DC's Batman: The Doom that Came to Gotham

 Coming soon to home video based on the graphic novel series by Mike Mignola:

Universal's Renfield

 Coming soon to theaters--a new take on Bram Stoker's Dracula from Universal Pictures. 

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

Edited Collection -- Disability and the Vampire

deadline for submissions:
May 31, 2023

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

contact email:
brooke.cameron@queensu.ca

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

CFP: edited collection -- Disability and the Vampire

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

Project Description:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Last updated March 1, 2023

CFP Nightmare/s in the Long Nineteenth Century Collection (3/15/2023)

Nightmare/s in the Long Nineteenth Century (CFP for edited volume)

deadline for submissions:
March 15, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Frances Clemente/University of Oxford; Greta Colombani/University of Cambridge

contact email:
nightmaresconference@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/12/19/nightmares-in-the-long-nineteenth-century-cfp-for-edited-volume.

Nightmare/s in the Long Nineteenth Century

(CFP for edited volume)

Building on the exciting multidisciplinary conference held last May 2022 at King’s College, University of Cambridge, funded by the Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership, we would like to invite proposals for essays to be included in an edited collection titled Nightmare/s in the Long Nineteenth Century.

The collection aims to explore the rich and multifaceted theme of nightmare in the arts, thought, and culture of the long nineteenth century. From Johann Heinrich Füssli’s 1781 oil painting The Nightmare, which was to become the iconic image of a newly emergent sensibility, to the first psychoanalytic investigations culminating in the Freudian study On the Nightmare by Ernest Jones (first published in 1911), the nineteenth century was characterised by a pervasive fascination with nightmares both as frightening dreams and, in their personified form, terrifying creatures or spirits (like the incubus).

Described by Samuel T. Coleridge as “not a mere Dream” but a peculiar oneiric phenomenon taking place “during a rapid alternation, a twinkling as it were, of sleeping and waking”, in the course of the nineteenth century the nightmare raised fundamental questions about conscience, the mind, fear, the Other, and the fear of the Other.

It occupied a special place in “the mythology of the Gothic imagination” (Philip W. Martin) not only because nightmares abounded in Gothic texts but also, and more significantly, because some of the most famous works in this genre – such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) – allegedly had their origins in their author’s nightmares. As “a phenomenon of passivity, self-effacement, irrationality, terror, and erotic excess” (Lisa Downing), the nightmare also conveyed cultural anxieties about repressed and deviant aspects of sexuality, as exemplified by another Füssli’s painting, the sapphic An Incubus Leaving Two Sleeping Girls (c. 1793), and by Louis Dubosquet’s definition of the nightmare as a nervous illness similar to hysteria in his medical thesis Dissertation sur le cauchemar (1815). Additionally, the age of imperialism witnessed the rise of ‘colonial nightmares’ which haunted Western imagination and gave voice to fears of racial otherness, as can be seen in “Lukundoo”, an American short story written in 1907 by Edward Lucas White about an explorer cursed by an African witch doctor and based on the authors’ own nightmares.

We invite proposals for contributions from various disciplines across the arts & humanities, with different methodological approaches and different geographical focus areas. Topics may include but are not restricted to:



● 19th-century literary and artsitic representations of nightmares

● 19th-century psychological and medical understanding of nightmares;

● nightmares and sleep

● nightmares and the unconscious

● nightmares and the Gothic;

● nightmares, inspiration, and the creative mind;

● nightmares, eroticism, and sexuality;

● nightmares and spectral apparitions;

● nightmares and hallucinations

● nightmares, altered states of consciousness, and psychoactive substances;

●nightmares and madness;

●prophetic nightmares;

●nightmares and the fear of (racial, ethnic, social, sexual…) Otherness;

●19th-century non-Western conceptions and depictions of nightmares.



Abstracts of 500 words, together with a short bio (max. 200 words), due March 15 2023 (notification of outcome by May 2023).

Final essays of 7.000-10.000 words, due September 15 2023.



All materials to be submitted to nightmaresconference@gmail.com.



With all best wishes,



The editors,

Frances Clemente (University of Oxford)

Greta Colombani (University of Cambridge)



Last updated December 20, 2022

CFP What is a life worth living? Speculative Fiction and Eternal Life (3/15/2023; MLA Philadelphia 1/4-7/2024)

What is a life worth living? Speculative Fiction and Eternal Life

deadline for submissions:
March 15, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Christene d'Anca, University of California Santa Barbara

contact email:
christene_danca@ucsb.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/01/22/what-is-a-life-worth-living-speculative-fiction-and-eternal-life.

Despite numerous post-apocalyptic storylines, many science fiction texts are a celebration of life and seek ways of prolonging it, whether artificially or by providing warnings against our current behavior in order to preserve the life that already exists. The fact that death and potential immortality are so frequently featured throughout the genre underscores our preoccupation with overcoming the limitations imposed on our bodies by nature, while seeking means to go beyond what is currently possible.

Such an interest has informed a broad literary fascination with immortality and rebirth, particularly in nineteenth and early twentieth century fantasy and science fiction, with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, H. Rider Haggard’s She, or Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Ring of Thoth” being prime examples. These concerns persisted into the late twentieth century, especially in the aftermath of two world wars, and continue to intrigue us in the twenty-first.

Moreover, we look towards modern technology to grant us invincibility, and these developments have been foreshadowed through a variety of texts from Ovid’s Daedalus in antiquity to Bruce Sterling’s Holy Fire, Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon, and Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy in the modern era, to name but a few. As such texts interrogate what a world might look like in which human and/or non-human beings experience immortality, or versions of it, they address questions such as what constitutes the human soul, individuality, and our relationships with others as well as the planet over periods of time beyond a single human lifespan.

For our panel at the 2024 MLA conference January 4-7 in Philadelphia, we welcome 250-300 word abstracts for 15-minute papers focusing on the extension of life in science fiction or fantasy, with topics including, but not limited to the following:

- Human enhancement

- Monstrosity and reconceptualization of the human body

- Digital consciousness

- Carnality and bodily experience

- Bodily commodification

- Immortality pros/cons

- Death as a character

- Life-extending instruments and technology

- New perspectives on death, immortality, and rebirth

- Theological afterlives

- Time travel

Please address abstracts and/or questions to Christene d’Anca (christene_danca@ucsb.edu) and Darren Borg (borgdj@piercecollege.edu).




Last updated January 26, 2023a

CFP Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference (3/19/2023; StokerCon Pittsburgh and remote 6/16/2023)

Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference

For Academic Researchers across the Horror Genre!


Source: https://www.stokercon2023.com/ann-radcliffe-academic-conference.






Call for Papers:


The Sixth Annual Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference at StokerCon 2023

Conference Date: Friday, June 16, 2023

Conference Location: Station Square Hotel, 300 W Station Square Dr, Pittsburgh, PA 15219

Conference Website: https://www.stokercon.com


The 2023 StokerCon ® convention in Pittsburgh promises to be a banner event. In addition to
celebrating the birthplace of many aspects of modern horror, this year also represents the
bicentenary of Ann Radcliffe’s death, and the publication of the 2nd edition of Frankenstein, the
first to bear Mary Shelley’s name.


The co-organizers of the Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference are eager to embrace and
interrogate the potential of this moment by examining and critiquing a wide range of topics
related to horror and gothic studies. The Ann Radcliffe Conference is intended as a research
showcase, as well as a tool for building community and collaboration. Therefore, we invite all
interested scholars, researchers, academics, and non-fiction writers to submit presentation
abstracts for completed research projects, works-in-progress, and projects that advance the
academic analysis of the horror genre in all its forms. This will be a hybrid conference with both
in-person and online events via Hopin.


As in prior years, we are eager to receive abstracts that expand the scholarship across horror and
gothic studies. This can include, but is by no means limited to:

• Art
• Cinema
• Comics/Manga
• Literature
• Music
• Poetry
• Television
• Video Games
• Cartoons/Anime

We invite papers that take an interdisciplinary approach to their subject matter and welcome
scholarship that considers a diverse range of readings, interpretations, and application of
theories. This includes work from a variety of interdisciplinary and transmedia fields such as:

• Critical race theory
• Film theory and analysis
• Gender/LGBTQIA+ theory
• Historical analysis and interpretation
• Literary theory and analysis
• Pedagogical approaches to horror
• Psychology and Medicine
• Philosophical approaches

Presentation and Submission Guidelines

Please upload a 250 – 300 word abstract to our form on Submittable (or by clicking the "Submit Here" button below) by March 19, 2023. Responses will follow as soon as possible during March 2023.


