MAPACA 2019 CFP (6/31/2019; Pittsburgh 11/7-9/2019)

Call for Papers for #mapaca19
https://mapaca.net/newsletter/general/201904051912

Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association (MAPACA) 2019 Annual Conference November 7-9, 2019 Pittsburgh, PA — Pittsburgh Marriott City Center Hotel

Call for papers:

Proposals are welcome on all aspects of popular and American culture for inclusion in the 2019 Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association (MAPACA) conference in Pittsburgh, PA. Single papers, panels, roundtables, and alternative formats are welcome.

Proposals should take the form of 300-word abstracts, and may only be submitted to one appropriate area. For a list of areas and area chair contact information, visit mapaca.net/areas. General questions can be directed to mapaca@mapaca.net. The deadline for submission is Sunday, June 30, 2019.

MAPACA’s membership is comprised of college and university faculty, independent scholars and artists, and graduate and undergraduate students. MAPACA is an inclusive professional organization dedicated to the study of popular and American culture in all their multi-disciplinary manifestations. It is a regional division of the Popular Culture and American Culture Association, which, in the words of Popular Culture Association founder Ray Browne, is a “multi-disciplinary association interested in new approaches to the expressions, mass media and all other phenomena of everyday life.”

For more info, visit mapaca.net.

Information about #mapaca19

This year, our conference will be in Pittsburgh, PA on November 7-9 at the Pittsburgh Marriott City Center Hotel.

Pittsburgh Information

For information about events and food in Pittsburgh, please see Visit Pittsburgh’s website. Pittsburgh has a lot of great museums and restaurants, offers inexpensive public transport options throughout the region, and is also serviced by Lyft and Uber.

Pittsburgh: Zombie Capital of the World

Since George Romero released Night of the Living Dead in 1968, Pittsburgh has been associated with zombies and zombie fandom. From 1985’s Day of the Dead(shot near Pittsburgh) to 2004’s Shaun of the Dead (shot in the UK) to 2019’s Kingdom (shot in S. Korea), zombies have become a worldwide popular culture phenomenon, but Pittsburghers still claim ownership over the shambling undead. This year, we want you to propose papers and panels with a zombie theme!

If zombies aren’t your favorite, we still want you to bring us your non-zombie themed papers as well! We will never restrict our conference to just one theme.

CFP Messengers from the Stars 2018 Conference (expired)

Sorry to have missed posting this sooner.

Science Fiction and Fantasy International Conference Messengers from the Stars: Episode V – “Fragments of Humanity”

https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/03/05/science-fiction-and-fantasy-international-conference-messengers-from-the-stars

 

deadline for submissions: 

April 30, 2018

full name / name of organization: 

School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon

contact email: 

mensageirosdasestrelas@gmail.com

Science Fiction and Fantasy International Conference

Messengers from the Stars:  Episode V – “Fragments of Humanity”

School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon

University Lisbon Centre for English Studies

November 29-30, 2018

http://messengersfromthestars.letras.ulisboa.pt/conference-2018/

CALL FOR PAPERS

Science Fiction and Fantasy objects are a permanent part of today’s cultural industry.  From the margins to mainstream culture, their ubiquity demands critical debate beyond the preconception of pop culture made for mass entertainment. The University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies (ULICES) invites you to take part in the 5th International Conference Messengers From the Stars: On Science Fiction and Fantasy to be held at the School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon, on November 29-30, 2018. This year Episode V will focus on the theme “Fragments of Humanity.”

Since its very beginning, Fantasy and SF have questioned essential notions such as: “What does it mean to be human?”; “What are the boundaries of humanity?”; “Are we more or less human than our ancestors?”, among others. These recurrent themes emerged in 18th- and 19th-century writing, namely in the Gothic novel and in works such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) or in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), a book which celebrates its 200th birthday in 2018. Inspired by these pioneering texts and fed by advances in technology, such issues have become more and more complex in Fantasy and SF literature, cinema, TV series, comics and graphic novels, music, and other art forms. What is happening to the human body? Are we still human or are we becoming something else? Are we still whole or fragmented? Are we human, post-human, metahuman and/or transhuman? How can hybrids and monsters allow us to reflect on notions of self and identity? Must we redefine those notions? In that case, what is the role of A.I. in this redefinition? What is the impact of our fragmented humanity on our social environment? What may be the consequences in current and future cultures and their religious belief systems and creeds?

We welcome papers of 20 minutes as well as joint proposals for thematic panels consisting of 3 to 4 participants. Postgraduate and undergraduate students are also welcomed to participate.

Topics may include but are not limited to the following:

▪     Artificial Intelligence;
▪     Ecocriticism;
▪     Fantasy and SF;
▪     Fantasy, SF and ethics;
▪     Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (and later adaptations/reinterpretations of the novel);
▪     Monsters and Monstrosity;
▪     Post-Humanism and Transhumanism;
▪     The Self, Humanity and Identity;
▪     The Other;
▪     Utopias/Dystopias;
▪     Vampires, zombies, werewolves and other undead bodies.

Confirmed keynote speakers:

Filipe Furtado – Full Professor (Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas – Universidade Nova de Lisboa) and author of A Construção do Fantástico na Narrativa (The Construction of the Fantastic in Narrative)

Mike Carey – British writer of comic books, novels, and films. He is the author of the acclaimed novel the Girl with All the Gifts (2014) which was adapted on screen in 2016. His most recent novel, published in April 2017, is The Boy On the Bridge, a stand-alone novel set in the same world as The Girl With All the Gifts.

Deadlines:
Individual papers, as well as thematic panel proposals, should have 250 words maximum and be sent to mensageirosdasestrelas@gmail.com along with a short biographical note (100 words maximum) by Apr 30, 2018.

