HWA Academics

Conference Dates: Thursday, May 12, 2022 - Sunday, May 15, 2022
Conference Hotel: The Curtis Hotel, 1405 Curtis Street, Denver, CO 80202
Conference Website: https://www.stokercon.com

The Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference co-chairs invite all interested scholars, researchers, academics, and non-fiction writers to submit presentation abstracts related to horror and gothic studies for consideration to be presented at the annual StokerCon which will be held May 12 - 15, 2022 in Denver, CO. This will by a hybrid convention with both in-person and online events via Hopin.

The Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference is an opportunity for individuals to present on completed research or work-in-progress horror studies projects that continue the dialogue of academic analysis of the horror genre in all of its forms.  As in prior years, we are looking for presentations that look to expand the scholarship in various facets of horror that proliferates in:

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

We invite papers that take an interdisciplinary approach to their subject matter and apply a variety of lenses and frameworks, such as, but not limited to:

    • Auteur theory
    • Close textual analysis
    • Comparative analysis
    • Cultural and ethnic
    • Fandom and fan studies
    • Film studies
    • Folklore
    • Gender/LGBTQIA+, studies
    • Genre studies
    • Historic analysis
    • Interpretations
    • Intertextuality
    • Linguistic
    • Literature studies
    • Media and communications
    • Media Sociology
    • Modernity/Postmodernity
    • Mythological
    • Psychological
    • Racial studies
    • Semiotics
    • Theoretical (Adorno, Barthes, Baudrillard, Dyer, Gerbner, etc.)
    • Transmedia
    • And others

Conference Details

    • Please send a 250 – 300 word abstract on your intended topic, a preliminary bibliography, and your CV to AnnRadCon@gmail.com by December 31, 2021. Responses will be emailed out during the month of January. Final acceptances will require proof of StokerCon registration.
    • Presentation time consideration: 15 minute maximum to allow for a Question and Answer period. Limit of one presentation at the conference.
    • This will be a hybrid conference, with the ability to present either in person and/or online via Hopin. Those presenting in person are strongly encouraged to make a recording of their presentation to have on Hopin as we will not be live streaming in person presentations.
    • There are no honorariums for presenters.
    • 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. More information at: http://horror.org/category/the-seers-table/
    • Please subscribe the StokerCon’s Newsletter to keep abreast for the latest conference information. 

Organizing Co-Chairs

Michele Brittany and Nicholas Diak
Email: AnnRadCon@gmail.com
Twitter: @AnnRadCon1

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. 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, comprised entirely of AnnRadCon presenters and was released by McFarland in February, 2020.

Membership to the Horror Writers Association is not required to submit or present, however registration to StokerCon 2022 is required to be accepted and to present. StokerCon registration 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 Writer’s Association as an academic member, please see www.horror.org/about/.

StokerCon is the annual convention hosted by the Horror Writers Association wherein the Bram Stoker Awards for superior achievement in horror writing are awarded.

Co-Editors: Dr Katarzyna Ancuta (Chulalongkorn University, Thailand) and Dr Li-hsin Hsu (National Chengchi University, Taiwan)

The Gothic as an aesthetic mode has been translated into Chinese either as “gede” (哥德) or as “zhiyi” (志異) in Taiwan in the past decades. The former version, with its direct translation from the sound, indicates its western and thus foreign origin. The latter one, alternatively, domesticates the notion by adopting a pre-existent Chinese term and subsuming it into the Chinese classical tradition of tales about strange or abnormal, and mostly supernatural, occurring. Either way, the diverging approaches towards the translation of the concept of the Gothic highlights its complexity, heterogeneity and elasticity as a transnational literary term. 

Asian cinemas and literatures began to capture the attention of Gothic scholars in the late 1990s. Yet when Henry J. Hughes made his case in 2000 for the acknowledgment of Japanese Gothic as a coherent literary tradition and called for the recognition of ‘transcultural’ Gothic, few people rushed to explore this unchartered Gothic territory. Much has changed in the last twenty years. The ongoing decentralisation of Gothic studies and de-westernisation of its methodologies has opened up new possibilities for including cultural productions from diverse geographical locations.Therefore, the appearance of Asia in the broader discussions on the Gothic is not an oddity anymore. The willingness to accept Asian Gothic as a legitimate category has rapidly increased with most edited collections and companions now carrying at least one chapter discussing Asian texts and contexts. Major academic publishers have similarly started commissioning collections and manuscripts on regional variations of Asian Gothic. The ensuing discussion has been insightful for both the Gothic community and area scholars, although, needless to say, many topics still remain unexplored.