Presentations should adhere to a 15-minute limit, to ensure adequate time for discussion.


Please note in your abstract whether you plan to present your work in person or virtually.


For those presenting virtually, details will be available soon, and video recordings will need to be sent by April 15, 2023.

​

Submit Here

​

In support of HWA’s Diverse Works Inclusion Committee goals, the Ann Radcliffe Academic
co-chairs encourage the widest possible diverse representation to apply and present their
scholarship in a safe and supportive environment. For more information, please see the Diverse
Works Inclusion Committee Mission Statement at: http://horror.org/category/the-seers-table/



The Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference is part of the Horror Writers Association’s Outreach
Program. Created in 2016 by Michele Brittany and Nicholas Diak, the Ann Radcliffe Academic
Conference has been a venue for horror scholars to present their work alongside professional
writers and editors in the publishing industry. The conference has also been the genesis of the
Horror Writer Association’s first academic release, Horror Literature from Gothic to Post-
Modern: Critical Essays, composed entirely of Ann Radcliffe Conference presenters, published
by McFarland in February 2020.


Membership to the Horror Writers Association is not required to submit or present, however
registration to StokerCon 2023 is required to be accepted and to present. StokerCon registration,
including full event registration and day passes, can be obtained by going to
https://www.stokercon.com.



There is no additional registration or fees for the Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference outside StokerCon registration. If interested in applying to the Horror Writers Association as an academic member, please see www.horror.org/about/.

​

CFP Romancing the Gothic Conference 2023 – The Supernatural and Witchcraft in belief, practice and depiction (3/31/2023; 8/26-27/2023)

Romancing the Gothic Conference 2023 – The Supernatural and Witchcraft in belief, practice and depiction

Main site: https://romancingthegothic.com/2022/11/12/romancing-the-gothic-conference-2023-the-supernatural-and-witchcraft-in-belief-practice-and-depiction/.
.


In 1848, William Harrison Ainsworth published his novel The Lancashire Witches based on the real-life witch-trials in Pendle in 1612. Exploring the background of the trials and executions, it was heavily based on Thomas Potts’ Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancashire (1613). 1848 also saw the publication of Catherine Crowe’s The Night-Side of Nature with T. C. Newby. The book purported to unclose something of this ‘night side of nature’ with all its wonders. After all, she tells us, ‘we are encompassed on all sides by wonders, and we can scarcely set our foot upon the ground, without trampling upon some marvellous production that our whole life and all our faculties would not suffice to comprehend.’ The book featured accounts of dreams, wraiths, doubles, ghosts and more. This year, Romancing the Gothic is marking the 175th anniversary of these publications with a conference dedicated to the subjects which lie at the heart of both texts: witchcraft, the supernatural in history, belief, practice and depiction.

We invite individual papers (20 minutes) or panels (3 x 20 minutes) exploring the fictional, factional and factual depiction or discussion of witchcraft and the supernatural from any period. This conference seeks to focus on the changing ways in which practices and beliefs have been understood and depicted as well as mapping the ways in which discourses of witchcraft and of the supernatural have been deployed in different historical, political, theological and social contexts. We welcome papers discussing all traditions of witchcraft and supernatural belief and depiction and would particularly encourage pre-formed panels discussing specific national or cultural traditions.

We welcome papers on topics including:

• The Night Side of Nature and The Lancashire Witches
• The wider work of William Harrison Ainsworth and Catherine Crowe
• The Lancashire ‘witches’
• The depiction of witches in fiction, film, video games etc.
• The depiction of witch trials
• Histories of persecution
• Factual and factional writing on the supernatural
• Occult writers
• The depiction of the supernatural in fiction and film
• Ghost-hunting (historical or contemporary)
• Ghost stories
• Social histories of the ghost
• Real ghosts and hauntings
• Supernatural typologies
• Queering the Supernatural
• Changing theologies of the supernatural
• Brujeria and its depiction in contemporary media
• Fear and the supernatural
• Healing and the supernatural
• Histories of ghost (and other supernatural) belief
• Supernatural dreaming in fiction and fact
• Changing theologies of the supernatural
• Internet subcultures related to witchcraft and the supernatural

The conference will be held entirely online on 26th-27th August 2023. We will be accepting abstracts until March 31st 2023. Please send abstracts of 250-300 words and a short bio. We accept and welcome papers from academics and non-academics, including practitioners. We also welcome pitches for ‘workshops’ or interactive activities. For previous conferences these have included: 18th century dance lessons, cooking with Dracula demonstrations, and creative writing workshops. Please send all pitches to the conference organiser Dr Sam Hirst (University of Liverpool/Oxford Brookes University) at sam@romancingthegothic.com.

To ensure the conference is accessible to the maximum number of people, there is no fee for presenters. Everyone delivering a paper or workshop will be offered a small honorarium. The event is online, using subtitling and will be recorded so that those unable to attend at various times (for example, due to timezones) are able to access all the events. Please contact me with any questions or requirements related to accessibility at the email address above.

If this is your first conference or you would like support with abstract writing, I will be putting on an online workshop on writing abstracts. Please email me at sam@romancingthegothic.com if you would like to attend.

CFP 2023 Festival of Monsters (3/1/2023; UC Santa Cruz/Online 10/13-15/2023)

My thanks to the organizers for the heads up on this event. More information is avail;e at the Center's website at https://www.monsterstudies.ucsc.edu/. 

Call for Proposals: 2023 Festival of Monsters 

The Center for Monster Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz is an interdisciplinary research, arts, and outreach organization focused on the ways monsters and tropes of monstrosity both perpetuate and contravene forms of social and cultural injustice. Each year we host a Festival of Monsters that brings together scholars, artists, students, and members of the general public to consider these issues.

Our 2023 Festival of Monsters (Oct. 13-15 in beautiful Santa Cruz) includes an academic conference, performances, readings, presentations from monster-makers in theatre, film and television, and events in association with an exhibit at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History (MAH) entitled Werewolf Hunters, Jungle Queens, and Space Commandos: The Lost Worlds of Women Comics Artists.

We invite proposals for 20-minute papers or presentations on any aspect of monsters or monster studies. We are particularly interested in work that addresses the following topics: 

• Women creators of monsters
• Monsters and misogyny
• Monsters in comics
• Monsters and sexual politics from any time period
• Monsters and queerness

Papers from all disciplines are welcome. Because participants in the Festival include members of the general public as well as people from within the academic community, we ask that proposed papers consider the Festival’s mixed audience. We welcome complex theoretical concepts and scholarly interventions, but please make sure the terms and stakes of your paper are articulated as clearly as possible.  The Festival will include both in-person and online components. 

Please submit 250-word abstracts and 50-word bios to chemers@ucsc.edu and rafox@ucsc.edu by March 1, 2023.

CFP Norm and Transgression in the Fairy-Tale Tradition Confernce (1/31/2023; Providence, RI 6/7-9/2022)

Norm and Transgression in the Fairy-Tale Tradition: (Non)Normative Identities, Forms, and Writings

deadline for submissions:
January 31, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Alessandro Cabiati / Brown University

contact email:
normandtransgression@brown.edu


source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/11/04/norm-and-transgression-in-the-fairy-tale-tradition-nonnormative-identities-forms-and

Norm and Transgression in the Fairy-Tale Tradition: (Non)Normative Identities, Forms, and Writings

Brown University, 7-9 June 2023

Conference Organisers: Alessandro Cabiati (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and Brown University) and Lewis Seifert (Brown University)



Keynote Speakers

Maria Tatar (Harvard University)

Anne E. Duggan (Wayne State University)

Laura Tosi (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)

Cristina Bacchilega (University of Hawai’i-Mānoa)



From Perrault’s representation of female disobedience in ‘Bluebeard’ to Little Red Riding Hood’s disregard of her mother’s prohibition of wandering in the forest, transgression is a key theme in fairy tales. The act of transgression is typically used as a vehicle for a moral and/or educational message which seeks to punish the transgressor and reward ‘good’ behaviour that is compliant with societal norms and values. But with the evolution of the literary fairy tale as a genre, transgression has taken many other forms and significations that go well beyond acts of disobedience or the infringement of society’s rules and expectations. Rewritings of fairy tales, including the efforts by late 19th-century Decadent writers to subvert traditional happy endings and moral meanings or postmodern feminist adaptations that challenge the patriarchal structure embedded in those fairy tales, put into question the very notions of transgression and normativity in the fairy-tale world.

