CFP Brutal Themes in Brutal Times: Teaching Edgar Allan Poe in a Culture of Violence (9/30/2018; NeMLA 2019)

CFP: Brutal Themes in Brutal Times: Teaching Edgar Allan Poe in a Culture of Violence, Northeast Modern Language Association
https://www.fantastic-arts.org/2018/cfp-brutal-themes-in-brutal-times-teaching-edgar-allan-poe-in-a-culture-of-violence-northeast-modern-language-association/
July 24, 2018

Brutal Themes in Brutal Times: Teaching Edgar Allan Poe in a Culture of Violence

deadline for submissions:
September 30, 2018

full name / name of organization:
Northeast Modern Language Association

contact email:
chendricks@goodwin.edu

This panel seeks papers that explore pedagogical strategies for teaching the horror stories of Edgar Allan Poe and his contemporaries. With the looming, true-to-life violence bombarding us every day in the news and in other media outlets, the macabre tales of our favorite authors resonate too well. Teaching the violent and psychologically disturbing short stories of Poe, and others writing in this genre, can be challenging in the current climate of violence in America. Exploring the depths and darkness of humanity through literature can be traumatic for contemporary students who are bombarded with violent words and images every day through social media and news outlets. This panel seeks papers that explore pedagogical strategies devoted to travelling through dark literary themes while maintaining a safe atmosphere in the classroom. How can instructors align class discussions, specifically the ones that take a sociopolitical turn, to heal the contemporary student in an America riddled with nihilism, senseless violence, and psychological desperation? The significance of this panel is to uncover innovative teaching strategies when bringing students classic horror tales for discussion in the milieu of a terrorizing era in American history.

CFP Speculative Souths (1/1/2019)

An intriguing idea for a collection:

Speculative Souths
https://www.theasa.net/jobs-opportunities/cfps/speculative-souths

Deadline: Tuesday, January 1, 2019

Review Begins: Tuesday, January 1, 2019



Speculative Souths

Ed. Amy Clukey, Erich Nunn, & Jon Smith

Edited Collection CFP


In the early years of science fiction, space frequently figured as the American West writ large—the final frontier. In the genre’s darker, grittier reboot era, however, it often looks more like the final plantation, from Blade Runner’s updated slavecatchers to the transnationally and transtemporally exploited Appalachians of William Gibson’s The Peripheral to Atlanta architect John Portman’s abstracted plantation-house columns looming over the Hunger Games films. And even as some white writers, in the twilight of American empire, set their dystopian survivalist fantasies in the region (The Road, The Walking Dead), self-consciously “southern” varieties of Afrofuturism and speculative blackness, ranging from OutKast to novels such as Kiese Laymon’s Long Division and Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing, represent it as a site of vibrant black futurity contesting and sometimes transcending both the nation’s plantation past and its carceral present. Meanwhile, cli-fi and ecofiction set in the South, from Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior to Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, is on the rise as the region’s coasts begin to sink.


This collection seeks to make sense of these and other“southern turns” in speculative fiction, broadly defined across multiple media and subgenres, and of earlier southern turns that, because they didn’t fit with dominant models, earlier scholarship may have missed or misread. What happens when speculative fiction goes from western to southern, for example, and/or when our understanding of “the South” shifts its gaze from past to future? How does the speculative allow writers to conceive of the South in ways that transcend the black/white binary that has long shaped how the region is imagined?


Send abstracts by January 1st, 2019 to Amy.Clukey@gmail.com. Final papers of 4000-5000 words will be due by January 1st, 2020.



Possible topics might include

• Southern Afrofuturisms in literature and music from Sun Ra to Outkast and beyond
• Speculative Souths in comic and graphic narratives: Swamp Thing, Black Panther, Bitch Planet, Kindred
• Nineteenth-century literature and speculative Souths: Edgar Allan Poe and lesser known southern innovators/imitators of the genre
• Southern iconographies that serve as sci-fi prop, backdrop, mood enhancers: architect John Portman
• Southern retro-futurism, futurity, and future’s futures
• Transnational, transtemporal, weird, queer, fantastic, or dystopian speculative Appalachias: The Hunger Games, The Peripheral
• The South and the (Old and/or New) Weird (e.g., Southern Reach)
• The presence or weird absence of “the South” in theorizations of science fiction, such as the work of Darko Suvin or North Carolinian Fredric Jameson
• Octavia Butler and the South, beyond Kindred
• Speculative fictions (e.g., Laymon’s Long Division) as counter-politics
• Alt-histories: Henry Turtledove’s white nationalist rehashes of the Civil War, more recent treatments like Omar El Akkad’s American War
• Cli-fi of or in the South
• Speculative poetry of or in the South
• Voodoo/hoodoo fantasy
• Time-traveling revisions of southern temporalities from Kiese Laymon’s Long Division to Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series
• Native southern speculative reclamations of space and time
• Even more Undead Souths
• Speculative southern modernisms
• NASA’s ties to Southern cultures or locales (Huntsville, Houston, Cape Canaveral)
• Southerners in space (e.g., Edgar Rice Burroughs’s A Princess of Mars)
• The construct of U.S./Global/Planetary “Souths” on Mars, Venus, and beyond (such as the appearance of the Jim Crow South in golden age SF like Ray Bradbury and Robert Heinlein’s work, or the icy southern polar settlements of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy, the agricultural terrains of The Expanse)
• Treatments of plantation agriculture, slavery, and incarceration in space
• Speculative southern camp in 60s and 70s sci-fi television

CFP Journal Issue on Tim Burton (Spec Issue of Parol: Qauderni d'Arte e di Epistemologia) (expired)

Sorry to have missed posting this earlier; it is certainly a publication worth looking out for:

Journal Issue on Tim Burton
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/03/16/journal-issue-on-tim-burton

deadline for submissions: May 15, 2018

full name / name of organization: Dr. Antonio Sanna

contact email: isonisanna@hotmail.com



Journal Issue on Tim Burton

Edited by Antonio Sanna

Tim Burton is certainly one of the most popular directors of contemporary Hollywood. His oeuvre includes blockbuster films such as Batman (1989), Planet of the Apes (2001) and Alice in Wonderland (2010) as well as less profitable– but still highly recognizable - films such as Ed Wood (1994). His work with stop motion, evident in Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride (2005) and the recent Frankenweenie (2013) has further popularized and updated a technique that has been fundamental in cinema since the silent era. His distinctive and personal touch, a visionary style that is now referred to as “Burtonesque”, and his frequent collaborations with Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and Danny Elfman (to mention merely a few) has contributed to establish a unique and identifiable brand.

The Italian academic and peer-reviewed journal Parol: Qauderni d'Arte e di Epistemologia will dedicate one of its next issues to the artistic production of the American director, including a total of six/seven papers on the subject, that explore Burton’s multi-medial oeuvre from multidisciplinary perspectives. The issue will be edited by Antonio Sanna, co-editor of the volume A Critical Companion to Tim Burton (Lexington Books, 2017). The editor seeks previously-unpublished essays that explore the American director’s heterogeneous career, and is particularly interested in interdisciplinary approaches to the subject that can illuminate the diverse facets of the Burton’s work and his unique visual style.

