HWA Academics

deadline for submissions: September 30, 2019
organization: Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)
contact email: margaretkelly@uky.edu

Diana Wallace and Andrew Smith note that the Female Gothic has been an ever-shifting category since its introduction into literary vocabulary by Ellen Moers in 1976, asserting that the Female Gothic “is shaped by...national identity, sexuality, language, race, and history” (The Female Gothic, 10). Gothic scholarship has long demonstrated that the mode varies across national and continental borders particularly drawing out distinctions between the American and the British. However, less attention has been paid to the concept of age. Keeping in mind the conference theme, how does the space of girlhood and/or adolescence complicate or further our understanding of the Female Gothic? In other words, how does examining the intersection of girlhood along with national, racial, and/or cultural identifiers change our conception of what the Female Gothic does? For the purposes of our panel, we aim to use a capacious definition of the Female Gothic and discuss texts that might not otherwise be considered Gothic. While works like Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca (1938) or Joyce Carol Oates's Bellefleur (1980) contain clear connections to traditional Gothic elements like female madness and the ancestral manor, other works that are not typically placed within the modern Gothic canon, such as Paule Marshall’s Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959) or Jeffrey Eugenides's The Virgin Suicides (1993), engage with questions of girlhood and the Gothic tradition in innovative and compelling ways. This panel invites papers that interrogate Gothic depictions of girlhood and female adolescence in 20 and 21st century American or British/Anglophone literature (including, but not limited to, fiction, film, drama, and video games). In particular, we seek papers that work towards an understanding of intersectional identities within the Gothic while paying particular attention to girlhood and female adolescence.

All proposals must be submitted through the NeMLA portal (see link below) by September 30, 2019 and should be no more than 300 words.

https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/Login

 

Please direct inquiries to Margaret Frymire Kelly (margaretkelly@uky.edu).

Copied from: https://www.nature.com/palcomms/for-authors/call-for-papers#monsters


Editors: Dr Sibylle Erle (Reader in English Literature), Dr Pat Beckley (Senior Lecturer in the School of Teacher Development) and Dr Helen Hendry (Senior Lecturer in Education Studies, Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln, UK)

There is a continued fascination with all things monsters, which is partly due to the critical and popular reception of Mary Shelley’s creature termed a “new species” by its ambitious and over-reading creator. Frankenstein regards himself a scientist, but his creature’s existence is bodged from the start. The aim of this ‘Monsters’ collection of articles is therefore to examine the legacy of Shelley’s novel as well as the different incarnations of monsters in contemporary research and teaching contexts. Attempting to explain the appeal of Shelley’s story, this collection offers a unique opportunity to promote dialogue between the social sciences and the humanities.

The title of this collection is deliberately left ambiguous to allow for an interdisciplinary exploration of ‘monstrosity’ and ‘the monstrous’. These concepts apply, in the first instance, to social and cultural threats — that is, to behaviours or (visual) qualities, which are deemed unacceptable because they are perceived as either amoral or unimaginable. The afterlife and reception of Frankenstein not only brings many opportunities for academic research to intersect with popular culture, but also brings into focus the pertinent theoretical and methodological challenges relating to how ‘monstrosity’ and ‘the monstrous’ get taught at universities and at schools.

Against the backdrop, we invite papers that explore the concepts of monsters, monstrosity and the monstrous. Contributions are welcomed on, but are not restricted to, the following themes:

Gothic studies;
Reception studies (the afterlife of Frankenstein);
Monsters’ as a metaphor (monstrosity, the monstrous);
Monsters in literature written for children and/or young adults;
Monsters in visual culture and performance art;
Horror movies for adults and/or for children and/or young adults;
The post-human, technology and robot-human interactions;
Disability studies;
Wellbeing;
Monsters’ in teaching contexts;
Popular culture.
Research is invited from the humanities (literature, drama, art, history) and the social sciences (education and teacher training studies, psychology, counselling studies), as well as interdisciplinary scholarship.

This is a rolling article collection and as such submissions will be welcomed at any point up until the end of November 2019. To register interest prospective authors should submit a short article proposal (abstract summary) to the Editorial Office (palcomms@palgrave.com) in the first instance.

