HWA Academics

Whilst not a new phenomenon, horror texts from 2010 upwards abound with monsters/ghosts/demons that embody the memory of a past that is unstoppable, and consumes everybody in its path. Whether it’s zombies (Kingdom), ghosts (Oculus, The Nun), demons (Sinister, It Follows), monsters (The Silence, The Meg) or even psychopaths (The Call) the entity of evil is one that manifests a monstrous memory or traumatic history that, once released, is seemingly unstoppable and determined to kill everyone in its path until no one is left, effectively seeing the past consume the present to prevent the future.

Arguably much of this idea is seen in the religious, political and ideological extremes that are eating their way into every area of life in the 21st century trying to deny change in favour of an idealized past and traditional values. Unsurprisingly this has found expression in popular culture in general and in the horror genre in particular and so this collection will focus on how certain kinds of remembrance or toxic nostalgias take on an undead life of their own manifesting as undead creatures that find life and meaning through terror, death and destruction.

Articles are sought that discuss, but are no limited to, the following:

Theoretical framings around, and the depiction of, such monsters of undead memory.
The uses of found-footage and New Media in such narratives
Differing cultural perspectives of the types monsters created by such undead memory (Betaal, Kingdom, Cargo)
Ecological and Environmental perspectives (Creature features, contagion and plagues, monstrous plants and vegetation)
Undead memories specifically focused on ethnicity, sexuality and gender
Aliens, alternate universes, and dystopian futures that envision a return to the past and reestablishment of “traditional” values
Undead technologies that want to consume/destroy the present


Please send 300 word abstracts to Simon Bacon (baconetti@googlemail.com) by March 31st, 2021.

Introduction

The critical and commercial success of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy ushered in a new era of fantasy-medieval and historic-medieval texts in the new Millennium. These neo-medieval texts were not restricted to the big screen, but in true transmedia fashion, exploded on the small screen, in video games, comics, and a variety of other medias as the genre became popular and hence, lucrative. Nearly twenty years later, depictions of the medieval period, be it authentic or moored in fantasy, remain a dominate component in the greater pop culture, with shows like Game of Thrones, video games like Skyrim, many fantasy-medieval books, young adult comics, and the like.

With neo-medieval texts enjoying heightened popularity, it invites an academic gaze to unearth their importance. What is it about these texts that makes them fascinating, especially considering that they are rooted in the distant past as compared to the new Millennium we are living in? What are the different approaches we can take to make sense of these films, shows, books, etc. which in turn can be used to understand not just our present world, but the future we are going into?

This anthology is looking for shorter-form essays (2.5k – 4k words in length) that aim to explore fantasy-medieval and historic medieval films, television shows, comics, video games, literature, and other works that add and expand the genre’s canon. The result would an anthology of 22-28 essays that touch upon a variety of texts with a plethora of academic lenses and approaches, grouped together to support a series of wider topics under the neo-medievalism banner.

Potential Essay Topics

The following is a list of possible (but not comprehensive) topics that contributors could submit on:

Auteur theory on filmmakers and their medieval films/TV shows (e.g. Neil Marshall, Guy Ritchie, Uwe Boll, etc.)
Adaptations of the Matter of Britain
Adaptations/portrayal of historic figures (Robert the Bruce, Robin Hood, Marco Polo, etc.)
Adaptations of fairy tales, stories, and myths
Adaptations of video games (In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale [2007] (and its sequels), Warcraft [2016])
Blending medieval with other genres, such as horror (The Head Hunter [2018]) or sci-fi (Transformers: The Last Knight [2017])
Close readings of specific texts
Colonialism
Covid-19 and plague texts (A Plague Tale: Innocence [2019 video game], The Last Witch Hunter [2015], Black Death [2010])
Currency/economics in medieval video games (Skyrim, The Witcher, Final Fantasy) compared to current economic anxieties
Fan and fandom studies
Gender studies
History of the portrayal of medieval times from the past to the present
Intersectionality
Intertextual analysis
Medieval monsters as metaphors
Monomyth/heroes journey
Non-occidental medieval films:
Indian neo-peplum films: Baahubali: The Beginning (2015), Baahubali 2: The Conclusion (2017), and Veeram (2016 film)
Late-era Mesoamerica films: Apocalypto (2006)
Russian medieval films: Furious (2017)
Chinese historic epics: Hero (2002), Genghis Khan (2018), House of Flying Daggers (2004)
Adaptations of One Thousand and One Nights
Portrayals of religions and nationalities (Vikings, Saxons, etc.)
Portrayals of bodies (such body builders and muscular heroes)
Race portrayals (example: white characters in Eastern settings such as The Great Wall [2016])
Semiotic analysis
Surveillance/panopticon in scrying magic: Lord of the Rings films
Temporal texts (time traveling): medieval in modern times or modern times in medieval
Torture porn genre in movies with medieval torture scenes: Red Riding Hood (2011)
Vernacular film theory
And others