There are several themes worth exploring when analyzing Burton’s works, utilizing any number of theoretical frameworks of your choosing. The editor requests the papers to be based on formal analysis and to use an academic language. Papers on the visual style of Burton will be particularly appreciated, but contributions may include the following topics:

• Burton and the visual arts
• Humour, Black Humour and the Macabre
• Burton and fairy tales
• Gender and queer readings
• Neo-Victorian art
• Exploration of dreams and the subconscious
• Fascination with machines and ecocriticism
• Mob mentality
• Alienation and misperception, conformity/nonconformity
• Disfigurement, deformity and (dis)ability
• Death and the afterlife
• Intertextuality
• Adaptations, Remakes and Appropriations
• Music and Danny Elfman
• Tim Burton in/and translation
• Evil Clowns
• Fan practice and fan communities

The journal issue will be organized around these topics and others that emerge from submissions. I am open to works that focus on other topics as well and authors interested in pursuing other related lines of inquiry. Feel free to contact the editor with any questions you may have about the project and please share this announcement with colleagues whose work aligns with the focus of this volume.

Submit a 300-500 word abstract of your proposed paper contribution, a brief CV and complete contact information in a single word file to Dr. Antonio Sanna (isonisanna@hotmail.com) by 15 May, 2018. Full chapters of 4000-6000 words will be due by 1 July, 2018 at the latest. Note: all full chapters submitted will be included subject to review.

CFP Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Area 2018 (6/1/18; NEPCA Worcester, MA 10/19-20/18)

Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Area
Eleventh-Anniversary and Farewell Sessions

2018 Conference of the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association (NEPCA)
Worcester State University, Worcester, Massachusetts
19-20 October 2018
Proposals due 1 June 2018

Formed in 2008, the Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Area will hold its eleventh-anniversary and farewell sessions in 2018, and we seek proposals from scholars of all levels for papers and/or panels that explore any aspect of the intermedia traditions of the fantastic (including, but not limited to, elements of fairy tale, fantasy, gothic, horror, legend, mythology, and science fiction) and how creative artists have altered our preconceptions of these subtraditions by producing innovative works in diverse countries, media, and time periods and for audiences at all levels.
Presentations will be limited to 15 or 20 minutes in length depending on final panel size.
An archive of previous work in the area exists at our website Northeast Fantastic (https://northeastfantastic.blogspot.com), which is intended as a gateway to furthering research on the fantastic.

Special Topics:

• Given the proximity of the conference to Halloween, we are always interested in proposals related to monsters and the monstrous.
• This year, we are also looking for papers related to the fantastic in children’s culture, especially the works of the Walt Disney Company.
• Furthermore, in celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in 2018, we are organizing a special session devoted to “Frankenstein 1818 to 2018: 200 Years of Mad Scientists and Monsters.” Details can at our outreach site Frankenstein and the Fantastic at https://FrankensteinandtheFantastic.blogspot.com/.

Directions for Submission:
Please contact area chair Michael A. Torregrossa at cfp.nepcafantastic@gmail.com, using “NEPCA Fantastic 2018” as your subject line, with any questions in advance of the 1 June 2018 deadline.
Submissions for papers and/or panels should be made online through the “2018 Proposal Form” at https://nepca.blog/2018-conference/. Please select “The Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction)” as your designated area. A complete submission includes contact information, academic affiliation (if any), an academic biographical statement (between 50 and 200 words), a paper title (no more than 60 characters), and a paper abstract (no more than 250 words). Do also send copies of your biography and proposal to the area chair at cfp.nepcafantastic@gmail.com, using “NEPCA Fantastic 2018” as your subject line.


The Northeast Popular/American Culture Association (a.k.a. NEPCA) was founded in 1974 as a professional organization for scholars living in New England and New York. It is a community of scholars interested in advancing research and promoting interest in the disciplines of popular and/or American culture. NEPCA’s membership consists of university and college faculty members, emeriti faculty, secondary school teachers, museum specialists, graduate students, independent scholars, and interested members of the general public. NEPCA is an independently funded affiliate of the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association. Membership is open to all interested parties, regardless of profession, rank, or residency. NEPCA holds an annual conference that invites scholars from around the globe to participate. In an effort to keep costs low, it meets on college campuses throughout the region.

Membership in NEPCA is required for participation and annual dues are included in conference registration fees. Further details are available at https://nepca.blog/membership-information/.

Fantastic Area Sessions 2017

Sorry about the lack of formatting; Blogger doesn't make pasting from Word easy:

Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Areas Sessions 2017
(full conference program at https://nepca.blog/2017-conference-schedule/)

Session I: Friday, October 27, 1:00-2:30pm

PANEL 1 – CC 803 – The Fantastic: Horrors Past and Present
CHAIR: Amie Doughty, SUNY Oneonta

 “Horrifying Mythical Obstacles: Masculine Anxieties and Alternate Gazes in Robert Eggers’s The Witch (2015),” Dustin Fisher, University of Cincinnati

Dustin Fisher received an M.A. in Literature from Wright State University in 2014 where he completed and presented his master’s thesis, “Doppelgangers and Dualistic Femininity in Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House.” In 2014 he also presented a paper at Newcastle University in Newcastle, UK, on Ian McEwan’s Atonement. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in contemporary Gothic fiction and film studies at the University of Cincinnati.

“Images of the Indigenous Monster in The Green Inferno (2013),” Erica Tortolani, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Erica Tortolani is currently enrolled at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in Communication with a concentration in Film Studies.  Her past research explored the intersection of film theory with rhetorical studies, looking specifically at how the cinematic medium can transmit messages regarding gender, sexuality, and the female body through visual and narrative elements.  These interests culminated into her Masters thesis, entitled "Dual Images of the ‘Monstrous Feminine’ in Three Horror Films," a project that received the 2015 Graduate Research Excellence award at the University of Rhode Island.  Erica has also presented at the 2015 Graduate Conference at the URI, the 2016 Northeastern Modern Language Association Conference, and earned her publication in the Fall 2013 issue of the undergraduate journal, Film Matters.  Her research interests include general film theory and criticism, silent cinema, comedy and theories of humor, horror films, German Expressionist film, and feminist film theory.

“The Decomposing Youths and the Revival of the Zombies in Contemporary Korea,” Ha Rim Park, Seoul National University

After receiving her Master of Literature in 2016, Harim Park is doing a Ph.D in Comparative Literature at Seoul National University. She has published an article titled “The Origin of Catastrophe and Melancholy: A Korean Cultural Study on Zombie Narrative in the 2000s” in the journal of Korea Comparative Literature as the result of her master degree. Her areas of research include 1990-2000s Korean literature, genre fiction, movie, webtoon, and modernization, democratization after the Korean War. Harim is currently studying on disaster, apocalypse, Sci-fi narratives and non-human representations in contemporary East asian cultures, specifically Korea, Taiwan and Japan. 

