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The Oxford Handbook of Black Horror Film
Edited by Drs. Robin R. Means Coleman & Novotny Lawrence

Since the release of Jordan Peele’s Academy Award-winning horror hit, Get Out (2017), interest in Black horror films has erupted. This renewed intrigue in the stories of Black life, history, and culture, or ‘Blackness’ has taken two forms. First, the history and politics of race has been centered in the genre. Second, Black horror has become an increasingly visible topic in mainstream discourses with scholars, critics, and fans contending that Black horror is seeing its “renaissance.”

However, in the U.S., critical attention to Blackness in horror has primarily focused on the U.S. and western world; this, despite the fact that Blacks and Black stories have featured prominently in the genre-- as actors, screenwriters, directors, producers—globally and across cultures. We invite contributions that explore Global Black horror cinema, across media platforms (e.g., theatrical releases, streaming services, etc.), by interrogating Blackness and the ways in which it manifests in films across the diaspora and around the world. Ours is an ambitious goal: to present a collection that leaves no continent unexamined.

This project is under contract with Oxford University Press.

We invite interested contributors to propose essays by submitting 250-word abstracts, along with 3 keywords. Example questions/themes include:

● How are taxonomies of race presented? Who is considered ‘Black?’ How is Blackness constructed in the culture(s) in which it is produced and/or distributed?
● How is ‘horror’ defined and represented globally and/or culturally? What textual role does Blackness play in horror?
● Themes:
  ○ Transgression—excess, disrupting temporalities, disrupting corporeality, appropriation, colorism, arriving at Blackness through blindcasting
  ○ Liberation—reflecting on responses to oppression
  ○ Sound—Examining the use of scores and soundtracks in Black horror films.
  ○ Adaptation—transformation of stories from one source to the Black horror film

To receive full consideration, please submit abstracts to Globalhorrorcinema@gmail.com by August 1, 2021. For those accepted into the collection, first drafts of essays will be due on January 14, 2022. Upon publication, contributors to the collection will receive a modest honorarium for their work.

Dr. Robin R. Means Coleman is Northwestern University’s Vice President and Associate Provost for Diversity and Inclusion and the Ida B. Wells and Ferdinand Barnett Professor in the Department of Communication Studies. Dr. Coleman is widely published, to include her book, Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present (2011, Routledge) Dr. Coleman’s (co-executive producer) documentary film, Horror Noire, made its international premiere in 2019 to critical acclaim. To-date, Horror Noire has won the 2020 Rondo Hatton Award for Best Documentary and the 2019 FearNyc Trailblazer Award.

Dr. Novotny Lawrence is an Associate Professor at Iowa State University where he holds a joint appointment between the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication and the English Department. He is widely published and his research primarily centers on African American cinematic and mediated experiences. Dr. Lawrence is the author of Blaxploitation Films of the 1970s: Blackness and Genre (Routledge, 2007), the editor of Documenting the Black Experience (McFarland, 2014), and the co-editor of Beyond Blaxploitation (Wayne State University Press, 2016).
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RURAL GOTHIC: CULT • CALL FOR PAPERS

Rural Gothic is a series of online conferences concentrating on horror media and literature, folklore and occult topics, curated by Mark Norman (The Folklore Podcast), Icy Sedgwick (Fabulous Folklore) and Howard David Ingham (Room 207 Press). Speakers at Rural Gothic events have included Robin Ince (Infinite Monkey Cage), Gemma Hurley and Jed Shepherd (writers, HOST), Ciaran O'Keeffe (Most Haunted) and Kier-La Janisse (director, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched).

RURAL GOTHIC: CULT will run on Saturday 24th and Sunday 25th July 2021, between 3pm and 11pm BST (UTC+1). We are putting out a call for eight presentations on the following subjects:

• Cults, sects and brainwashing in the popular imagination;
• The presentation of new religious movements (NRMs) in popular culture (especially in horror);
• Folklore, myths and urban legends surrounding NRMs and how they relate to reality;
• Histories of NRMs, particularly if lesser known and of historical and cultural interest.

All speakers will be reimbursed with a share of net profit from ticket sales after expenses.

Presentations don't have to be academic, and we will consider personal perspectives and artistic works. Submissions from single speakers and group speakers are welcome. There are no geographical limits: presenters have so far participated from Great Britain, mainland Europe, North America and Australia.
Please message, Howard David Ingham, with short pitches for presentations.

