HWA Academics

Abstracts due: 30th April 2022
Keynote speakers: Professor Gina Wisker, Dr Ian Burrows

It has been a decade and a half since the last period of sustained work exploring the ways in which gothic literature is, and might be, taught in the classroom. This symposium seeks to renew this important critical discussion. It invites contributions that explore the richness, value, and complexities of pedagogy that situates the careful scrutiny of gothic literature at its heart.

Critical interest in the gothic remains high and the critical field is notable for the breadth of its scholarship; moreover, gothic literature courses at undergraduate and postgraduate level are enduringly popular choices for students, whether they are survey and introductory courses or bespoke Masters-level programmes, and the genre is a mainstay on UK secondary education curricula. But how might recent innovations in the critical field inform, and be informed by, innovations in the classroom? In order to explore this question more fully, we are motivated by several central concerns:

How do we teach gothic literature in the classroom?
What do gothic texts themselves have to say about learning and pedagogy?
How do we negotiate a genre that thrives on forms of affect – what Fred Botting calls the genre’s ‘negative aesthetics’ – that are, by and large, difficult to recapture in classroom environments, and difficult to evaluate cogently?

The gothic undoubtedly wants us to experience its thrills and chills. But it insists frequently on its own unspeakability and seems to prioritise individual susceptibility to its terrorising affect in ways that would suggest a shared experience of the gothic is an extremely difficult thing to recover. In what ways can something that wants quite deliberately to bypass rational thought be better understood via supposedly detached or objective small group discussions in secondary and higher education? How do we bring to light that which is secret and hidden, that which thrives only when briefly glimpsed?

Relatedly, there are questions to be asked here about responsible ways of teaching this literature, grappling as it does with subject matter that may be hoping to deliberately discomfort, shock, or offend its readers. We are interested, also, in what happens when the gothic does not succeed, and how far the gothic is in this respect indicative of broader issues when teaching genre literature. The classroom and lecture theatre might readily make space for the pleasures of reading lurid gothic texts. But what if the gothic text does not scare us (anymore)? If the gothic seeks above all to be experiential, hoping to stimulate certain sensations in its readers, in what ways do we make room in the classroom for our failure to experience something, for those moments when we did not “get it”?

We invite proposals for 15–20 minute papers and joint/collaborative presentations, 5 minute lightning talks, poster presentations, or any other relevant format that reflects on the questions above or any other issues pertaining to humanities pedagogy and the various literatures of terror and horror.
Please send an abstract of 200–300 words and a brief biography (100–150 words) to gothicpedagogies@gmail.com by 30th April 2022. Please also send any queries our way: we’d be glad to hear them.

We strongly encourage submissions from a range of teachers and students of the gothic, whether working or studying in secondary, further, higher or any other form of education.

Deadlines: Queries and abstracts: August 2022
Full papers: October 15, 2022
Publication date: February 28, 2023

Urban myth, internet rumors, social media memes, deliberate falsification of information in the media: these all have real world impact. These past several years we have witnessed how a rumor or a myth that contains false information can spread and do serious harm to communities and individuals; how some are deliberately spread by political parties and how others seem to come from nowhere and take on a life of their own. From the insurrection of 1/6/21 to Youtube pseudoscience concerning AIDS, COVID-19, Ebola, and cancer, to religious fakery, theocratic power mongering, and campaigns of oppression and genocide against those who are perceived as different and “the other”. This issue will be devoted to how these myths spread and how they harm people, places, other living creatures, communities, and democracy itself and how communities debunk and counter these myths.