Additional submission guidelines can be found here: https://www.nature.com/palcomms/for-authors/submission-guidelines

Deadline for submissions: December 1, 2019
full name / name of organization: Claire O'Callaghan/Sarah Fanning (Loughborough University/Mount Allison University)
contact email: C.OCallaghan@lboro.ac.uk

In recent years, the media has abounded with stories of serial killers. Esquiremagazine notes that 2019 has been a particularly ‘bumper year for [Ted] Bundy’, but numerous other news stories have maintained our perennial fascination with serial murderers.Indeed, the death of Charles Manson (2017), the 2018 arrest and subsequent identification of Joseph James DeAngelo (known as the ‘original night stalker’ and, latterly, the Golden State Killer), and multiple anniversaries, including the Tate-LaBianca murders (50th) and Ted Bundy’s death (30th), have all kept serial killers at the forefront of the public imagination.


Unsurprisingly, production companies from both the big and small screen have capitalised on – and contributed to – this surge of serial killer media. While documentaries such as the BBC’s The Yorkshire Ripper Files: A Very British Crime Story(2019)and Jack the Ripper – The Case Reopened (2019) have revisited high-profile cases with fresh questions, fictionalised biopics and adaptations continue to offer an alternative approach to these harrowing stories. From Netflix’s Mindhunter (2017 –), Joe Berlinger’s Bundy biopic Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile(2019), to Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) and Netflix’s Lost Girls (release TBA), it seems there is a conspicuous interest in seeing this figure mediated on screen. And this current phenomenon builds on the fact that some of the silver screen’s most critically-acclaimed and popular films have been based on real-life serial murderers, including, for instance, Patty Jenkin’s academy award-winning biopic, Monster(2003) based on Aileen Wuornos, and David Fincher’s Zodiac(2007), the media name given to the unidentified killer who haunted North California in the late 1960s.

 

Professor of Criminology David Wilson explains that one reason why the public ‘might follow a serial killer’ is ‘because they are complex puzzles that they want to figure out’, but Wilson also suggests that this ever-growing appetite is ‘driven by co-activation and the titillation of getting close to something frightening with the knowledge you won’t come to any harm.’ [ii]

 

Using Wilson’s comments as a starting point, we solicit contributions to an edited collection focused on the representation of the real-life serial killer as portrayed onscreen in biopics, documentaries, television series, and films. While there is plenty of media discussion about the proliferation of serial killer narratives in popular culture, scholarly study of their representation onscreen remains largely overlooked. This collection, therefore, is interested in unravelling the politics at play in adapting and screening the stories of real-life serial murderers. We pose the following questions:

 

• How are real-life serial killers fictionalised onscreen?
• How are the horrific crimes and the traumatic legacies left by serial murderers negotiated for public audiences?
• What are the ethical issues at stake (social/cultural and/or historical) in the making of such productions, and what ethical dilemmas does the screening of serial killers’ crimes generate?
• What are the cultural effects (individually and collectively) produced by serial killer narratives on screen?

And can films, documentaries, biopics and television dramas about serial killers generate valuable cross-disciplinary insights into this criminological phenomenon? [/li]
[/list]
 

Accordingly, we welcome proposed chapters that investigate, but are not limited to, topics including:

• Any aspect of the portrayal of serial killer(s) in biopics, documentaries, television drama, and film
• Glamorisation / romanticisation of the serial killer
• Serial killer myths/mythologies as perpetuated onscreen
• The portrayal (and perspective) of victims and survivors
• Screening serial murder and the representation of violence
• The representation of misogyny, homophobia, ageism and other vulnerable (victim) groups in serial killer narratives
• Theories of performance and embodiment
• Serial killers and the representation of the body
• Issues of gender, sexuality, race, disability, class, and nation
• Serial killers and screen genre(s)
• The concept of ‘murder porn’
• Screening psychopathy and sociopathy
• The figure of the detective / criminal profiler in relation to serial murder
• The criminal body
• Media ethics and the representation of the serial killers

We are interested in cohering a range of diverse perspectives and theoretical approaches to this subject, including feminist, psychoanalysis, criminology, film/TV, cultural studies, and biographical.

