My thanks to Jack Dudley for forwarding this to me:
American Comparative Literature Association's 2016 Annual Meeting will take place at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts March 17-20, 2016
Horror
Organizer: Jack Dudley, Mount Saint Mary's University
Co-Organizer: Chris McVey, Boston University
http://www.acla.org/seminar/horror
Proposals due September 2015 (see http://www.acla.org/annual-meeting for details)
What would it mean to think and read with horror? What would a turn to horror look like, and what might its implications be for critical practice? Building on recent work by Eugene Thacker, Dylan Trigg, Graham Harman, Ben Woodard, and Thomas Ligotti, among others, this seminar seeks to situate horror as a site for new critical inquiry. Like other genre categories (Western, Romance, Mystery), horror fiction and film have been traditionally denigrated as “popular,” “low,” and “underground,” despite changing conceptions of canonicity and challenges to the “high/low” divide. As Harman suggests when he challenges Edmund Wilson’s reductive reading of H.P. Lovecraft, mere content should not lead to critical dismissal. If, for instance, crime and detective fiction have recently been turned to as new sites for understanding global literature, what can horror now open to comparative literary studies and theory?
Given the broad and new nature of this topic, our seminar seeks a range of papers, from large-scale interventions that situate horror broadly, to new close readings of works of horror, to re-readings of canonical texts as horror. How should horror be understood? Or, is it something that simply cannot be understood, but is, as Thacker suggests, a way of exploring the unthinkable, and so of bringing alternative philosophies, like the negative and nihilism, into the centers of critical discourse? Is there a hermeneutics of horror, in the sense of both a specific set of approaches keyed to horror and in the sense of a larger reading practice thought from within horror itself? Can traditional literary categories and even periods be rethought as horror? For instance, can European modernism, an idiom and aesthetic usually left out of genealogies of horror fiction, itself be read as a kind of literature of horror? Is horror compatible with realism? Is it a space where religion and theology have persisted in a secular age? How can horror help rethink recent areas of critical inquiry, including the global, cosmopolitanism, object-oriented ontologies, and the Anthropocene?
Thursday, July 30, 2015
CFP Monstrous Messengers Extended Deadline (8/17/2015)
UPDATE: Extended Deadline: Monstrous Messengers 17 Aug. 2015
http://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/node/63143
full name / name of organization:
Leslie Ormandy
contact email:
monstrousmessengers@gmail.com
For this collection, three more papers from any discipline are welcome; however, advantaged are those focusing on a gendered or religious moral message. And I am looking for ONE paper which is willing to argue that the monsters represented are simply that, monsters, and that utilizing them as a tool toward acceptance of diversity is not a good thing. The latter is, I understand, a controversial view. This book wishes to explore all views and not promote one view by excluding another.
Picture books and early readers carry all the weight of parental authority, and are essential tools in the learning process for our children. They offer children not only hours of sanctioned entertainment and carefully chosen words and concepts, they also introduce our youngest children to specific cultural norms and belief systems. What role then does the supernatural character play for children learning to “read” and interpret the values in the interplay of images, words, and authority? At this point, there is no text addressing this question; although there is an increasing amount of scholarship regarding how the various supernatural characters (and monstrous children) reflect various adult issues when they appear within film and television. This edited collection is meant to begin the exploration of what cultural norms and morals are being offered our children in images and words in the medium of picture books and early readers since they are not just sanctioned, but encouraged.
Focus is exclusively on supernatural figures in children’s picture books and early readers. (The only exclusions are aliens, and magical entities such as talking trees, talking owls, etc.) Issues which might be explored by contributors include (but are not limited to):
• The primary purpose of the supernatural character[s] within a specific text, or series, and what it/they are teaching children
• The use of a supernatural character as harmless entertainment (is there really a picture book which doesn’t offer a moral of some sort?)
• The use of a ghost, vampire, werewolf, or other supernatural, as a stand-in for diversity. Do they work as a stand in? Why or why not? (Why not just depict the human “other?”)
• The way in which a specific moral is being offered through the use of a supernatural character
• The way the supernatural character will potentially impact the child’s view of their world
• Comparative discussion regarding how the morals in early monster tales (such as Grimm’s) are now being revised to offer a differing moral – and how/why the changes reflect new norms
Questions to get you thinking:
• Why are so many supernatural characters green?
• Are some supernatural characters depicted as “bad” while others are “good?”
• Does the color scheme used impact the child’s reading of the characters?
• In what way does adult encouragement regarding “reading” the text impact the child’s reading of the supernatural character[s]?
• Is there a different reading/interpretation of the text offered the child when the supernatural being is the protagonist or the antagonist?
Please submit a 300 word abstract and a brief scholarly bio to Leslie Ormandy at monstrousmessengers@gmail.com . The closing date for submissions for this final selection is August 15. Notice of acceptance will follow by no later than August 25 (and will include a listing of helpful readings). Complete rough drafts of 7000 – 8000 word essays are to be submitted by December 15, 2015 in MLA format with US spelling and punctuation for notes.
By web submission at 07/24/2015 - 20:45
http://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/node/63143
full name / name of organization:
Leslie Ormandy
contact email:
monstrousmessengers@gmail.com
For this collection, three more papers from any discipline are welcome; however, advantaged are those focusing on a gendered or religious moral message. And I am looking for ONE paper which is willing to argue that the monsters represented are simply that, monsters, and that utilizing them as a tool toward acceptance of diversity is not a good thing. The latter is, I understand, a controversial view. This book wishes to explore all views and not promote one view by excluding another.
Picture books and early readers carry all the weight of parental authority, and are essential tools in the learning process for our children. They offer children not only hours of sanctioned entertainment and carefully chosen words and concepts, they also introduce our youngest children to specific cultural norms and belief systems. What role then does the supernatural character play for children learning to “read” and interpret the values in the interplay of images, words, and authority? At this point, there is no text addressing this question; although there is an increasing amount of scholarship regarding how the various supernatural characters (and monstrous children) reflect various adult issues when they appear within film and television. This edited collection is meant to begin the exploration of what cultural norms and morals are being offered our children in images and words in the medium of picture books and early readers since they are not just sanctioned, but encouraged.
Focus is exclusively on supernatural figures in children’s picture books and early readers. (The only exclusions are aliens, and magical entities such as talking trees, talking owls, etc.) Issues which might be explored by contributors include (but are not limited to):
• The primary purpose of the supernatural character[s] within a specific text, or series, and what it/they are teaching children
• The use of a supernatural character as harmless entertainment (is there really a picture book which doesn’t offer a moral of some sort?)
• The use of a ghost, vampire, werewolf, or other supernatural, as a stand-in for diversity. Do they work as a stand in? Why or why not? (Why not just depict the human “other?”)
• The way in which a specific moral is being offered through the use of a supernatural character
• The way the supernatural character will potentially impact the child’s view of their world
• Comparative discussion regarding how the morals in early monster tales (such as Grimm’s) are now being revised to offer a differing moral – and how/why the changes reflect new norms
Questions to get you thinking:
• Why are so many supernatural characters green?
• Are some supernatural characters depicted as “bad” while others are “good?”
• Does the color scheme used impact the child’s reading of the characters?
• In what way does adult encouragement regarding “reading” the text impact the child’s reading of the supernatural character[s]?
• Is there a different reading/interpretation of the text offered the child when the supernatural being is the protagonist or the antagonist?
Please submit a 300 word abstract and a brief scholarly bio to Leslie Ormandy at monstrousmessengers@gmail.com . The closing date for submissions for this final selection is August 15. Notice of acceptance will follow by no later than August 25 (and will include a listing of helpful readings). Complete rough drafts of 7000 – 8000 word essays are to be submitted by December 15, 2015 in MLA format with US spelling and punctuation for notes.
By web submission at 07/24/2015 - 20:45
CFP Horror (8/31/2015; ACLA Harvard 3/17-20/2016)
My thanks to Jack Dudley for forwarding this to me:
American Comparative Literature Association's 2016 Annual Meeting will take place at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts March 17-20, 2016
Horror
Organizer: Jack Dudley, Mount Saint Mary's University
Co-Organizer: Chris McVey, Boston University
http://www.acla.org/seminar/horror
Proposals due September 2015
What would it mean to think and read with horror? What would a turn to horror look like, and what might its implications be for critical practice? Building on recent work by Eugene Thacker, Dylan Trigg, Graham Harman, Ben Woodard, and Thomas Ligotti, among others, this seminar seeks to situate horror as a site for new critical inquiry. Like other genre categories (Western, Romance, Mystery), horror fiction and film have been traditionally denigrated as “popular,” “low,” and “underground,” despite changing conceptions of canonicity and challenges to the “high/low” divide. As Harman suggests when he challenges Edmund Wilson’s reductive reading of H.P. Lovecraft, mere content should not lead to critical dismissal. If, for instance, crime and detective fiction have recently been turned to as new sites for understanding global literature, what can horror now open to comparative literary studies and theory?
Given the broad and new nature of this topic, our seminar seeks a range of papers, from large-scale interventions that situate horror broadly, to new close readings of works of horror, to re-readings of canonical texts as horror. How should horror be understood? Or, is it something that simply cannot be understood, but is, as Thacker suggests, a way of exploring the unthinkable, and so of bringing alternative philosophies, like the negative and nihilism, into the centers of critical discourse? Is there a hermeneutics of horror, in the sense of both a specific set of approaches keyed to horror and in the sense of a larger reading practice thought from within horror itself? Can traditional literary categories and even periods be rethought as horror? For instance, can European modernism, an idiom and aesthetic usually left out of genealogies of horror fiction, itself be read as a kind of literature of horror? Is horror compatible with realism? Is it a space where religion and theology have persisted in a secular age? How can horror help rethink recent areas of critical inquiry, including the global, cosmopolitanism, object-oriented ontologies, and the Anthropocene?
American Comparative Literature Association's 2016 Annual Meeting will take place at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts March 17-20, 2016
Horror
Organizer: Jack Dudley, Mount Saint Mary's University
Co-Organizer: Chris McVey, Boston University
http://www.acla.org/seminar/horror
Proposals due September 2015
What would it mean to think and read with horror? What would a turn to horror look like, and what might its implications be for critical practice? Building on recent work by Eugene Thacker, Dylan Trigg, Graham Harman, Ben Woodard, and Thomas Ligotti, among others, this seminar seeks to situate horror as a site for new critical inquiry. Like other genre categories (Western, Romance, Mystery), horror fiction and film have been traditionally denigrated as “popular,” “low,” and “underground,” despite changing conceptions of canonicity and challenges to the “high/low” divide. As Harman suggests when he challenges Edmund Wilson’s reductive reading of H.P. Lovecraft, mere content should not lead to critical dismissal. If, for instance, crime and detective fiction have recently been turned to as new sites for understanding global literature, what can horror now open to comparative literary studies and theory?