Topics to consider:

How does a community, a society or a country counter these fakeries in popular media, oral folklore, and destructive urban myths? Or does it?
Debunking and dismantling disinformation.
The history and current use of “the blood lie” and other myths concerning minority communities.
Social media and internet memes
Protests and counterprotests: how rumors become viral
Deliberate propaganda and how it is used
"Jailhouse Myth" corruptions of Norse Mythology and racist ideologies.
Urban myth in film, live performance and literature
Medical mythologies in pandemics, cancer treatment, and major illness
RE: the "wellness community" and other movements

To contact the editors and to submit your work, please write to: coreopsisjournalofmyththeatre@gmail.com

Please prepare your paper for blind peer review. Artists and scholars are welcomed in the pages of Coreopsis journal. It is recommended that all writers and artists wishing to submit to Coreopsis Journal familiarise themselves with the guidelines before submission.

Our submission guidelines are here: http://societyforritualarts.com/coreopsis/submissions

Essays from artists do not have to be strictly prepared for review. As Coreopsis Journal is a web-based publication, we can accommodate samples of both audio and video performances.

Visual art submission guidelines: http://societyforritualarts.com/coreopsis/arts-multimedia/

Please label - clearly - whether your paper or essay is submitted for peer review or as an editorial. Papers submitted for peer review from scholars must be in APA style and prepared for blind review following these guidelines: http://societyforritualarts.com/coreopsis/papers-for-peer-review-2/.

This journal accepts papers from many disciplines and is welcoming of all faiths and philosophies. We publish 3-5 papers per issue that have been peer-reviewed according to academic standards. Final submissions should be 3000 to 10,000 words. If you have a finished paper ready for submission, send it directly to coreopsisjournalofmyththeatre@gmail.com.

COPE Notice

This journal and her editors, referees, readers, staff and Advisory Board members work, to the best of our abilities, under the guidelines for scholarly publications as set forth by The Committee for Publication Ethics Code of Conduct for Journal Editors. Download the PDF “Code of Conduct for Journal Editors” to learn more.

Coreopsis Journal is published 2X yearly by The Society for Ritual Arts. Never for profit. https://www.academia.edu/s/5c8dabde52

30 years ago, Polygram Filmed Entertainment released Candyman, a film loosely adapted from Clive Barker’s short story “The Forbidden”. Unlike Barker’s original text, this Candyman was set in Chicago, specifically the urban ghetto Cabrini Green, and seemed to focus on the tragedy of a Black artist who vengefully returns as a violent ghost after his brutal lynching. The film and its ideologies were complicated. Innovative in its starting point – a story of profound Black suffering which called attention to the racial injustice underpinning US society – audiences were also given a tale which reiterated ideas of Black monstrosity and illogical interracial violence. Notably, the film and its stars went on to win a number of awards, and spawned a franchise worthy of critical exploration.

29 years later, Jordan Peele and Nia DaCosta released the long-awaited Black response to the original film. Released in the midst of another wave of anti-Black violence, the film served as both tribute and corrective to the original, shifting the focus from the white heroine’s quest (the center of the original film) to the terror and pain of Black men made monstrous and the Black women forced to act as witnesses. Ultimately this later film asked audiences “who is the real monster: Candyman, or the violent racist society which created him?”

This conference, a collaboration between the Centre for the History of the Gothic at the University of Sheffield, Fear 2000 at Sheffield Hallam University, and the University of California, Riverside, and taking place on Friday 7 - Sunday 9 October 2022, seeks to explore, critique and celebrate the legacy of Candyman as text, film and, in it’s latest iteration, clapback…

We invite papers that focus on the following themes:
Historical and sociopolitical contexts
Blaxploitation and Black Horror
Monsters and monstrosity
Gender and feminism
Class, gentrification, and race
Ancestral trauma and narratives of violence
Sequels, adaptations, and source materials including: Clive Barker’s short story “The Forbidden”; the original sequels (Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh, 1995 and Candyman: Day of the Dead, 1999); and the 2021 legacy sequel
Transmedia including: advertising, merchandise, gaming, songs, pop culture etc.
Candyman as urban legend and folklore
Sounds of Candyman including film soundtracks and Ice Nine Kill’s “Farewell II Flesh”
Film production 


These are just suggestions and we welcome proposals for 20 minute papers or panel proposals (with three 20 minute papers) exploring any and all aspects of Candyman, its histories and its legacies. We also welcome proposals for nontraditional, creative papers and / or art submissions: see our FAQ for more details or get in touch to discuss your idea.