With this in mind, we invite contributions to a special issue on Asian Gothic, scheduled to be published in December 2022. We seek essays of 6000-10000 words that would broaden our understanding of the Gothic in Asia. Rather than considering the Gothic as a fixed western-centric genre or a rigidly defined aesthetical category, we propose to address it as a larger umbrella term: a conceptual framework through which distinctive local cultural practices, historical formulations, national and regional traumas, anxieties, collective violent histories and diverse belief systems are expressed. Whether understood as a localised version of international Gothic or part of a larger category of “globalgothic”,Asian Gothic can thus be read as a distinctive aesthetical and narrative practice, where conventional gothic tropes and imagery (monsters, ghosts, haunting, obscurity, darkness, madness etc.) are assessed anew, and where global forms get consumed, appropriated, translated, transformed, and, even, resisted.

Possible topics for this special issue may include but are not limited to:

·      Gothic themes in Asian literature, film and television, or gothic interpretations of above

·      Gothic and Asian popular culture (manga, comics, anime, games, fashion, subcultures etc.)

·      Haunting memories, wars, trauma, terrorism, history and historiography

·      Gothic myths and their contemporary adaptations

·      Gothic folklore: local gods, demons and spirits; folk narratives and their contemporary reworking

·      Gothic and folk horror

·      Religion(s) and the Gothic

·      Local and regional Gothic and horror

·      Asian adaptations of western Gothic texts, (Postcolonial) rewriting of the Gothic canon

·      Asian Gothic as part of “globalgothic”

·      Animistic practices and the concept of “living Gothic”

·      Western appropriation and adaptations of Asian Gothic literatures, movies and arts

·      Genealogy of Gothic in an Asian context

·      Gothic and gender / class / race 

·      Inter-Asian adaptations of Gothic films, literatures and arts

Please email an abstract of 200-300 words, along with a 100-word bio, to the co-editors Katarzyna Ancuta (kancuta@gmail.com) and Li-hsin Hsu (johsu@mail2.nccu.tw) by 15 October 2021. The notification of the results will be sent out by 31 October 2021.

The deadline for the submission of your full paper is 20 February 2022. Please follow the submission guidelines detailed on The Wenshan Review of Literature and Culture website, and submit your articles online. The papers will then be subject to the normal double-blind peer-reviewing procedure that The Wenshan Review uses to evaluate all submissions.

The Wenshan Review of Literature and Culture, founded in 1995, is an open-access peer-reviewed journal of literary and cultural studies, and one of the most reputable academic journals in Taiwan. It offers a unique space to bring together scholar from around the world to address important issues and debates in a wide range of research areas. It is currently indexed in: Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI); SCOPUS; EBSCOhost; MLA International Bibliography; Taiwan Humanities Citation Index (THCI).

We welcome informal enquiries, and proposals for co-authored contributions. Please contact the co-editors: Katarzyna Ancuta (kancuta@gmail.com) and Li-hsin Hsu (johsu@mail2.nccu.tw).

The Gothic Association of New Zealand and Australia (GANZA) welcomes papers for its upcoming online symposium to be held 27 January 2022.

The symposium will be organized in the spirit of the Association. Ganza is interdisciplinary in nature, bringing together scholars, students, teachers, and professionals from a number of Gothic disciplines, including literature, film, music, television, fashion, architecture, and other popular culture forms. It is the aim of the Association to not only place a focus on Australasian Gothic scholarship, but also to built international links and foster collaborations with the wider Gothic community as a whole.