Notification of acceptance will be sent by June 4, 2018.

Working Languages: Portuguese and English

Registration[1]:
Early bird registration:  June 4 –14 September
80 € / Students: 40 €
Late bird registration: 14 September – 19 October
100 € / Students: 70 €

Note:
1    Only after proof of payment is registration effectively considered.
2    Participants are responsible for their own travelling arrangements and accommodation.
3    Undergraduate and post-graduate students must send proof of student status with their registration.
4    All sessions are free. However, participants who are not presenting (or co-authoring) and wish to have access to the conference materials and coffee breaks can benefit from a special registration rate: 20€. Registration: June 4 – 26 November.

---

[1] The fee includes attendance at all sessions, conference material, coffee breaks and a certificate of participation.

Last updated March 6, 2018
This CFP has been viewed 935 times. 

NEACIS 2015 Session

The Area is proud to sponsor a second session this year at the annual conference of the New England region of the American Conference for Irish Studies. The conference is being held at the University of West Haven on Friday, 20 November, and Saturday, 21 November.

NEACIS 2015 Conference

Saturday, November 21st: Session 6 (Kaplan 203, 3:45-5:00 PM)

Horrors of the Irish Imagination: Papers from the Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Legend Area of the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association

Organized by Michael A. Torregrossa, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Legend Area Chair

Chair: Christopher Dowd, University of New Haven

1. “Francis Crozier and the Mysterious Disappearance of the Franklin Expedition”

Donald Vescio, Worcester State University

Don Vescio is a faculty member of Department of English at Worcester State University.  After serving ten years as Worcester State’s Chief Information Office/Vice President of Information Technologies and two years as Vice President of Enrollment Management and Marketing, Don now focuses his energies on teaching undergraduate and graduate students in a variety of disciplines.  His research interests are in critical theory, narratological analysis, and information design. 

2. “Louis MacNeice’s Bogeymen”

Samuel Robertson, Suffolk County Community College 

Sam Robertson is an Associate Professor of English at Suffolk County Community College.  He received his Ph.D. from New York University.  Though he teaches a wide range of courses, and considers himself a Generalist, his specialty is twentieth-century Northern Irish poetry.  He has written on such figures as John Hewitt, Louis MacNeice, Michael Longley, and Derek Mahon.  He lives in Brooklyn and enjoys spending summers in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

3. “There’s Something Rotten in Denmark Ireland: Irish Zombie Media and the Irish ‘Other’ ”

Kristine Larsen, Central Connecticut State University

Dr. Kristine Larsen is Professor of Astronomy and Faculty Coordinator of the Copernican Observatory and Planetarium at Central Connecticut State University. Her teaching and scholarship focus on the intersections between science and society, including science education, the history of science, and scientific motifs in literature, television, and film. Her research on popular culture has focused on The Walking Dead, Doctor Who, the Resident Evil series of films, Lost, Harry Potter, Dominion, and The Last Mimzy, and in particular the fantasy works of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Andrzej Sapkowski. She is the author of Stephen Hawking: A Biography and Cosmology 101, and co-editor of The Mythological Dimensions of Doctor Who and The Mythological Dimensions of Neil Gaiman. Her twenty-five year career as a science educator has been recognized by the 2014 Connecticut Science Center's Petit Family Foundation Women in Science Leadership Award, the 2013 Walter Scott Houston award of the North East Region of the Astronomical League, the 2007 Distinguished CCSU Alumni Service Award, and the 2001 CCSU Excellence in Teaching Award.

4. “Have the Irish Doomed Civilization?: Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Its Enduring Legacy in the  21st Century”

Michael A. Torregrossa (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, and his work has been published in academic journals and edited collections. Michael is founder of The Alliance for the Promotion of Research on the Matter of Britain and co-founder, with Carl James Grindley, of The Virtual Society for the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages; he also serves as editor for these organizations’ various blogs and moderator of their discussion lists. Besides these activities, he is currently Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Legend Area Chair for NEPCA, a position he has held since 2009, and organizes sessions for their annual conference in the fall (and other conferences like this one) and maintains the area’s blogs.

For more information on the Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Legend Area of the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association please visit our blog at http://nepcafantastic.blogspot.com/.

CFP UNApocalypse: Exploring Dystopianism in Texts (Grad Conf) (12/1/15; Alabama 2/26-27/16)

Looks like a great idea:

UNApocalypse: Exploring Dystopianism in Texts
http://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/node/62588
full name / name of organization:
University of North Alabama English Department
contact email:
ehughes@una.edu

Call for Papers:
The University of North Alabama English Department
Announces the 7th Annual Alabama Regional Graduate Conference in English
February 26-27, 2016

UNApocalypse: Exploring Dystopianism in Texts

Recently, there has been a resurgence of critical interest in dystopianism, which is mirrored by dystopic themes in contemporary literature and pop culture like The Walking Dead, The Hunger Games series, and dystopian graphic novels. The University of North Alabama’s Department of English invites proposals for scholarly papers which investigate any aspect of dystopianism or its converse, utopianism, in language, literature, or other media. For example, topics might include readings of works within the genre of utopic or dystopic literature, but we also welcome examinations of these themes in texts. We are interested in receiving examinations of texts from any time period or country of origin, but we are particularly interested in contemporary and nontraditional texts or media.

Possible topics and representative texts may include (but are not limited to):
Film and film adaptations
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
YA literature and novels
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Television shows
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
Comics and graphic novels
Divergent series (novels and film adaptations)
Studies of fan fiction
V for Vendetta (graphic novel or film adaptation)
Contemporary and classic literature
The Republic by Plato
Marxist and neo-Marxist criticism
Utopia by Thomas More
Gender studies and feminist theory
Zombie genre films, TV shows, novels, and graphic novels
Postcolonial theory
Science fiction and fantasy
Queer theory
Satire and political commentary
Diversity in dystopian texts
Post-apocalyptic texts

The keynote speaker for this conference will be announced at a later date.