List of Media Texts

Below is a list of media titles (from films, TV, comics, games, etc.) that could potentially fit into the neo-medieval formula. This list is by no means complete, but it is presented to give title examples that fit within this genre and to inspire creative ideas on topics to write about. The below list contains titles that are historic-medieval, fantasy-medieval, and medieval combined with other genres.

Films

Black Death (2010)
Dragonheart: A New Beginning (2000)
Dragonheart 3: The Sorcerer’s Curse (2015)
Dragonheart: Battle for the Heartfire (2017)
Dragonheart: Vengeance (2020)
The Head Hunter (2018)
The Hobbit trilogy (2012-214)
The Huntsman: Winter’s War (2016)
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)
Last Knights (2015)
The Last Witch Hunter (2015)
Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-2003)
Maleficent (2014)
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019)
Robin Hood (2010)
Robin Hood (2018)
Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)

Television

Britannia (2018-present)
Cursed (2020)
Deus Salve o Rei (2018)
Game of Thrones (2011-2019)
The Hollow Crown (2012, 2016)
Knightfall (2017-2019)
The Last Kingdom (2015-present)
The Letter for the King (2020)
Marco Polo (2014)
Miracle Workers (season 2)
The Name of the Rose (2019)
Robin Hood (BBC) (2006-2009)
The Witcher (2019-present)

Literature

Ascendance Series (Nielsen)
Codex Alera (Butcher)
The Kingkiller Chronicle (Rothfuss)
Ranger’s Apprentice (Flanagan)
Sabbath (Mamatas)
Sands of Arawiya series (Faizal)
A Song of Fire and Ice series (Martin)
Throne of Glass series (Maas)
The Witcher series (Sapkowski)
The Wrath & the Dawn (Ahdieh)

Comics

Berserker Unbound (Dark Horse)
Birthright (Image)
Cursed (Simon & Schuster)
A Game of Thrones (Dynamite)
Lady Castle (Boom!)
Nimona (web comic)
Northlanders (Vertigo)
The Witcher (Dark Horse comics)

Video games

Assassin’s Creed series
Chivalry: Medieval Warfare (2012)
Crusader Kings series
The Cursed Crusade (2011)
Fable series
The First Templar (2011)
Game of Thrones (2012)
Game of Thrones: A Telltale Games Series (2014-2015)
Kingdom Come: Deliverance (2018)
A Plague Tale: Innocence (2019)
Stronghold series
The Witcher series from CD Projekt Red

Music

Dungeon synth music
Adventure/power metal bands like Blind Guardian and Keep of Kalessin

Again, the above list is not comprehensive, but to illustrate a general idea of titles from different media that could fit into this essay collection.

Project Timetable

This anthology has not yet procured a contract, but will be submitted for consideration to Peter Lang Publishing to be part of the Genre Fiction and Film Companions series. The following a proposed timetable to realize this project:

February 28, 2021 – Deadline for abstract submissions
March 7, 2021 – Notification of acceptance
March 14, 2021 – Submission of preliminary table of contents to Peter Lang Publishing for consideration for their Genre Fiction and Film Companions series
If rejected, submit to alternative publisher, repeat process
If accepted, distribute style guide to authors
+ Five months after publisher acceptance – Chapter drafts are due
+ Four months – Chapter revisions are due
+ One month – Submission of manuscript to publisher
Drafts and revisions are strongly encouraged to be submitted before the deadlines.