Given the broad and new nature of this topic, our seminar seeks a range of papers, from large-scale interventions that situate horror broadly, to new close readings of works of horror, to re-readings of canonical texts as horror. How should horror be understood? Or, is it something that simply cannot be understood, but is, as Thacker suggests, a way of exploring the unthinkable, and so of bringing alternative philosophies, like the negative and nihilism, into the centers of critical discourse? Is there a hermeneutics of horror, in the sense of both a specific set of approaches keyed to horror and in the sense of a larger reading practice thought from within horror itself? Can traditional literary categories and even periods be rethought as horror? For instance, can European modernism, an idiom and aesthetic usually left out of genealogies of horror fiction, itself be read as a kind of literature of horror? Is horror compatible with realism? Is it a space where religion and theology have persisted in a secular age? How can horror help rethink recent areas of critical inquiry, including the global, cosmopolitanism, object-oriented ontologies, and the Anthropocene?
Monday, July 20, 2015
CFP Female Tricksters (9/15/15; Kalamazoo 2016)
Also from MEARCSTAPA-L:
CFP: Kalamazoo 2016: Female Tricksters
Session Sponsors: MEARCSTAPA (Monsters: the Experimental Association for the Research of Cryptozoology Through Scholarly Theory and Practical Application) and the American Society of Irish Medieval Studies (ASIMS).
Session Organizers: Sarah L. Higley (University of Rochester), Larissa Tracy (Longwood University), and Asa Simon Mittman (Chico State University).
Session Presider: Sarah L. Higley (University of Rochester)
The trickster, who conquers by cunning and not force, inhabits a complex moral/ethical world and seems to provoke a culture already steeped in cruelty and punishment in order to enact his/her own cruelty and punishment. The trickster in the “Beast Epic” gratifies his brute desires at the expense of others for fun and sadism, and is often punished for doing so in order to restore order to a damaged cultural body, but also to expose its injustices and hypocrisies. It has been suggested by Joan Acocella in the New Yorker that that the only kind of creature that can’t be a trickster is a woman, and yet medieval literature is rife with female tricksters of all kinds—particularly in fabliaux and Celtic fairy lore where the hero is defeated by a woman’s underhanded magic or rewarded by his ability to deal with her.
This session engages the challenge set forth by Acocella to locate and examine female tricksters in medieval culture. What role does the female trickster/monster play in it? The Morrígan of The Táin takes multiple animal shapes, as does Cerridwen of Welsh tradition. Acocella mentions Alison of The Miller’s Tale, but not the Wife of Bath or her model, La Vieille of Roman de la Rose; nor Dame Sirith; nor the monstrous loathly ladies in Irish and Middle English literature; nor the ugly, otherworldly woman in The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel who brings down the hapless Conaire. Hags and widows are relentlessly portrayed as “cunning women.” Women of the Old French fabliaux beguile and trick their witless spouses and lovers through a variety of means. In short, female tricksters abound in the medieval literary traditions all over the world.
MEARCSTAPA and ASIMS invite 20-minute papers from any field or theoretical approach and on any subject relating to the topic of medieval female tricksters. Please send abstracts of 300 words and a brief bio to session organizers Sarah L. Higley (sarah.higley@rochester.edu) and Larissa Tracy (kattracy@comcast.net) by Sept. 15, 2015.
CFP: Kalamazoo 2016: Female Tricksters
Session Sponsors: MEARCSTAPA (Monsters: the Experimental Association for the Research of Cryptozoology Through Scholarly Theory and Practical Application) and the American Society of Irish Medieval Studies (ASIMS).
Session Organizers: Sarah L. Higley (University of Rochester), Larissa Tracy (Longwood University), and Asa Simon Mittman (Chico State University).
Session Presider: Sarah L. Higley (University of Rochester)
The trickster, who conquers by cunning and not force, inhabits a complex moral/ethical world and seems to provoke a culture already steeped in cruelty and punishment in order to enact his/her own cruelty and punishment. The trickster in the “Beast Epic” gratifies his brute desires at the expense of others for fun and sadism, and is often punished for doing so in order to restore order to a damaged cultural body, but also to expose its injustices and hypocrisies. It has been suggested by Joan Acocella in the New Yorker that that the only kind of creature that can’t be a trickster is a woman, and yet medieval literature is rife with female tricksters of all kinds—particularly in fabliaux and Celtic fairy lore where the hero is defeated by a woman’s underhanded magic or rewarded by his ability to deal with her.
This session engages the challenge set forth by Acocella to locate and examine female tricksters in medieval culture. What role does the female trickster/monster play in it? The Morrígan of The Táin takes multiple animal shapes, as does Cerridwen of Welsh tradition. Acocella mentions Alison of The Miller’s Tale, but not the Wife of Bath or her model, La Vieille of Roman de la Rose; nor Dame Sirith; nor the monstrous loathly ladies in Irish and Middle English literature; nor the ugly, otherworldly woman in The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel who brings down the hapless Conaire. Hags and widows are relentlessly portrayed as “cunning women.” Women of the Old French fabliaux beguile and trick their witless spouses and lovers through a variety of means. In short, female tricksters abound in the medieval literary traditions all over the world.
MEARCSTAPA and ASIMS invite 20-minute papers from any field or theoretical approach and on any subject relating to the topic of medieval female tricksters. Please send abstracts of 300 words and a brief bio to session organizers Sarah L. Higley (sarah.higley@rochester.edu) and Larissa Tracy (kattracy@comcast.net) by Sept. 15, 2015.
CFP Imagery from the Medieval Bestiary (9/18/2015; Kalamazoo 2016)
A heads up courtesy of the MEARCSTAPA listserv:
Call for Papers: 51st International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan: May 12-15, 2016
Session Title: “"Beauty and the Beast: Imagery from the Medieval Bestiary"
Session Organizer: Elizabeth Morrison (Senior Curator of Manuscripts, J. Paul Getty Museum)
The role of animals in the Middle Ages has recently become a popular topic for research in all realms of medieval studies. Given this interest, it seems a good time to turn attention to perhaps the most important source of information about animals in the period, the bestiary. The animal stories contained in the bestiary were used as inspiration for public sermons, daily reading for the religious, and entertainment by the nobility, thereby exerting a powerful hold over the understanding and interpretation of animals in the medieval world. This session would propose to focus in particular on the influential role of the imagery associated with the bestiary. The bestiary is one of a very small number of medieval texts that seems to be almost invariably accompanied by illumination, and with a more even balance between image and text than is found in almost any other surviving manuscript tradition. The stable iconography of the bestiary was so well-known, in fact, that it was instantly recognizable, even when separated from its accompanying text; examples such as a lion breathing life into its cubs or the pelican piercing its own breast to revive its chicks can be found in the visual arts well beyond the bestiary. Papers for this session could address the text/image relationship in the bestiary, illuminated texts that are often bound together with the bestiary, non-bestiary texts that are accompanied by bestiary imagery, or other artistic media that integrate iconography traditionally associated with bestiaries
Please send an abstract of no more than 300 words (for a paper planned to be 15-20 minutes), along with the conference Participant Information Form, to Elizabeth Morrison at * emorrison@getty.edu * by September 18, 2015. Any proposals not accepted for this session will be sent on to for consideration in one of the general sessions at Kalamazoo.
The Participant Information Form can be found on the Congress website:http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html
Call for Papers: 51st International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan: May 12-15, 2016
Session Title: “"Beauty and the Beast: Imagery from the Medieval Bestiary"
Session Organizer: Elizabeth Morrison (Senior Curator of Manuscripts, J. Paul Getty Museum)
The role of animals in the Middle Ages has recently become a popular topic for research in all realms of medieval studies. Given this interest, it seems a good time to turn attention to perhaps the most important source of information about animals in the period, the bestiary. The animal stories contained in the bestiary were used as inspiration for public sermons, daily reading for the religious, and entertainment by the nobility, thereby exerting a powerful hold over the understanding and interpretation of animals in the medieval world. This session would propose to focus in particular on the influential role of the imagery associated with the bestiary. The bestiary is one of a very small number of medieval texts that seems to be almost invariably accompanied by illumination, and with a more even balance between image and text than is found in almost any other surviving manuscript tradition. The stable iconography of the bestiary was so well-known, in fact, that it was instantly recognizable, even when separated from its accompanying text; examples such as a lion breathing life into its cubs or the pelican piercing its own breast to revive its chicks can be found in the visual arts well beyond the bestiary. Papers for this session could address the text/image relationship in the bestiary, illuminated texts that are often bound together with the bestiary, non-bestiary texts that are accompanied by bestiary imagery, or other artistic media that integrate iconography traditionally associated with bestiaries
Please send an abstract of no more than 300 words (for a paper planned to be 15-20 minutes), along with the conference Participant Information Form, to Elizabeth Morrison at * emorrison@getty.edu * by September 18, 2015. Any proposals not accepted for this session will be sent on to for consideration in one of the general sessions at Kalamazoo.
The Participant Information Form can be found on the Congress website:http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html
CFP Food and Horror on Screen Collection (proposals by 5/31/15)
Mea culpa. Please note expired deadline:
What's Eating You?: Food and Horror on Screen (Abstracts 5/31/15)
https://networks.h-net.org/node/13784/discussions/70525/deadline-extended-whats-eating-you-food-and-horror-screen-abstracts
Discussion published by Cynthia Miller on Friday, May 22, 2015
DEADLINE EXTENDED!!! ** Abstracts accepted through 5/31 **
Lots of territory to explore here - Poultrygeist ... Bad Taste ... Sweeney Todd ... The Stuff ... Delicatessen ... Dead Sushi ... Motel Hell ... Attack of the Killer Tomatoes ... and so much more!!
Call for Contributors (Abstracts 5/31/15; Essays 12/1/15)
What’s Eating You?: Food and Horror on Screen
There is, perhaps, no closer association than the one between food and life – and nearly as close is that between food and quality of life. Old adages tell us that we are what we eat, or more broadly, divide us into two categories: those who live to eat, and those who eat to live. And of course, what child hasn’t heard “Eeww! Don’t put that in your mouth!”?
Food sustains our bodies, creates and binds relationships, signals beliefs, and engenders romance. Our relationship with food, then, is not only one of biological continuance, but of what it means to be human, and so, bubbles over with taboos, fears, morals, boundaries, and hierarchies. Are we hunters or prey? Connoisseurs or cave dwellers? Pure or polluted?