We welcome proposals from current students and recent graduates (within the last five years) of MA or PhD programs in English, Film Studies, or Cultural Studies. Presentations should be twenty-minutes in length and may explore a range of topics addressing our theme in relation to literature, film, or other new media. Presentations that utilize audiovisual presentations are encouraged.

Proposals:
Please upload proposals of 250-300 words by December 1, 2015 to the conference website at www.una.edu/englishgradcon. You may also send proposals directly to Eric Hughes at ehughes@una.edu. Suggestions for panels are also welcomed. All proposals will receive a decision on acceptance by January 15, 2016.

Travel Scholarships:
A limited number of travel scholarships for out-of-town presenters are available and must be made at time of proposal submission. Presenters will be notified of travel scholarship award when they are notified of acceptance. More information and the application can be found on our website: www.una.edu/englishgradcon

Prize for Best Paper:
At the closing session of the conference, presenters will be asked to vote on the three best papers presented at the conference. Following the conference, a panel of judges will award first, second, and third place standing to these three papers with a cash prize awarded to the top paper.

Information:
Further information on the conference, the University of North Alabama, our department, and the Florence area is available on our website: www.una.edu/englishgradcon.

By web submission at 06/17/2015 - 19:35

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

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

Journal of Popular Culture December 2012

Catching up:

The Journal of Popular Culture

Vol. 45.6, December 2012

Editorial Gary Hoppenstand

Articles
“Terror in Horror Genres: The Global Media and the Millennial Zombie” by Nicole Birch-Bayley
“Edith Wharton Meets Aquaman: The Glimpses of the Moon and Imperiled Male Culture in Entourage” by Donna Campbell
“Failure to Launch: Not-So-Superheroes in Gravity’s Rainbow and Superfolks” by Megan Condis
“Ernst Benjamin Salomo Raupach’s Vampire Story ‘Wake Not the Dead’” by Heide Crawford
“Challenging Lilywhite Hollywood: African Americans and the Demand for Racial Equality in the Motion Picture Industry, 1963-1974” by Andrew Dawson
“The Accidental Supermom: Superheroines and Maternal Performativity, 1963-1980” by Laura Mattoon D’Amore
“Smiles of Oblivion: Demonic Clowns and Doomed Puppets as Fantastic Figures of Absurdity, Chaos, and Misanthropy in the Writings of Thomas Ligotti” by Jason Marc Harris
“The Female Link: Citation and Continuity in Watchmen” by Erin M. Keating
“A Myth about the Present: The Shaw Brothers’ The Monkey Goes West Series in the 1960s” by Yan Liang
“Shock Corridors: The New Rhetoric of Horror in Gus Van Sant’s Elephant” by Jennifer A. Rich

BOOK REVIEWS
Hatfield, Charles. Hand of Fire: The Comics Art of Jack Kirby. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2012. Reviewed by Matthew Costello.
Athanasourelis, John Paul. Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe: The Hard-Boiled Detective Transformed. McFarland & Company, 2012. Reviewed by Len Gutkin.
Gill, D.C. How We Are Changed by War: A Study of Letters and Diaries from Colonial Conflicts to Operation Iraqi Freedom. New York: Routledge, 2010. Reviewed by Bob Johnson.
Vinegar, Aron. I am a Monument, On Learning from Las Vegas. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008. Reviewed by Sally L. Levine.
Lehman, Katherine J. Those Girls: Single Women in Sixties and Seventies Popular Culture. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2011. Reviewed by Chadwick Roberts.
Wetzel, Richard D. The Globalization of Music in History. New York: Routledge, 2012. Reviewed by Mindy Clegg.
Hochscherf, Tobias and James Leggott, eds. British Science Fiction Film and Television: Critical Essays. Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland, 2011. Reviewed by Julie Anne Taddeo.

Essential Supernatural Out Now

Insight Editions has recently released the following:

Knight, Nicholas, and Christopher Cerasi. The Essential Supernatural: On the Road with Sam and Dean Winchester. Foreword Eric Kripke. San Rafael, CA: Insight Editions, 2012. Print. 978-1-60887-145-2

Profusely illustrated, this over-sized book serves as both a guide to and celebration of the first seven seasons of the Supernatural television series. The book includes a wealth of photographs from the show, commentary by the cast and crew, and a variety of extras for the fans. The book concludes with predictions for the upcoming season eight and a short episode guide devoted to seasons one through seven.

Modern Monsters on Film

Another set of trailers for new and upcoming films:

Halloween at Design Toscano

Design Toscano offers a wealth of Halloween- and Gothic-themed products (including zombies, vampires, skeletons, reapers, witches, and, of course, their signature gargoyles) at their website. Details and images at http://www.designtoscano.com/category/more+themes/halloween+decor.do?sortby=bestSellers&page=all.