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words along with a short bio to thewholedamnswarm@gmail.com. The deadline for abstracts is 8 July 2022.

This will be an international hybrid conference taking place in person in Sheffield (UK), Riverside, California (US) and virtually on zoom across different time zones, and as such may be subject to scheduling changes due to COVID restrictions or time zone conflicts. Please see our FAQ before submitting an abstract.

FAQ: http://www.sheffieldhistoryofthegothic.group.shef.ac.uk/index.php/candyman-faq/

Deadline: March 31, 2021
Contact: Miniature Malekpour, miniature.malekpour@anu.edu.au

The grotesque and bizarre have accompanied many lyrics and melodies throughout the decades. Whether it is used to fit the Gothic narrative of bands such as Bauhaus and The Cure, or to serve as a device to create buzz surrounding the artist/band, such as the monstrous element of Lady Gaga’s early persona, the shock factor of audiovisual aesthetics has played a pivotal role in the development of contemporary soundscapes. From Michael Jackson’s Zombie infested “Thriller” to The Weeknd’s experimentation of male-gaze induced ultraviolence in “Pretty,” this edited collection looks at the unique history and social-cultural significance of the aestheticization of Horror, which has come to represent one of the multiple facets of how musicians shock their viewers while promoting sales of their albums/records.


We invite proposals from scholars at all stages of their careers.

Possible topics may include but are not limited to:

-          Horror Iconography in Music Videos
-          Horror Music Video Directors
-          Horror Music Video Analysis
-          The Metaphysical use/s of Gothic Iconography in 80’s Music Videos
-          The use of Horror Aesthetics as Homage, Parody, and/or Satire in Music Videos
-          Horror Imagery as Cultural Expression
-          Horror as a tool for Socio/Political Visualization in Music Videos
-          Horror and Music Video Animation
-          Ultraviolence and the Male Gaze in Music Videos
-          The Association of Horror and Heavy Metal Music Videos
-         Shock Value and Surrealism in Music Videos

Submission Details:

Please email proposals of no more than 350 words to Miniature Malekpour at the following email address: miniature.malekpour@anu.edu.au

Submission Deadline: 28 March 2022

We invite proposals for 20-minute papers and 80-minute panels to be presented at the sixth Fear 2000 conference, Fear 2000: Horror Undying. Hosted by staff and postgraduate students in the Centre for Culture, Media and Society and the Department of Media Arts and Communication at Sheffield Hallam University, this online conference will explore connections between twenty-first century horror and the genre’s history.

Taking inspiration from the recent trend for ‘legacy sequels’ such as Blair Witch (2016), The Exorcist (2016–2017), Halloween (2018), Spiral (2021), Candyman (2021), Chucky (2021– ), Scream (2022) and Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022), Fear 2000: Horror Undying aims to form social, cultural, political, industrial and textual links between horror past and present. The conference will discuss contemporary horror media through topics such as franchising, sequelisation, remaking, adaptation, nostalgia, intertextuality, homage, pastiche and parody. It will also investigate historic themes, issues, styles, modes and sub-genres that have recurred post-2000. Any paper that aims to explore the historical legacy of the horror genre in the new millennium will be considered.

Our first keynote speaker for this event will be Stella Gaynor (University of Salford), author of the forthcoming monograph Viewer Discretion is Advised: Rethinking Horror in the New Economies of Television, who will discuss historic franchise properties on contemporary TV. Further keynote lectures will be announced via our website and social media channels. The programme will also include special events to be announced.