Horror narratives routinely grasp those questions and spin them into nightmares. Monstrous others dine on bugs and worms, or force-feed them to unwilling captives; Bodies, still thrashing with life are ripped apart for consumption by zombies, or worse, by other humans; The tables of consumption are turned, and the consumer becomes the consumed; The unaware innocently dine on their friends, neighbors, and loved ones. Overindulgence, as Le Grande Bouffe (1973) and Se7en (1995) warn, can kill us, and occasionally, as films like The Stuff (1985) and Poultrygeist (2006) illustrate, our food fights back. From Blood Feast (1963) to Sweeney Todd (2007); Delicatessen (1991) to Hannibal (2001); and Bad Taste (1987) to Black Sheep (2006), motion pictures have reminded us that it is an “eat or be eaten” world.
This volume is intended to explore the deeper significance of such stories: The ways in which they reflect (or challenge) our deepest fears about consuming and being consumed. How do these films mock our taboos, threaten our complacencies, and unsettle our notions about the human condition? How do they critique our increasing focus on consumption? In what ways do they hold a mirror to our taken-for-granteds about food and humanity and ask if we are more than what we eat, or if what we eat truly matters?
Proposals for both topical essays and close readings of a single text are welcome. Please note that this volume is focused on fictional, or explicitly fictionalized, narratives on screen. Essays that treat documentary or other non-fiction horror stories about food and consumption are outside the scope of this project.
The editors seek 500-word proposals for engaging, accessible essays that will explore a wide range of narratives linking food and horror, with an eye toward the ways in which food is used as cultural, social, and philosophical commentary. Please send your 500-word abstract to both co-editors, Cindy Miller (cynthia_miller@emerson.edu) and Bow Van Riper (abvanriper@gmail.com).
Publication timetable:
May 31, 2015 – Deadline for Abstracts
June 1, 2015 – Notification of Acceptance Decisions
December 1, 2015 – Chapter Drafts Due
March 1, 2016 – Chapter Revisions Due
May 1, 2016 –Delivery to Publisher
Acceptance will be contingent upon the contributors' ability to meet these deadlines, and to deliver professional-quality work. First drafts not submitted by the December 1 deadline will, regrettably, be replaced.
What's Eating You?: Food and Horror on Screen (Abstracts 5/31/15)
https://networks.h-net.org/node/13784/discussions/70525/deadline-extended-whats-eating-you-food-and-horror-screen-abstracts
Discussion published by Cynthia Miller on Friday, May 22, 2015
DEADLINE EXTENDED!!! ** Abstracts accepted through 5/31 **
Lots of territory to explore here - Poultrygeist ... Bad Taste ... Sweeney Todd ... The Stuff ... Delicatessen ... Dead Sushi ... Motel Hell ... Attack of the Killer Tomatoes ... and so much more!!
Call for Contributors (Abstracts 5/31/15; Essays 12/1/15)
What’s Eating You?: Food and Horror on Screen
There is, perhaps, no closer association than the one between food and life – and nearly as close is that between food and quality of life. Old adages tell us that we are what we eat, or more broadly, divide us into two categories: those who live to eat, and those who eat to live. And of course, what child hasn’t heard “Eeww! Don’t put that in your mouth!”?
Food sustains our bodies, creates and binds relationships, signals beliefs, and engenders romance. Our relationship with food, then, is not only one of biological continuance, but of what it means to be human, and so, bubbles over with taboos, fears, morals, boundaries, and hierarchies. Are we hunters or prey? Connoisseurs or cave dwellers? Pure or polluted?
Horror narratives routinely grasp those questions and spin them into nightmares. Monstrous others dine on bugs and worms, or force-feed them to unwilling captives; Bodies, still thrashing with life are ripped apart for consumption by zombies, or worse, by other humans; The tables of consumption are turned, and the consumer becomes the consumed; The unaware innocently dine on their friends, neighbors, and loved ones. Overindulgence, as Le Grande Bouffe (1973) and Se7en (1995) warn, can kill us, and occasionally, as films like The Stuff (1985) and Poultrygeist (2006) illustrate, our food fights back. From Blood Feast (1963) to Sweeney Todd (2007); Delicatessen (1991) to Hannibal (2001); and Bad Taste (1987) to Black Sheep (2006), motion pictures have reminded us that it is an “eat or be eaten” world.
This volume is intended to explore the deeper significance of such stories: The ways in which they reflect (or challenge) our deepest fears about consuming and being consumed. How do these films mock our taboos, threaten our complacencies, and unsettle our notions about the human condition? How do they critique our increasing focus on consumption? In what ways do they hold a mirror to our taken-for-granteds about food and humanity and ask if we are more than what we eat, or if what we eat truly matters?
Proposals for both topical essays and close readings of a single text are welcome. Please note that this volume is focused on fictional, or explicitly fictionalized, narratives on screen. Essays that treat documentary or other non-fiction horror stories about food and consumption are outside the scope of this project.
The editors seek 500-word proposals for engaging, accessible essays that will explore a wide range of narratives linking food and horror, with an eye toward the ways in which food is used as cultural, social, and philosophical commentary. Please send your 500-word abstract to both co-editors, Cindy Miller (cynthia_miller@emerson.edu) and Bow Van Riper (abvanriper@gmail.com).
Publication timetable:
May 31, 2015 – Deadline for Abstracts
June 1, 2015 – Notification of Acceptance Decisions
December 1, 2015 – Chapter Drafts Due
March 1, 2016 – Chapter Revisions Due
May 1, 2016 –Delivery to Publisher
Acceptance will be contingent upon the contributors' ability to meet these deadlines, and to deliver professional-quality work. First drafts not submitted by the December 1 deadline will, regrettably, be replaced.
CFP Hermeneutics of Hell Collection (proposals by 9/1/15)
Call for Submissions: The Hermeneutics of Hell (Essay Collection; 09/01/15;03/15/16)
https://networks.h-net.org/node/13784/discussions/72983/call-submissions-hermeneutics-hell-essay-collection-090115031516
Discussion published by Gregor Thuswaldner on Tuesday, June 23, 2015
Call for Submissions: The Hermeneutics of Hell: Devilish Visions and Visions of the Devil in World Literature
“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 collection of essays 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 September 1, 2015 to Dan Russ and Gregor Thuswaldner at dkruss47@gmail.com and Gregor.Thuswaldner@gordon.edu If selected for the essay collection, the finished assays are due by March 15, 2016.
https://networks.h-net.org/node/13784/discussions/72983/call-submissions-hermeneutics-hell-essay-collection-090115031516
Discussion published by Gregor Thuswaldner on Tuesday, June 23, 2015
Call for Submissions: The Hermeneutics of Hell: Devilish Visions and Visions of the Devil in World Literature
“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 collection of essays 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 September 1, 2015 to Dan Russ and Gregor Thuswaldner at dkruss47@gmail.com and Gregor.Thuswaldner@gordon.edu If selected for the essay collection, the finished assays are due by March 15, 2016.
CFP The Automated Body (Spec Issue) (8/15/15)
CFP: ESC—“‘Fear, Love, and Confusion’: A Special Issue on the AUTOMATED BODY” (Deadline: August 15, 2015)
http://accute.ca/2015/05/28/call-for-papers-esc-fear-love-and-confusion-a-special-issue-on-the-automated-body-deadline-august-15-2015/
BY INFOACCUTE ON MAY 28, 2015
ESC—“‘Fear, Love, and Confusion’: A Special Issue on the AUTOMATED BODY”
Deadline for submission of abstracts or completed papers: August 15, 2015
ESC: English Studies in Canada invites submissions for a special issue on the automated body, edited by Cecily Devereux and Marcelle Kosman, to be published Spring 2016. This special issue is situated in response to an expanding range of questions and concerns about humans and automation in early twenty-first-century cultural representation. Such questions and concerns are arguably evident in representation from the earliest days of mechanization and industrialization in the late eighteenth century, and what a scant twenty years ago were referred to as “cybercultures” have been the focus for nearly three decades of academic considerations. Contemporary cultural texts, we suggest, demonstrate a renewed engagement with questions of the implications of the convergence of the biological with the mechanical and the relationships and the limits of what Donna Haraway characterized in her 1985 “Cyborg Manifesto” as “couplings between organism and machine” and the “fear, love, and confusion” they generate. If fear is evident in what a 2014 New York Times op-ed (June 22) characterized as “robot-worriers’” concerns about automation and unemployment in the workplace, to take only one example, love of—and confusion regarding—human-machine convergences is evident in proliferating stories of transformation, connection, and relationship such as the 2014 film Her and Allison de Fren’s 2012 documentary The Mechanical Bride. This special issue of ESC is interested in questions of automated bodies broadly conceived. It undertakes to bring into conversation a range of papers focused on any aspect of bodies and automation in cultural representation across media and disciplines. We are interested in automated embodiment as a distinctively contemporary concern yet also/and as well in the histories and archaeologies of such embodiment across periods and contexts.
Please forward either a 500-word abstract OR a completed paper (6000-8000 words, in MLA format) and a 50-word biographical statement to Marcelle Kosman (mkosman@ualberta.ca) and Cecily Devereux (cecily.devereux@ualberta.ca) by August 15, 2015. Final revisions to accepted papers will need to be completed by December 15, 2015.