ALA Gothic Symposium CFP

Call for Papers (PDF)
American Literature Association Symposium
“Fear and Form:
Aspects of the Gothic in American Culture”

Keynote Speakers:
Teresa A. Goddu, Vanderbilt University
Eric Savoy, University of Montreal
February 21-23, 2013

ALA symposia provide opportunities for scholars to meet in pleasant settings, present papers, and share ideas and resources. The February 2013 symposium will meet in the self-proclaimed “most haunted city in America” and focus on the role of the Gothic in American literary culture. We welcome proposals for presentations on the place of the Gothic in the writings of both popular and canonical American authors (Brown, Poe, Hawthorne, Faulkner, O’Connor, Wright, Morrison, and others). We are particularly interested in studies relating Gothic modes to other forms, including the historical novel, poetry, the graphic novel, and detective fiction. In addition, we welcome studies exploring the roles of ghosts, vampires, demons, zombies, haunted houses, ancestral curses in American literary culture, including film. Proposals for panels and roundtable discussions are also encouraged.
Location: Hyatt Regency Savannah
Two W. Bay Street
Savannah, Georgia 31401

Hotel Rate: The Hyatt is offering a special rate of $150 (plus tax) per night for a single or double room.
Conference Fee: $150 (includes two meals and two receptions)
Conference Directors:
Alfred Bendixen, Texas A & M University
Rene H. Trevino, Texas A & M University
Please email all proposals to Rene Trevino
trevinreo@tamu.edu
Before October 1, 2012


Conference Details: The American Literature Association will meet in the Hyatt Regency in Savannah for a symposium on the Gothic in American Culture, February 21-23, 2013.
Please plan to stay in the conference hotel as this helps us meet our commitment to the hotel and keeps our rates low. The Hyatt is ideally located on the waterfront and right next to the largest historic district in the United States.

Sessions run Friday and Saturday, February 22-23. On Friday September 22rd, there will be a luncheon as well as an evening reception featuring a key note speaker. The second luncheon will be Saturday February 24, with a closing keynote and reception scheduled for the evening. Meal preferences will be sent to conference participants at a later date. The conference fee of $150 includes two lunches and two receptions.

Individuals may propose papers or panels by emailing the conference director, Rene Trevino, at trevinreo@tamu.edu no later than October 1, 2012. The proposal should include the title of the presentation or panel, an abstract that provides the conference director with a clear idea of the material that will be covered, a brief vita or description of the presenter’s qualifications, and complete emails for all participants. The proposal should be both pasted into an email and sent as an attachment (preferably in WORD). All emails will be acknowledged in a timely manner. The conference directors welcome proposals for roundtables and panels that deal with the development of important genres and literary movements.
Please note that no audiovisual equipment will be available for the symposium.

Those proposing papers and/or panels will be informed of acceptances in mid October Participants will be asked to make their hotel reservations immediately and to pre-register using the material posted at the end of this announcement. A program will be placed on the website prior to the conference and printed programs will be available at the symposium.

ALA Guidelines: The most common ALA format is a time slot of one hour and twenty minutes with three papers and a chair. This permits time for discussion and three papers of approximately 20 minutes (or nine typed double-spaced pages). Organizers of panels are free to use other formats provided they respect the time limits. Furthermore, the ALA encourages panel organizers to experiment with innovative formats including discussion groups and panels featuring more speakers and briefer papers. Chairs will make sure that the panels start and end on time and that no speaker goes beyond the allotted time limit. We prefer that chairs not present papers on the panels that they are moderating, and no one may present more than one paper at an ALA symposium.

The conference fee covers the costs of the conference including two meals and two receptions. We encourage all of those who are on the program to pre-register. The conference fee is $150 for all participants. We regret that we are unable to offer a lower rate for graduate students and independent scholars for this symposium.

ALA Membership: Membership in the ALA is not required in order to propose or present a paper. In fact, technically the members of the American Literature Association are the various author societies. Individuals may keep informed about the activities of the ALA by checking our website (www.americanliterature.org), which is the primary source for information about ALA activities

The easiest way to find out about the conference and all ALA activities is by consulting our website: www.americanliterature.org

Please note that the American Literature Association maintains the lowest conference fees of any major scholarly organization because it operates without a paid staff. If you have any questions that are not answered by this announcement, please contact the conference director or Alfred Bendixen, Executive Director of the ALA, at abendixen@tamu.edu.

Dead Inside (Zombie Collection) CFP Update

UPDATE. CFP The Walking Dead, Essay Collection.
Call for Papers Date: 2012-08-13 (in 6 days)
Date Submitted: 2012-07-17
Announcement ID: 195841

UPDATE for The Walking Dead, Essay Collection: I will also be accepting PROPOSALS for articles for this essay collection by the August 13, 2012 deadline (although ideally the essays should be underway)

Dead Inside: The Walking Dead and the Problem of Meaning in the New Millennium

In the early twenty-first century, zombies are everywhere—in film (Land of the Dead, 28 Days Later, Dead Snow, Rammbock, The Horde), fiction (Stephen King’s Cell, Colson Whitehead’s Zone One, Max Brooks’ World War Z, John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Handling the Undead), social movements (zombie walks and the Zombie Research Society ), classrooms (Zombie Studies) and even politics (Daniel Drezner’s Theories of International Politics and Zombies). Undoubtedly one of the most sustained and complex representations of the modern zombie, though, is AMC’s television series, The Walking Dead, based on Robert Kirkman’s series of comics.

I am seeking essays for a scholarly collection that will explore the complexities of The Walking Dead in relation to the multiple forms of zombie revival, and that will address the ways in which the zombie articulates the crucial theoretical and political debates of the new century.

I am particularly interested in essays about how zombies, and narratives about zombies, engage problems of meaning. In the first episode of season one of The Walking Dead, after protagonist Rick Grimes wakes up in a hospital to a post-apocalyptic world, he encounters a door on which the words “Do Not Open. Dead Inside” are painted. Zombies claw at the opening. The moment encapsulates how zombies often function to signal loss or lack—of self, of consciousness, of history, of political efficacy, of meaning itself. How does the series, in its many contexts—literary, cinematic, historical, political—address compelling contemporary problems of meaning, of how we find and attribute significance in our lives. Essays should, then, take up The Walking Dead as a crystallization of one of the many contemporary problems of meaning. Some generative questions/contexts include:

--Why have zombies seen such a resurgence in the twenty-first century, after their apparent demise in the 1990s? How does The Walking Dead represent an evolution in the history of zombie fiction and film?