This three-day conference will take place on 1-3 July 2022. The deadline for proposals is 28 March 2022. For individual papers, please send an abstract (maximum 300 words) and bio (maximum 75 words) to Craig Ian Mann (c.mann@shu.ac.uk), Chris Cooke (c.cooke@shu.ac.uk) and Oliver Hicks (oli.hicks@student.shu.ac.uk). Your submission should be in .doc or .docx format if possible and include your name, the title of your paper and your institutional affiliation (if applicable; independent scholars are welcomed).

We also seek proposals for 80-minute panels comprising three speakers; if you would like to propose a panel, please keep submissions to a maximum of 1000 words and include abstracts, institutional affiliations and contact information for all speakers and a chair. Panels should run to no more than 80 minutes.

Please direct any informal enquiries to the organisers using the email addresses listed above.

You can also find information on the conference via the following channels:

Twitter (http://twitter.com/shufear2000/)
Facebook (http://facebook.com/fear2000/)
Web (https://blogs.shu.ac.uk/fear2000/)

CFP: CULTURE WARS AND HORROR MOVIES: SOCIAL FEARS AND IDEOLOGY IN CONTEMPORARY CINEMA

When Jordan Peele’s Get Out made its big screen debut in 2010, it was met with instant, widespread praise among worldwide audiences for its creative blending of horror conventions and social commentary. As part of the horror film trend known as “social horror” (Heba, 1995; Kronja, 2016), Get Out championed the filmic representation of sociopolitical ideologies in the United States at a time when horror codes and sociocultural issues acquired recognized critical distinction. Parallel to current divisive sociopolitical disagreement, contemporary horror movies are emerging as a reproduction of what dominates popular culture and the current political framework: culture wars.

In the 2010 book, Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America, M. Fiorina, J. Abrams and J. Pope turned the spotlight on commonly believed myths about American sociopolitical reality, claiming that Western civilization and, specifically, the United States are deeply divided in their fundamental political views. Confrontations between social conservative and progressive forces in American society, described as “culture wars” by sociologist James D. Hunter (1991), are as much a reality today as they were in the past. Beginning in the 1960s, the United States has experienced a partisan conflict over cultural issues such as gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion, immigration and ecology which is actively exported as a model to other cultural spheres, such as contemporary cinema. According to theses on the present-day existence of culture wars, salient battles have led contemporary cinema to characterize these issues as “new fronts in the culture war” (Castle 2018), thereby giving reasons to revisit the culture wars debate.

This edited volume seeks to examine recent culture wars manifestations in American popular culture, considering their impact and representation in the field of horror cinema. In many contemporary examples of the genre, these ideologically charged battles over opposing moral values and fundamental belief systems are a substantial part of the definition and development of horror films. Night of the Living Dead (1968) as a commentary on Cold War paranoia and racism, or Rosemary’s Baby (1968), as an allegory of women’s liberation, are two good examples of the penetration of social references in the genre. In this way, American horror film hinges on cinematically constructed fears of the Other, an Otherness “both drawn from and constitutive of any given era’s cultural history” (Benshoff 2000:31). However, the changing spectrum of filmmakers, producers and other agents involved in the making of these films in the 21st century has reached a turning point pitting the “normal” (white, middle-class, heterosexual, male) vs. the “monstrous” (defined by racial, sexual, class, gender, ideological markers). In this horror film trend, the “monster”, the foregrounded “other” is rooted in historically specific cultural and social horrors, which set the stage for the ideological depiction of contemporary culture wars.