ESC: English Studies in Canada is a quarterly journal of scholarship and criticism concerned with the study of literature and culture. Recent special issues include “Hysteria Manifest: Cultural Lives of a Great Disorder” (40.1: 2014), edited by Derritt Mason and Ela Pryzbylo); “The Global Animal” (39.1: 2013), edited by Karyn Ball and Melissa Haynes), and “Childhood and Its Discontents” (38:3-4: 2012), edited by Nat Hurley. For more information visit ESC Digital at www.arts.ualberta.ca/~esc ESC normally accepts black and white images, up to a limit of six per article. Contributors are responsible for providing image files in black and white with a resolution no less than… and for securing permissions in advance of publication. The journal’s style sheet is available at http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/~esc/submit.php.
http://accute.ca/2015/05/28/call-for-papers-esc-fear-love-and-confusion-a-special-issue-on-the-automated-body-deadline-august-15-2015/
BY INFOACCUTE ON MAY 28, 2015
ESC—“‘Fear, Love, and Confusion’: A Special Issue on the AUTOMATED BODY”
Deadline for submission of abstracts or completed papers: August 15, 2015
ESC: English Studies in Canada invites submissions for a special issue on the automated body, edited by Cecily Devereux and Marcelle Kosman, to be published Spring 2016. This special issue is situated in response to an expanding range of questions and concerns about humans and automation in early twenty-first-century cultural representation. Such questions and concerns are arguably evident in representation from the earliest days of mechanization and industrialization in the late eighteenth century, and what a scant twenty years ago were referred to as “cybercultures” have been the focus for nearly three decades of academic considerations. Contemporary cultural texts, we suggest, demonstrate a renewed engagement with questions of the implications of the convergence of the biological with the mechanical and the relationships and the limits of what Donna Haraway characterized in her 1985 “Cyborg Manifesto” as “couplings between organism and machine” and the “fear, love, and confusion” they generate. If fear is evident in what a 2014 New York Times op-ed (June 22) characterized as “robot-worriers’” concerns about automation and unemployment in the workplace, to take only one example, love of—and confusion regarding—human-machine convergences is evident in proliferating stories of transformation, connection, and relationship such as the 2014 film Her and Allison de Fren’s 2012 documentary The Mechanical Bride. This special issue of ESC is interested in questions of automated bodies broadly conceived. It undertakes to bring into conversation a range of papers focused on any aspect of bodies and automation in cultural representation across media and disciplines. We are interested in automated embodiment as a distinctively contemporary concern yet also/and as well in the histories and archaeologies of such embodiment across periods and contexts.
- Bodies and/as machines; anthropomorphized machines; mechanical enhancement; prosthetics
- Cybernetics, biomedical engineering, genetic engineering; new eugenics and reproductive technologies
- Science fiction, fantasy, speculative and dystopic fiction and film; genres and subgenres: cyberpunk, biopunk, steampunk; automated bodies in comics media
- Fictions of transformation across media: Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio, Hoffmann’s “The Sandman,” Coppélia, The Nutcracker
- Fictions of male reproduction; parthenogenesis; auto-generation; cloning
- Mechanical bodies and televisual media: The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, Dark Angel, Aeon Flux; media and mechanization
- Mechanical bodies in dance; dancing machines; machine music; music and automatism; karaoke; Dance Dance Revolution
- Mechanical bodies and fitness; sports and automation
- Robots as themes and instruments in contemporary music: Daft Punk, Ladytron, Kraftwerk, Radiohead, Robyn; Auto-Tune
- Avatars; gaming bodies (bodies in games, players’ bodies); virtual automation; virtual companions; intimate operating systems: Her; Siri; artificial intelligence
- Humans and computers; computer automation; machine dependency; devices, appliances, watches, glasses; brain-computer interface
- Social media and automatism
- Robot, robotics, fembot, cyborg, cylon, clone, replicant; robots as “immigrants from the future” (The Economist)
- Anthropomorphized robots; robots and affect; robots and love; robots we love; robots we fear; human/robot hybrids; roboethics
- Donna Haraway: reading organisms and machines since “The Cyborg Manifesto”
- Gender and automation; automation and patriarchy; fantasies of automation; housewives and mechanization
- Femininity and living dolls; Mechanical Brides, Stepford Wives, Windup Girls
- Masculinity and living dolls; Lars and the Real Girl, My Living Doll, Metropolis
- Automation, capital, and labour; automation and exhaustion; robots and dirty human work; overwork and automation; automation and unemployment
- Bodies in industry; factory bodies; Taylorism; Fordism; factory girls, typewriter girls; modernism, modernity, Modern Times
- Automated monsters (Chucky); zombies and/as automated bodies; Frankenstein; bodies and/as weapons; automation and monstrosity
- Automatic writing; computer-generated poetry; hypnotism and performing bodies
- Animals and automation; robot animals; cinema and mechanical creatures; technologies of 3D animation
- Automobility, automaticity, bodies and cars; killer cars (Christine, Killdozer)
- Automated toys and other things; sex toys; future toys
- Talking to machines: everyday life and automated systems
- Machines without humans: self-parking cars, self-flying planes, drones, drone photography; killing machines
- Surveillance and security systems; facial recognition technology; NSA monitoring; bio-identification
Please forward either a 500-word abstract OR a completed paper (6000-8000 words, in MLA format) and a 50-word biographical statement to Marcelle Kosman (mkosman@ualberta.ca) and Cecily Devereux (cecily.devereux@ualberta.ca) by August 15, 2015. Final revisions to accepted papers will need to be completed by December 15, 2015.
ESC: English Studies in Canada is a quarterly journal of scholarship and criticism concerned with the study of literature and culture. Recent special issues include “Hysteria Manifest: Cultural Lives of a Great Disorder” (40.1: 2014), edited by Derritt Mason and Ela Pryzbylo); “The Global Animal” (39.1: 2013), edited by Karyn Ball and Melissa Haynes), and “Childhood and Its Discontents” (38:3-4: 2012), edited by Nat Hurley. For more information visit ESC Digital at www.arts.ualberta.ca/~esc ESC normally accepts black and white images, up to a limit of six per article. Contributors are responsible for providing image files in black and white with a resolution no less than… and for securing permissions in advance of publication. The journal’s style sheet is available at http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/~esc/submit.php.
CFP Science Fiction and the Medical Humanities (Spec Issue) (3/1/16)
This sounds promising:
Call for Papers for Medical Humanities
Science Fiction and the Medical Humanities
http://scifimedhums.glasgow.ac.uk/journal-issue/
The BMJ Group journal Medical Humanities will be publishing a special issue: ‘Science Fiction and the Medical Humanities’.
Themes
We invite papers of broad interest to an international readership of medical humanities scholars and practising clinicians on the topic ‘Science Fiction and the Medical Humanities’.
Science fiction is a fertile ground for the imagining of biomedical advances. Technologies such as cloning, prosthetics, and rejuvenation are frequently encountered in science-fiction stories. Science fiction also offers alternative ideals of health and wellbeing, and imagines new forms of disease and suffering. The special issue seeks papers that explore issues of health, illness, and medicine in science-fiction narratives within a variety of media (written word, graphic novel, theatre, dance, film and television, etc.).
We are also particularly interested in articles that explore the biomedical ‘technoscientific imaginary’: the culturally-embedded imagining of futures enabled by technoscientific innovation. We especially welcome papers that explore science-fiction tropes, motifs, and narratives within medical and health-related discourses, practices, and institutions. The question – how does the biomedical technoscientific imaginary permeate the everyday and expert worlds of modern medicine and healthcare? – may be a useful prompt for potential authors.
Subject areas might include but are not limited to:
• clinicians as science-fiction writers
• representations of medicine, health, disability, and illness in science-fiction literature, cinema, and other media
• the use and misuse of science fiction in public engagement with biomedical science and technology
• utopian narratives of miraculous biomedical progress (and their counter-narratives)
• socio-political critique in medical science fiction (via cognitive estrangement, critical utopias, etc.)
• science fiction as stimulus to biomedical research and technology (e.g. science-fiction prototyping)
• science-fiction tropes, motifs and narratives in medical publicity, research announcements, promotional material, etc.
• the visual and material aesthetic of science fiction in medicine and healthcare settings
Publication
Up to 10 articles will be published in Medical Humanities in 2016.
All articles will be blind peer-reviewed according to the journal’s editorial policies. Final publication decisions will rest with the Editor-in-Chief, Professor Deborah Bowman.
Important Dates
Please submit your article no later than 1 March 2016
Submission Instructions
Articles for Medical Humanities should be a maximum of 5,000 words, and submitted via the journal’s website. Please choose the special issue ‘Science Fiction and the Medical Humanities’ during the submission process.
If you would like to discuss any aspect of your submission, including possible topics, or the possibility of presenting your work under the auspices of the Wellcome Trust funded project ‘Science Fiction and the Medical Humanities’, please contact the Guest Editor in the first instance: Dr Gavin Miller (gavin.miller@glasgow.ac.uk)
Call for Papers for Medical Humanities
Science Fiction and the Medical Humanities
http://scifimedhums.glasgow.ac.uk/journal-issue/
The BMJ Group journal Medical Humanities will be publishing a special issue: ‘Science Fiction and the Medical Humanities’.
Themes
We invite papers of broad interest to an international readership of medical humanities scholars and practising clinicians on the topic ‘Science Fiction and the Medical Humanities’.
Science fiction is a fertile ground for the imagining of biomedical advances. Technologies such as cloning, prosthetics, and rejuvenation are frequently encountered in science-fiction stories. Science fiction also offers alternative ideals of health and wellbeing, and imagines new forms of disease and suffering. The special issue seeks papers that explore issues of health, illness, and medicine in science-fiction narratives within a variety of media (written word, graphic novel, theatre, dance, film and television, etc.).
We are also particularly interested in articles that explore the biomedical ‘technoscientific imaginary’: the culturally-embedded imagining of futures enabled by technoscientific innovation. We especially welcome papers that explore science-fiction tropes, motifs, and narratives within medical and health-related discourses, practices, and institutions. The question – how does the biomedical technoscientific imaginary permeate the everyday and expert worlds of modern medicine and healthcare? – may be a useful prompt for potential authors.
Subject areas might include but are not limited to:
• clinicians as science-fiction writers
• representations of medicine, health, disability, and illness in science-fiction literature, cinema, and other media
• the use and misuse of science fiction in public engagement with biomedical science and technology
• utopian narratives of miraculous biomedical progress (and their counter-narratives)
• socio-political critique in medical science fiction (via cognitive estrangement, critical utopias, etc.)
• science fiction as stimulus to biomedical research and technology (e.g. science-fiction prototyping)
• science-fiction tropes, motifs and narratives in medical publicity, research announcements, promotional material, etc.
• the visual and material aesthetic of science fiction in medicine and healthcare settings
Publication
Up to 10 articles will be published in Medical Humanities in 2016.
All articles will be blind peer-reviewed according to the journal’s editorial policies. Final publication decisions will rest with the Editor-in-Chief, Professor Deborah Bowman.
Important Dates
Please submit your article no later than 1 March 2016
Submission Instructions
Articles for Medical Humanities should be a maximum of 5,000 words, and submitted via the journal’s website. Please choose the special issue ‘Science Fiction and the Medical Humanities’ during the submission process.