--How do zombies feature in imaginings of the end of the world? How do post-apocalyptic narratives with zombies (The Walking Dead, World War Z, Romero’s Dead cycle) differ from those without (The Road, Survivors, Jericho)?

--How do fictional, cinematic, and televisual zombies illuminate philosophical debates over the conceivability of the zombie and what the possible existence (or lack thereof) of zombies says about human consciousness and identity?

--How do zombie narratives encode politics and offer forms of social critique (notably of global capitalism), as well as embodying forms of utopian political thinking?

--How do zombies serve as figures of contagion—as a virus that infects both the body and the mind (memes, flash mobs, etc.)? What meanings inhere in zombies’ contagiousness?

--How do zombies engage with recent theorists of the posthuman?

Please send your essay of no more than 30 pages to Dawn Keetley, Associate Professor of English, at Lehigh University, 35 Sayre Drive, Bethlehem PA 18015. Email: dek7@lehigh.edu. The deadline is Monday August 13, 2012. All disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives are welcome. I will be happy to address any questions via email at any time. I am in communication with McFarland (which has been publishing the best books on zombies) about a contract for the collection.

Dawn Keetley
Department of English
Lehigh University
Drown Hall
Bethlehem PA 18015
(610) 758-5926
Email: dek7@lehigh.edu

CFP UK Zombie Conference

Zombies: Walking, Eating and Performance
Location: United Kingdom
Call for Papers Date: 2012-11-20
Date Submitted: 2012-05-22
Announcement ID: 194700

Zombies: Walking, Eating and Performance a one day symposium Plymouth University, UK  on 13 April 2013
CALL FOR PAPERS deadline for proposals: 30 November 2012

The purpose of this symposium is to explore, interrogate and celebrate zombies as a cultural phenomenon through the paradigms of performance, as well as models of performance through the quintessential zombie activities of eating and walking. It will examine the zombie as protagonist, performer, nomad, pilgrim, traveller, tourist, nightmare, underclass and demonstrator. Zombies: Walking, Eating and Performance will consider the derided and resilient figure of the zombie as metaphor and character; the zombie as vehicle for protest and for public self-expression.

Contributors to the Zombies: Walking, Eating and Performance symposium are invited to develop discussions and dialogues around the practice and theory of zombie performance in the context of any media (film, live art, participatory performance, video gaming, comics, etc). Proposals for 20 minute papers in a variety of formats are welcome from performers, practitioners, researchers and any combination therein.

We particularly invite proposals for papers that take an interdisciplinary approach to the living dead, as well as those that reflect on the nature and resonance of the zombie mythos now , rather than historically (although contributors may wish to reference past manifestations to tease out causes and connections).

Possible topics, themes and approaches include (but are not limited to):
 * Contemporary walks of the living dead
 * Acting dead
 * Zombies as consumers
 * The kinaesthetics and proxemics of zombie movement
 * Cross-cultural zombies and their translations
 * The zombie as character
 * The re-presentation of death and resurrection
 * The walking dead versus the running dead
 * Zombies on the streets and in the home
 * Hunger for the living/Feeding off liveness
 * The living dead as protest mechanism
 * Passivity and agency among the living dead
 * Alternative zombies
 * Zombies and taboo
 * Political acts of the contemporary living dead
 * Ethics of survival in zombie landscapes
 * Flesh-eating and consumption as ritual and cultural performance
 * Zombie physiology and other impossible bodies
 * The zombie as social metaphor
 * Collectivism and sociability in zombie flash mobs and parades
 * Zombie gaming and the virtual living dead
 * Remaking space through dead marches

Proposals for performative presentations and video papers are also welcome, as well as papers that combine 'traditional', performative and video elements – but please note that all presentations must be no longer than 20 minutes in length in total. The makers of video papers must be present at the symposium. Performative papers must be possible with limited technical resources.

Full written papers will be reviewed for possible publication in a forthcoming publication, Zombies: Walking, Eating and Performance. More information will be provided to delegates.

 For full details of how to submit a proposal, please visit: http://www.plymouth.ac.uk/pages/view.asp?page=38990.

This symposium is being organized by the Theatre, Dance & Performance Research Group at Plymouth University, a constituent of the Research Centre for Humanities, Music & Performing Arts (HuMPA). The organising committee comprises Phil Smith, Roberta Mock, Lee Miller and Kayla Parker.

For more information, please email: livingdead@plymouth.ac.uk.

Prof Roberta Mock Plymouth University 0(1752) 585033
Email: livingdead@plymouth.ac.uk
Visit the website at http://www.plymouth.ac.uk/pages/view.asp?page=38990.

Dead Inside: The Walking Dead and the Problem of Meaning in the New Millennium (8/13/12)

Dead Inside: The Walking Dead and the Problem of Meaning in the New Millennium
Call for Papers Date: 2012-08-13
Date Submitted: 2012-03-30
Announcement ID: 193618

Dead Inside: The Walking Dead and the Problem of Meaning in the New Millennium

In the early twenty-first century, zombies are everywhere—in film (Land of the Dead, 28 Days Later, Dead Snow, Rammbock, The Horde), fiction (Stephen King’s Cell, Colson Whitehead’s Zone One, Max Brooks’ World War Z, John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Handling the Undead), social movements (zombie walks and the Zombie Research Society ), classrooms (Zombie Studies) and even politics (Daniel Drezner’s Theories of International Politics and Zombies). Undoubtedly one of the most sustained and complex representations of the modern zombie, though, is AMC’s television series, The Walking Dead, based on Robert Kirkman’s series of comics.