 

This volume will be submitted to Palgrave Macmillan’s series on Crime, Media and Culture (https://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15057) who have expressed an interest in the collection.

 

Please send a 500-word abstract (for 8000 word chapters) and brief bio to the editors, Dr Claire O’Callaghan (Loughborough University, U.K.) and Dr Sarah Fanning (Mount Allison University, Canada) by 1stDecember 2019at C.OCallaghan@lboro.ac.uk and sfanning@mta.ca.

 

Penumbra

Deadline: 2020-05-31 (for inaugural issue)
Contact: stjoshi45@hotmail.com

Penumbra is an annual journal edited by weird fiction scholar S. T. Joshi and published through Hippocampus Press. About 75% of its content will consist of articles (scholarly or otherwise) on all aspects of weird fiction; the other 25% will be original fiction. The journal will in all likelihood be indexed in the MLA [Modern Language Association] Bibliography and will consist of up to 100,000 words.

Deadline for the first issue of the journal is May 31, 2020. Submissions can be sent to S. T. Joshi at  stjoshi45@hotmail.com

Abstracts or inquiries of up to 200 words may be submitted any time before June 28, 2019.

Rough draft chapters of roughly 3,000 to 8,000 words (with an ideal length of 5,000 words) will be due Dec 20, 2019.  Final rewrites will be due Jan 15, 2020.

Essays on Clown Horror in Film and Television is an academic anthology, edited by Ron Riekki (co-editor of The Many Lives of The Evil Dead: Essays on the Cult Film Franchise, McFarland, 2019), examining the various clowns in the horror genre.  With the success of American Horror Story: Freak Show, American Horror Story: Cult, and It (with the huge anticipation of It: Chapter Two), the clown horror genre has solidly proven its place in contemporary film and TV.  Previous landmarks in the genre include the likes of Amusement, Blood Harvest, Clown, Clownhouse, Dead Silence, House of 1000 Corpses, The Houses October Built, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, The Last Circus, Poltergeist, Stitches, the opening of Halloween, and even, one might argue, certain aspects of The Dark Knight.  Essays on Clown Horror in Film and Television will give a variety of theoretical perspectives, being open to Marxist film theory, queer film theory, psychoanalytic film theory, cultural studies, interdisciplinary studies, and much more.

With this call for papers, the editor seeks essays of 3,000 to 6,000 words on any aspect of clown horror films and television, including:

Film and television studies essays related to all of the above aforementioned film and TV, as well as Killjoy, Carnival of Souls, 31, Serial Killers: John Wayne Gacy, We All Scream for Ice Cream, Terrifier, Supernatural, The Phantom of the Big Tent, Koko the Clown in “Betty Boop in Snow-White,” Krusty the Clown in “Treehouse of Horror,” and any other fitting films/television, on topics such as horror theory, gender studies, queer theory, psychoanalysis, coulrophobia, the carnivalesque, horror aesthetics, the philosophy of horror, fear theory, and various theoretical lenses (Clover, Creed, Freud, Jung, Kristeva).  Multiple and varied theoretical approaches are welcomed.
Essays related to frightening clowns in the history of theater (such as Chicago’s Soiree DADA or Halloween Horror Nights’ Jack the Clown) or in music culture (such as Insane Clown Posse, Twiztid) cross-compared with clown horror in film/television.

Essays related to filmic areas such as acting, screenwriting, sound, cinematography, special effects, or costuming in the clown horror genre.
Essays related to the various toys, miniatures, collectibles, tie-in paraphernalia, soundtracks/score/songs, and other material ephemera associated with the clown horror genre.
The editors are also open to any other television and film criticism related to the clown horror genre.  [Note: as this essay collection will be paired with an upcoming anthology on the It franchise, we already have enough essays on the Stephen King book, miniseries, and 2017 film, but the one exception is that we are still open to essays on It: Chapter Two if anyone might be able to either attend an early screening or else view the film during its initial September 2019 release but then still be able to make the December deadline for the first drafts of essays.]
The anthology is under contract with McFarland.

Contact Info:

Please submit abstracts or inquiries of up to 200 words any time before June 28, 2019, to ronriekki@hotmail.com.  On December 20, 2019, completed essays will be sent to peers for review and then rewrites from that peer-review will be due January 15, 2020.