It could easily be argued, moreover, that transgression of accepted cultural norms has defined the literary fairy tale as a genre ever since its development in late 17th-century France. Physical deformity and monsters, such as ogres, witches, and other villains, populate the fairy-tale universe; violent and homicidal acts are commonly represented; and transgressive relationships and comportments abound, including, for instance, the numerous tales classified as ‘unnatural love’ in the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index of folktales. In spite of the evident moralistic and allegorical meanings of fairy tales, and of the supposed acceptance of its illogical and ‘marvellous’ world as normative by the reader, the latter cannot but acknowledge the transgressive presence of topics such as cannibalism and anthropophagy in many of the tales. Recently, scholarly works in the emerging field of Queer Fairy-Tale Studies have underlined the ‘transgressive’ quality of certain traditional tales that do not conform to a heteronormative paradigm.

What can then be considered as normative, and what as transgressive, in a fairy tale? We invite proposals for papers that broadly address the above question(s), and which more narrowly consider, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• The laws of fairy land and the fairy world; breaking the law and committing crimes; investigations and trials; sentencing, punishments, and ‘fairy’ prisons; eye for an eye and the ‘poetic justice’ of fairy tales.
• The subversion of the categories of good and evil, and related notions of reward and punishment; the rejection of happy endings and ‘happily ever after’, and of moral messages and educational aims.
• Social and cultural taboos in fairy tales; prohibitions and interdictions; forbidden practices and illicit desires.
• Transgressions of the ‘once upon a time’ formula and of fairy-tale settings; fairy tales set in modern and contemporary times; the presence of science and technology in the fairy world and the intermingling of fairy tale, fantasy, and science fiction.
• Transgressions and violations of the human body; illness and physical deformity; amalgamation and equivalence of the human and the animal; posthuman figures.
• Gender rules and laws; princesses and laws of succession; adventurous heroines and rescued princes; ruling queens.
• Nonnormative identities; cross-dressing; gender fluidity; marvellous sexual metamorphoses and magical transsexuality; homo- and bisexual desire.
• Racial rules and laws; interracial relationships and marriages.
• Rewritings of traditional tales; poems, novels, and novellas with a fairy-tale plot; postmodern retellings.
• Non-Western fairy-tale traditions; translation of non-Western fairy tales in Western culture and vice versa.
• Adaptation as transgression; adaptation that becomes the norm (the Disney films); adaptation in other media, theatre, cinema, TV, comics; computer games and new technologies.

Please send an abstract of around 300 words for a 20-minute paper, along with a biographical note and your affiliation, to normandtransgression@brown.edu by 31 January 2023. Outcomes will be communicated by 28 February 2023. For regular updates on the conference, please visit the conference website.

We plan to produce a Special Issue or an Edited Volume including a selection of papers presented at the conference.

The conference is planned as an in-person event, but contingency plans are in place to hold the conference online should it become necessary due to the changing nature of the pandemic.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 101025123.



Last updated January 16, 2023

CFP Defying Death: Immortality and Rebirth in the Fantastic (1/31/2023; Magdeburg, Germany 4/29-5/1/2023)

Defying Death: Immortality and Rebirth in the Fantastic

deadline for submissions:
January 31, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Inklings Society for Literature and Aesthetics

contact email:
carsten.kullmann@ovgu.de

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/10/05/defying-death-immortality-and-rebirth-in-the-fantastic

In fantasy and science fiction, death, immortality and rebirth are topics that feature frequently, elucidating that the loss of life and the questions of how it might be prevented or reversed are at the centre of human concern. These questions also constitute an essential focal point of the works of the Oxford Inklings, particularly Tolkien and Lewis. They created places of immortality, such as Valinor, also known as the undying lands in Tolkien’s legendarium, or Aslan’s Country in Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, wrote about the struggles of immortal beings amongst mortals in the fight of good versus evil, and frequently introduced ideas of resurrection or rebirth (the White Tree of Gondor, Gandalf the White, Aslan, the multitude of worlds in The Magician’s Nephew) and the neither living nor dead (The Nazgul, The (un-)Dead Men of Dunharrow) in their works.

Yet, the Oxford Inklings were by far not the only ones concerned with such themes. An interest in ancient belief systems, alchemy, theosophy, and science informed a broader literary fascination with immortality and rebirth, particularly in 19th and early 20th century fantasy and science fiction, with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Ring of Thoth” being prime examples.

Issues of life and death, immortality and rebirth remained a persistent concern in the later 20th century, especially in the aftermath of the two world wars, and continue to fascinate us in the 21st century. In the fantastical imagination, texts in all media, such as The Sandman, Good Omens, The Expanse, A Song of Ice and Fire, Harry Potter, Hologrammatica, Altered Carbon, or the Maddaddam Trilogy, to name just a few examples, all explore the idea of what a world might look like in which human and/or non-human beings experience immortality, or versions of it, thereby addressing questions of what constitutes the human soul, individuality, and the significance of existence beyond a single lifetime.

2023 marks the anniversary of the death of J. R.R. Tolkien (50) and C.S. Lewis (60) as well as the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the German Inklings-Society. We take these anniversaries as a cue to discuss the intersection of death, rebirth, and immortality in our symposium.

We invite contributions investigating how these topics are represented in the mode of the fantastic beyond the limitations of realism, including but not limited to the following possible topics: 

• death as a character
• psychopomps
• (dis)advantages of immortality
• the pursuit of immortality
• art and immortality
• elixirs of life
• life-extending instruments and measures
• metaphorical or literal rebirth
• rebirth as new beginning or redemption
• afterlives and underworlds
• ethical, philosophical and religious perspectives
• circle(s) of life
• (ab)use of power
• new perspectives on death, immortality, and rebirth in Tolkien’s and Lewis’s works in particular

Please send proposals (300–500 words, either in German or English) as well as a short bio to carsten.kullmann@ovgu.de or maria.fleischhack@uni-leipzig.de. Please use the subject line “Inklings Symposium 2023”. The deadline is 31 January 2023. Presentations at the symposium should be 20 minutes long and a selection of them will be published in the Inklings Yearbook.

Location: Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg

Date: 29 April to 1 May 2023

Travel Allowance: There will be a small allowance available to speakers for accommodation and travel expenses.

Organisers: Carsten Kullmann, M.A. (Magdeburg) and Dr. Maria Fleischhack (Leipzig)


Last updated October 10, 2022

CFP Strange Things: Alternatives, Imaginaries, and Other(world)s Conference (1/31/2023; online 3/24-25/2023)

DEADLINE EXTENDED: Strange Things: Alternatives, Imaginaries, and Other(world)s

deadline for submissions:
January 31, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Indiana University Department of English

contact email:
iugradconference@gmail.com


source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/11/03/deadline-extended-strange-things-alternatives-imaginaries-and-otherworlds


Call for Papers

Strange Things: Alternatives, Imaginaries, and Other(world)s

20th Annual Interdisciplinary Conference

Department of English, Indiana University, Bloomington

Dates: Friday March 24th – Saturday March 25th, 2023



We are pleased to announce the Call for Papers for Indiana University’s 20th Annual Interdisciplinary Conference, hosted by the Department of English. This conference will be held virtually on Friday March 24th and Saturday March 25th. Our keynote speaker is Dr. Christy Tidwell, whose recent work includes the co-edited anthology Fear & Nature: Ecohorror Studies in the Anthropocene, and a co-edited special issue of Science Fiction Film & Television on creature features and the environment.

In 1937, the Indiana General Assembly officially selected the phrase "Crossroads of America" as the state motto. Almost 80 years later, the Netflix show Stranger Things features the fictional town Hawkins, Indiana as a portal that leads us into the "Upside Down," where all those "stranger" things come from, those Others desiring to annihilate us all. And the kids fight back—the familiar mixture of superpower, blood-spatter, and initiation rite. But we ask: what if we can put the war in abeyance, and cohabitate with that mirroring Otherworld and all the creatures flooding from it? What if we can replace the two-way portal with a crossroads, and (re)imagine other ways—both figuratively and literally—of defining our shared worlds? Indeed, are they really that stranger? We in the humanities have always dealt with things that are strange around us, and we enjoy and yes, have fun imagining strange, alternative worlds and different temporalities, spatialities, identities, and subjectivities that come with them. In 2023, we will make Bloomington such a crossroads, a space where not only people but animals, cyborgs, aliens, indeed, "things" come and go. Out of sync with the normative time and space, we will "make it strange."