“The Bunhill Apocalypse: Robert Aickman’s ‘Larger than Oneself’ (1966) as a Post-Christian Metaphor,” Steffen Silvis, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Steffen Silvis is a playwright, theatre critic, actor and director, who is currently finishing his Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Theatre Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Among Silvis’ plays are Archetypes (1991; produced at The King’s Head, London), Liberty, Oregon (winner of the London International Playwrights Festival, 1993, produced by The Man-in-the-Moon Theatre, Chelsea, London, 1994, [nominated for best new work on the London Fringe]; The Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 1995, California State University, 2005,); The Kalama Orpheum (winner of the London International Playwrights Festival, 2001); Nothing, If Not Critical (co-winner of the London One-Act Festival, 2003, and produced in London and Portland, Oregon, 2004); and Phere[crates]: Scraps (produced in Madison, Wisconsin, 2013). Silvis was the theatre critic for Portland’s Willamette Week and The Prague Post in the Czech Republic. His writing has appeared in American Theatre Magazine, Time Out, Paperback Jukebox, and Black Lamb. Co-Founder of the Madison-based theatre company, In-House, Silvis has produced Manjula Padmanabhan’s Light’s Out, and directed the devised-environmental piece, Reunion. Silvis has also won an NEA/Annenberg Fellowship and an O’Neil Fellowship for his criticism.


Session II: Friday, October 27, 2:45-4:15pm

PANEL 8 – CC 803 – The Fantastic: Meeting Monsters
CHAIR: Michael A. Torregrossa, Independent Scholar

“‘Everything That Ought to Have Remained Hidden’: Sublimation and the Uncanny in Anya's Ghost (2011),” Shane Gomes, North Dakota State University

Shane is from Honolulu, Hawaii, and completed his BA at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, his MA at the University of Northern Colorado, and is currently pursuing his PhD in English at North Dakota State University. His primary research interests are graphic novels and pop/comic culture more broadly, especially minority representations therein.

“Murder, Reproduction, and Bad Women in Junji Ito’s Tomie,” Rahel Worku, University of Maryland

Rahel Worku was an undergrad English major at UMBC and is currently a Masters student at the University of Maryland studying Comparative Literature. Rahel is now in the second year of the program and once again teaching English 101. Rahel’s interests are in African American literature, speculative fiction, and comic books.

“A Trekkie’s Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse,” Cinzia DiGiulio, Merrimack College

Cinzia DiGiulio is an Associate Professor of Italian and Cultural Studies at Merrimack College in North Andover, Massachusetts.  Cinzia completed a Doctorate in Russian and English (languages and literatures) at the Catholic University of Milan, a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature and Classics at Purdue University, and then a Ph.D. in Romance Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Most Cinzia’sstudies and research interests revolve around late 19th-century narrative (British, Russian, and Italian) -- particularly popular narrative -- and its intersections with contemporary popular culture.

“Scientists Become Monsters: The Strain’s Dr. Goodweather,” Kristine Larsen, Central Connecticut State University

Dr. Kristine Larsen is Professor of Astronomy at Central Connecticut State University, where her teaching and research focus on the intersections between science and society. She is the co-editor of The Mythological Dimensions of Doctor Who and The Mythological Dimensions of Neil Gaiman.


Session III: Friday, October 27, 4:30-6:00pm

PANEL 15 – CC 803 – The Fantastic: Re-envisioning the Heroic in Fantastic Fiction
CHAIR: Shane Gomes, North Dakota State University

“Happy Endings: Frankenstein’s Creature as a Romantic Lead,” Maggie Damken, Independent Scholar

Maggie Damken is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied literature and creative writing. She has presented previously at the Northeast Regional Honors Conference and Beacon Conference. A previous essay on Frankenstein was accepted for presentation by the Science Fiction Research Association.

“Decentering Monsterhood: Blurred Histories, Genres and Narrative Identities in John M. Ford’s Fantasy The Last Hot Time (2000),” Angela Gustafsson Whyland, Southern New Hampshire University [WITHDRAWN]


“Guinevere, the Warrior Queen of Camelot?: The Altered Fate of Guinevere in Recent Comics,” Michael A. Torregrossa, Independent Scholar
 
Independent scholar Michael A. Torregrossa is a graduate of the Medieval Studies program at the University of Connecticut (Storrs). His research interests include adaptation, Arthuriana, comics and comic art, medievalism, monsters, and wizards. Michael has presented papers on these topics at regional, national, and international conferences, as well as in published works. In addition, he is currently Fantastic (Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror) Area Chair for the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association and organizes sessions, like this one, for their annual conference in the fall and maintains the area’s blogs.


Session IV: Saturday, October 28, 8:45-10:15am

PANEL 22 – CC 803 – The Fantastic: New Approaches to the Fantastic
CHAIR: Nova Seals, Salve Regina University

“The Princess Bride and Slavoj Žižek's Fantasy of the Real,” Heather Flyte, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania

Heather Flyte is a graduate student in English Literature at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania. She is working on her thesis investigating the dialogue of imperialism created during translation of non-western fairy tales in the Victorian era, with a specific focus on Japanese folk tales. In September 2014, she presented at the “Sensational Influences: Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Literary Legacy” in London and recently was awarded the Emma Richards-Bausch Award in Literary Criticism from Kutztown University for her writing on H.G. Wells. She is a non-traditional student who has previously worked in journalism and web development and plans to pursue doctoral work in English Literature.

“Madness and Mixed-Bloods: Racial Metaphors in Seanan McGuire’s October Daye Series,” Amie Doughty, SUNY Oneonta

Amie Doughty is an associate professor of English as SUNY Oneonta, where she teaches course in linguistics, composition, and literature, including children’s literature, folklore, fantasy, and science fiction. She is the author of Folktales Retold: A Critical Overview of Stories Updated for Children and “Throw the book away”: Reading versus Experience in Children’s Fantasy, and is the editor of Children’s and Young Adult Literature and Culture: A Mosaic of Criticism.

“Heredity And The Hero: The Role of Heredity in Shaping Popular Heroes and Why It Matters,” Cheryl Hunter, University of Massachusetts Lowell

Cheryl Hunter is an adjunct professor of English and the Humanities at UMASS Lowell and Southern New Hampshire University. She attended the University of New Hampshire where she received a Master of Arts degree in Liberal Studies with a concentration in Philosophy and Literature. She was a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at a week-long workshop on Henry David Thoreau. Her book, Myths and Archetypes in The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, looks at the roles of Philosophy and Mythology in modern literature and what important lessons about the human condition are conveyed to the audience through the hero and journey archetypes. She is a writer and artist, and she loves to travel.


Session V: Saturday, October 28, 10:30am-noon

PANEL 29 – CC 803 – The Fantastic: Re-Thinking the Monstrous
CHAIR: Heather Flyte, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania


“‘If You're So Hungry, Why Don’t You Get a Job?’: Patrick Bateman as Neoliberal Monster and Hero in American Psycho,” Caitlin Duffy, Stony Brook University

Caitlin Duffy is a doctoral student in the English Department at Stony Brook University. Her scholarly interests include horror films and 19th century American Gothic literature. Her work will be published in the 2017 issue of The Journal of Dracula Studies and in an upcoming volume on 1980’s horror films.

“Tackling the Femme: The Psycho-Biddy Genre,” James Patrick Carraghan, Kutztown University

James Patrick Carraghan is a graduate student, writing tutor, and research assistant at Kutztown University. He is currently writing a thesis on the intersection of Harlem Renaissance scholarship and Queer Theory. His work has been published in On the Road, Glimmer on the Bookshelf, and 5x5. He is currently a contributing writer at Terse Journal and Vada Magazine (UK).