The horror genre has long been ripe for social commentary precisely because it subverts the idea of what “villainous” is, allowing us to subtly empathize with the subject we fear while exploring why we fear it (Solórzano and Yosso 2002). In other words, these marginalized subjects become narrative agents who take possession of the gaze, and whose act of looking emerges from them. Moreover, culture wars and horror cinema do not shy away from the most diverse polarized issues: from religious dilemmas, immigration, and gender violence to racism or ecological consciousness. We are not only concerned with horror genre conventions and their sociocultural references, but also with the way in which the genre appropriates a divisive, polarized society, and what results from this situation in a global context. Thus, for example, consider the way Happy Death Day (2017), Antebellum (2020) or The Invisible Man (2020) can be analyzed as operating in the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo context by mobilizing horror film conventions to represent polarized social views as they are experienced today.
The widespread social discontent with recent political actions has been connected to recent horror films, which can be taken to be examples of a critical framework that attempts to understand social divisions today. Therefore, we ask ourselves the following: How can we create a framework for the analysis of conflicting and divisive sociocultural representations in contemporary horror cinema? Are American horror films becoming more polarized in their representation of social values? Have movements such as #MeToo, Black Lives Matter or new narratives of slavery in film contributed to making this trend even more salient? Which conventions of the genre challenge traditional values and ideals within 21st century horror cinema? By what means are these movies taking sides on the current culture wars?

Contributors to this edited volume are invited to critically analyze the ways in which the ideology of culture wars has made its way through recent American horror cinema across different nations, topics and visual aesthetics. From indigeneity, race criticism, religion and ecology to issues such as post-feminism, gender violence, immigration, and social media as surveillance, the areas and films to be explored include but are not limited to:

• The relationship of social horror and indigeneity (The Dead Can’t Dance, 2013; Violet, 2015)
• Horror articulations of the Neo-slavery and the Old South (Get Out, 2017; Antebellum, 2020)
• Gender/Genre: the culture wars in the #MeToo era (The Perfection, 2018; The Invisible Man, 2020)
• Spaces and limits of the culture wars: borders, race, ethnicity (Planet Terror, 2007; Vampires vs. The Bronx, 2020)
• Endangered society and nature: Eco-horror (Take Shelter, 2011; The Incident, 2014)
• Representations and constructions of culture wars and immigration (Don’t Breathe,
2016; His House, 2020)
• Postmodern social horror: parody, pastiche, self-reflective humor (Happy Death Day,
2017; Midsommar,2019)
• Religion, faith and the Southern Gothic: (The Skeleton Key, 2005; Mother!, 2017)
• Horror, surveillance, and social media (Ratter, 2015; Spree, 2020)
• Social horror and late capitalism (The Purge, 2013; A Quiet Place, 2018)
• The monster as a symbol of Othering vs. a figure of resistance
• The reception of social horror movies: cinematic responses to the culture wars

If you are interested in proposing a chapter, please send an abstract of 400- 500 words and a short biographical note including the author’s academic affiliation no later than 21st March 2022 to socialhorrorvolume@gmail.com

Manuscripts should not have been previously published, and should not be submitted simultaneously for publication in another edited volume collection or medium.

March 21, 2022: abstract submission
April 1, 2022: notification of acceptance/rejection September 15, 2022: paper submission
2023: Expected publication in a major publisher

Editors:
Noelia Gregorio-Fernández (UNED) Assistant Professor of American Literature and Culture at the Department of Foreign Languages, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid.
Carmen M. Méndez-García (UCM) Associate Professor of American Literature at the Department of English Studies, Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

University of Wales Press is seeking proposals for their Gothic Literary Studies Series.

PDF can be found here: https://www.uwp.co.uk/app/uploads/CFP-GOTHIC-STUDIES-FLYERcb.pdf

Copy and paste of flyer:

GOTHIC LITERARY STUDIES

Gothic Literary Studies is the University of Wales Press’s award-winning series dedicated to publishing ground-breaking scholarship on the Gothic genre. We are actively commissioning pioneering research which analyses the diverse and emerging trends in the Gothic.

Volumes in the series explore how issues such as gender, religion, nation and sexuality have shaped our view of the Gothic tradition, and are informed by the latest developments in critical theory.

GLS currently features over twenty-five titles, including three winners of the Allan Lloyd Smith Memorial Prize: Gothic Music: The Sounds of the Uncanny by Isabella van Elferen, The Twilight of the Gothic? Vampire Fiction and the Rise of the Paranormal Romance by Joseph Crawford, and The Gothic and the Carnivalesque in American Culture by Timothy Jones.