I am seeking essays for a scholarly collection that will explore the complexities of The Walking Dead in relation to the multiple forms of zombie revival, and that will address the ways in which the zombie articulates the crucial theoretical and political debates of the new century.

I am particularly interested in essays about how zombies, and narratives about zombies, engage problems of meaning. In the first episode of season one of The Walking Dead, after protagonist Rick Grimes wakes up in a hospital to a post-apocalyptic world, he encounters a door on which the words “Do Not Open. Dead Inside” are painted. Zombies claw at the opening. The moment encapsulates how zombies often function to signal inner deadness or absence—the loss of self, of consciousness, of history, of political efficacy, of meaning itself. How does the series, in its many contexts (literary, cinematic, historical, political, address compelling contemporary problems of meaning, of how we find and attribute significance in our lives? Essays should, then, take up The Walking Dead as a crystallization of one of the many contemporary problems of meaning. Some generative questions/contexts include:

--Why have zombies seen such a resurgence in the twenty-first century, after their apparent demise in the 1990s? How does The Walking Dead represent an evolution in the history of zombie fiction and film?

--How do zombies feature in imaginings of the end of the world? How do post-apocalyptic narratives with zombies (The Walking Dead, World War Z, Romero’s Dead cycle) differ from those without (The Road, Survivors, The Book of Eli)?

--How do fictional, cinematic, and televisual zombies illuminate philosophical debates over the conceivability of the zombie and what the possible existence (or lack thereof) of zombies says about human consciousness and identity?

--How do zombie narratives encode politics and offer forms of social critique (notably of global capitalism), as well as embodying forms of utopian political thinking?

--How do zombies serve as figures of contagion—as a virus that infects both the body and the mind (memes, flash mobs, etc.)? What meanings inhere in zombies’ contagiousness?

--How do zombies engage with recent theorists of the posthuman?

Please send your essay of no more than 30 pages to Dawn Keetley, Associate Professor of English, at Lehigh University, 35 Sayre Drive, Bethlehem PA 18015. Email: dek7@lehigh.edu. The deadline is Monday August 13, 2012. All disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives are welcome. I will be happy to address any questions via email at any time. McFarland (which has been publishing the best books on zombies) is interested in publishing this collection.




Dawn Keetley, Department of English, Drown Hall, Lehigh University, Bethlehem PA 18015.
Email: dek7@lehigh.edu

Zombielore in Film and Literature Collection CFP (8/1/12)

This call for papers is an online submission for any recent conference papers that attempt to decode the fascination of zombielore through analytical and academic research. We are editing together an anthology, the first of its kind, that covers the widespread status of zombies in film but also follows the lack of lore in literature. We will be focusing largely on the latter in order to spur an interest in discovering why this is so. Submissions are open beginning immediately with a deadline of August 1, 2012. Please send original, unpublished works to the contact email. Thank you and good luck.

Negean Mohi
Florida Atlantic University
CU Bldg. 97, Room Ste. 306
777 Glades Road
Boca Raton, FL 33431-0991
Phone: (561) 297-2922

Email: nmohi1@fau.edu

Monsters in America

Monsters in America: Our Historical Obsession with the Hideous and the Haunting
By W. Scott Poole

Imprint: Baylor University Press
Hardback, 295 pages $29.95
Published: 15th October 2011
ISBN: 9781602583146
Format: 9in x 6in
24 b/w illustrations
Subjects: Cultural Studies, History, American History

About the Book:
Salem witches, frontier wilderness beasts, freak show oddities, alien invasions, Freddie Krueger. From our colonial past to the present, the monster in all its various forms has been a staple of American culture. A masterful survey of our grim and often disturbing past, Monsters in America uniquely brings together history and culture studies to expose the dark obsessions that have helped create our national identity.

Monsters are not just fears of the individual psyche, historian Scott Poole explains, but are concoctions of the public imagination, reactions to cultural influences, social change, and historical events. Conflicting anxieties about race, class, gender, sexuality, religious beliefs, science, and politics manifest as haunting beings among the populace. From Victorian-era mad scientists to modern-day serial killers, new monsters appear as American society evolves, paralleling fluctuating challenges to the cultural status quo. Consulting newspaper accounts, archival materials, personal papers, comic books, films, and oral histories, Poole adroitly illustrates how the creation of the monstrous "other" not only reflects society's fears but shapes actual historical behavior and becomes a cultural reminder of inhuman acts.

Monsters in America is now online at www.monstersinamerica.com. Visit the new website for more about the book, upcoming events, and to keep up with Scott Poole's blog.

\

Contents:
Introduction: The Bloody Chords of Memory

1. Monstrous Beginnings
2. Goth Americana
3. Weird Science
4. Alien Invasions
5. Deviant Bodies
6. Haunted Houses
7. Undead Americans

Author Biography:

W. Scott Poole grew up in love with monsters. Now a tenured professor of American History at the College of Charleston, South Carolina, he teaches popular courses on America and its monsters as well as on the image of the Devil in religion and popular culture. He is the author of several books including Satan in America: The Devil We Know and is a regular contributor to www.popmatters.com, an international magazine of cultural criticism.

New Horror Studies from McFarland

Theorizing Twilight: Critical Essays on What’s at Stake in a Post-Vampire World
Edited by Maggie Parke and Natalie Wilson

Print ISBN: 978-0-7864-6350-3
EBook ISBN: 978-0-7864-8912-1
notes, bibliographies, index
253pp. softcover (6 x 9) 2011
Price: $35.00


About the Book
Since the publication of Twilight in 2005, Stephenie Meyer’s four-book saga about the tortured relationship between human heroine Bella Swan and her vampire love Edward Cullen has become a world-wide sensation--inciting screams of delight, sighs of derision, and fervent pronouncements. Those looking deeper into its pages and on screen can find intriguing subtexts about everything from gender, race, sexuality, and religion.