The association invites abstracts for 15-minute online presentations related to the theme of "Gothic Trajectories." Topics can includes, but are not limited to:

• Revisions/Revisitations/reimagingings of classical Gothic texts
• Hauntings and spectrality
• Monsters and the monstrous
• Gothic cycles, exchanges, trans/mutations and trans/routes
• The undead
• Gothic forms in popular culture
• Horror in its various contexts (evolutions and re-imagings)
• Gothic mutations, incarnations, and reincarnations
• Gothic histories
• memory and trauma
• folklore and fiarytales
• Gothic intertextualities
• Travel Gothic and Gothic tourism
• Genre and the Gothic
• Gothic adaptations 9from novel to film, from film to TV, etc.)
• Gothic regionalities and geographies
• Global Gothic
• Postcolonial Gothic
• The Gothic in a post-COVID world
• The Gothic in the past, present, and future

Please send your abstracts (250-350 words) together with a short bio (100 words max) to: conference@ganza.co.nz . The deadline for submissions of abstracts is 1 October 2021.

Call for Papers: Bodily Transgressions in Gothic TV – Console-ing Passions 2022

The recent boom in horror films and scholarship testifies to the rich generic, thematic, and formal spaces the gothic provides for engaging what scares, horrifies, and haunts us. As seen in films like Get Out (2016) and The Invisible Man (2020), horror and gothic texts have particular power to speak, especially in the current moment, to marginalized, oppressed, and Othered subjectivities. However, the self-versus-other gatekeeping and disciplinary taste cultures which long excluded the horror film from gothic studies, and which dismissed the gothic itself as a monstrously hybridized, corrupted form, continue to neglect the televisual. This panel seeks to redress such erasures by interrogating the surge in horror and gothic TV over the last decade, including series like American Horror Story, Penny Dreadful, The Haunting of Hill House, Sharp Objects, and Lovecraft Country.

As with older cinematic and literary forms, such recent television confirms the centrality of the body to the gothic, which has long spectacularized bodily transgressions, bodily transformations, and body horror. As Xavier Aldana Reyes (2014) demonstrates, the gothic encompasses and exposes the uncanny experience of being a body vulnerable to mutilation, pain, and death as well as the way corporeal fears and anxieties about transgressive bodies/bodily transgressions are connected to social constructions of the normative body. The body gothic, Reyes argues, explores the body’s expectations and limits, and the promise and horror of its breaching. This panel calls for papers that explore the themes and politics of bodily transgression in horror and/or gothic television (or television incorporating horror or gothic elements).
Potential topics include:

• Bodily transgression/transgressive bodies configured in relation to gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, and/or nationality.
• Body horror and/or the gothic body as a mode for exploring experiences of racism and/or racialized violence; misogyny and/or gender violence; or nativism.
• Contemporary and/or historical anxieties about the body: the national body, the gendered body, the dis/abled body, the racialized body, the techno-scientific body, the surgical body, the aged body, etc.
• Connections between bodily transgression and the sublime or metaphysical; the uncanny, the abject, the grotesque, or the repressed.
• Bodily transgression and the exploration of borders, limits, and boundaries of space, place, time, and/or identity.
• “The promise of its breaching” - bodily transgressions as radical or liberating.
• Themes of torture, mutilation, gore, and dismemberment in relation to tropes of the mystic, the occult, and the supernatural.
• Transgressive bodily transformations, hybridization, or reproduction -- racial, gendered, human, national, etc.
• Explorations of the body around gothic hauntings, contaminant, and entrapment.
• Embodied monsters and the monstrous.

Please send a 250 word abstract and short bio to Jackie Pinkowitz and Lucia Palmer at pinkowitz_jm@mercer.edu and lucia.palmer@mga.edu by Friday September 24. Notice of decisions will be sent by Sunday September 26.

The 2022 Console-ing Passions Conference will be held at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, June 23-25.

Theology and Vampires

From the ‘vampire craze’ of the eighteenth century, and up to contemporary takes on the genre, vampire narratives have been inextricably bound up with theological questions. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula and its many adaptations, the vampire is repelled by the crucifix and the consecrated Host. Two puncture wounds on the victim’s neck in Le Fanu’s ‘Carmilla’ make the doctor send for a clergyman. In Anne Rice’s Memnoch the Devil, Lestat believes that he has witnessed the Crucifixion and tasted Christ’s blood. ‘God kills, and so shall we; indiscriminately He takes the richest and the poorest, and so shall we; for no creatures under God are as we are, none so like Him as ourselves’, he tells Louis in Interview with the Vampire, styling himself as a God, and mimicking divine omnipotence. But he has no answers to give Louis, no revelation, and no known salvation or solace, because he is just like him in their shared vampiric nature. What do these examples tell us about where the vampire sits in relation to the divine? And what kind of theological vision do vampire stories uncover?