Individual titles will ideally be original monographs or edited collections of around eighty thousand words, intended for an academic and global readership.

GOTHIC AUTHORS: CRITICAL REVISIONS

The University of Wales Press’s Gothic Authors: Critical Revisions series focuses on innovative introductions to writers of the Gothic, including Mary Shelley, Richard Marsh, and Bram Stoker. We are seeking original scholarship which can serve as accessible and engaging guides for students and teachers of the Gothic. Ideal manuscripts will be around sixty to eighty thousand words, on the subject of an author who has made a significant contribution to the Gothic.

For either series, please send initial expressions of interest to Sarah Lewis, Commissioning Editor (s.lewis@press.wales.ac.uk), or to the series editors Professor Andrew Smith, Sheffield University (andrew.smith1@sheffield.ac.uk), and Professor Benjamin F. Fisher, University of Mississippi (bfisher@olemiss.edu).

For more information on our series, please visit our website: www.uwp.co.uk

Virtual event: 13-16 April 2022.
Proposals due: 21 January 2022
 
At its 2021 Virtual Conference, the Monsters & the Monstrous Area and the Disney Studies Areas of the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association (a.k.a. NEPCA) organized three successful sessions on the theme of monsters and the monstrous in the fictional worlds of the Walt Disney Company.
We’d like to continue to build on those investigations this coming spring at the national meeting of the Popular Culture Association (a.k.a. PCA) and to also help support the PCA’s new Disney Studies Special Topic Area.

For this session, we’re most interested in proposals related to representations of monsters and the monstrous in the traditional Disney brand and in Pixar, but papers related to more recent properties and acquisitions (for example ABC, ABC Family/Freeform, Hulu, Lucasfilm, Marvel, the Muppets, Saban Entertainment, and Twentieth Century Fox) can be also be valid approaches. All submissions will also be considered for inclusion in a collection of essays based on the topic.

Potential topics might include the following:
    • Adaptations of classic monster stories.
    • Aliens.
    • Animals as monsters.
    • Attractions.
    • Bad dreams.
    • Communities of monsters.
    • Constructs.
    • Cryptids.
    • Curses.
    • Dinosaurs.
    • Disguises.
    • Disney as monstrous.
    • Disney Villains.
    • Gargoyles.
    • Ghosts.
    • Halloween.
    • Halloween-themed productions.
    • Haunted houses (and mansions)
    • Horror-themed productions.
    • Human “monsters”.
    • Imaginary creatures.
    • Legendary creatures.
    • Magical creatures.
    • Magic-users.
    • Othered individuals.
    • Reanimated dead.
    • Shape-shifters.
    • Technology and monsters.
    • Undead/zombies.
    • Underworld and other realms of the dead.
    • Vampires.
    • Weather-related monsters.
    • Witchcraft/witches and wizards.

If you are interested in joining this session, please submit your information into PCA’s online system at https://pcaaca.org/conference/submitting-paper-proposal-pca-conference. You’ll need to create a profile and upload a biographical statement AND join the PCA for the coming year before the system will allow you to reach the proposal screen. Be sure to select “Disney Studies” as the area for your paper. Proposals should be about 250 words.

Please also send a copy of your proposal to the session organizers, so we can keep track of them: Michael A. Torregrossa (NEPCA’s Monsters & the Monstrous Area Chair) at popular.preternaturaliana@gmail.com and Priscilla Hobbs (NEPCA’s Disney Studies Area Chair) at p.hobbs-penn@snhu.edu.

Further details on PCA’s Disney Studies Special Topic Area can be found at https://pcaaca.org/area/disney-studies-special-topic-2022.
NEPCA’s Monsters & the Monstrous Area maintains a blog at https://popularpreternaturaliana.blogspot.com/.