“The Aesthetics of Abjection in Anna Dressed in Blood (2011),” Nova Seals, Salve Regina University

Nova Seals is a Ph.D. candidate in humanities at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island. Nova is also the Director of Library Services and Archives and teaches philosophy courses at St. George’s School, an independent preparatory school in Middletown, Rhode Island. Her academic interests are the intersection of philosophy and technology, as well as art and aesthetics. Nova is particularly interested in how groups use technology, especially social media, to transform knowledge.

“The Brides of Dracula Tell All: Dracula as Romantic Protagonist in Recent Neo-Victorian Fiction,” Terry Riley, Bloomsburg University

Terry Riley teaches in the English Department at Bloomsburg University.  He teaches 19th and 20th century British Literature; his research interests are in 19th century science and neo-Victorian fiction.


Session VI: Saturday, October 28, 1:30-3pm

PANEL 36 – CC 803 – The Fantastic: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: 199 Years Old and Still Going Strong
CHAIR: Kristine Larsen, Central Connecticut State University

“Frankenstein and the Real: A Psychoanalytic Look at Power and the Unconscious,” Emilie Lewis, Simmons College

Emilie Lewis is currently an M.A. candidate in Gender/Cultural Studies at Simmons College in Boston. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English-Creative Writing from Goucher College and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

“Coexistence of Gender Binaries: Bisexualism in Frankenstein,” Christopher Maye, California State University, Long Beach

Christopher Maye graduated from California State University, Long Beach with a Bachelor's in English Literature and a minor in music in 2015. His research interest includes Critical Theory, Gender Studies, Political, and Ethnic Literature, but he primarily focuses on literature within the 18th Century English and 20th Century American periods. While he is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in English at CSULB, he works as a substitute teacher in the Los Angeles Charter School system, and is one of the managing editors for CSULB’s graduate academic journal Watermark.

“Modern Prometheus Bound,” Dennin Ellis, Independent Scholar

Dennin Ellis grew up in upstate New York and was raised by a consortium of stubborn women, a trait they passed to him. He learned how to read from X-Men comics and how to talk (and sing) from Beatles records. Throughout his childhood he vacillated between his dual passions for music and writing before settling on the former, receiving his Bachelor’s in Music from the College of Saint Rose. He then immediately went back to vacillating, achieving his Master’s in English from the State University of Albany. His graduate thesis, Colossus, concerned the place of humanity and the individual in the face of technological encroachment, brought to life through the melding of historical fiction, journalism and the epistolary novel. More recent projects include a collection of speculative fiction and research papers on topics as diverse as Edgar Allan Poe and Pink Floyd. He currently lives with his girlfriend in Ulsan, Korea, where he teaches English.


Session VII: Saturday, October 28, 3:15-4:45pm

PANEL 43 – CC 803 – The Fantastic: New England Horrors
CHAIR: Amie Doughty, SUNY Oneonta

“Body Horror in Lovecraft Fiction and Film,” Shastri Akella, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Shastri Akella earned an MFA in Creative Writing before joining the Comparative Literature PhD in 2014. He lived all over India, Dublin, and San Francisco, before moving the valley. He previously worked for a street theater troupe and for Google. His fiction and essays have been published or is forthcoming in Guernica, Electric Literature, The Common, The Rumpus, and Hypothetical Review, among other places. He has taught at the university for 5 years and was one of two teaching associates to win the campus-wide Distinguished Teaching Award for the academic year 2015-2016. His dissertation topic is a comparison of the perception of children in horror films and the perception of refugees. His other interests include film and translation, and he is working to get certified in both areas.

“The Dead Past in New England Vernacular Poetry,” N. C. Christopher Couch, University of Massachusetts Amherst

N. C. Christopher Couch holds a Ph.D. in art history from Columbia University, and is the author of numerous books and articles on comic art, graphic novels, and Latin American art. His most recent book, Jerry Robinson: Ambassador of Comics (Abrams 2010), on the artist and humanitarian famed for his Expressionist Batman and creation of the Joker, was a Harvey Award finalist and was featured in a New York Times profile of Robinson. As senior editor at Kitchen Sink Press, he worked with Will Eisner, about whom he has published two co-authored volumes, including The Will Eisner Companion (2005, with Stephen Weiner). He has held fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study, Dumbarton Oaks of Harvard University, and the Newberry Library among others. He teaches at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Trinity College in Hartford, and in the Care Center Clemente Program, Holyoke, MA, and has curated exhibitions at the American Museum of Natural History and other art and science museums.

“Tilting at Vampires,” Katie Gagnon, Independent Scholar

Katie Gagnon has a Master of Arts in American Studies from Trinity College.

New Book--Gothic Landscapes: Changing Eras, Changing Cultures, Changing Anxieties

A new book from members of the area:

Gothic Landscapes: Changing Eras, Changing Cultures, Changing Anxieties
Editors: Yang, Sharon Rose, Healey, Kathleen (Eds.)
http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9783319331645

Hardcover $99.99
price for USA
ISBN 978-3-319-33164-5

eBook $79.99
price for USA (gross)
ISBN 978-3-319-33165-2
Digitally watermarked, DRM-free
Included format: PDF, EPUB
ebooks can be used on all reading devices


About this book:

• Looks at the role of landscapes in Gothic Fiction - an under-examined area
• Broad historical sweep, from 18th century to 20th century
• Examines other media including film

This book is about the ways that Gothic literature has been transformed since the 18th century across cultures and across genres. In a series of essays written by scholars in the field, the book focuses on landscape in the Gothic and the ways landscape both reflects and reveals the dark elements of culture and humanity. It goes beyond traditional approaches to the Gothic by pushing the limits of the definition of the genre. From landscape painting to movies and video games, from memoir to fiction, and from works of different cultural origins and perspectives, this volume traverses the geography of the Gothic revealing the anxieties that still haunt humanity into the twenty-first century.



Table of contents (13 chapters)

Introduction: Haunted Landscapes and Fearful Spaces—Expanding Views on the Geography of the Gothic
Yang, Sharon Rose (et al.) / Pages 1-18

Dark Shadows in the Promised Land: Landscapes of Terror and the Visual Arts in Charles Brockden Brown’s Edgar Huntly
Healey, Kathleen / Pages 21-46

Haunting Landscapes in “Female Gothic” Thriller Films: From Alfred Hitchcock to Orson Welles
Biesen, Sheri Chinen / Pages 47-69

“Beauty Sleeping in the Lap of Horror”: Landscape Aesthetics and Gothic Pleasures, from The Castle of Otranto to Video Games
Davenport, Alice / Pages 71-103

What the Green Grass Hides: Denial and Deception in Suburban Detroit
Vayo, Amber B. / Pages 107-124

“Go Steady, Undine!”: The Horror of Ambition in Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country
Drizou, Myrto / Pages 125-145

The Convent as Coven: Gothic Implications of Women-Centered Illness and Healing Narratives in Toni Morrison’s Paradise
Waller-Peterson, Belinda M. / Pages 147-168

Haunting Memories: Gothic and Memoir
Moore, Erica / Pages 169-198

The Indian Gothic
Pai, Nalini / Pages 201-223

St. Bernard’s: Terrors of the Light in the Gothic Hospital
Rieger, Christy / Pages 225-238

Nature Selects the Horla: How the Concept of Natural Selection Influences Guy de Maupassant’s Horror Tale
Yang, Sharon Rose / Pages 239-269

Ruins of Empire: Refashioning the Gothic in J. G. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun (1984)
Watson, Alex / Pages 271-291

Gothic Landscapes in Mary Butts’s Ashe of Rings
Foy, Roslyn Reso / Pages 293-305



About the editors:

Sharon Rose Yang is Professor of English at Worcester State University, USA. She both teaches and writes on the Gothic and nineteenth-century literature. She has published in nineteenth-century literature and is the author of Goddesses, Mages, and Wise Women: The Female Pastoral Guide in Sixteenth-and Seventeenth-Century English Drama.