Contact Email:

ronriekki@hotmail.com

In the opening decades of the twenty-first century, with Trump in the White House and Brexit on the horizon, Angela Carter’s famous assertion of 1974 that ‘we live in Gothic times’  has never been more apt. But from the eighteenth century onwards, the Gothic mode has routinely placed the present moment under scrutiny, exploring the terrors of the age whilst calling into question the comforting fantasies upon which the established order rests. In this, the Gothic text might be seen to offer a culturally and politically engaged exploration of the historic period in which each text was produced, interrogating the contemporary present even as it calls into question standard historical narratives about the past.

This year’s Gothic Manchester Festival Symposium picks up on these concerns, inviting twenty-minute papers on the theme of ‘Gothic Times’ that are accessible to a non-specialist audience. These may focus on any aspect of Gothic culture – literature, film, television, music, graphic novels, games, Goth subcultures, etc. Topics may include, but are certainly not limited to:

The Gothic and  History / Gothic Histories
The Gothic as social and political critique
Gothic narratives in (and out of) time
Gothic temporalities – time in the Gothic text
Gothic of the present moment: Trump and Brexit
Projecting the Future – Gothic/SF fusions

Abstracts of 150 words are to be sent to the conference organiser Dr Linnie Blake by July 30th 2019.

Email: l.blake@mmu.ac.uk

Important: Please save your abstracts as ‘Surname Short Title’ and ensure that your name and full title are included on the abstract itself, which should be attached to a covering email.

Find out more information about the Manchester Gothic Festival on our website here: https://www2.mmu.ac.uk/english/gothic-studies/gothic-manchester-festival/gothic-times/

The Monsters and the Monstrous Area welcomes proposals that investigate any of the things, whether mundane or marvelous, that scare us. Through our sessions, we hope to pioneer fresh explorations into the darker sides of the intermedia traditions of the fantastic (including, but not restricted to, aspects of fairy tale, fantasy, gothic, horror, legend, mythology, and science fiction) by illuminating how creative artists have both formed and transformed our notions of monsters within these sub-traditions in texts from various countries, time periods, and media and for audiences at all levels. Our primary goal is to foster a better understating of monsters in general and to examine their impact on those that receive their stories as well as on the world at large. However, as a component of the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association, the Monsters and the Monstrous Area is also especially interested in celebrating both the New England Gothic tradition and the life, works, and legacy of H. P. Lovecraft, a leading proponent of Weird Fiction and an immense influence on contemporary popular culture.

Please submit paper proposals through NEPCA’s Google form accessible from https://nepca.blog/conference/. Submissions should comprise the presenter’s personal information (including email, full name, home address, telephone, academic affiliation [if one], and scholarly rank [if relevant], and a short bio of 50-200 words) AND paper information (including a working title of no more than 60 characters and proposal/abstract of no more than 250 words). Do be sure to select “Monsters and the Monstrous Area” as your designated Subject Area.

Please address any inquiries about submissions to the area chair, Michael A. Torregrossa, at popular.preternaturaliana@gmail.com.
The Monsters and the Monstrous Area is affiliated with the Northeast Alliance for Scholarship on the Fantastic, which maintains three websites that might be of interest to potential presenters. They are Northeast Fantastic (https://northeastfantastic.blogspot.com/), Popular Preternaturaliana: Studying the Monstrous in Popular Culture (https://popularpreternaturaliana.blogspot.com/), and Frankenstein and the Fantastic (https://frankensteinandthefantastic.blogspot.com/).
 
NEPCA prides itself on holding conferences that emphasize sharing ideas in a non-competitive and supportive environment. We welcome proposals from graduate students, junior faculty, and senior scholars. NEPCA conferences offer intimate and nurturing sessions in which new ideas and works-in-progress can be aired, as well as completed projects. Further details on the organization can be found at their website: https://nepca.blog/.