Given the richness of theological substratum in vampire fiction, we invite submissions for a collected volume entitled Theology and Vampires, for the Theology and Pop Culture Series published by Lexington Books/Fortress Academic. The aim of this volume is to explore the theology of vampires, with a particular focus on the pop culture aspect of vampire narratives. We are seeking essays exploring the theological implications of the vampire across a wide range of media, from popular Victorian tales through to films, video games, and animated series.

Possible topics could include:
-eschatology and vampire salvation
-free will and predestination
-the Eucharist, sacramentality, and blood drinking
-theology of the body
–analogia entis, univocity of being, and vampire ontology
-Faustian pacts and the demonic sublime
-conditionalism and immortality
-gender and theology
-vampires, victims, and divine kenosis
-theodicy and the realness of evil
-denominational commitment and religious tradition
-theological epistemology and the vampire figure
-vampires and creation
-ecclesiology and vampire genesis

Please send 500-word abstracts, accompanied by a current CV, to madeline.potter@york.ac.uk by November 01, 2021. Acceptance notifications will be sent out no later than 15 November 2021. Final essays are due 1st June 2022.

Horror and comics have a long history that stretches from the earliest woodcuts, scrolls, penny dreadfuls and pulp magazines, to today’s monthly titles, graphic novels, webcomics, and dedicated imprints from both mainstream and small press publishers. Horror comics have dominated at various points in comics history, and reactions to extreme content have shaped the industry. Horror also underpins other comics genres: many of the most famous characters and titles rely on violence or fear of some kind. As a visual medium that relies on reader input, comics storytelling is uniquely positioned to oscillate between terror (through omission) and explicit horror (in drawn panels), while the multimodal language of comics allows stylized art to vividly evoke the sublime and the grotesque and encourages affective responses from audiences.

We invite proposals for chapters for a forthcoming volume. This collection will explore the development of horror within comics and graphic novels, combining close analyses of indicative texts with wider discussions of the development of archetypes, themes, formats, and subgenres. It will be genre-defining and global in scope, and so we particularly encourage submissions that go beyond the UK and US comics industries and/or engage with diverse perspectives and texts. University of Wales Press has expressed interest as part of their Horror Studies series, subject to successful peer review.

Papers may investigate the intersections of comics and horror in historical, thematic, cultural, structural, formalist, or other terms. Suggested themes might include (but are not limited to) the following:

    • Histories and development of cultural traditions (e.g. fumetti neri, horror manga, EC New Trend, etc.)
    • Discussions of key global developments (e.g. texts, publishers, authors, series, etc.)
    • Horror comics and social anxieties (e.g. history, politics, public health, etc.)
    • Intersectional analyses (e.g. gender, ethnicity, class, sexuality, religion, dis/abilities, etc.)
    • Subgenres of horror in comics (e.g. body horror, psychological horror, eco horror, comedy horror, folk horror, supernatural horror, etc.)
    • Horror archetypes (e.g. witches, vampires, zombies, ghosts, etc.)
    • Acts of censorship and transgression
    • Horror and ethnicity (e.g. horror as metaphor for racial trauma, the horror of being perceived as other, etc.)
    • Horror and national / transnational identities (e.g. national vs global, local vs rural, etc.)
    • Affect and the comics medium (e.g. the depiction and responses of fear, disgust, outrage, etc.)
    • Visual iconography and aesthetics (e.g. the grotesque, artistic style, colour and shading, etc.)
    • Comics adaptations of older horror (e.g. myth, legend, folktales, etc.) or contemporary horror (e.g. adaptation from television, film, literature, etc.)
    • The presence of horror or its signifiers in other comics genres (e.g. superheroes, graphic medicine, autobiography, etc.)
    • Horror readers and audiences (e.g. horror comics and childhood, reader engagement and affect, interactivity, fan cultures, cosplay, etc.)