Kathleen Healey is Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Worcester State University, USA. Her research includes literature and the visual arts, Gothic Literature, and American Literature.

CFP Twenty-Five Years of Twin Peaks Collection (proposals by 9/30/2015)

[UPDATE] "It's Happening Again": Twenty-Five Years of Twin Peaks: EXTENDED DEADLINE! (new submission date: September 30 2015)
full name / name of organization: Eric Hoffman and Dominick Grace
contact email: dgrace2@uwo.ca
http://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/node/63202

Call for Papers for "It's Happening Again": 25 Years of Twin Peaks is a proposed edited collection on the television show Twin Peaks. Eric Hoffman and Dominick Grace solicit essays for a new collection celebrating one of television's greatest cult phenomena. Originally airing in 1990/91, Mark Frost and David Lynch's Twin Peaks will be returning, just over twenty-five years after it went off the air, and this collection will explore the show in the context of its time, and its legacy. We are interested in papers on all aspects of the television program as well as on tie-ins and connected materials (e.g. the film Fire Walk with Me, the new Log Lady material added for the show's run on Bravo, the book The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, etc.). Possible subjects include but are not limited to:

narrative and the televisual medium
cinema versus television textuality
Twin Peaks in relationship to Lynch's oeuvre
Twin Peaks as pop culture phenomenon
Twin Peaks as satire
Twin Peaks as cult/experimental television
Twin Peaks and sexuality/gender/feminist contexts
generic explorations - specifically murder mystery/film noir, soap opera, horror, fantasy, science fiction, etc.

Completed papers can be submitted, in Word, to Dominick Grace (dgrace2@uwo.ca) or to Eric Hoffman (diamondjoecity@gmail.com). Papers should be between 5,000 and 7,000 words and should follow MLA guidelines. Inquiries and proposals are also welcome. Eric Hoffman and Dominick Grace are the co-editors of Dave Sim: Conversations, Chester Brown: Conversations and Seth: Conversations, all of which are part of the University Press of Mississippi's Conversations with Comics Artists series. Due date: September 30 2015.


By web submission at 07/29/2015 - 21:15

CFP Global Poe (9/23/2016; ACLA Harvard U 3/17-20/2016)

"Global Poe" Seminar for ACLA Conference at Harvard, Mar. 17-20, 2016 (submissions from Sept. 1-23, 2015)
full name / name of organization: Emron Esplin / Department of English, Brigham Young University
contact email: emron_esplin@byu.edu
http://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/node/63392

The following CFP is for a seminar I have co-organized with Margarida Vale de Gato for the upcoming convention of the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) held from March 17-20, 2016 at Harvard University. ACLA’s annual meeting uses a seminar format in which 8-15 participants meet together for 2-3 days to share their papers. To submit a paper, go to the ACLA website at www.acla.org, click on “annual meeting,” and then click on “submit a paper." The website will not be accepting submissions until September 1. The CFP below is currently available under “Global Poe” on the ACLA website. After September 1, a link will be available for you to submit a paper directly to the seminar. Submissions will be open between September 1 and September 23.

If you are doing work on Poe from an international angle, we would enjoy receiving your submissions. Also, if you have questions about this seminar, feel free to email me directly at emron_esplin@byu.edu.

Many thanks,

Emron Esplin
Assistant Professor of English
Brigham Young University

Margarida Vale de Gato
Assistant Professor
University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies
mvgato@gmail.com

“Global Poe”

Critical studies of the life and writings of Edgar Allan Poe have long acknowledged Poe’s global influence. In nations as disparate as France, Japan, and Argentina, Poe has left his mark, and local authors, artists, and translators have conversed with and altered Poe’s works and image according to their own unique needs and purposes. Building on the most recent push of global Poe scholarship that includes Barbara Cantalupo’s edited volume Poe’s Pervasive Influence (Lehigh UP, 2012), Emron Esplin and Margarida Vale de Gato’s edited volume Translated Poe (Lehigh UP, 2014), and successful seminars on Poe and the world at the ACLA’s Annual Meeting in 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2014, this seminar hopes to join and expand the conversation about Poe’s global influence and affinities.

Paper topics could include:

• Analyses of Poe’s influence on literary, philosophical, or critical discourses in any linguistic and/or national tradition
• Analyses of Poe translations in any language and/or comparisons of translations of Poe
• Comparative readings of Poe alongside various world writers
• Critical discussions of any of the Poe bicentennial celebrations
• Discussions on Poe’s textualization of foreign or estranged places
• Examinations of literary traditions incorporated into Poe’s work or of specific foreign influences or appropriations in his literary corpus
• Examinations of Poe’s international biographies
• Studies of Poe adaptations in film, music, or other artistic forms
• Studies on how particular authors and cultural mediators use Poe’s works or image to accomplish specific ends within their particular literary or cultural setting

In short, we are interested in scholarship that places Poe’s work and/or his biography in comparative and/or international contexts.


By web submission at 08/11/2015 - 19:33

CFP Gothic in Literature, Film and Culture Area (10/1/2015; PCA/ACA Seattle 3/22-25/2016)

CFP: The Gothic in Literature, Film and Culture (10/1/15; National PCA/ACA Conference, 3/22/16-3/25/16)
full name / name of organization: Louis H Palmer, III, Gothic Chair Poplar Culture Association
contact email: Louis.palmer@castleton.edu
http://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/node/63425

CFP: The Gothic in Literature, Film and Culture (10/1/15; National PCA/ACA Conference, 3/22/16-3/25/16)

NATIONAL POPULAR & AMERICAN CULTURE
ASSOCIATIONS 2016 JOINT CONFERENCE

Submissions: All submissions should go through the database:
http://ncp.pcaaca.org

The Conference will be held at the

SHERATON SEATTLE HOTEL
1400 6th Avenue
Seattle WA 98101 United States
Phone:(1)(206) 621-9000
Fax:(1)(206) 621-8441

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: October 1, 2015.

We welcome papers and presentations on any aspect of the Gothic in film, literature, media, performance or other forms of cultural expression. All critical approaches are welcome.

You can propose an individual paper or a panel session of three or four presenters. Graduate students are especially encouraged to submit papers or panels.