If you would like to discuss any aspect of your submission, including possible topics, or the possibility of presenting your work under the auspices of the Wellcome Trust funded project ‘Science Fiction and the Medical Humanities’, please contact the Guest Editor in the first instance: Dr Gavin Miller (gavin.miller@glasgow.ac.uk)
CFP Expanding the Scope of Horror (Spec Issue) (no deadline noted)
"Expanding the Scope of Horror"; special journal issue of Interdisciplinary Humanities Humanities Education and Research Association
Fall 2016: Expanding the Scope of Horror
http://www.theofantastique.com/2015/07/07/cfp-expanding-the-scope-of-horror-special-journal-issue-of-interdisciplinary-humanities/
Guest Editors: Edmund Cueva and William Novak
The proposed set of essays and book reviews would have as its main objective to offer a new practical model for research and analysis as an alternative to the rigid and dichotomous methodologies often used in investigations on horror. Currently, most of the scholarship either tends to situate horror on the fringe of academic research and therefore not worthy of attention. Or, research isolates and defines horror as being strictly the intellectual property of those who are experts in literature or film.
The proposed paradigm would seek to create a multidisciplinary investigatory paradigm that will bring together into productive discussion such varied disciplines as classics, art history, philosophy, architecture, psychology, religious studies, history, gender studies, music, and the traditionally associated areas of literature and film.
The special issue would serve as a starting point for future discussion and research on horror in all of its multiple and complex forms. Please send inquiries and submissions to: Edmund Cueva at cuevae@uhd.edu and William Nowak at nowakw@uhd.edu.
Contact Info:
Edmund Cueva at cuevae@uhd.edu and William Nowak at nowakw@uhd.edu.
Fall 2016: Expanding the Scope of Horror
http://www.theofantastique.com/2015/07/07/cfp-expanding-the-scope-of-horror-special-journal-issue-of-interdisciplinary-humanities/
Guest Editors: Edmund Cueva and William Novak
The proposed set of essays and book reviews would have as its main objective to offer a new practical model for research and analysis as an alternative to the rigid and dichotomous methodologies often used in investigations on horror. Currently, most of the scholarship either tends to situate horror on the fringe of academic research and therefore not worthy of attention. Or, research isolates and defines horror as being strictly the intellectual property of those who are experts in literature or film.
The proposed paradigm would seek to create a multidisciplinary investigatory paradigm that will bring together into productive discussion such varied disciplines as classics, art history, philosophy, architecture, psychology, religious studies, history, gender studies, music, and the traditionally associated areas of literature and film.
The special issue would serve as a starting point for future discussion and research on horror in all of its multiple and complex forms. Please send inquiries and submissions to: Edmund Cueva at cuevae@uhd.edu and William Nowak at nowakw@uhd.edu.
Contact Info:
Edmund Cueva at cuevae@uhd.edu and William Nowak at nowakw@uhd.edu.
CFP Critical Companion to Tim Burton (9/1/15)
A CRITICAL COMPANION TO TIM BURTON (Abstr. by 30 September)
http://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/node/63040
full name / name of organization: Prof. Adam Barkman and Dr. Antonio Sanna
contact email: adam_barkman@hotmail.com isonisanna@hotmail.com
Tim Burton is certainly one of the most popular directors of contemporary Hollywood. His oeuvre includes blockbuster films such as Batman (1989), Planet of the Apes (2001) and Alice in Wonderland (2010) as well as less profitable– but still highly recognizable - films such as Ed Wood (1994). His work with stop motion, evident in Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride (2005) and the recent Frankenweenie (2013) has further popularized and updated a technique that has been fundamental in cinema since the silent era. His distinctive and personal touch, a visionary style that is now referred to as “Burtonesque”, and his frequent collaborations with Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and Danny Elfman (to mention merely a few) has contributed to establish a unique and identifiable brand. All of his achievements have offered (and still offer) an incredibly fertile ground for critical examination, analysis and discussion. Indeed, in recent years the scholarship on Burton has proliferated and a number of distinct theoretical approaches that analyze the director’s visual texts and their philosophical and cultural weight have emerged.
This anthology will explore Burton’s multi-medial oeuvre from multidisciplinary perspectives. This volume seeks previously-unpublished essays that explore the American director’s heterogeneous career, from short films such as Vincent (1982) and Frankenweenie (1984) and his direction of commercials and music videos to his drawings, paintings and photographs. We are particularly interested in interdisciplinary approaches to the subject that can illuminate the diverse facets of the director’s work and his unique visual style. We do not yet have a publisher, but are very confident in finding one soon.
There are several themes worth exploring when analyzing Burton’s works, utilizing any number of theoretical frameworks of your choosing. We request that chapters based on formal analysis cover a maximum of three films to allow for reasonably close readings. Contributions may include (but are not limited to) the following topics:
The anthology will be organized into thematic sections around these topics and others that emerge from submissions. We are open to works that focus on other topics as well and authors interested in pursuing other related lines of inquiry. Feel free to contact the editors with any questions you may have about the project and please share this announcement with colleagues whose work aligns with the focus of this volume.
Submit a 300-500 word abstract of your proposed chapter contribution, a brief CV and complete contact information to Prof. Adam Barkam (adam_barkman@hotmail.com) and Dr. Antonio Sanna (isonisanna@hotmail.com) by 30 September, 2015. Full chapters of 5000-7000 words would be due by 1 January, 2016. Note: all full chapters submitted will be included subject to review.
By web submission at 07/18/2015 - 10:29
http://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/node/63040
full name / name of organization: Prof. Adam Barkman and Dr. Antonio Sanna
contact email: adam_barkman@hotmail.com isonisanna@hotmail.com
Tim Burton is certainly one of the most popular directors of contemporary Hollywood. His oeuvre includes blockbuster films such as Batman (1989), Planet of the Apes (2001) and Alice in Wonderland (2010) as well as less profitable– but still highly recognizable - films such as Ed Wood (1994). His work with stop motion, evident in Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride (2005) and the recent Frankenweenie (2013) has further popularized and updated a technique that has been fundamental in cinema since the silent era. His distinctive and personal touch, a visionary style that is now referred to as “Burtonesque”, and his frequent collaborations with Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and Danny Elfman (to mention merely a few) has contributed to establish a unique and identifiable brand. All of his achievements have offered (and still offer) an incredibly fertile ground for critical examination, analysis and discussion. Indeed, in recent years the scholarship on Burton has proliferated and a number of distinct theoretical approaches that analyze the director’s visual texts and their philosophical and cultural weight have emerged.
This anthology will explore Burton’s multi-medial oeuvre from multidisciplinary perspectives. This volume seeks previously-unpublished essays that explore the American director’s heterogeneous career, from short films such as Vincent (1982) and Frankenweenie (1984) and his direction of commercials and music videos to his drawings, paintings and photographs. We are particularly interested in interdisciplinary approaches to the subject that can illuminate the diverse facets of the director’s work and his unique visual style. We do not yet have a publisher, but are very confident in finding one soon.
There are several themes worth exploring when analyzing Burton’s works, utilizing any number of theoretical frameworks of your choosing. We request that chapters based on formal analysis cover a maximum of three films to allow for reasonably close readings. Contributions may include (but are not limited to) the following topics:
- Burton and philosophy
- Burton and the visual arts
- Humour, Black Humour and the Macabre
- Burton and fairy tales
- Gender and queer readings
- Neo-Victorian art
- Exploration of dreams and the subconscious
- Fascination with machines and ecocriticism
- Mob mentality
- Alienation and misperception, conformity/nonconformity
- Disfigurement, deformity and (dis)ability
- Death and the afterlife
- Intertextuality
- Adaptations, Remakes and Appropriations
- Music and Danny Elfman
- Tim Burton in/and translation
- Evil Clowns
- Fan practice and fan communities
The anthology will be organized into thematic sections around these topics and others that emerge from submissions. We are open to works that focus on other topics as well and authors interested in pursuing other related lines of inquiry. Feel free to contact the editors with any questions you may have about the project and please share this announcement with colleagues whose work aligns with the focus of this volume.
Submit a 300-500 word abstract of your proposed chapter contribution, a brief CV and complete contact information to Prof. Adam Barkam (adam_barkman@hotmail.com) and Dr. Antonio Sanna (isonisanna@hotmail.com) by 30 September, 2015. Full chapters of 5000-7000 words would be due by 1 January, 2016. Note: all full chapters submitted will be included subject to review.
By web submission at 07/18/2015 - 10:29
CFP Natural and Unnatural Histories (11/2/15; Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies 3/10-13/16)
Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies (INCS) 2016: Natural and Unnatural Histories
http://navsa.org/2015/07/18/cfp-incs-2016-natural-and-unnatural-histories-1122015-310-132016/
Keynote Speakers Kate Flint (University of Southern California) and Elaine Freedgood (NYU)
March 10-13, 2016, Renaissance Asheville Hotel, Asheville, NC
Hosted by Appalachian State University
incs2016.appstate.edu
Historicism achieved its full flowering in the nineteenth century, when the historical methods of inquiry envisioned by figures such as Vico, Herder, and von Ranke were taken up and transformed in philosophy, art criticism, hermeneutics, philology, the human sciences, and, of course, history itself. By 1831, John Stuart Mill was already declaring historicism the dominant idea of the age. Taking human activity as their central subject, some nineteenth-century historicisms extended Hegel’s distinction between historical processes governed by thought and non-historical processes governed by nature. At the same time, scientists like Lyell and Darwin radically challenged nineteenth-century understandings of history by arguing that nature itself is historical. Powered by fossil fuels, industrialization began to prove this point by profoundly altering global ecologies at a previously unimaginable scale. We seek papers that investigate nineteenth-century histories and natures. How do natures, environments, or ecologies interact with histories at different scales—the local, the national, the transnational, or the planetary? What role does the nineteenth century play in the recent idea of an Anthropocene era? How might nineteenth-century natural histories help us to rethink historicism in the present? What are the risks and promises of presentist approaches to the nineteenth century? Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
Deadline: November 2, 2015. Upload proposals and a one-page CV via incs2016.appstate.edu. For individual papers, send 250-word proposals; for panels, send individual proposals plus a 250-word panel description. Proposals that are interdisciplinary in method or panels that involve multiple disciplines are especially welcome. Questions? Contact Jill Ehnenn at incs@appstate.edu
http://navsa.org/2015/07/18/cfp-incs-2016-natural-and-unnatural-histories-1122015-310-132016/
Keynote Speakers Kate Flint (University of Southern California) and Elaine Freedgood (NYU)
March 10-13, 2016, Renaissance Asheville Hotel, Asheville, NC
Hosted by Appalachian State University
incs2016.appstate.edu
Historicism achieved its full flowering in the nineteenth century, when the historical methods of inquiry envisioned by figures such as Vico, Herder, and von Ranke were taken up and transformed in philosophy, art criticism, hermeneutics, philology, the human sciences, and, of course, history itself. By 1831, John Stuart Mill was already declaring historicism the dominant idea of the age. Taking human activity as their central subject, some nineteenth-century historicisms extended Hegel’s distinction between historical processes governed by thought and non-historical processes governed by nature. At the same time, scientists like Lyell and Darwin radically challenged nineteenth-century understandings of history by arguing that nature itself is historical. Powered by fossil fuels, industrialization began to prove this point by profoundly altering global ecologies at a previously unimaginable scale. We seek papers that investigate nineteenth-century histories and natures. How do natures, environments, or ecologies interact with histories at different scales—the local, the national, the transnational, or the planetary? What role does the nineteenth century play in the recent idea of an Anthropocene era? How might nineteenth-century natural histories help us to rethink historicism in the present? What are the risks and promises of presentist approaches to the nineteenth century? Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- Narrating history, narrating nature
- Ideas of the natural, the unnatural, and/or the supernatural
- Nineteenth-century ecologies broadly construed: domestic ecologies, aesthetic ecologies, imperial and postcolonial ecologies, synthetic or technological ecologies
- Evolution and extinction
- Posthuman histories
- History, nature, and/or science in art
- Family histories, social histories
- Climate change, geosystems, geohistories
- Bioregionalisms, transregionalisms, literature and “sustainability”
- Queer ecologies/histories
- Disability histories/Cripping nature
- Life and non-life
- Flora, fauna, and fossils
- Ecopoetics, Environmental justice
- Reporting events/recording nature
- Commemorative musical compositions/performances
- Biopolitics, biopoetics
- Discourses of pollution, toxicity, garbage, waste
- Resource imperialism
- Political ecologies and economies
- Cross-cultural, indigenous, mestizo, subaltern nature writing
- Creaturely life, life forms, nonhumans, monstrosity
- Landscape aesthetics
- Global South studies
- Utopian/dystopian, steampunk, or neo-Victorian natures and/or histories
- Nineteenth-century histories of philosophy, religion and/or theology
- History of science, history of medicine, public health discourses
- Natural disasters, cataclysmic events
- Sexological, criminological, and/or psychiatric narratives
- Resources, capital, economies
- Biography and autobiography, case studies, archives
- History as genre: history painting, Bildungsroman, epic, historical novel, historical drama, etc.