Relevant topics may include (but are by no means limited to):

• Representations and interrogations of the “other”
• Crossings of time and/or space
• Worldbuilding
• Materiality or materialisms
• Liminality, borders, and/or margins
• Ghosts, monsters, aliens, and all things “strange”
• Narratives and counternarratives
• Collectivity and collaboration
• Critical identity studies
• Genre studies
• Studies of migration, border, and/or diaspora
• Queer modes of composition and interpretation

Proposals might also situate these topics in the context of rhetoric and composition studies. We invite proposals that consider the “strange” world of the classroom, the role of rhetoric in studies of the strange and the other, and more. Papers that bring together critical and creative elements are also encouraged.

We invite proposals for both individual papers and organized panels: Individual scholarly papers and creative works (15-minute presentations; please submit a 250-word abstract)
Panels organized around a thematic topic (three 20-minute papers or four 15-minute papers; please submit a 350-word panel abstract as well as a 100-word abstract for each individual paper on the panel)

Email your submission to iugradconference@gmail.com by January 31, 2023. In your email, please submit your abstract (both in the body of the email and as a Word attachment), along with your name, institutional affiliation, email, and phone number. Please note that both the keynote and the panels will be given synchronously via Zoom.



Lydia Nixon, Conference Chair

AC Carlson, Conference Co-Chair

Jaehoon Lee, CFP Author



Last updated January 10, 2023

CFP Special Issue of Revenant - Dialogues with the Dead (1/31/2023)

Special Issue of Revenant - Dialogues with the Dead

deadline for submissions:
January 31, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Revenant Journal

contact email:
Fiona.Snailham@greenwich.ac.uk

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/10/18/special-issue-of-revenant-dialogues-with-the-dead

CALL FOR PAPERS: Dialogues with the Dead

Guest Editors: Dr Anna Maria Barry and Dr Fiona Snailham

Communication with the dead has gripped the Western imagination for centuries - from Odysseus’s journey to the underworld and Saul’s attempt to summon Samuel to the Fox sisters’ nineteenth-century mediumship and the purported appearance of Arthur Conan Doyle at the Royal Albert Hall in 1930… several days after his death! This Anglo-American cultural obsession continues to manifest in films such as The Sixth Sense (1999) and Hereafter (2010), as well as popular television series like the long-running Most Haunted which follows the investigations of ghost hunters. In literature, too, there are many accounts of dialogues with the dead, from Hamlet’s conversations with the ghost of his father to W.T. Stead’s Letters From Julia which were supposedly dictated to the author by the eponymous spirit. Other works have considered the role of the medium, from Robert Browning’s Mr Sludge, “The Medium” (1864) to Alison Hart in Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black (2005).

Engaging with this intense interest, our special issue explores depictions of spirit communication across the globe. We are interested in work that explores what is at stake when we claim contact with the other side. How do different cultures afford different levels of respect to deceased voices? How does gender function within these conversations? Does dialogue with the dead influence our perception of authority and to what extent is this reflected in critical responses? How do apparently posthumous conversations reflect the anxieties of the individual acting as conduit, and the time in which they exist? How do we respond to art purportedly created through contact with the dead, and what questions does this raise about the creative process?

Contributing to these discussions, we invite articles, creative pieces, and reviews that address any aspect of dialogues with the spirit world. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

•  Considerations of autobiographical writing by spiritualists and/or mediums – e.g. Elizabeth d’Espérance’s Shadowlands
• Non-fiction accounts of conversations with the spirit world
• How representations of communication with the dead differ across geographic and cultural borders
• Literary and artistic depictions of those who communicate with the dead - for instance: the spiritualist, the shaman, the sangoma
• Art produced through contact with the spirit world - in current practice or by historic practitioners such as Georgiana Houghton, Anna Mary Howitt (later Watts), Emma Kuntz, Florêncio Anton, Augustin Lesage
• Postcolonialism and dialogues with the dead
• Depictions of investigations into spirit communications
• Spiritualism’s influence on the work of writers such as H.D., Sylvia Plath, Rebecca West and Rosamond Lehmann.
• The relationship between spiritualism and genre: modernism, magic realism, the Gothic etc
• Specialist Spiritualist journals and periodicals: The Spiritualist, El Espiritismo, La Revue Spirite, Light
• Automatic writing - in non-fiction and fictional accounts
• Proclamations of contact with the spirits of deceased authors and artists - (e.g) Dickens and the alleged posthumous completion of The Mystery of Edwin Drood

For articles and creative pieces (such as poetry, short stories, flash fiction, videos, artwork and music) please send a 500-word abstract and a short biography by 31st January 2023. Reviews of books, films, games, events, and art related to the dialogues with the dead (800-1,000 words in length) are also welcome. Please send full details of the title and medium you would like to review as soon as possible.



If your abstract is accepted, the full article (maximum 7000 words, including Harvard referencing) and the full creative piece (maximum 5000 words if a written piece) will be due by 31st October 2023.



Further information, including Submission Guidelines, are available at the journal website: www.revenantjournal.com. Enquiries are welcome and, along with all submissions, should be directed to both Dr Anna Maria Barry (anna_maria_barry@hotmail.com) and Dr Fiona Snailham (Fiona.Snailham@greenwich.ac.uk). Please quote ‘Dialogues with the Dead special issue’ in the subject box.





Last updated October 23, 2022

CFP Edited Collection -- Victorians and Videogames (1/31/2023)

Edited Collection -- Victorians and Videogames

deadline for submissions:
January 31, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Brooke Cameron (Queen's University) and Lin Young (Mount Royal University)

contact email:
brooke.cameron@queensu.ca

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/12/19/edited-collection-victorians-and-videogames

CFP: edited collection -- Victorians and Videogames

Dr. Lin Young (Mount Royal University) and Dr. Brooke Cameron (Queen’s University) invite proposals for chapters that explore the connections between video games and 19th-Century themes, texts, or aesthetics.

Project Description:

The influence of 19th-Century literature on generations of videogames is long overdue for critical study. Victorians and Videogames will examine the ways in which game/interactive texts interact with 19th-Century genres, aesthetics, and literary themes as a means of engaging, critiquing, or challenging their original contexts. Chapters will be collected under three categories. The first will examine 19th-Century predecessors or precursors to the videogame – texts that anticipate systems of interactivity, user-generated narrative, play or virtual realities, and/or which may be read through the lens of ludology/narratology. The second will consider games that adapt 19th-Century texts or histories as a means of reworking or challenging their original themes and contexts. Finally, the edited collection will consider games that more broadly function as thematic pastiches or aesthetic engagements with 19th-Century genres or themes.

In essence, this collection will consider the ways in which embodied, user-driven storytelling can impact new and challenging engagements with the 19th Century in the contemporary world. We welcome submissions from many fields: this includes game studies, literature studies, new media, neo-Victorian studies, history, popular culture scholarship, etc.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Chapter(s) on 19thC predecessors or precursors to the videogame – texts on interactivity, games, virtual realities, etc.
• Oral storytelling traditions and their relationships to game narration (or other elements of games).
• Chapters that examine 19thC texts/games from a ludology or narratology critical perspective (or its debates).
• Strategy games like Victoria or Sid Meier’s Civilization that evoke imageries of Empire, invasion, and colonization.
• The use of gameplay, mechanics, and/or design to engage 19thC themes.
• 19thC aesthetics, fashion, and visual design in games (Fable, Bloodborne, etc.)
• Games set in, or inspired by, countries outside Britain in the 19th Century, such as Great Ace Attorney: Adventures (Capcom).
• Disability and gaming culture in a 19thC context.
• Queering the 19th Century in games.
• Representations of BIPOC in 19th Century game settings.
• Impacts of 19thC texts on specific games (ie, Treasure Island on Monkey Island).
• Point-and-click mysteries and adventure tales (ie, Amnesia).
• Fairy tale adaptations of tales published or first translated in the 19th Century.
• Videogames involving contemporary characters investigating or unearthing 19thC histories.
• Games that utilize genres invented or significantly popularized in the 19th Century (ie, vampire fiction, detective fiction, science fiction, the Gothic, ghost fiction) in historically-conscious or referential ways.
• Games that make significant allusions to 19thC stories, philosophies, or art in modern contexts or alternate universes.
• Games that feature 19thC historical events (ie, Dread Hunger or Inua - A Story in Ice and Time as recreations of the lost Franklin expedition).