Individual papers will be grouped into sessions based on historical, thematic, disciplinary or critical affinities. Participants will be asked to serve as session chairs. Sessions are scheduled in one-and-a-half hour slots, ideally with four papers or speakers per session, so individual papers should be limited to a length of approximately 10-15 minutes.

Submit a one-page (250-500 word) proposal or abstract
(via regular mail, fax, or email) complete with your name, 
affiliation, address and phone number by October 1, 2015, to:

Louis H. Palmer, III
English Dept.
6 Alumni Drive
Castleton State College
Castleton, VT 05735
Louis.palmer@castleton.edu

w(802) 468-1341
fax (802) 468-6045
h(518) 639-8593

All presenters must be (or become) members of the PCA or ACA and must 
register for the conference. Membership and registration forms will be 
sent upon presentation acceptance. Paper acceptance obligates participants 
to present the paper at the conference, and multiple submissions to 
different areas are not allowed. Please note that you must be present at 
the conference to read your own paper. For more information on the PCA/ACA, please go to: http://www.h-net.org/~pcaaca OR www.pcaaca.org.


By web submission at 08/13/2015 - 13:53

CFP Asylums, Pathologies and the Themes of Madness: Patrick McGrath and his Gothic Contemporaries (10/16/2015; U of Stirling, UK 1/16/2016)

Asylums, Pathologies and the Themes of Madness: Patrick McGrath and his Gothic Contemporaries, January 16th, 2016
full name / name of organization: University of Stirling
contact email: m.r.foley@stir.ac.uk
http://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/node/63435

A one-day symposium

Saturday 16th January 2016

Keynote Event
• During the symposium we will be delighted to invite speakers and attendees to view exhibits from the newly acquired Patrick McGrath archive at the University of Stirling’s library.

Keynote Speakers
• Professor Lucie Armitt, University of Lincoln – author of Twentieth-Century Gothic (University of Wales Press, 2011)

• Professor Sue Zlosnik, Manchester Metropolitan University – author of Patrick McGrath (University of Wales Press, 2011)

Modern and contemporary Gothic is widely recognised as a literature of madness. Many of the mode’s key writers – including Stephen King, Chuck Palahniuk and several notable others – are consistently preoccupied with psychopathology, perversion and the divided self. This first British symposium dedicated to exploring Patrick McGrath’s fiction, writing and life, seeks to capitalise upon a growing recognition that he is one of the leading purveyors of the contemporary tale of psychological terror and horror. An important contribution to English letters as a whole, McGrath’s fiction has been noted as parodic (The Grotesque, 1989), psychologically disturbing (Spider, 1990), and darkly sexual (Asylum, 1996). In her full-length study Patrick McGrath, Sue Zlosnik has suggested that in his fiction an “inclination towards Gothic excess remains in tension with a sceptical and ironic sensibility” (2011, p.5). By disentangling this and many other tensions and intertextual resonances that may be relevant, we seek to both pose and investigate important questions regarding McGrath’s place in the field of contemporary Gothic studies and assess his intricate – yet at times grotesque – stagings of asylums, psychopathology, and trauma.

We invite 20-minute papers from postgraduate, early-career and established scholars on any topic related to McGrath’s life, fiction and his contemporary context. Suggested topics include – but are not limited to – the following:

• Pathologies and madness in McGrath or the contemporary Gothic (for instance, in the novels of Stephen King, Chuck Palahniuk, Ramsey Campbell, Clive Barker, Michel Faber, etc.)
• The asylum as staged in McGrath’s fiction and non-fiction (e.g. the Broadmoor influence) or in the contemporary Gothic more widely
• Theorizing and staging psychopathologies in the Gothic
• The continuing import of McGrath’s edited collection The New Gothic (1991)
• McGrath’s unreliable narrators and his narrative technique
• Gothicized adultery
• Trauma theory and the contemporary Gothic
• The supposed turn from parody to realism in McGrath’s novels
• Gothic metafiction
• Archival research that investigates the production of the contemporary Gothic text
• Adaptations of McGrath’s work
• Notable influences – from Edgar Allan Poe to John Hawkes – upon McGrath’s aesthetic

As part of the day’s programme, we are delighted to invite speakers and attendees to view exhibits from the newly acquired McGrath archive at the University of Stirling’s library. Donated by the author himself, the wealth of materials in this emerging collection include novel drafts, notebooks, automatic writing, film scripts and a complete set of first editions of his work.

Proposals of around 250 words for 20-minute papers – or suggestions for three-person panels – should be submitted to Dr Matt Foley on m.r.foley@stir.ac.uk by Friday 16th October 2015. Please also include a brief biography.


By web submission at 08/14/2015 - 09:45

cfp The Fantastic: Positions from Another World (Panel at the SCLA) (4/15/15)

From H-Announce:

https://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=220807

NOTE EXPIRED DEADLINE

The Fantastic: Positions from Another World (Panel at the SCLA)
Location: Louisiana, United States
Conference Date: 2015-04-15
Date Submitted: 2015-03-01
Announcement ID: 220807
Panel for the Annual Meeting of the Society for Comparative Literature and the Arts.

Four Points by Sheraton

New Orleans, LA

October 15-17 2015

 The Fantastic: Positions from Another World

 “The fantastic is . . . a product of human imagination, perhaps even an excess of imagination. It arises when laws thought to be absolute are transcended, in the borderland between life and death, the animate and the inanimate, the self and the world . . . The fantastic is the unexpected occurrence, the startling novelty which goes contrary to all our expectations of what is possible. The ego multiplies and splits, time and space are distorted.”
― Franz Rottensteiner, The Fantasy Book: An Illustrated History From Dracula To Tolkien

 Authors of the fantastic employ various strategies to create new worlds. Magic, ghosts, and the supernatural are only a few of the ways in which our world is transformed into something different, but not altogether alien. Whether it be a hidden world of monsters, a future world of robots and aliens, a past world of vampires, or a new world of dragons and elves, the fantastic allows authors to explore the positions created by the otherworldly. These positions have consequences for the subject’s relationship to the political, rhetorical, theoretical, ideological, sexual, psychological, cultural, and so on. This panel seeks submissions for papers that engage with all types of literature or multimedia whose authors or creators represent worlds outside, behind, or beside our own. Possible topics could include but are not limited to:

The supernatural

The magical

Horror

The gothic

Sci-fi

Fantasy

Myth

Romantic literature

Medieval literature

Magical realism


Please send 300-500 words abstracts to ccmoore@mailbox.sc.edu by April 15th, 2015.


Casey C. Moore
University of South Carolina

Email: ccmoore@mailbox.sc.edu

CFP Small-Screen Souths: Interrogating the Televisual Archive (9/1/14)

CFP: Small-Screen Souths: Interrogating the Televisual Archive [Edited Collection]
Stephanie Rountree
Friday, July 25, 2014
H-PCAACA
Source:
https://networks.h-net.org/node/13784/discussions/35912/cfp-small-screen-souths-interrogating-televisual-archive-edited

CFP: Small-Screen Souths: Interrogating the Televisual Archive [Edited Collection]

Proposals due September 1, 2014

In recent years, the advent of reality television’s “hicksploitation” alongside the rise of scripted dramatic series such as True Blood and The Walking Dead has seemingly kept the U.S. South as a small-screen spectacle of wonder and exceptionalism. Yet the broader historical archive of televisual representation of the region reveals a more complicated picture of how television generates, enables, contaminates and disrupts discourses about the U.S. South, forming a medium for the reproduction of dominant ideologies about life in the region while also simultaneously broadcasting oppositional, subordinated, and alternative ways of thinking about space and place.