Submissions close Midnight BST Friday 25th June.
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THE 21ST CENTURY SLASHER FILM: CFP FOR SPECIAL ISSUE #5

When Siskel and Ebert famously launched their offensive against what they labeled as “Women in Danger films,” they effectively positioned slasher films as anti-feminist, exploitative, and lacking all artistic merit. But in the intervening years, this once much maligned sub-genre has enjoyed increasing acclaim for its subversive potential and reflection of cultural norms. This special issue seeks to examine the elements of the “new slasher” that potentially explain this shift.

We invite submissions on any 21st century slasher film(s). Emerging and advanced scholars, popular writers, and fans are invited to submit abstracts on any aspect of the sub-genre. We are especially interested in abstracts that engage with slasher film conventions. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

Slasher tropes reimagined
Performance and identity
The impact of critical acclaim upon horror’s association with ‘low-brow’ culture
Monstrous nature and its evolution
How camp and pastiche code audience reception
Reboots and audience expectation
Location and narrative dread
Horror sub-genre crossovers
Engagement with postmodernist theory
Reflection of societal taboo
We would especially like to include articles on: Freaky, Halloween, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, Black Christmas, and All the Boys Love Mandy Lane.

Please submit abstracts of 500 words and a brief bio to Dawn Keetley and Elizabeth Erwin at  horrorhomeroom@gmail.com and dek7@lehigh.edu by July 15, 2020. Articles will be limited to 2,500 words and should be written for a general audience. Completed essays will be due September 15, 2020. We welcome all questions and inquiries!
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Archived - Calls for Papers / Global Aboriginal Horror - Deadline 2021-08-01
« Last post by nicholasdiak on June 13, 2021, 01:27:32 PM »
Global Aboriginal Horror

Deadline: August 1, 2021
Organizer: Dr. Naomi Simon Borwein
Contact email: nborwein@uwo.ca

This is a call for chapter proposals to be included in an edited volume on Aboriginal/Indigenous Horror largely produced by Indigenous artists, directors, and writers. Aboriginal Horror, or Horror that relies on the experience and artistic production of Indigenous peoples span from North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, and beyond, including Indigenous groups whose migration and diaspora within other countries offer new perspectives. Aboriginal Horror as a cultural and aesthetic lens intersects with horror realism and the fantastic, myth and metaphysics or ways of knowing and being, and traverses various media—e.g., music, performance, visual arts, film or literature. As a reimagining of the Global Horror that David Punter implies in 2018, with the increased prevalence of Aboriginal Horror in global mass media, a careful examination of theory and reception outside the domain of (post)coloniality provides a unique understanding of the constituent parts of this movement.
The proposed volume is an heuristic exploration of Aboriginal Horror trends around the world that offers a culturally aware critique of theoretical approaches to “global” Aboriginal Horror. By navigating various global and regional complexities of Horror theory and genre, the volume traces this emergent trend and its impact on mainstream Horror theory, iconography, and aesthetics.

The edition equally examines recent developments related to vogues in horror that impact theoretical approaches to Aboriginal Horror, including reception and context. Although we want to hear from all voices, we are particularly interested in contributions from scholars of Indigenous, Aboriginal, or Native descent.
Chapters (6,000-8,000 words) may examine Aboriginal Horror from a variety of culturally specific perspectives with an emphasis on some of the following topics, including but not limited to:

    • Global/Local (‘G/local’)
    • Popular trends like Global Horror and ‘Global Fear’
    • Global Black Horror and Global Indigenous Horror
    • Indignity, the postcolonial, and the theoretical relationship between Gothic and Horror genres
    • Horror at the intersection of Indigenous futurism and Afrofuturism
    • Monster anthropology and ethnographic objectification
    • Indigenizing Horror iconography in theory vs. Indigenizing culture
    • Horror theory as meme
    • The relation between theory, paratext, and reception
    • Diaspora of aesthetics
    • Politics of time and synchronisms
    • Monstrosity and different ontological realities
    • Culturally specific theories
    • Ways of knowing
    • Country, land, place, space, topographies, and constellations
    • Comparative analysis of different forms of Indigenous Horror—e.g., Inuit Horror and Métis Horror
    • Posthumanism and Indigenous metaphysics
    • ‘Deep logic’ and various Aboriginal/Indigenous metaphysics

Several major publishers have shown interest in the project. Abstracts of 300 to 500 words are due August 1, 2021, along with a short bio and an affiliation. Accepted chapters will be due February 1, 2022. Please send any enquiries about this CFP to Dr. Naomi Simone Borwein (nborwein@uwo.ca).
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Call for Chapters

We are seeking dynamic essays on the subject of race in contemporary horror.