Deadline: November 2, 2015. Upload proposals and a one-page CV via incs2016.appstate.edu. For individual papers, send 250-word proposals; for panels, send individual proposals plus a 250-word panel description. Proposals that are interdisciplinary in method or panels that involve multiple disciplines are especially welcome. Questions? Contact Jill Ehnenn at incs@appstate.edu
Friday, June 19, 2015
CFP Space Horror in Film (collection) (8/25/2015)
This sounds like a great idea:
CFP: Essays on Space Horror in Film, 1950s - 2000s Abstract Submission Deadline: August 25, 2015
Sunday, June 14, 2015
https://networks.h-net.org/node/13784/discussions/72546/cfp-essays-space-horror-film-1950s-2000s-abstract-submission
Call for Papers
Essays on Space Horror in Film, 1950s – 2000s
Abstract Submission Deadline: August 25, 2015
In 1979, the word A L I E N was spelled out across the top of an ominous movie poster, conveying a sense of foreboding of something unknown. An eerie yellow light seeped out of the egg-shaped space pod with the tagline: In space no one hears you scream. Audiences were drawn along with the Nostromo crew as they explored the mysterious abandoned ship on LV-426 and encountered a new and hostile alien species. It was one of the first movies to successfully combine science fiction and horror in an interstellar setting, spawning several inferior imitations in the 1980s while also inspiring standout films that furthered the genre, such as Event Horizon (1997), Pitch Black (2000), Sunshine (2007), and Europa Report (2013). While it may have seemed like space horror was a new genre after the release of Ridley Scott’s film, the genre has a rich history that took hold of movie audience-goers almost thirty years prior with the space horror films that could best be classified as invasion films. With a plethora of films, much has been written about science fiction, horror or on individual films (mostly the Alien franchise), yet surprisingly, little analysis can be found on space horror as its own genre in cinema. Essays for this anthology will seek to deconstruct and analyze the genre via the films from 1950s through the present offerings with the goal of exploring and bridging the gap of critical analysis that currently exists between science fiction and the horror genres. The intended audience is expected to include individuals studying and/or curious to increase their understanding of science fiction, horror and of course, space horror.
There are several themes worth exploring when analyzing space horror, utilizing any number of theoretical framework of your choosing. Here is a brief list of ideas, which is by no means exhaustive:
I am accepting up to two abstracts in order to assemble the most cohesive arrangement of essays that will provide a well-rounded exploration and representation of this little discussed genre. The deadlines are as follows:
Accepted essays received on or before January 31st will continue through the editing process. The editor will utilize Microsoft Word’s tracking function to record all edits and return the edited version back to the author for final correction.
The final manuscript will be delivered to the publisher June 1, 2016. Contributors will receive a complimentary book copy when published, which is anticipated for late 2016.
Please direct all correspondence to:
Michele Brittany, Editor
Email: SpaceHorrorFilms@gmail.com
Blog: http://spacehorrorfilms.blogspot.com
Website: www.spacehorrorfilms.com
Michele Brittany is an independent popular culture scholar residing in Southern California and is the editor of James Bond and Popular Culture: Essays on the Influence of the Fictional Superspy (2014, McFarland & Company). She is the James Bond, Espionage and Eurospy Area Chair for the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association’s annual conference. She is a West Coast Correspondent for Bleeding Cool and writes daily on all things spy related at her blog, Spy-Fi & Superspies. She annually presents at the SWPACA and has presented at Wondercon Anaheim as part of the Comic Arts Conference series. She is also an academic member of the Horror Writer’s Association in Los Angeles.
Michele Brittany, Editor
Independent Scholar
Email: spacehorrorfilms@gmail.com
Visit the website at http://www.spacehorrorfilms.com
CFP: Essays on Space Horror in Film, 1950s - 2000s Abstract Submission Deadline: August 25, 2015
Sunday, June 14, 2015
https://networks.h-net.org/node/13784/discussions/72546/cfp-essays-space-horror-film-1950s-2000s-abstract-submission
Call for Papers
Essays on Space Horror in Film, 1950s – 2000s
Abstract Submission Deadline: August 25, 2015
In 1979, the word A L I E N was spelled out across the top of an ominous movie poster, conveying a sense of foreboding of something unknown. An eerie yellow light seeped out of the egg-shaped space pod with the tagline: In space no one hears you scream. Audiences were drawn along with the Nostromo crew as they explored the mysterious abandoned ship on LV-426 and encountered a new and hostile alien species. It was one of the first movies to successfully combine science fiction and horror in an interstellar setting, spawning several inferior imitations in the 1980s while also inspiring standout films that furthered the genre, such as Event Horizon (1997), Pitch Black (2000), Sunshine (2007), and Europa Report (2013). While it may have seemed like space horror was a new genre after the release of Ridley Scott’s film, the genre has a rich history that took hold of movie audience-goers almost thirty years prior with the space horror films that could best be classified as invasion films. With a plethora of films, much has been written about science fiction, horror or on individual films (mostly the Alien franchise), yet surprisingly, little analysis can be found on space horror as its own genre in cinema. Essays for this anthology will seek to deconstruct and analyze the genre via the films from 1950s through the present offerings with the goal of exploring and bridging the gap of critical analysis that currently exists between science fiction and the horror genres. The intended audience is expected to include individuals studying and/or curious to increase their understanding of science fiction, horror and of course, space horror.
There are several themes worth exploring when analyzing space horror, utilizing any number of theoretical framework of your choosing. Here is a brief list of ideas, which is by no means exhaustive:
- Claustrophobia, Outer Space fears (Pandorum, Dark Star, Europa Report, The Black Hole)
- The influence of slasher films (Alien, Event Horizon, Jason X, Sunshine, Leprechaun 4: In Space)
- Psychological (2001: A Space Odyssey, Solaris, Sunshine, Moon)
- Body Horror and/or transformation (Supernova, Event Horizon, Hellraiser: Bloodline, Slither)
- Final girl (Alien, Prometheus, Dead Space: Downfall)
- Paranormal/Occult (Event Horizon, Hellraiser: Bloodline, Dracula 3000, Ghosts of Mars)
- Cold War fears (most invasion films of the 1950s – 1970s)
- Doppelganger (Event Horizon, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Thing, Moon)
- Compare/Contrast maleficent vs. animal “aliens” (Xenomorphs in Alien franchise vs. alien species encountered in Pitch Black, Apollo 18, Europa Report for example)
- Alien abduction (Communion, Fire In The Sky, Extraterrestrial)
- Found footage (Europa Report, Apollo 18)
- Sacrifice of self and/or self-destruct sequence (Alien franchise, Event Horizon, Critters 4, The Last Days on Mars)
- Role of AI, robotics and/or the concept of “uncanny valley” (Alien franchise, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Prometheus, Dracula 3000)
- Bram Stoker and Space Vampires (Dracula 3000, Planet of the Vampires, Lifeforce)
- Exploring Literary roots such as H.P. Lovecraft, H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury, etc.
I am accepting up to two abstracts in order to assemble the most cohesive arrangement of essays that will provide a well-rounded exploration and representation of this little discussed genre. The deadlines are as follows:
- August 25, 2015: Abstract of 300-500 words, 1 page CV, preliminary draft bibliography
- September 1, 2015: Notification of acceptance/rejection (editor will send comprehensive style sheet)
- January 31, 2016: Essays due of 5,000-8,000 words in length (earlier submissions welcomed and encouraged)
- February 1 - April 20, 2016: Essays will be edited and returned to the author for review and revision. The final version of the essay, author’s release and a brief contributor’s bio is due to the editor by April 20, 2016
- June 1, 2016: Manuscript is received by the publisher
Accepted essays received on or before January 31st will continue through the editing process. The editor will utilize Microsoft Word’s tracking function to record all edits and return the edited version back to the author for final correction.
The final manuscript will be delivered to the publisher June 1, 2016. Contributors will receive a complimentary book copy when published, which is anticipated for late 2016.
Please direct all correspondence to:
Michele Brittany, Editor
Email: SpaceHorrorFilms@gmail.com
Blog: http://spacehorrorfilms.blogspot.com
Website: www.spacehorrorfilms.com
Michele Brittany is an independent popular culture scholar residing in Southern California and is the editor of James Bond and Popular Culture: Essays on the Influence of the Fictional Superspy (2014, McFarland & Company). She is the James Bond, Espionage and Eurospy Area Chair for the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association’s annual conference. She is a West Coast Correspondent for Bleeding Cool and writes daily on all things spy related at her blog, Spy-Fi & Superspies. She annually presents at the SWPACA and has presented at Wondercon Anaheim as part of the Comic Arts Conference series. She is also an academic member of the Horror Writer’s Association in Los Angeles.