Proposals of 400-500 words should be submitted along with a 60-word author biography and one-page cv to both editors (brooke.cameron@queensu.ca & lyoung1@mtroyal.ca) by 31 January 2023.

We will notify applicants of results by 31 March 2023. Following acceptance, final papers should be approximately 6,000-7000 words long and will be due by 01 Sept 2023. Routledge has expressed interest in this collection.




Last updated December 20, 2022

CFP Adapting Horror in Popular Culture (1/24/2023)

Note the impending deadline. 

Adapting Horror in Popular Culture

deadline for submissions:
January 24, 2022

full name / name of organization:
Joseph J. Darowski and John Darowski

contact email:
monsteradaptations@gmail.com


full cfp accessible from this link: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/11/18/adapting-horror-in-popular-culture

CFP for Adapting Horror in Popular Culture

Deadline for Submissions: Jan. 24, 2023

Publisher: McFarland & Company

Contact Email: monsteradaptations@gmail.com

The editors of Adapting Horror in Popular Culture are seeking abstracts for essays that could be included in the upcoming collection. The essays should address the long-running global appeal of the monstrous in popular culture. Each essay will examine the adaptation of a creature, monster, or source of terror into a new medium.

Adaptations inherently transform an audience’s relationship with the original while presenting a version with contemporary relevance. Topics can include fairy tales, folklore, urban legends, or literary monsters from around the world and their adaptation into film, television, animation, radio/podcast, comic books, graphic novels, webtoons, video games, etc.

Essays should focus on stories featuring issues of adaptation and influence theory, evolving cultural contexts, or formalist aspects of telling existing stories in new mediums. Analysis must apply critical theory to explore the form, function, and/or intersectionality of monsters,
adaptation, and culture.

The proposed volume is intended to be scholarly but accessible in tone and approach. Abstracts explaining the focus and approach of the proposed chapter should be accompanied with a CV.

Topics should be limited in scope, focusing on one monster or text. Topics that compare and contrast different adaptations of the same monster within a single medium (e.g. comparing Bernie Wrightson and Junji Ito’s graphic novel versions of Frankenstien) will also be considered.

Completed essays should be approximately 15-20 double-space pages in MLA format.

Abstracts (100-500 words) and CVs should be submitted by January 24, 2023.

Submissions should be sent to Joseph J. Darowski and John Darowski at adaptingmonsters@gmail.com.



Last updated November 27, 2022

CFP FRAME 36.1 “Dying Wor(l)ds” (Spec. Issue, proposals by 12/7/2022)

FRAME 36.1 “Dying Wor(l)ds”

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/10/31/frame-361-%E2%80%9Cdying-worlds%E2%80%9D

deadline for submissions:
December 7, 2022

full name / name of organization:
FRAME, Journal of Literary Studies

contact email:
info@frameliteraryjournal.com



In “Land Sickness”, Nikolaj Schultz describes how he goes on vacation to “detach from the material consequences of [his] existence,” but upon arrival on a French island, he is once more faced with the material reality of existence, as the island’s coastline is eroding, caused by rising sea levels and the pressure of foreign tourism. He writes: “Neither Pareto, Marx or Bourdieu died in vain, but none of them offer a language sufficient to articulate the geo-social struggle for territory that unfolds on the island. I myself lack a language to understand what is happening.” How indeed, does one think and write about the world that is disappearing under our feet?

FRAME’s next issue is titled “Dying Wor(l)d’s” and accordingly focuses on questions of death and dying, in our world and our language. The understanding of the Anthropocene as a geological epoch has highlighted humanity’s ineffable impact on the planet we inhabit, but simultaneously, the Anthropocene continually draws attention to humanity’s inability to act upon that understanding. The cultural apathy that arises in discussions about the planet and our future illustrates our inability to think and write about such matters. We would like to invite scholars of literary studies and related fields to consider the (textual) implications of dying worlds and dying words. What happens when we, like Nikolaj Schultz, find ourselves without the vocabulary to express the loss we experience around us? Is literature able to narrate such complex matters, or is the environmental crisis also an illustration of the limits of literature—or indeed, the death of literature, brought about by the ‘poisonous gift’ that Bruno Latour titled the Anthropocene? And yet, there is a promise of global survival. Anna Tsing writes, while landscapes globally are dying, “[i]n a global state of precarity, we don’t have choices other than looking for life in this ruin” (6). How can we react to wor(l)ds dying?

Themes and topics related to these questions might include, but are not limited to:

• The death of animal species and ecosystems
• The use of death as narrator in literature
• Cultural mediation of disasters
• The human as destructive agent
• Gothic literature and its anticipation of disaster
• Cultural representation of good and evil
• The death of literature, including increased illiteracy or the death of the physical book
• (Eco)mourning
• Posthumanism or the death of the human
• The Great Dyings
• The death of Indigenous and minority languages

The above questions and concerns are only a few of the many themes that could be explored in the upcoming issue. However, we would like to stress that while FRAME encourages interdisciplinary and creative approaches, every proposal/article should show a clear connection to literary studies, as we are a literary journal first and foremost.

If you are interested in writing for FRAME, please submit a brief proposal of max. 500 words before 7 December 2022. Proposals should include a thesis statement, general structure and a preliminary reflection on the theories and discourses in which the argument will be situated. On the basis of all abstracts, contributors whose proposals are accepted will be notified by 15 December 2022, and asked to submit a draft version of the paper before 11 January 2023. Be mindful that we hold the right to reject draft versions to ensure consistency and coherence across all contributions to the issue. The deadline for the article’s first full version will be 26 February 2022, after which the editing process will begin. A regular article has a word limit of 6000 words, including bibliography and footnotes. For our Masterclass section, graduate and PhD students are invited to write up to a maximum of 4000 words. Please feel free to contact us at info@frameliteraryjournal.com, should you have any questions. More information about our journal, as well as our submission guidelines, can be found on our website: www.frameliteraryjournal.com.




categories
cultural studies and historical approaches
ecocriticism and environmental studies
journals and collections of essays
theory
world literatures and indigenous studies

Last updated November 3, 2022

CFP Tall Tales and Urban Legends in American Literature (1/3/2023; CAAS Conference, Halifax 9/22-24/2023)

Tall Tales and Urban Legends in American Literature

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/11/23/tall-tales-and-urban-legends-in-american-literature

deadline for submissions:
January 3, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Jasleen Singh, University of Toronto

contact email:
ja.singh@mail.utoronto.ca



Tall Tales and Urban Legends in American Literature

Canadian Association for American Studies (CAAS) 2023 Conference, Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, NS, September 22-24, 2023

Organized by Ross Bullen (OCAD University) and Jasleen Singh (University of Toronto)



In American Humor: A Study of National Character (1931), Constance Rourke describes the tall tale as a “scattered” genre that necessarily exists only in “fragments” (67). Embodying elements of the supernatural and the gothic, the genre typically centers around the figure of the pioneering “backwoodsman,” or “simpleton.” Moreover, the tall tale is rooted in regionalism–but in Rourke’s analysis–also ruminates on the question of the “native” or so-called “authentic” American national character at large. Tall tales, folk tales, and urban legends have had an appreciable impact on American literature and on articulations of the American national identity. As a literary strategy, the tall tale allows the author to approach serious or challenging subject matter in a way that engages a readership in both pedagogical and (provocatively) entertaining ways. Discussing William Wells Brown’s use of comedic and tall tales in his anti-slavery writing, Geoffrey Sanborn claims that “Brown concluded early in his career that white Americans strongly prefer narratives of self-making that are a little ‘off,’ in which something other than merit is at work” (9). For Brown, the naive and lucky outsider is better able to rouse his readers’ sympathy than a conventionally virtuous and heroic protagonist. Accordingly, it is the fantastical, the strange, or the “off” that can deliver the most prescient and serious critiques of American identity and national ideals. Moving beyond Rourke’s and Sanborn’s focus on the nineteenth century, in the late twentieth- and twenty-first centuries, the tall tale has morphed into multiple genres and forms, including urban legends, memes, creepypastas (online horror legends), and online folk figures like Slender Man or, more recently, Loab.