The 15 essays in this book examine the texts, the films, and the fandom, exploring the series’ cultural reach and offering one of the first thorough analyses of the saga.


Table of Contents

Acknowledgments v
Introduction 1

Part I. Twilight as Pop Cultural Artifact: Pilgrimages, Fan Culture, and Film Adaptations
The Vampire Capital of the World: Commerce and Enchantment in Forks, Washington
TANYA ERZEN 11
Fanpires: Utilizing Fan Culture in Event Film Adaptations
MAGGIE PARKE 25
The Hero and the Id: A Psychoanalytic Inquiry into the Popularity of Twilight
HEATHER ANASTASIU 41
Someday My Vampire Will Come? Society’s (and the Media’s) Lovesick Infatuation with Prince- Like Vampires
COLETTE MURPHY 56
Team Bella: Fans Navigating Desire, Security, and Feminism
ANANYA MUKHERJEA 70

Part II. Once Upon a Twilight: Fairy Tales, Byronic (Anti) Heroes, Post- Feminist Romance, and Growing Up in a Twilight World
“How Old Are You?” Representations of Age in the Saga
ASHLEY BENNING 87
Read Only as Directed: Psychology, Intertextuality, and Hyperreality in the Series
ANGELA TENGA 102
Torn Between Two Lovers: Twilight Tames Wuthering Heights
SARAH WAKEFIELD 117
Rewriting the Byronic Hero: How the Twilight Saga Turned “Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know” into a Teen Fiction Phenomenon
JESSICA GROPER 132
A Post- Feminist Romance: Love, Gender and Intertextuality in Stephenie Meyer’s Saga
HILA SHACHAR 147

Part III. Twilight Through an Intersectional Lens: Patriarchy, White Privilege, Heteronormativity, Rape Culture, Religion
Maybe Edward Is the Most Dangerous Thing Out There: The Role of Patriarchy
MELISSA MILLER 165
Denial and Salvation: The Twilight Series and Heteronormative Patriarchy
ASHLEY DONNELLY 178
It’s a Wolf Thing: The Quileute Werewolf /Shape- Shifter Hybrid as Noble Savage
NATALIE WILSON 194
Violence, Agency, and the Women of Twilight
ANNE TORKELSON 209
Un-biting the Apple and Killing the Womb: Genesis, Gender, and Gynocide
LINDSEY ISSOW AVERILL 224

About the Contributors 239
Index 243


About the Author
Maggie Parke is completing her doctorate in film and new media at the National Institute for Excellence in the Creative Industries at Bangor University, Wales. She has published in theJournal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds and is currently the head of development for Elfin Productions.
Natalie Wilson pens one of the only academic blogs analyzing Twilight and its cultural impact. She teaches at Cal State San Marcos in the Department of Literature and Writing and in the women’s studies program.



Seduced by Twilight: The Allure and Contradictory Messages of the Popular Saga
Natalie Wilson

Print ISBN: 978-0-7864-6042-7
EBook ISBN: 978-0-7864-8561-1
notes, bibliography, index
242pp. softcover (6 x 9) 2011
Price: $35.00

About the Book
Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga has maintained a tight grip on the contemporary cultural imagination. This timely and critical work examines how the Twilight series offers addictively appealing messages about love, romance, sex, beauty and body image, and how these charged themes interact with cultural issues regarding race, class, gender and sexuality. Through a careful analysis of the texts, the fandom and the current socio-historical climate, this work argues that the success of the Twilight series stems chiefly from Meyer’s negotiation of cultural mores.Table of Contents


Table of Contents:

Preface and Acknowledgments 1
Introduction: A Post-Twilight World 5

1. The Allure of the Vampire, the Danger of the Wolf: Or, Why to Avoid Big, Bad Shape-shifters in Favor of Knights in Sparkling Armor 15
2. Bitten by Romance: Happy Twilight-Ever-After 41
3. Vamping Femininity: Twilight as (Anti?) Feminist Fairy Tale, Or, We Can’t All Be Slayers 61
4. The Dawning of New Men: Hegemonic Masculinity, Sparkly White Male Vampires, and Ab-tastic Wolves of Color 83
5. Sexuality Eclipsed: The Taming of Female Sexuality via Vampire Abstinence 106
6. The Soul of the Vampire: Sparkly Mormons, Female Eves, and Unconverted Wolves 133
7. Got Vampire Privilege? Or, Why You Should Marry an Undead White, Wealthy, Heterosexual Mormon 157
8. Consuming Desires: Can You Buy That Twilight Feeling? 180

Conclusion: You Have a Choice, and It Need Not Be Edward or Jacob 205
Chapter Notes 209
Bibliography 219


Index 229


About the Author
Natalie Wilson pens one of the only academic blogs analyzing Twilight and its cultural impact. She teaches at Cal State San Marcos in the Department of Literature and Writing and in the women’s studies program.