Michele Brittany, Editor
Independent Scholar
Email: spacehorrorfilms@gmail.com
Visit the website at http://www.spacehorrorfilms.com
Sunday, June 7, 2015
CFP Edited Collection: Monstrous Moral Messengers: Supernatural Figures in Children’s Picture Books and Early Readings (6/10/15)
Been meaning to post this one:
CFP for Edited Collection - Monstrous Moral Messengers: Supernatural Figures in Children’s Picture Books and Early Readings
MAY 30 2015
http://www.theofantastique.com/2015/05/30/cfp-for-edited-collection-monstrous-moral-messengers-supernatural-figures-in-childrens-picture-books-and-early-readings/
CFP for Edited Collection: Monstrous Moral Messengers: Supernatural Figures in Children’s Picture Books and Early Readings
Picture books and early readers carry all the weight of parental authority, and are essential tools in the learning process for our children. With their bright pictures, they perform their function of holding the child’s attention quite well, and they are accessed freely and repeatedly. They offer children not only hours of sanctioned entertainment and carefully chosen words and concepts, they also introduce our youngest children to specific cultural norms and belief systems. What role then does the supernatural character play for children learning to “read” and interpret the values in the interplay of images, words, and authority? Is there a difference, for the child, when the protagonist shown in the picture is a werewolf, fairy, or ghost? What message is offered to a viewing child when the image of the antagonist is a vampire, troll, or god? Does the very fact that the character is supernatural alter the reading? And is it meant to alter the meaning? At this point, there is no text addressing these questions; although there is an increasing amount of scholarship regarding how the various supernatural characters (and monstrous children) reflect various adult issues when they appear within film and television. I think it is perhaps more important to understand what messages are being offered our children through the same, albeit simplified, medium of pictorial texts which offer a sanctioned teaching medium for learning the semiotics which children are praised for interpreting. This book is meant to begin the exploration of what cultural norms and morals are being offered our children in images via this medium since picture books and early readers are not just sanctioned, but encouraged.
For this collection, papers from any discipline are welcome. Focus is, however, exclusively on supernatural figures in children’s picture books and early readers. (The only exclusions are aliens, and magical entities such as talking trees, talking owls, etc.) Issues which might be explored by contributors include (but are not limited to):
* The primary purpose of the supernatural character[s] within a specific text, or series, and what it/they are teaching children
* The use of a supernatural character as harmless entertainment (is there really a picture book which doesn’t offer a moral of some sort?)
* The use of a ghost, vampire, werewolf, or other supernatural, as a stand-in for diversity. Do they work as a stand in? Why or why not? (Why not just depict the human “other?”)
* The way in which a specific moral is being offered through the use of a supernatural character
* The way the supernatural character will potentially impact the child’s view of their world
* Comparative discussion regarding how the morals in early monster tales (such as Grimm’s) are now being revised to offer a differing moral – and how/why the changes reflect new norms
Questions to get you thinking:
* Why are so many supernatural characters green?
* Are some supernatural characters depicted as “bad” while others are “good?”
* Does the color scheme used impact the child’s reading of the characters?
* In what way does adult encouragement regarding “reading” the text impact the child’s reading of the supernatural character[s]?
* Is there a different reading/interpretation of the text offered the child when the supernatural being is the protagonist or the antagonist?
Please submit a 300 word abstract and a brief scholarly bio to Leslie Ormandy at monstrousmessengers@gmail.com. The closing date for submissions is June 10, 2015. Notice of acceptance will follow by June 25, 2015 (and will include a listing of helpful readings). Complete 7000 – 8000 word essays are to be submitted by December 10, 2015 in MLA format with US spelling and punctuation.
CFP for Edited Collection - Monstrous Moral Messengers: Supernatural Figures in Children’s Picture Books and Early Readings
MAY 30 2015
http://www.theofantastique.com/2015/05/30/cfp-for-edited-collection-monstrous-moral-messengers-supernatural-figures-in-childrens-picture-books-and-early-readings/
CFP for Edited Collection: Monstrous Moral Messengers: Supernatural Figures in Children’s Picture Books and Early Readings
Picture books and early readers carry all the weight of parental authority, and are essential tools in the learning process for our children. With their bright pictures, they perform their function of holding the child’s attention quite well, and they are accessed freely and repeatedly. They offer children not only hours of sanctioned entertainment and carefully chosen words and concepts, they also introduce our youngest children to specific cultural norms and belief systems. What role then does the supernatural character play for children learning to “read” and interpret the values in the interplay of images, words, and authority? Is there a difference, for the child, when the protagonist shown in the picture is a werewolf, fairy, or ghost? What message is offered to a viewing child when the image of the antagonist is a vampire, troll, or god? Does the very fact that the character is supernatural alter the reading? And is it meant to alter the meaning? At this point, there is no text addressing these questions; although there is an increasing amount of scholarship regarding how the various supernatural characters (and monstrous children) reflect various adult issues when they appear within film and television. I think it is perhaps more important to understand what messages are being offered our children through the same, albeit simplified, medium of pictorial texts which offer a sanctioned teaching medium for learning the semiotics which children are praised for interpreting. This book is meant to begin the exploration of what cultural norms and morals are being offered our children in images via this medium since picture books and early readers are not just sanctioned, but encouraged.
For this collection, papers from any discipline are welcome. Focus is, however, exclusively on supernatural figures in children’s picture books and early readers. (The only exclusions are aliens, and magical entities such as talking trees, talking owls, etc.) Issues which might be explored by contributors include (but are not limited to):
* The primary purpose of the supernatural character[s] within a specific text, or series, and what it/they are teaching children
* The use of a supernatural character as harmless entertainment (is there really a picture book which doesn’t offer a moral of some sort?)
* The use of a ghost, vampire, werewolf, or other supernatural, as a stand-in for diversity. Do they work as a stand in? Why or why not? (Why not just depict the human “other?”)
* The way in which a specific moral is being offered through the use of a supernatural character
* The way the supernatural character will potentially impact the child’s view of their world
* Comparative discussion regarding how the morals in early monster tales (such as Grimm’s) are now being revised to offer a differing moral – and how/why the changes reflect new norms
Questions to get you thinking:
* Why are so many supernatural characters green?
* Are some supernatural characters depicted as “bad” while others are “good?”
* Does the color scheme used impact the child’s reading of the characters?
* In what way does adult encouragement regarding “reading” the text impact the child’s reading of the supernatural character[s]?
* Is there a different reading/interpretation of the text offered the child when the supernatural being is the protagonist or the antagonist?
Please submit a 300 word abstract and a brief scholarly bio to Leslie Ormandy at monstrousmessengers@gmail.com. The closing date for submissions is June 10, 2015. Notice of acceptance will follow by June 25, 2015 (and will include a listing of helpful readings). Complete 7000 – 8000 word essays are to be submitted by December 10, 2015 in MLA format with US spelling and punctuation.
CFP 2nd call for submissions: "The Paranormal and Popular Culture" (9/1/15)
2nd call for submissions: "The Paranormal and Popular Culture"
JUN 03 2015
http://www.theofantastique.com/2015/06/03/2nd-call-for-submissions-the-paranormal-and-popular-culture/
Previously, a call for submissions was issued for a proposed volume, but we need a few more good abstracts to complete the volume.
With this second call for submissions we are are looking for proposals for essays to be included in an edited volume entitled The Paranormal and Popular Culture. Academic writers and independent scholars are invited to submit proposals spanning the wide range of topics on pop culture and the paranormal, and their connection to religion, including reflections on the full panoply of extraordinary beings (e.g. vampires, zombies, demons, ghosts, mutants, cyborgs, cryptoids, etc.) and extraordinary phenomena (e.g. psychic abilities, channeling, spontaneous combustion, magic, necromancy, etc.), as well as theoretical and/or historical reflections on supernaturalism and the paranormal, Fortean approaches to religion in popular culture.
Those interested in being considered as contributors should send an abstract to the co-editors, Darryl Caterine (cateridv@lemoyne.edu) and John Morehead (johnwmorehead@msn.com) by September 1. Our timeline is as follows: write up a proposal in September and pitch it to various publishers. Assuming we receive a timely and positive response from one or more of them, the tentative deadline for the essays would be February 2017.
JUN 03 2015
http://www.theofantastique.com/2015/06/03/2nd-call-for-submissions-the-paranormal-and-popular-culture/
Previously, a call for submissions was issued for a proposed volume, but we need a few more good abstracts to complete the volume.
With this second call for submissions we are are looking for proposals for essays to be included in an edited volume entitled The Paranormal and Popular Culture. Academic writers and independent scholars are invited to submit proposals spanning the wide range of topics on pop culture and the paranormal, and their connection to religion, including reflections on the full panoply of extraordinary beings (e.g. vampires, zombies, demons, ghosts, mutants, cyborgs, cryptoids, etc.) and extraordinary phenomena (e.g. psychic abilities, channeling, spontaneous combustion, magic, necromancy, etc.), as well as theoretical and/or historical reflections on supernaturalism and the paranormal, Fortean approaches to religion in popular culture.
Those interested in being considered as contributors should send an abstract to the co-editors, Darryl Caterine (cateridv@lemoyne.edu) and John Morehead (johnwmorehead@msn.com) by September 1. Our timeline is as follows: write up a proposal in September and pitch it to various publishers. Assuming we receive a timely and positive response from one or more of them, the tentative deadline for the essays would be February 2017.
CFP: Complicated Masculinities in Popular Culture (6/28/15)
Of potential interest:
CFP: Complicated Masculinities in Popular Culture
Recent scholarship supports the notion that contemporary American masculinity is complex and problematic. Many scholarly projects seem to reflect a “crisis” perspective and focus on the negative or limiting aspects of changing masculinities. In contrast, this edited collection will focus on the possibilities of multiple, fluid, complex, twenty-first-century masculinities.
Casting a wide net that considers all forms of popular media from film to video games, the collection will consider the ways that categories of race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, as well as the natural and supernatural, affect conceptualizations of male identities. All of these patterns of representation are shaped in response to our global political climate: threats of terrorism, the New Jim Crow, pandemic fears, violence and crime, and women’s increased financial and political empowerment. These elements all affect and complicate depictions of masculinities, but they also open up new possibilities in terms of the ways that they can be represented, constructed, and revised. The ever-evolving world of new media and technology offers new ways of conceptualizing masculinities. People now have more options available for constructing a variety of identities, and a variety of venues open for the performance of them.