Abstract Submission Information

Please submit your abstract(s) of roughly 500 words along with your academic CV/resume and preliminary bibliography to the email address below before February 28, 2021. Please use an appropriate subject line when submitting – have it contain the phrase “medieval submission.” I will confirm each submission via email within 72 hours. I will also accept multiple abstract submissions.

This CFP is open to all academics and scholars. Underrepresented scholars researching this genre are greatly encouraged to submit.

Nicholas Diak, editor

Email: vnvdiak@gmail.com
Website: http://www.nickdiak.com

Nicholas Diak is a pop culture scholar of neo-peplum and sword and sandal films, industrial music, synthwave, exploitation films Italian genre cinema, and H. P. Lovecraft studies. He is the editor of The New Peplum: Essays on Sword and Sandal Films and Television Programs Since the 1990s (McFarland, 2018) and the co-editor of Horror Literature from Gothic to Post-Modern: Critical Essays (McFarland, 2020). Along with Michele Brittany, he co-created and co-chairs the Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference and co-hosts the H. P. Lovecast Podcast. He has contributed articles, essays, and reviews to numerous journals, academic anthologies, magazines, and websites.

The connection between vampires and music would seem a natural one in popular culture with the vampire Lestat awakening to become a rock god, Bauhaus’ iconic rendition of Bela Lugosi’s Dead and the never-ending pop video of Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys (1987). Indeed, the vampire seems to be a regular in pop videos and many other kinds of musical performances from stage shows to operas to ballets.

But what does each party bring to the table in this partnership; what characteristics of the vampire influence and inform certain songs, videos and performances, and conversely how does music/music videos influence the shape of the vampire in modern culture (the vampire being a creature/creation of technology in many senses)?

As intimated above this can involve bands, songs, music videos, films about music, rock operas, musicals, stage shows, opera, ballet, in fact any instance where music and the vampire come together in a meaningful way.

Send 300 word abstracts or expressions of interest to Simon Bacon (baconetti@googlemail.com)  by March 31, 2021, with full 7–8,000 word essays not required until early/mid-2023. The collection already has interest from University of Amsterdam Press.

A new collection on aliens is proposed for Peter Lang.

Aliens are everywhere in contemporary culture: from sci-fi franchises such as Star Wars to religious cults, conspiracy theories, and SETI deep-space explorations. But despite a plethora of studies addressing various aspects of this phenomenon, there has never been a Companion that systematically discusses the meaning of aliens through a range of representative texts. Our collection is intended to fill this lack.

We are asking for essays of 2,500 words that frame a theoretical aspect of the aliens’ cultural role by centering on one text, whether literary or cinematic to use as a lens to look at the wider topic. The essays themselves should be accessible but address the big ideas.

The proposed Companion will be divided into several sections. The topics in each section may include but are not limited to the following:

Origins

H. G. Wells and the Scientific Romance
War of the Worlds and Victorian Invasion Literature (Chesney’s Battle of Dorking)
Aliens and other Victorian monsters (Dracula, “the little people” in Arthur Machen, Jekyll/Hyde, etc.)
Aliens and Darwinism
Aliens and the Empire (Conrad, Haggard, Wells)

The Golden Age

Aliens and the frontier/western
Aliens and the Cold War
Monstrous imagination in invasion movies
Alien infestation and the poetics of paranoia (Finney’s Invasion of Body Snatchers)
Aliens and natives

International Aliens

Aliens behind the Iron Curtain (Soviet SF; Stanislaw Lem)
Aliens in China, Japan and South Korea (Cixin Liu, manga/anime)
Aliens in India and the Middle East
Aliens and Indigenous Identity

Aliens and the Cultural Imagination

Aliens and race
Aliens and gender
Aliens and theology
Aliens and the apocalypse
Queer aliens
Aliens and the Anthropocene
Humans as Alien Invaders

Aliens in Different Genres/Media

Space opera
Art, dance, performance
Aliens in music and music videos
Fandom and cosplay
Aliens in Gaming and Roleplay
Aliens in New Media

Please send 300 word abstracts or expressions of interest to both editors Elana Gomel (egomel@tauex.tau.ac.il) and Simon Bacon (baconetti@googlemail.com) by February 28th 2021 for consideration in the collection which will be part of the Peter Lang, Oxford,  Genre, Literature and Film Companion Series.