George Romero’s classic Night of the Living Dead’s Ben transfixed audiences on the treatment of race in the horror genre. Recent films like Get Out and Amazon Prime’s series Them have begun to explore anew the subject of race in the 21st century.

As America grapples with race relations, it’s a good time to understand its complexity. We invite interdisciplinary approaches besides the black/white polemic. There is room for essays dealing with sexuality and gender expression and the class struggles apparent. We encourage analysis of themes, behaviors, and depictions of characters and types. 

Essays should be undergraduate friendly and be free of academic jargon. We are anticipating an educated fan of horror as our readers.

Double-spaced proposals of less than 500 words can be emailed to horrorandrace@gmail.com by July 1, 2021, and final first drafts of accepted essays are due October 1, 2021. Final drafts will be approximately 8500 words (without references). This collection is under contract with DIO Press (www.diopress.com)

About the editors

Shirley R. Steinberg, PhD is the Werklund Research Professor of Critical Youth Studies at The University of Calgary. She is the author and/or editor of Kinderculture: the Corporate Constructions of Childhood and the SAGE Handbook of Critical Pedagogies.

Brian C. Johnson, PhD is an independent scholar focused on film studies. He published Reel Diversity: A Teacher’s Sourcebook and co-edited Glee’s New Directions for Social Change and The Problematic Tyler Perry. Johnson is a best-selling novelist. His Send Judah First: the Erased Life of an Enslaved Soul chronicles the life of the enslaved cook at Belle Grove Plantation in Middletown, VA.
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Academic and Non-Fiction Publishers / Academia Linare
« Last post by nicholasdiak on May 30, 2021, 10:04:15 AM »
Academia Lunare is the Luna Press Publishing academic branch for speculative and general non-fiction. They are open year round for submissions. More info at their website: https://www.lunapresspublishing.com/academialunare
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Northeastern Monsters (8/1/21; NEPCA virtual 10/21-23/21)

Deadline: August 1, 2021
Organization/Organizer: Michael Torregrossa / Monsters & the Monstrous Area of the Northeast Popular/American Culture Association
Email: Popular.Preternaturaliana@gmail.com


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, we’re looking for papers that explore and highlight the Northeast’s contributions to monster lore, including authors, events, individuals, locations, and, of course, 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 and the Monstrous” from the list)
Working Title
Abstract (250 words)
Short bio (50-200 words)
Address any inquiries to the area chairs: Michael A. Torregrossa at popular.preternaturaliana@gmail.com.

Presenters are also required to become members of NEPCA for the year.
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The Exorcist: Studies on Possession, Influence, and Society

Deadline: October 31, 2021
Publication: Revenant: Critical and Creative Studies of the Supernatural
Email: cuevae@uhd.edu
Guest Editors: Edmund P. Cueva (University of Houston-Downtown) and Nadia Scippacercola (Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II)

The Exorcist, both as a book and film, has had a lasting influence beyond the world of horror. It is essentially a foundational, multivalent work: on the one hand, it helps understand and approach the theological concept and spiritual dimension of demonic possession as found in the Catholic faith, and on the other hand, it investigates domestic/public, spaces, dynamics, and spheres. Indeed, The Exorcist examines social discourse and narratives from a transformative and turbulent period of American history, sheds light on the difficulties that aging populations face in societies that do not offer adequate social safety nets, and exposes the miserable circumstances that people with mental health conditions and medically uninsured individuals and families often endure. Moreover, The Exorcist also speaks directly to the colonization and neo-colonization of archaeological sites and religions.

The Exorcist has much to offer as the foci for extensive and sustained research in the humanistic disciplines. This Special Edition of Revenant aims to start a new conversation on The Exorcist according to three dimensions: 1) to go back to the roots of the concept of possession, 2) to assess the cultural impact of the book and film, and 3) to present new scholarly developments about the book and film. Potential topics include but are not limited to:

possession in antiquity – literary accounts
possession in antiquity – anthropological, psychological, archaeological data and observations
antiquity as a bridge between medieval and/or modern religious views of possession
possession in post-classical – pre-modern times
the influence of ancient literature and thought on the book and movie
possession in the modern age
similarities differences between Western and non-Western possession (ancient, post-classical, and modern) – literary accounts; anthropological, psychological, archaeological data and observations
possession in the arts
possession and witches
mysticism and altered state of consciousness
psychology/psychiatry and possession
the influence of the book and movie(s)
the persistence of the popularity of the book and movie