Deadline: 2019-05-31

Essays are sought for an academic book that aims to examine the popular cycle of films widely known as “giallo.” Growing out of the Gothic Italian cycle (but influenced by foreign cycles such as the German “Krimi” film), the giallo film was a cultural and historical phenomenon. Meaning yellow in Italian, the giallo was an umbrella term for crime fiction, named after the bright yellow covers of cheap paperbacks ranging from Agatha Christie to Edgar Wallace. Soon enough, the term giallo was adopted to signify a Italian cycle of thriller cinema much closer to the horror film than the suspense or noir films made in America. Mario Bava kickstarted the cycle with two films, The Girl who Knew Too Much (La Ragazza che Sapeva Troppo, 1963) and Blood and Black Lace (Sei Donne per l’Assesino, 1964), while Dario Argento gave it the definitive form with his The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (L’Uccello dalle Piume di Cristallo, 1970). The giallo film influenced its American counterparts, paving the path to the American slasher formula of the 1980s.

Even if there are two books on the subject, including Mikel Koven’s excellent La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Italian Giallo Film (McFarland, 2006) —a monograph recounting the history of the cycle­—, there is a strong lack on essays taking individual films for a close reading and analytical insight. Thus, for this collection, I am not interested in chapters engaging with an overview of the cycle but in essays analyzing individual, overlooked films and unexplored areas and directors. Essays on the usual “suspects” such as Bava or Argento are welcome, but my goal is offering a critical collection on the most neglected aspects of the cycle.

With this purpose in mind, mi intention is to gather together a group of essays covering ignored areas:

First, works on overlooked directors such as Massimo Dallamano (What Have you Done to Solange?, 1972), Aldo Lado (The Short Night of the Glass Dolls, 1971), Sergio Martino (The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, 1971; Your Vice is a Locked Room  and Only I Have the Key, 1972; Torso, 1973), Lucio Fulci (Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, 1971; Don’t Torture a Duckling, 1972), Luciano Ercoli (Death Walks on High Heels, 1971), Giuseppe Bennati (L’Assasino ha Riservato Nove Poltrone, 1974), or Paolo Cavara (Black Belly of the Tarantula, 1971), among many others.

Second, works on the completely neglected cycle of foreign giallos, including Spanish films such as Una Libélula para cada Muerto (Leon Klimovsky, 1975), El Pez de los Ojos de Oro (Pedro Luis Ramírez, 1974), Los Ojos Azules de la Muñeca Rota (Carlos Aured, 1973), La Corrupción de Chris Miller (Juan Antonio Bardem, 1973), El techo de Cristal (Eloy de la Iglesia, 1971), or La Muerte Ronda a Mónica (Ramón Fernández, 1976), and American gialli such as Alice, Sweet Alice (Alfred Sole, 1976), Eyes of Laura Mars (Irvin Kershner, 1978), Private Parts (Paul Bartel, 1972), or Dressed to Kill (Brian de Palma, 1980).

Third, essays on what can be termed as “neo-gialli”, meaning, contemporary films that try to honor the aesthetics and narrative tropes of the Italian giallo. This revival, currently very lively, demonstrates the interest and influence that the cycle is still projecting in contemporary thriller/horror cinema. Neo-gialli includes Basic Instinct (Paul Verhoeven, 1992), Knight Moves (Carl Schenkel, 1992), Amer (Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, 2009), The Neon Demon (Nicolas Winding Reig, 2016), The Strange Color of your Body’s Tears (Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, 2013), Francesca (Luciano Onetti, 2015) or Un Couteau dans le Coeur (Yan González, 2018), this last film, a beautiful rewriting of Argento’s Bird with the Crystal Plumage.

These lists are far from exhaustive. All disciplinary approaches are welcome, including psychoanalytic, queer, adaptation studies, historical approach, animal studies, philosophy, posthumanism, trauma studies, gender studies, etc.

Please submit 300-500 word abstracts with working title and short bio to giallobookproject@yahoo.com by April 29, 2019. Abstracts must be delivered as a Word attachment. A renowned academic publisher has showed interest in the project.

Please, share this CFP with all you believe might be interested. Thanks.

Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns (PhD student) works as Professor at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA) - Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (Argentina)-. He teaches courses on international horror film and is director of the research group on horror cinema “Grite.” He has published chapters on horror and popular culture in many books and has authored a book about Spanish horror TV series Historias para no Dormir.

Contact Email: giallobookproject@yahoo.com