We welcome papers that explore any aspect of tall tales and urban legends from any period of American and African American literature or popular culture. Please send proposals to Jasleen Singh (ja.singh@mail.utoronto.ca) and Ross Bullen (rbullen@ocadu.ca) by January 3rd, 2023.

To learn more about the CAAS 2023 Conference, visit: http://american-studies.ca/conferences/



Works Cited

Rourke, Constance. American Humor: A Study of the National Character. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1931.

Sanborn, Geoffrey. Plagiarama! William Wells Brown and the Aesthetic of Attractions. New York: Columbia UP, 2016.



Last updated November 27, 2022

CFP Vampire Studies Area for PCA 2023 (12/20/2023; San Antonio 4/5-8/2023)

Vampire Studies (PCA/ACA National Conference) April 5-8, 2023

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/09/20/vampire-studies-pcaaca-national-conference-april-5-8-2023

deadline for submissions:
December 20, 2022

full name / name of organization:
Popular Culture Association

contact email:
pcavampires@gmail.com



Annual National Popular Culture Association Conference

CALL FOR PAPERS:

PCA CONFERENCE 5-8 APRIL 2023 IN SAN ANTONIO, TX

The Vampire Studies Area of the PCA welcomes papers, presentations, panels, and roundtable discussions that cover all aspects of the vampire as it appears throughout global culture.

We specifically welcome papers, panel presentations, or creative pieces about vampire children/young adults from fiction and film such as Claudia in Interview with a Vampire, Eli from Let the Right One In or Shorifrom Fledgling. We also look forward to submissions addressing media and advertising targeted towards children/young adults and vampirism such Mavis from Hotel Transylvania, The Count from Sesame Street, or Vampirina Ballerina.

As well as this broad theme we also encourage papers, presentations, and panels that cover any of the following:

• Children’s Products (i.e. toys like Draculara from Monster High, cereals like Count Chocula, the Ink Drinker, and Bunnicula, and Halloween-related products)
• The Non-Western Vampire (i.e. Black, Asian, Latino/a/x, African, Aboriginal)
• Vampires at the end of the world and beyond
• The vampire on legacy television shows (i.e. Dark Shadows, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Moonlight, The Vampire Diaries, The Originals)
• The vampire on recent television shows (i.e. First Kill, The Passage, Interview with the Vampire, Vampire in the Garden, Fire Bite)
• Legacy Cinematic vampires (i.e., Nosferatu, Interview with the Vampire, Near Dark, Twilight, Dracula Adaptations etc.)
• Recent Cinematic Vampires (i.e., Night Teeth, Morbius, Monster Family etc.)
• Monster Universes (i.e. A Discovery of Witches, Lost Girl, Monster High)
• Vampire Cultures and Contexts (i.e. vampire RPGs or other gaming universes, fan studies, graphic novels, Tik Tok & other social media platforms)
• Vampires and the Marginalized (i.e., race, gender, sexualities, national origin)
• Genres (i.e. Gothic Horror, Urban Fantasy, Romance, Steampunk, Early Readers, Children’s Picture Books, Young Adult, Erotica, Comedy)
• Historic and contemporary vampiric locations and geographies (i.e. cemeteries, castles, cities)
• The Horror Vampire, Byronic vs Hedonistic, or Horror vs Romantic
• Vampire Studies (i.e., the vampire in the classroom, vampire scholarship)

And anything and everything in between!

To have your proposal/abstract considered, please submit your proposal/abstract of approximately 250 words at the Popular Culture Association Website. We also accept complete panel proposals of 3-4 people.

We do not currently accept papers from fledgling/undergraduate scholars, but you can submit your proposal to the Undergraduate Area. We encourage you to get involved in our vibrant vampire community by joining one of our social media spaces and attending our conference events such as our business meeting. film screening, other roundtables, and sessions.

If you have questions, contact us at pcavampires@gmail.com Also, follow us on Twitter @pca_vampires or join our Facebook groups PCA Vampire Studies and Vampire Scholars.



Last updated September 20, 2022

Monsters & the Monstrous Area Panels for NEPCA 2022

I'm pleased to announce the final slate for the 2022 gathering of the Monsters & the Monstrous Area. NEPCA's annual conference will be held this weekend in Zoom. Details on the event and registration information can be found at this link.

Michael A. Torregrossa

Area Chair

Monsters & the Monstrous Area Panels for NEPCA 2022

Thursday, October 20th

Session 1: 3pm-4:15pm EDT: Monsters on Screen (Monsters & the Monstrous 1)

Session Chair: Joe Baumstark

Gangster/Monster: Cody Jarrett in White Heat

Gail Sheehan, Salem State University

Gail Sheehan, a member of the English Department at Salem State University (Salem, MA), teaches courses in film studies, in literature, and in writing. Gail’s areas of interest include: film history; adaptation studies; radio studies; and the representation of race and gender in media texts.

Shadows of the Vampire: Nosferatu, Phantom der Nacht as Post-Holocaust Trauma Allegory

Seth Wilder, Georgia State University

S. A. Wilder (he/him/his) is a doctoral student in Moving Image Studies in the School of Film, Media, and Theater at Georgia State University, where his research focuses principally on late cinematic style and its relationship to auteurism. His work has appeared in Slayage: The International Journal of  Buffy+, Asian Cinema Journal, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Film & History, Porn Studies, Global Hip Hop Studies, and is scheduled to appear in the upcoming edited volumes Screening Controversy and Serial Killers and Serial Spectators. 

The Horror Lives on: Trauma and Race in the Candyman Series 

Loredana Bercuci, West University of Timisoara (Romania)

Loredana Bercuci is an assistant professor at the Department of Modern Languages of the West University of Timișoara, in Romania, where she teaches American cultural history and popular culture. She holds a Ph. D. in American Studies from the West University of Timisoara, with a focus on transmedial representations of trauma in contemporary American culture.

An Evolution of Monstrous Maleficence: Disney’s Changing Portrayal of Otherness

Amelia Meiburg, McNeese State University

An expert in monstrosity, Amelia Meiburg has taught secondary English for over a decade in southwest Louisiana. She is currently wading through the conquest of working on a masters in English literature from McNeese State University, and when not bogged down in graduate school work or grading sophomore English essays, she undergoes the quest of exploring texts through lenses of monster and feminist theories, generally focusing on modern American literary works.

Session 2: 4:30pm-5:45pm EDT: New Perspectives on Classic Monsters (Monsters & the Monstrous 2)

Session Chair: Joe Baumstark

Monsters Then and Now? Births, the Undead and Deformities as Divine Punishment

Luisa de Padua Zanon, Independent Scholar, and Luiz Felipe Anchieta Guerra, Estate University of Montes Claros

Luisa de Padua Zanon - Licentiate in History by the Federal University of Minas Gerais. Does research focused on early modern "British" prints and the figure of monstrosity, and has published material on demonic possession in English press and Education on Imperial Brazil. She also works as a high-school-level regular teacher.

Luiz Felipe Anchieta Guerra - Licentiate in History by the Federal University of Minas Gerais, MPhil candidate by the Estate University of Montes Claros. Current board member of the ISSM (International Society for the Study of Medievalism). Does research focused on 20-21st century political medievalisms in Brazil, with published works on the uses of medieval imagery by far-right and extremist groups in Brazil.

“Induced by the demon’s lips”: Vampiric Orality and the Lesbian Mouth in Le Fanu’s Carmilla 

Rachel M. Friars, Queen's University, Kingston (Ontario, Canada)

Rachel M. Friars is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of English Language and Literature at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Her current work centers on neo-Victorianism and nineteenth-century lesbian literature and history, with secondary research interests in life writing, historical fiction, true crime, and the Gothic. Her work on lesbian historical fiction has been published with Palgrave Macmillan, The Journal of Neo-Victorian Studies, Lexington Books, Crime Studies Journal, Queer Studies in Media and Popular Culture, and is forthcoming in The Journal of Lesbian Studies and The Palgrave Handbook of Neo-Victorianism.