Please send detailed proposals of 500 words and a 100 word biography to jround@bournemouth.ac.uk, kkunyosy@gmail.com, and b.j.chamberlin@brighton.ac.uk with the header ‘Horror Comics Collection’ by 1 September 2021. Informal enquiries may also be sent to the editors at these addresses.

Contributors will be notified of the outcome by 1 November 2021. The deadline for submission of completed draft essays (c.6000 words) will be 1 November 2022.

Virtual event, Thursday, 21 October, through Saturday, 23 October 2021.
Proposals due by 1 August 2021.
 
The Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association (a.k.a. NEPCA) prides itself on holding conferences that emphasize sharing ideas in a non-competitive and supportive environment. We welcome proposals for presentations of 15-20 minutes in length, from researchers at all levels, including undergraduate and graduate students, junior faculty, and senior scholars, as well as independent scholars. NEPCA conferences offer intimate and nurturing sessions in which new ideas and works-in-progress can be aired, as well as completed projects.

For this session, at present, we’re most interested in proposals related to representations of monsters and the monstrous in the traditional Disney brand and to Pixar. Submissions related to more recent properties and acquisitions (for example the Muppets, ABC, ABC Family/Freeform, Saban Entertainment, Marvel, Lucasfilm, Twentieth Century Fox, and Hulu) might be set on an alternate panel. 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.
    • 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.

If you are interested in joining this session, please submit the following information into NEPCA’s online form at http://bit.ly/PopCFP2021.
    • Proposal Type (Single Presentation or Panel)
    • Subject Area (select the “Monsters/Disney (Joint Session)” at the bottom of the list)
    • Working Title
    • Abstract (250 words)
    • Short bio (50-200 words)

Address any inquiries to the area chairs: Michael A. Torregrossa (Monsters & the Monstrous) at popular.preternaturaliana@gmail.com and Priscilla Hobbs (Disney Studies) at p.hobbs-penn@snhu.edu.
Presenters are also required to become members of NEPCA for the year.

Of all the secrets of witches and sorcerers, the act of calling a supernatural agent is perhaps the one outsiders regard with the most fear. Spirits, angels, deities, and demons are summoned for power, knowledge, healing, or wisdom in rituals that are often elaborate and only known to the initiated.

In The Summoning Issue we’ll explore the history of acts of conjuration, what they say about our desires and needs, why they evoke fear and reverence. We’ll look at how fiction regards these rituals, with characters driven by their thirst for forbidden knowledge, and we’ll reflect on the power of the spoken word, the power of the gaze, the importance of a ritual, of defining boundaries, and of using symbols.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

FEATURES AND ARTICLES

We’re looking for well-researched non-fiction pieces (approx. 2000 words) with an academic flair, directed at a popular audience, on the theme of Summoning as described above. It’s important that your piece preserves the mystery and enchantment of the themes we’re dealing with. If you’re unsure about the tone, please refer to our previous issues.

We love:
-Articles about weird history, folklore, archaeology, or beliefs which have influenced or directly feature in folk horror and occult fiction.
-Cultural history of folk horror and occult fiction.
-Psychogeography of remote corners of the UK, rooted in history and folklore, with references to the themes that drive the issue.

We’re NOT looking for:
-Film, book, music, or videogame reviews.
-Pieces that discuss why a film, book, or cultural product are/aren’t folk horror.
-Your personal experiences of magic, folklore, or the occult.
-Poetry or fiction.

HELLEBORE is a love letter to the British landscape and the beliefs it inspires. We’re interested in how beliefs from other cultures may have influenced British culture and in post-colonial perspectives, but ultimately we remain focused on Britain.

HOW TO SUBMIT

Send us a short pitch, including your references and sources, a short bio, and links to your published work, to helleborezine@gmail.com, with SUMMONING WRITING as the subject, before June 21st.

We’re a very (very) small team, so please understand that we can’t provide individual feedback. If we’re interested in publishing your piece, we’ll contact you by June 27th. If you haven’t heard from us by then, please understand your submission hasn’t been successful this time. All contributors are paid. Articles will be due by 31st July.