Capitalizing on recent innovations in southern studies, cultural studies, media studies, and American studies, this proposed collection will take on the large stakes of the small screen to examine how, from The Beverly Hillbillies to Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta, much of the nation has long viewed the U.S. South through their televisions. In seeking to question and complicate the way that, as Katherine Henninger has aptly noted, “dominant narratives of southernness, black and white, privilege oral over visual expression, word over picture,” Small-Screen Souths: Interrogating the Televisual Archive will contribute to a body of emerging work that seeks to reveal the South as an intensely visual space while also demonstrating how television studies can participate in and even suggest new avenues for ongoing transformations in southern studies.

Small-Screen Souths: Interrogating the Televisual Archive, which has attracted the initial interest of a major university press, thus aims to bring together essays that critically interrogate televisual representations of the region and fill a significant gap in the existing scholarship on the U.S. South by considering the “South” and the televisual archive broadly, from sites of reception to archival presences in unexpected places. In examining the relationship between the U.S. South and television, this collection will examine how the televisual South speaks to national and transnational transformations, including changing modes of conceptualizing race, class, gender, and regional identity itself. We seek analyses of representations of the South from both the classical network era, and our contemporary “post-broadcast” era, where traditional definitions of imagined communities—signified by national audiences, national networks, and national programming—are no longer adequate for understanding current configurations of community and identity.

In so doing, we aim to engage with a wide variety of questions regarding the relationship between the U.S. South and television. How does television work to complicate or reaffirm the traditional iconic elements of “the South”? What does this material tell us about the continued (mis)conception of the region as a site of national exception? How does televisual representation help us interrogate the performative nature of regional studies? How does television entrench or complicate certain ways of seeing the South in relationship to the nation at large? Does television provide the space for a performance of place that can illuminate the transnational or hemispheric affiliations between the U.S. South and the Global South, or otherwise reveal aspects of the region’s complicated cultural hybridity and multiplicity?

Individual essays may of course be more focused and might consider the following topics:

• Television’s cultural influence on popular conceptions of the South
• Television and the commodification of the region
• Television’s relationship to lived social environments and material conditions in the South
• Televisual representations of racial constructions in the region
• Television, memorialization and memory
• The South and the politics of televisual pleasure
• Issues of genre: television and the southern gothic, the grotesque, etc.
• The role television plays in generating, mediating or resisting social change in the region
• Television’s role in globalizing the South and/or exporting “the South” to a global market
• Television’s relationship to the cultural logic of late capitalism
• The South and comedy /the sitcom South
• Television and the temporality of the South
• Broadcasting the sexual politics of the South
• Televisual representation of nation, class, sexuality, gender, youth and race
• Television and the nation-state / televisual nationhood
• Television and the representation of the urban and/or rural South
• Issues of authenticity and exploitation
• Television’s relationship to convergent media, including advertising and intermedia

500 word proposals should be sent to Gina Caison, Lisa Hinrichsen, and Stephanie Rountree at smallscreensouths@gmail.com by September 1, 2014. For those asked to contribute to the collection, completed essays of approximately 7,000 words will be due by January 15, 2015. Submissions from both established and emerging scholars are welcomed, as is work from multiple perspectives and disciplines.

Love Never Dies on Home Video

Andrew Lloyd Weber's musical Love Never Dies, the 2010 sequel to The Phantom of the Opera, is now available for home viewing. The film (released in 2012) is a re-staged and somewhat re-imagined version of the original London production (see  Wikipedia for details) and was produced in Australia in 2011; both the DVD and Blu-Ray versions include a special feature on the making of the play/film.

Love Never Dies offers an interesting look into the futures of the key characters from Phantom but has received mixed responses from fans. A number of clips from the musical numbers are featured at the show's YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/phantomloveneverdies, though (oddly enough) the film's trailer (below) is devoid of music beyond an instrumental theme.

Extrapolation Open Call

Not sure if I've posted this before-- 

Extrapolation has the following open call for papers on its publisher's website: 

Extrapolation was founded in 1959 by Thomas D. Clareson and was the first journal to publish academic work on science fiction and fantasy. It continues to be a leading, peer-reviewed, international journal in that specialized genre in the literature of popular culture.

It welcomes papers on all areas of speculative culture, including print, film, television, comic books and video games, and particularly encourages papers which consider popular texts within their larger cultural context.

The journal publishes a wide variety of critical approaches including but not limited to literary criticism, utopian studies, genre criticism, feminist theory, critical race studies, queer theory, and postcolonial theory. Extrapolation promotes innovative work which considers the place of speculative texts in contemporary culture. It is interested in promoting dialogue among scholars working within a number of traditions and in encouraging the serious study of popular culture.

We are particularly interested in the following areas of study: 

• Racial constructions in speculative genres 
• Children's and YA sf and fantasy 
• Sexualities 
• Fantastic motifs in mainstream texts 
• Gender and speculative texts 
• History of sf and fantasy 
• New weird fiction 
• Remakes, rewriting and retrofitting 
• Pulp sf and fantasy 
• The body in speculative texts 
• Posthumanism 
• Political sf and fantasy 
• Non-Western speculative traditions 
• Technoculture 

Please email submissions to Javier A. Martinez (extrapolation@utb.edu )

Essays should be approximately 4000-9000 words, written according to MLA standards and include a 100 word abstract. Neither embedded footnotes nor generated footnotes that some software systems make available should be used. Electronic submissions in MS Word are encouraged. The editors aim to respond to submissions within three months. Please do not send simultaneous submissions of articles to other publications.

Popular Preternaturaliana Now Online

We've just launched a new endeavor called Popular Preternaturaliana: Studying the Monstrous in Popular Culture at http://popularpreternaturaliana.blogspot.com/. The site is sponsored by the Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Legend Area and (like NEPCA Fantastic) hosted by The Virtual Society for the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages in the hopes of providing a place to promote further study and debate of the preternatural where ever and when ever it may appear.

In the future, calls for papers and other postings relating to the monstrous, gothic, and horror can be found on the new site. 

Michael A. Torregrossa
Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Legend Area Chair, Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association
Co-Founder, The Virtual Society for the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages

Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance CFP (6/1/13)

Essay Collection: Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance
Publication Date: 2013-06-01 (in 30 days)
Date Submitted: 2013-02-05
Announcement ID: 201091

Articles about urban fantasy and romance novels are invited for a new, multi-contributor collection.

During the last few decades, urban fantasy and paranormal romance novels have come to the forefront in the publishing world. Normative heroes and heroines have been joined by werewolves, vampires, mermaids, shape-shifters, centaurs and dragons, to name but a few. These magical creatures fill the pages of books and the screens of movie theaters in ever-increasing numbers.

Such a vast industry—one that generated at least 75 million readers in 2008 alone (and has been growing since)—should not be disregarded. This collection will offer critical examinations of both urban fantasy and paranormal romance.