The Cosmic Horror of H. G. Wells

Samuel Crider, DePaul University

Samuel Crider (he/him) is a graduate student in the Media and Cinema Studies program at DePaul University in Chicago Illinois, and teaches courses in computer graphics and visual effects at Columbia College Chicago. His research interests include monster theory, fandom studies, and alternative narrative forms. He recently returned to academic studies and teaching after nearly 25 years working in the video game industry.

Don’t Tell Everyone: Candyman (1992) Film as an Urban Legend

Francine Sutton, University of Central Florida

Francine N. Sutton is a Ph.D. candidate in the Texts & Technology Program with a concentration in Digital Media at the University of Central Florida. She received a B.A. in Art and M.A. in Urban & Regional Planning from Jackson State University. Her research interests include improving the user experience of older adults with limited technology experience on mobile devices, fan studies, game studies, and popular culture.

Session 3: 6pm-7:15pm EDT: Transformations (Monsters & the Monstrous 3) [canceled 10/10

Monstrous Possibilities: The Re-Transfiguration of Female Desire and Agency in Carmen Maria Machado’s “The Husband Stitch” [MOVED TO Literature and Popular Culture 3: Literature and Challenging Society]

Mikayla Garcia, San Diego State University

Session 4: 7:30pm-8:45pm EDT: Mass Media Monsters (Monsters & the Monstrous 4) 

Session Chair: Glen Farrelly, Athabasca University

Deceive, Disgrace and Dismember: The Vampire Histories of the Monstrous-Feminine in Comics

Julia Lane, Independent Scholar (Australia)

Julia Lane (She/Her) is an intersectional feminist academic with a focus in visual arts, graphic design, cultural studies, and education. Lane is a published editor, author and illustrator, her most recent work Tracing behind the image: An interdisciplinary exploration of visual literacy was published in 2020. Completed in September 2022, her PhD project was an exhibition accompanied by a thesis/exegesis entitled Vessels for the Devil: Exploring the rhetoric of the monstrous-feminine in graphic culture. Lane’s research engages in how the monster trope is used to ‘other’ marginalised groups, and works to question, subvert and transform existing societal narratives.

From Haunted House to House Haunting: Domesticity and the Monstrous Feminine in Monster House 

Lauren Chun, San Diego State University

Lauren Chun (ch-uh-n) (she/her) is a second year M.A. Candidate at San Diego State University with a specialization in Children’s Literature. Her research as of late, focuses on gothic as well as Asian American children’s literature. In addition to this, she is a Rhetoric and Writing Studies instructor. 

The Silence of The Witcher: Voicelessly Plant Like Monsters 

Bryce King, Florida Atlantic University

Bryce King is a Florida Atlantic University Alumni with a BA in English: Writing and Rhetoric, minor in sociology and an MA in English:Science Fiction and Fantasy. Her MA thesis The Voice Not from Rivia: Silence, Ecofeminsim and Their Limits in The Witcher Series focuses on the role of monster plants and women within the Witcherverse to argue that the voices of each are both intertwined and in conflict. 

Revamping the Vampire: How What We Do in the Shadows Updates the Vampire Story Colleen Etman, University of South Carolina [added in 10/10

[Michael doesn’t have contact info or bio. Sorry.]

Friday, October 21st

Session 1: 1pm-2:15pm EDT: Re-Imagining the Monster (Monsters & the Monstrous 5)

Session Chair: Giacomo Calabria

Monsters in the Mills: Industrial Gothic Horror in New England 

Faye Ringel, U.S. Coast Guard Academy, Emerita

Faye Ringel is Professor Emerita of Humanities, U.S. Coast Guard Academy, New London CT. She is the author of The Gothic Literature and History of New England: Secrets of the Restless Dead (Anthem Press, 2022) and New England's Gothic Literature: History and Folklore of the Supernatural.  Once chair of NEPCA’s former Fantastic Literature area, she has presented at the two virtual conferences and many in-person. She lives in Norwich, Connecticut, home to abandoned and repurposed (haunted) mills. 

H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds and 21st Century Disclosure 

Don Vescio, Worcester State University

Don is a member of Worcester State University’s Department of English and his scholarly interests include: contemporary critical and narrative theory; information design and architecture; data structures and applied analytics, and post-1950s American fiction. Additionally, he regularly consults in the private sector on advanced information technology issues, with a specific focus on developing scalable data structures. He finds that his education in English and the humanities is an excellent complement to his interest in data technologies.

Unto Dust Thou Shalt Return: The Corporeal Legacy of Carl Dreyer’s Vampyr

Jordan Parrish, University of Pittsburgh

Jordan Parrish is a doctoral candidate in Film and Media studies and English at the University of Pittsburgh. He received an MA from Ohio University with a thesis titled “The Undead Subject of Lost Decade Japanese Horror Cinema.” He is currently writing a dissertation on temporal body horror cinema, defining bodily experiences of gaps between living and experiencing time in horror films from Japan, Canada, and Europe. His work has been published in the journal Horror Studies.

We Are the Monsters. Strange Creatures in Dino Buzzati’s Short Stories

Simone Pettine, "G. d'Annunzio" University of Chieti-Pescara (Abruzzo, Italy)

Simone Pettine is currently a PhD student at the “Gabriele d’Annunzio” University of Chieti-Pescara in "Languages, Literatures and Cultures in Contact" and Subject Matter Expert in "Italian Literature". His main field of research is Realism, Verismo and their relationship with fantastic narrative. He has published a monograph dedicated to Giovanni Verga ("Un viaggio nel quale si riposa per sempre. La morte in Verga", Solfanelli, 2021) and some essays on Salvatore Di Giacomo, Cesare Pavese and Francesco Biamonti. He has also participated in numerous national and international conferences (Mexico City, Wroclaw, Turkey, Viterbo, Washington).

Session 2: 2:30pm-3:45pm EDT: 

(No Monsters & the Monstrous Area sessions scheduled at this time as of 10/3.)

Session 3: 4pm-5:15pm EDT: Monsters in Comics (Monsters & the Monstrous 6)

Session Chair: Michael Torregrossa, Independent Scholar

Tapioca Pudding, Bingo, and Homicide: A Vision of Two Aging Serial Killers in The Roberts 

Angela Tenga, Florida Institute of Technology

Angela Tenga is an associate professor at Florida Institute of Technology. Her classes focus on literature, culture, and history, while her research interests include representations of the monstrous, the fictional construction of criminality (especially serial killers), and early English literature. She has co-edited two collections of critical essays: The Written Dead: Essays on the Literary Zombie (with Kyle William Bishop) and Plant Horror: Approaches to the Monstrous Vegetal in Fiction and Film (with Dawn Keetley).  Her work has been featured in Gothic Studies, The Journal of Popular Culture, Supernatural Studies, and Studies in Popular Culture, along with several edited volumes of critical essays. She and co-author Jonathan Bassett received a Whatley Award for “Spies Like Us: Ideology and Futility in the FX Television Series The Americans.”

Comic Book Monster-Human Hybrids in “Fine Art”

Gustavo Garcia, California State University, Northridge

Gustavo Garcia [he/him/his] is an interdisciplinary visual artist/writer, arts educator and a MA candidate at California State University Northridge. His artwork is in the Collections of MoMA New York, LACMA and the Bibliotheque Nationale de France. His writing has been published in literary journals and publications including the online speculative fiction journal Strange Horizons, the literary journal Bilingual Review and the comic/manga magazine Shonen Jump/Aoharu. As an Arts Educator, Gustavo creates art experiences for museums and arts organizations including the California African American Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Self Help Graphics and artworxLA. Gustavo holds a BA from Hampshire College, Certificate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Certificate from California State University Los Angeles and Certificates from the Architectural Association London.

Riverdale Monster Mash: An Initial Survey of Horror in Archie Comics’ Non Horror Books 

Michael Torregrossa, Independent Scholar

Michael A. Torregrossa (he/him/his) is a medievalist and comics scholar. He works as an adjunct in both Rhode Island and Massachusetts and serves on the council of the New England American Studies Association. Michael is also NEPCA’s chair for the Monsters & the Monstrous Area, which he initiated in 2018, and he welcomes your ideas for monster-related papers and panels for future NEPCA conferences and other events throughout the year. 

Keynote & Awards: 5:30pm-7pm EDT

(Please attend the session if you are able, especially if you are a student. NEPCA offers a number of student paper awards that you are now eligible to complete for. NEPCA is also open to ideas for new areas if you have any thoughts on things you’d like to see next year.)