Popular culture: contemporary representations of masculinity, preference will be given to critical discussions of twenty-first-century popular culture (2000-2015).
Theoretical Concepts
● Masculinities and Men’s Studies
● Feminisms
● Media Studies
● Gender Studies
● Intersectionality
● Female Masculinities
● Comparative masculinities
● New men/masculinities
● Evolution/Devolution of masculinity
Subjects
● Utopia/Dystopia
● Anti-heroes/Villains
● Post-Apocalyptic
● Monsters/vampires
● Politics/Politicians and the 24-Hour News Cycle
● Performers/Musicians
● Hip Hop Culture
● Professional Sports and Sexuality
● Domestic Violence in the Media
● Sexual Scandals
● Superheroes/Villains
Possible texts
● Anime
● Superhero films
● Television (ie: Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Mad Men,
Supernatural.
● Reality TV (ie: Duck Dynasty, Turtle Man)
● Police Procedural Shows (CSI)
● Films (Bromances, Chick Flicks, Buddy Films)
● Advertising
● Music/Performers
● Video Games (Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, MMOs, Sports
games)
● Sports (Fantasy Sports, Scandals)
● Internet (Avatars, Online Dating, Social medias)
Other ideas? Please query the editors!
Dr. Merry G. Perry (mperry@wcupa.edu) and
Dr. Cherise A. Pollard (cpollard@wcupa.edu)
West Chester University
Dept. of English, Main Hall
700 High Street
West Chester, PA 19382
Please send the following documents to complicatedmasc@gmail.com by June 28, 2015.
1. A one-page abstract (about 500 words) of your proposed chapter
2. A complete curriculum vita
The editors will notify authors of their abstract’s acceptance status by July 16, 2015.
Several presses have expressed interest in this collection.
Full chapter submissions will be original scholarly work of approximately 6,000-8,000 words in length and be due by Oct. 1, 2015.
CFP Fan Phenomena: The Twilight Saga (6/15/15)
CFP: Fan Phenomena: The Twilight Saga
http://fanstudies.org/2015/05/19/cfp-fan-phenomena-the-twilight-saga/
The UK publisher Intellect is now seeking chapters for Fan Phenomena: The Twilight Saga, the next edition in its Fan Phenomena book series.
Fan Phenomena: The Twilight Saga will be an edited collection of essays about the forces that contributed to the global popularity and commercial success of the books, films and graphic novels of The Twilight Saga. Chapters will explore Twilight’s unique appeal to fans as well as its impact on people, literature, film, music, television and social issues. Suggested topics include but are not limited to the following areas:
Creative Legacy:
– The Twilight series reignited the popularity of vampire and werewolf lore worldwide, prompting numerous books, television shows and movies. Explore Twilight’s creative and commercial impact on these industries.
– Explore the role of music in both Twilight’s appeal and success, considering the groups and songs that inspired the author or were commissioned for the movies. What lasting impact did Twilight have on its musicians and the world of music?
– Was there something unique about Twilight or its fandom that enabled the massive success of its fan fiction (i.e. Fifty Shades of Grey) plus the follow-on Storytellers project? What is Twilight’s artistic legacy?
Social Impact:
– Why did Twilight’s appeal cross generations, unexpectedly embracing “Twilight Moms” as well as teens? What was the impact of this disparate fandom on Twilight’s commercial success and social acceptance? Was Twilight’s demographic diversity unique among fandoms?
– Several conservative family values, such as the soul, redemption, abstinence, marriage, family and preserving life, laced the Twilight series. How did the books’ messages influence the development of young readers’ moral principles and the popularity of the story?
– Explore Stephenie Meyer’s presentation of the strong female and its contribution to Twilight’s uniqueness, popularity, success and social impact.
Media and Marketing Explosion:
– Explore the factors that sparked Twilight’s explosive fame and pervasive media presence around the world.
– Explore Twilight fans’ stratification of Team Edward vs. Team Jacob. What was its impact on the fandom, the franchise’s success and commercial merchandising?
– Was the Kristin Stewart and Robert Pattinson off-screen romance a genuinely serendipitous coincidence or a carefully crafted pairing? What was its impact on the fandom, including the fans’ romantic dedication to the story during the movies’ releases and post-production dissolution of fan conventions?
The Fan Phenomena series explores the greatest popular culture stories of our time. The collection already includes 16 iconic titles, including Star Wars, Star Trek, Sherlock Holmes, Batman, Lord of the Rings, Dr. Who, James Bond, Harry Potter, The Hunger Games and Supernatural. The Twilight Saga is a perfect addition to this collection. Since the release of the first Twilight novel in 2005, The Twilight Saga has generated billions of dollars in book and franchise sales1. Ten years later, the fandom’s loyal devotion to the story led to the launch of the Twilight Storytellers project, a contest in which spin-off films based on Twilight fan fiction will ultimately be judged by Twilight fans. The Twilight Saga’s enduring popularity is truly a unique and global phenomenon that demands attention, examination and celebration within the Fan Phenomena series.
This targeted anthology is intended to be an enlightening and fun addition to Twilight fans’ collections, as well as a resource for universities. As such, papers should be written for a broad audience of academics and fans. Final chapters will be 3000 – 3500 words. Questions, abstracts (maximum 400 words) and author biographies should be directed to Laurena Aker at LSAker@att.net by June 15, 2015. Final paper submissions will be due Oct. 1, 2015. Scheduled publication date is 4th quarter 2016.
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/FanPhenomenaTwilight
Website: https://sites.google.com/site/fanphenomenathetwilightsaga/home
http://fanstudies.org/2015/05/19/cfp-fan-phenomena-the-twilight-saga/
The UK publisher Intellect is now seeking chapters for Fan Phenomena: The Twilight Saga, the next edition in its Fan Phenomena book series.
Fan Phenomena: The Twilight Saga will be an edited collection of essays about the forces that contributed to the global popularity and commercial success of the books, films and graphic novels of The Twilight Saga. Chapters will explore Twilight’s unique appeal to fans as well as its impact on people, literature, film, music, television and social issues. Suggested topics include but are not limited to the following areas:
Creative Legacy:
– The Twilight series reignited the popularity of vampire and werewolf lore worldwide, prompting numerous books, television shows and movies. Explore Twilight’s creative and commercial impact on these industries.
– Explore the role of music in both Twilight’s appeal and success, considering the groups and songs that inspired the author or were commissioned for the movies. What lasting impact did Twilight have on its musicians and the world of music?
– Was there something unique about Twilight or its fandom that enabled the massive success of its fan fiction (i.e. Fifty Shades of Grey) plus the follow-on Storytellers project? What is Twilight’s artistic legacy?
Social Impact:
– Why did Twilight’s appeal cross generations, unexpectedly embracing “Twilight Moms” as well as teens? What was the impact of this disparate fandom on Twilight’s commercial success and social acceptance? Was Twilight’s demographic diversity unique among fandoms?
– Several conservative family values, such as the soul, redemption, abstinence, marriage, family and preserving life, laced the Twilight series. How did the books’ messages influence the development of young readers’ moral principles and the popularity of the story?
– Explore Stephenie Meyer’s presentation of the strong female and its contribution to Twilight’s uniqueness, popularity, success and social impact.
Media and Marketing Explosion:
– Explore the factors that sparked Twilight’s explosive fame and pervasive media presence around the world.
– Explore Twilight fans’ stratification of Team Edward vs. Team Jacob. What was its impact on the fandom, the franchise’s success and commercial merchandising?
– Was the Kristin Stewart and Robert Pattinson off-screen romance a genuinely serendipitous coincidence or a carefully crafted pairing? What was its impact on the fandom, including the fans’ romantic dedication to the story during the movies’ releases and post-production dissolution of fan conventions?
The Fan Phenomena series explores the greatest popular culture stories of our time. The collection already includes 16 iconic titles, including Star Wars, Star Trek, Sherlock Holmes, Batman, Lord of the Rings, Dr. Who, James Bond, Harry Potter, The Hunger Games and Supernatural. The Twilight Saga is a perfect addition to this collection. Since the release of the first Twilight novel in 2005, The Twilight Saga has generated billions of dollars in book and franchise sales1. Ten years later, the fandom’s loyal devotion to the story led to the launch of the Twilight Storytellers project, a contest in which spin-off films based on Twilight fan fiction will ultimately be judged by Twilight fans. The Twilight Saga’s enduring popularity is truly a unique and global phenomenon that demands attention, examination and celebration within the Fan Phenomena series.
This targeted anthology is intended to be an enlightening and fun addition to Twilight fans’ collections, as well as a resource for universities. As such, papers should be written for a broad audience of academics and fans. Final chapters will be 3000 – 3500 words. Questions, abstracts (maximum 400 words) and author biographies should be directed to Laurena Aker at LSAker@att.net by June 15, 2015. Final paper submissions will be due Oct. 1, 2015. Scheduled publication date is 4th quarter 2016.
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/FanPhenomenaTwilight
Website: https://sites.google.com/site/fanphenomenathetwilightsaga/home
Sunday, May 24, 2015
Cute Zombies 2015
Happy Halloween! Zombie Ornament
Keepsake Ornament
3rd in the series
$14.95
Available July 11, 2015
PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
Take a peek into the creepy graveyard scene within this gourd ornament to see what lurks at night. Treat yourself or a friend to the third ornament in the Happy Halloween series! Learn more about Keepsake Ornaments.
Christmas tree ornament.
Each ornament in this series features a spooky Halloween scene.
On ornament:
RIP
2015
Tree-shaped series symbol around number 3.
Dated 2015.
Artist crafted.
Pre-packaged for easy gift giving, preservation and storage.
2.3" W x 3" H x 1.6" D
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
Reading The Golem and the Jinni
Chava, a masterless golem, is not a very typical representation of her class. She seems very human despite her obviously unnatural size, appearance, and physical strength and speed and reminded me very much of the plight of a modern-day Frankenstein's Creature trying to fit into a world that could easy hate and fear her.
Reading Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
For vampire fans, while we really get into Lincoln's head, we don't get much detail into the history of the undead (besides the suggestion of an emigration from Europe following the activities of Countess Bathory) and nothing about their natures (i.e. are the demonic?) besides that some are good (abolitionist/prohuman vampires) and some are bad (those allied with the South/Confederate States). There is also little information about how they die; they don't appear to decay, and there is at least one reference of hunters having to bury the body.
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