The following categories suggest possibilities but are by no means exhaustive:
• Gender
• Race
• Sexuality
• Romance
• Desire
• Domesticity
• Power
• Monstrosity
• Witchcraft
• Fandom and/or Reception
• Transformation and/or Adaptation
• Vampires, Shapeshifters, and other Supernatural Creatures
• Hybridity
• Heroism
• Villainy
• Memory

What to Send:

300 - 500 word abstracts (or complete articles, if available) and CVs should be submitted by June 1, 2013. If an abstract is accepted for the collection, a full draft of the essay (5000 – 8000 words) will be required by December 1, 2013.

Abstracts and final articles should be submitted to: paranormalromance.urbanfantasy@gmail.com

Margo Collins and Nadine Farghaly
Email: paranormalromance.urbanfantasy@gmail.com

CW's Superrnatural CFP (5/15/13)

One more from supernaturaltelevision@gmail.com for the night:


Essay Collection: CW's "Supernatural" television
Publication Date: 2013-05-15 (in 18 days)
Date Submitted: 2013-01-22
Announcement ID: 200641

Articles are invited for an edited collection on issues related to any element of the CW television series Supernatural.

The following categories suggest possibilities but are by no means exhaustive:
• Monstrosity
• Fandom and/or Reception
• Transformation and/or Adaptation
• Gender
• Race
• Desire and Sexuality
• Hybridity
• Vampires
• Shapeshifters
• Ghosts and Hauntings
• Demons and Angels
• Heroism
• Villainy
• Desire
• History and Memory
• Family
• Power
• Possession and/or Mind Control

What to Send: 300 - 500 word abstracts (or complete articles, if available) and CVs should be submitted by May 15, 2013. If an abstract is accepted for the collection, a full draft of the essay (5000 – 8000 words) will be required by October 15, 2013.

Abstracts and final articles should be submitted to supernaturaltelevision@gmail.com. Please include “Supernatural Submission” in your subject line.

Dr. Margo Collins
Email: supernaturaltelevision@gmail.com

Vampire Diaries Collection CFP (5/1/13)

Almost missed this one (though I'm starting to feel like I'm advertising for supernaturaltelevision@gmail.com). The Vampire Diaries (2009-) is a very popular series and a spin-off on The Originals has recently been announced for the fall.


Essay Collection: "The Vampire Diaries"
Publication Date: 2013-05-01 (in 4 days)
Date Submitted: 2013-01-22
Announcement ID: 200642

Articles are invited for an edited collection on issues related to any element of The Vampire Diaries (either the original books or the CW’s television series).

The following categories suggest possibilities but are by no means exhaustive:

• Monstrosity
• Fandom and/or Reception
• Transformation and/or Adaptation
• Gender
• Race
• Vampirism
• Shapeshifters
• Hybridity
• Witchcraft
• Heroism
• Villainy
• Adolescence
• Desire
\• History
• Memory
• Domesticity
• Power
• Possession and/or Mind Control

What to Send: 300 - 500 word abstracts (or complete articles, if available) and CVs should be submitted by May 1, 2013. If an abstract is accepted for the collection, a full draft of the essay (5000 – 8000 words) will be required by October 1, 2013.

Abstracts and final articles should be submitted to supernaturaltelevision@gmail.com. Please include “Vampire Diaries Submission” in your subject line.

 Dr. Margo Collins
Email: supernaturaltelevision@gmail.com

Zombie/Comedy CFP (6/1/13)

Another zombie collection. (See also a CFP on The Walking Dead at our comics blog.)


Edited Collection: Zombies and Comedy
Publication Date: 2013-06-01
Date Submitted: 2013-01-30
Announcement ID: 200898

The recent re-animation of the zombie in popular culture has led to the creation of the “zombie romantic comedy,” or the zomromcom. Examples of zombie comedies can be found in books, movies, and on the internet. Articles are invited for an edited collection on issues related to any element of zombie comedies (romantic or otherwise).

The following categories suggest possibilities for exploration but are by no means exhaustive:

• Love and zombies/the undead
• Love in the postapocalyptic world
• Romance and monstrosity
• Fandom and/or reception
• Transformation and/or adaptation in zombie comedies
• Gender
• Race
• Hybridity
• History and Memory
• Sex and the undead
• The literary zombie comedy
• The cinematic zombie comedy
• Zombie comedies and the internet

What to Send: 300 - 500 word abstracts (or complete articles, if available) and CVs should be submitted by June 1, 2013. If an abstract is accepted for the collection, a full draft of the essay (5000 – 8000 words) will be required by November 1, 2013.

Abstracts and final articles should be submitted to supernaturaltelevision@gmail.com. Please include “ZomCom” in your subject line.

Dr. Margo Collins
Email: supernaturaltelevision@gmail.com

MTV's Teen Wolf Collection CFP (6/1/13)

Essay Collection: MTV's Teen Wolf
Publication Date: 2013-06-01
Date Submitted: 2013-02-19
Announcement ID: 201568

Articles are invited for an essay collection on the new MTV serial remake of Teen Wolf. In “Upright Citizens on All Fours: Nineteenth-Century Identity and the Image of the Werewolf,” Chantal Bourgault du Coudray notes that ‘an ever-growing body of scholarship utilises the concept of hybrid or heterogeneous identity. The hybrid identity is theorised and celebrated as a response to the demands of a fragmented, multi-dimensional, postmodern world, one in which shifting boundaries and a multiplicity of subject positions make it impossible to assume a homogeneous or stable subjectivity.’ Theorists such as Katherine Hayles and Donna Haraway discuss the implications of hybridity in the posthuman. Asa Simon Mittman and Peter J. Dendle deal with the monstrosity of hybridity. Many critics discuss iterations of the werewolf in literature and film. This volume aims to discuss the new MTV serial remake of Teen Wolf in terms of its connection to the popular and literary culture, though other approaches are welcome, as well.

The following categories suggest possibilities but are by no means exhaustive:

• Monstrosity and/or Hybridity
• Fandom and/or Reception
• Personal Transformation and/or Adaptation
• Genre Transformation and/or Adaptation
• Gender
• Race
• Desire and Sexuality
• Heroism and/or Villainy
• History and Memory
• Family
• Power

We are also interested in the intersections of Teen Wolf with:
• the werewolf in 19th century literary history
• the werewolf in 20th century literary history
• post humanism in teen culture
• the werewolf in the 1980s
• the werewolf in Comics (such as the werewolf in Dell comics, Marvel comics, Legends of the Dark Night)
• the werewolf in fairy tales and/or folk mythology
• the werewolf in American pulp fiction
• the werewolf in children’s literature
• the werewolf in adult television (True Blood, Doctor Who, Sanctuary, Grimm)
• the werewolf in games or anime

 What to Send: 300 - 500 word abstracts (or complete articles, if available) and CVs should be submitted by June 1, 2013. If an abstract is accepted for the collection, a full draft of the essay (5000 – 8000 words) will be required by January 1, 2014.

Abstracts and final articles should be submitted to supernaturaltelevision@gmail.com. Please include “Teen Wolf Submission” in your subject line.

Dr. Kamille Stone Stanton
supernaturaltelevision@gmail.com
Email: supernaturaltelevision@gmail.com