Saturday, October 22

Session 1: 9:00am-10:15am EDT: Rethinking the Role of the Monster (Monsters & the Monstrous 7) 

Session Chair: Lance Eaton

The Perilous Realm: Folklore and Horror in Tolkien's Works 

Monica Sanz, Independent Scholar

Monica Sanz (she/her/hers) holds a Masters Degree in English Philology, and a Postgraduate Degree in Literature from the UK. Tolkien has been her main field of study for more than 20 years, and she is an internationally published author and lecturer on Tolkien.

Monica Sanz is an independent scholar on Tolkien. As an English Philologist, she specialised in Literature of the British Islands. Her main field of study is Tolkien, and she has published several essays on topics such as the influence of Nordic and Scandinavian mythology in Tolkien’s works or the impact of the writer in subculture, counterculture and exploitation. She has also cooperated with Spanish universities, such as Universidad de Zaragoza (Saragossa), Universitat de les Illes Balears (Majorca) or Universidad Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona) offering lectures about Tolkien in their academic courses and events. Mrs Sanz has been an active member of the Sociedad Tolkien Española (Tolkien Society of Spain) for more than 20 years, where she currently leads many projects. She has organised national and local Tolkien events, exhibitions, readings, shows, round tables, screenings, workshops and other Tolkien-centred activities. She has also collaborated with other Tolkien Societies’ activities, such as the 2020 Tolkien Society Seminar (UK) or the 2022 Mythopoeic Society's Online Midwinter Seminar (USA).

The Power of the Elusive Presence in Horror Fiction

Oscar De Los Santos, Western Connecticut State University, and Kelly L. Goodridge, Western Connecticut State University

Oscar De Los Santos is former chair of the Writing Department at Western Connecticut State University, where he teaches fiction and essay workshops. His books include short story collections, a novel, a writing handbook, and edited essay collections.

Kelly L. Goodridge, M.A., M.F.A., teaches fiction and nonfiction workshops at Western Connecticut State University. A former journalist, her books include A Modern Bestiary: When the Ape-Hawk Strikes and 25 Questions All Writers Should Ask Themselves.

Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla and S.D. Simper’s Carmilla and Laura: The Vampire and the Victim’s Evolution, their Relationship and the New Representation of the Sublime in the Original and in its Retelling

Marika Strano, Swansea University (Wales)

After a Bachelor’s Degree in International Communication and a Master’s Degree in Modern Italian Philology, Marika Strano is now a second year PhD candidate in English Literature at Swansea University, in Wales. Her thesis concerns the presence of the works of Giacomo Leopardi, the most famous Italian modern author, in James Joyce’s masterpieces. Marika’s interests range from English Literature (in particular on Gothic Literature) to Italian, Irish and Comparative literatures. She’s currently working both on her thesis and on an essay about the reception of the Greek Mith Giacomo Leopardi’s work.  

King’s Pennywise and the Rise of Coulrophobia in Popular Culture

Ananya Roy, University of Delhi / Independent Scholar (India)

Ananya Roy (she/her/hers) has completed her masters in English Literature from Jesus and Mary College, University of Delhi. Her focus on research is widespread ranging from the renaissance to the modern-contemporary literary world, more significantly on gothic, horror, noir, crime, speculative and science fiction(s). Her works have been previously published in e-journals like IJELLH, IJOES, CLRI, IJECLS. 

Session 2: 10:30am-11:45am EDT: We Live with the Monstrous We Made: Perspectives on the Netflix Series Extraordinary Attorney Woo (Monsters & the Monstrous 8)

Session Chair: Giacomo Calabria

The Society Violence in Autistic World: Reality X Possibilities Based on Extraordinary Attorney Woo 

Isabelle Ferreira Pires, Centro Universitário do Rio Grande do Norte (Brazil)

Isabelle Ferreira Pires graduated in business administration at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte and holds a postgraduate degree in strategic management of people by Centro Universitário do Rio Grande do Norte. She is interested in marketing, working with images and watching movies and exploring other cultures such as Jewish, Egyptian, Indian and Koreans through references of the drama she is watching. Lately she is crazy about the dramas especially those of history, magic or the romantic and funny ones.

Evolution of Perspectives on Autism Spectrum Disorder from Extraordinary Monster to Good Professionals 

Aryong Choi-Hantke, Independent Scholar (Korea)

Aryong Choi-Hantke has finished a Ph.D. program at the School of Media, Art & Technology, at Sogang University, S. Korea, and established Institute of Body and Mind aiming at the interdisciplinary research in the field of communication, film studies, comparative literature, cultural studies, psychology and yoga therapy in 2005. Since 2006, she presented papers analyzing Park Chan Wook’s films, Korean films, culture and society in Transforma, SWPACA, NEPCA, GFF and ICLA. Aside from working as a translator and writing about issues in Korean culture and films, her recent interest has been the disease, the healing and the medicine in cinemas and were the area chair of the very topic in 2016 ICLA. and acted as the referee of Participations:International Journal of Audience Research(2015-2016). She participates in The World Hobbit Project and Game of Thornes Project. Her articles were published in the “Three Asias” issue of Paradoxa (Nov. 2010) and “Peppermint Candy” in Neues ostasiatisches Kino (May.2015). And she published her own books: Our Body Culture Probe (2011) and At 7 P.M., I Meet Myself (2014), and contributed to “Yoga, Women, & Popular Culture,” in Yoga and Culture (2013).

The Court Hearing Monsters

Ressu Ferreira Pires, Independent Scholar (Brazil)

Ressu Ferreira Pires graduated with her Bachelor of Laws degree from Centro Universitário do Rio Grande do Norte in 2016, and she has been practicing as a Brazilian lawyer since 2016. She also received an international trade bachelor's degree from Instituto Federal do Rio Grande also in 2016. Nowadays she is engaged in a post graduation program for legal practice in Escola da Magistratura do Rio Grande do Norte (ESMARN).

Session 3: 12:00pm-1:15pm EDT: Making Monsters (Monsters & the Monstrous 9)

Session Chair: Derya Agis

Monster of the Time: When the Lion Becomes Post-Human

George Sieg, Southwestern Indian Polytechic Institute

 Dr. George Sieg (PhD Western Esotericism, University of Exeter Centre for the Study of Esotercism; MA Study of Religion, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) is the Area Chair for Esotericism, Occultism, and Magic at the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association. He teaches philosophy at the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In addition to these areas, his specialties as a historian of religion include dualism and its Iranian origins, apocalypticism, gnosis and Gnosticism, radicalism and extremism, ideological violence, traditionalist worldviews, conspiracism, occult war beliefs, and contemporary expressions of the Left-Hand Path and the sinister. He has published articles and chapters on these subjects, as well as self-referential horror, intimacy in the zombie apocalypse, and survival euphoria, with a forthcoming chapter on survival horror and the transfiguration of the zombie toward the transhuman.

Monstrous Possibilities: HG Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau and the Chimera

Paul Driskill, Tufts University

Paul Driskill is a PhD candidate at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. His dissertation, Narrative Species: Imagining the Modern Human in Nineteenth-Century Science and Fiction explores the emergence of the species concept in the nineteenth century and considers the role that narrative, imagination, and fiction played in how Victorians understood themselves as subjects, characters, and species. Throughout, he argues that the chimera manifests Victorian anxieties about the reality of their nonhuman being—a part of their evolutionary history as a species. (Most of human history is, in fact, nonhuman.) HIs third chapter focuses specifically on Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Island of Dr. Moreau and considers their claims to possibility. In doing so, he considers the monster’s slippery status within the context of realism. Additionally, Paul will (pending approval) be teaching a class called “The Monsters that Make Us” to college undergraduates. This course will be all about the figure of the monster in popular culture—what it reveals to us about our deepest fears, desires, and uncertainties. 

“I just wanted my dog back”: Suspended Animation and Queer Potentiality in Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie (2012)

Dani Nouriazad, San Diego State University

Dani Nouriazad (they/she) is a graduate student at San Diego State University in San Diego, CA. A specialist in children’s literature, their research and writing interests include gothic and horror studies, queer studies, cultural studies, performance and visual culture, and critical theory. 

Writers’ Roundtable: 1:30pm-2:45pm EDT

(Please support NEPCA by attending this special event.)