Deadline: November 1, 2020
Contact name: Aoise Stratford and Joel Hawkes
Email: gothicagetv@gmail.com
 

The last three decades have witnessed a proliferation of Gothic television programs. Some provide a platform for the Gothic’s most fantastic mode of expression, with vampires, werewolves, and zombies invading our screens. Closer to home but decidedly unheimlich, domestic spaces are haunted by uncanny secrets in programs from Twin Peaks to Top of The Lake. Still other programs, like Game of Thrones and Black Mirror, capture the Gothic’s obsession with barbaric pasts and threatening futures. Subtle elements of Gothic emerge in a wide range of non-Gothic programming, such as Mad Men and Breaking Bad, revealing the true extent of the genre’s influence.

Perhaps, just as Black Mirror’s techno-mediated future reflects – and reflects upon – the present moment, this Gothic resurgence responds to the transformations and uncertainties of our time.  In other words, we might read the Gothic, as it repeatedly has been, as a genre that re-emerges at times of cultural anxiety.

The screens, and the streaming services that play this Gothic programming might, then, themselves be read as “Gothic devices,” even more transformative than the technologies that that have inspired and shaped the Gothic narratives of past centuries.

This call for papers requests proposals that explore this resurgence in the Gothic as it is mediated through television programming, and the proliferation of screens and streaming services, at the beginning of the 21st century.

The collection looks to theorise this Gothic revival.  Papers might offer close readings of particular shows, ponder themes and tropes, trace trends in programming, consider the importance of the television medium in this revival, or examine the Gothic technologies of streaming screens and other devices.

The collection looks to be, like Frankenstein’s monster, hybridic, a composite, and larger than the sum of its parts, deploying a range of critical methodologies and lenses--including Queer theory, postmodernism, and post-human studies--and seeking to embrace some of the many different ways in which we can have conversations about Gothic Television.

Essays might examine shows such as (but not limited to),

Stranger Things, Penny Dreadful, Carnival Row, Outlander, Buffy, Angel, Vampire Diaries, True Blood, Sherlock, Twin Peaks: The Return, Sharp Objects, Mad Men, Black Mirror, Top of the Lake, Game of Thornes, Frankenstein Chronicles, The Walking Dead, American Horror Story, Supernatural, The X-Files, Bates Motel, Hannibal.

Essays might explore a number of topics, and ask and answer a variety of questions of Gothic television, such as (but not limited to),

Streaming, binging, booting, seriality, and the structure of Gothic television

How do screen mediums and consumption habits speak to a sense of the Gothic?

21st century spaces / 21st century Gothic

How is space/place/setting important to Gothic television?  What Gothic implications are there for the “space” of the streaming screen?

Twin Peaks: The Return

Why is Twin Peaks: The Return important?  How does it make use of the Gothic?

Vampires and their slayers

How does the vampire inhabit the new century, this gothic revival, and an age of streaming screens?

Dissecting 21st century monsters

What and who are the important monsters of this Gothic television revolution?

Gothic nostalgias

How do Gothic shows (re)imagine the past?  What is the relationship of the Gothic to the plethora of reboots, returns, and sequels on our screens?

Gothic futures

How do Gothic television shows imagine the future?  What kind of future is Gothic programming creating?

Gothic fantasy

How do Gothic and fantasy interact on our screens?  What has led to the rise of this important sub-genre?

Gothic marginalities

How are those on the margins important to the Gothic?  How are questions of race, gender, class, or sexuality important in terms of marginality and isolation, but also community, inclusivity, and diversity?  What is the role of the so-called “normative”?

Abstracts of 300 words and a brief bio should be sent to the editors, Aoise Stratford (Cornell University) and Joel Hawkes (University of Victoria) at gothicagetv@gmail.com

Deadline for abstracts is 1 November 2020.  (Final papers will be of about 5000 words, due end of April.)