For articles and creative pieces (such as poetry, short stories, flash fiction, videos, comics, artwork, and music) please send a 500-word abstract and a short biography by October 31st, 2021. 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 April 30th, 2022. Reviews of books, films, games, events, and art related to The Exorcist will be considered (800-1,000 words in length). Please send full details of the title and medium you would like to review as soon as possible. Further information, including Submission Guidelines, are available at the journal website: www.revenantjournal.com. Inquiries are welcome and, along with all submissions, should be directed to cuevae@uhd.edu and nadia.scippacercola@gmail.com.
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Special Issue of Studies in American Fiction: The EcoGothic

Contact Name: Matthew Wynn Sivils
Email: sivils@iastate.edu

We invite submissions for a special issue of Studies in American Fiction devoted to the ecoGothic, an emergent critical approach that explores the intersections between the Gothic imagination and the natural world. The ecoGothic offers suggestive pathways toward theorizing the environmental humanities by investigating how such texts at times harbor the monstrous, the spectral, and the sublime. Gothic anxieties haunt some of our most environmentally-focused literature. Likewise, natural elements and environmental concerns emerge, often in subtle ways, in texts more conventionally recognized under the label of the Gothic.

 

We seek submissions that shine a light into the shadowy corners of the American literary tradition, that address a host of environments—natural, unnatural, supernatural—and that explore canonical as well as understudied texts to reveal an environment that is not only a realm of beauty and enlightenment but also the province of madness and fear.

 

Topics might include but are not limited to:

The Gothic as a vehicle for addressing environmental injustice
Fear of nature (i.e., ecophobia); terror in/of the wilderness
Threats to the integrity of the human body; the melding of the human and the non-human (e.g., the ecogrotesque, trans-corporeality, hybridization, and post-humanism)
EcoGothic and disability; the spectacle of the “unnatural” body (e.g., freak shows)
Gothic tropes (e.g., the uncanny, the sublime) within an environmental context
The apocalyptic; connections between human oppression and environmental degradation or the threat of extinction
EcoGothic and Regionalism; the Southern ecoGothic
The transnational ecoGothic
Queer figurations of ecology; the social construction of the (un)natural
Ecological crises and the repressed other; environmental guilt
Frontier Gothic; maritime Gothic; and the horrors of conquering nature
The land as a haunted house; cursed environments (e.g., swamps, cemeteries, battlefields)
Ecofeminism through a Gothic lens
The legacy of slavery written upon the land (e.g., plantations and memorials)
Vengeful environments; monstrous wildlife; uncanny plants
 

How might we theorize American Gothic works in relation to their portrayal of the non-human? How does the history of environmental thought emerge or diverge in these texts? What anxieties and fears about the human impact upon the natural world appear in the literary culture of the industrial age? What environmentally-based terrors surface in Moby-Dick? What do we hear in the sound of the “waddling fungus growths [that] just shriek with derision!” in Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper”? How can we read Chesnutt’s Southern Gothic conjure tales in which slaves are transformed into trees or otherwise physically linked with the plantation environment? In Morrison’s Beloved, what are the implications of the tree-shaped scar on Sethe’s back?

 

Please send 250 word abstracts by June 30, 2021; final submissions of 8000–10,000 words (including endnotes and works cited) in Chicago format will be due December 31, 2021. Please send submissions and any queries to the guest editor: Matthew Wynn Sivils (sivils@iastate.edu).
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The Hero Is Female

Deadline: June 7, 2021
full name / name of organization: 2021 PCAS/ACAS New Orleans Sept. 30 - Oct 2
Email: crystal.odavidson@mga.edu

The Hero is Female Katniss Everdeen’s hand signal is now used at real-world rallies, and Princess Leia is the face of the real-world resistance movement. More than ever fictional female protagonists are symbols of hope and strength during these turbulent times, but power can take many forms and often these characters can take nontraditional paths. This panel will focus on female protagonists in fiction and film, with an emphasis on genre narratives, as we examine the ways in which women of all ages gain revelations and empowerment.

Please submit a 250-300 word abstract, a brief bio, and any A/V needs by June 07, 2021 to Crystal O’Leary-Davidson at Middle Georgia State University crystal.odavidson@mga.edu .
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