 1, 2014
full name / name of organization:
The Journal of Dracula Studies
contact email:
journalofdraculastudies@kutztown.edu

We invite manuscripts of scholarly articles (4000-6000 words) on any of the following: Bram Stoker, the novel Dracula, the historical Dracula, the vampire in folklore, fiction, film, popular culture, and related topics.
Submissions should be sent electronically (as an e-mail attachment in .doc or .rtf). Please indicate the title of your submission in the subject line of your e-mail.

Please follow the 2009 updated MLA style.

Contributors are responsible for obtaining any necessary permissions and ensuring observance of copyright.
Manuscripts will be peer-reviewed independently by at least two scholars in the field.

Copyright for published articles remains with the author.

Submissions must be received no later than June 1, 2014, in order to be considered for the 2014 issue.
Send electronic submissions to journalofdraculastudies@kutztown.edu

Contact: Dr. Curt Herr or Dr. Anne DeLong


By web submission at 05/15/2014 - 21:57