Generation Zombie: Essays on the Living Dead in Modern Culture
Edited by Stephanie Boluk and Wylie Lenz

Print ISBN: 978-0-7864-6140-0
EBook ISBN: 978-0-7864-8673-1
notes, bibliography, index
268pp. softcover (7 x 10) 2011
Price: $45.00

About the Book
Growing from their early roots in Caribbean voodoo to their popularity today, zombies are epidemic. Their presence is pervasive, whether they are found in video games, street signs, hard drives, or even international politics. These eighteen original essays by an interdisciplinary group of scholars examine how the zombie has evolved over time, its continually evolving manifestations in popular culture, and the unpredictable effects the zombie has had on late modernity. Topics covered include representations of zombies in films, the zombie as environmental critique, its role in mass psychology and how issues of race, class and gender are expressed through zombie narratives. Collectively, the work enhances our understanding of the popularity and purposes of horror in the modern era.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Generation Z, the Age of Apocalypse
(Stephanie Boluk and Wylie Lenz) 1

Zombies as Internal Fear or Threat
(Kim Paffenroth) 18
White Zombie and the Creole: William Seabrook’s The Magic Island and American Imperialism in Haiti
(Gyllian Phillips) 27
The Origin of the Zombie in American Radio and Film: B- Horror, U.S. Empire, and the Politics of Disavowal
(Chris Vials) 41
The Eco-Zombie: Environmental Critique in Zombie Fiction
(Sarah Juliet Lauro) 54
Lost Bodies/Lost Souls: Night of the Living Dead and Deathdream as Vietnam Narrative
(Karen Randell) 67
Shambling Towards Mount Improbable to Be Born: American Evolutionary Anxiety and the Hopeful Monsters of Matheson’s I Am Legendand Romero’s Dead Films
(Sean Moreland) 77
Ztopia: Lessons in Post- Vital Politics in George Romero’s Zombie Films
(Tyson E. Lewis) 90
Soft Murders: Motion Pictures and Living Death in Diary of the Dead
(Randy Laist) 101
Mass Psychology and the Analysis of the Zombie: From Suggestion to Contagion
(Phillip Mahoney) 113
Gray Is the New Black: Race, Class, and Zombies
(Aalya Ahmad) 130
Cyberpunk and the Living Dead
(Andrea Austin) 147
The End Begins: John Wyndham’s Zombie Cozy
(Terry Harpold) 156
Zombies in a “Deep, Dark Ocean of History”: Danny Boyle’s Infected and John Wyndham’s Triffids as Metaphors of Postwar Britain
(Nicole LaRose) 165
Dead and Live Life: Zombies, Queers, and Online Sociality
(Shaka McGlotten) 182
The E- Dead: Zombies in the Digital Age
(Brendan Riley) 194
A Brain Is a Terrible Thing to Waste: Isolation U. and the Campus Zombie
(Brian Greenspan) 206
Rhetoric Goes Boom(er): Agency, Networks, and Zombies at Play
(Scott Reed) 219
The National Strategy for Zombie Containment: Myth Meets Activism in Post–9/11 America
(Christopher Zealand) 231

About the Contributors 249
Index 253


About the Author
Stephanie Boluk is a postdoctoral fellow in the Media Studies program at Vassar College. Wylie Lenz is a Ph.D. candidate in the English Department at the University of Florida.

Race, Oppression and the Zombie: Essays on Cross-Cultural Appropriations of the Caribbean Tradition

Edited by Christopher M. Moreman and Cory James Rushton 

Print ISBN: 978-0-7864-5911-7
EBook ISBN: 978-0-7864-8800-1
bibliography, filmography, index
240pp. softcover (7 x 10) 2011
Price: $45.00

About the Book
The figure of the zombie is a familiar one in world culture, acting as a metaphor for "the other," a participant in narratives of life and death, good and evil, and of a fate worse than death--the state of being "undead." This book explores the phenomenon from its roots in Haitian folklore to its evolution on the silver screen and to its radical transformation during the 1960s countercultural revolution. Contributors from a broad range of disciplines here examine the zombie and its relationship to colonialism, orientalism, racism, globalism, capitalism and more--including potential signs that the zombie hordes may have finally achieved oversaturation.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Race, Colonialism, and the Evolution of the “Zombie”
CORY JAMES RUSHTON and CHRISTOPHER M. MOREMAN 1

I—Haitian Origins: Race and the Zombie
1. New South, New Immigrants, New Women, New Zombies: The Historical Development of the Zombie in American Popular Culture
ANN KORDAS 15
2. Hurston in Haiti: Neocolonialism and Zombification
RITA KERESZTESI 31
3. Putting the Undead to Work: Wade Davis, Haitian Vodou, and the Social Uses of the Zombie
DAVID INGLIS 42
4. Guess Who’s Going to Be Dinner: Sidney Poitier, Black Militancy, and the Ambivalence of Race in Romero’s Night of the Living Dead
BARBARA S. BRUCE 60

II—The Capital of the Dead
5. Time for Zombies: Sacrifice and the Structural Phenomenology of Capitalist Futures
RONJON PAUL DATTA and LAURA MACDONALD 77
6. Zombified Capital in the Postcolonial Capital: Circulation (of Blood) in Sony Labou Tansi’s Parentheses of Blood
ELIZABETH A. STINSON 93

III—Culturally Transplanted Zombies
7. Zombie Orientals Ate My Brain! Orientalism in Contemporary Zombie Stories
ERIC HAMAKO 107
8. Post–9/11 Anxieties: Unpredictability and Complacency in the Age of New Terrorism in Dawn of the Dead (2004)
BECKI A. GRAHAM 124
9. The Rise and Fall—and Rise—of the Nazi Zombie in Film
CYNTHIA J. MILLER 139
10. Eating Ireland: Zombies, Snakes and Missionaries in Boy Eats Girl
CORY JAMES RUSHTON 149
11. It’s So Hard to Get Good Help These Days: Zombies as a Culturally Stabilizing Force in Fido (2006)
MICHELE BRAUN 162

IV—The Future of Zombie Understandings
12. Zombie Categories, Religion and the New False Rationalism
EDWARD DUTTON 177
13. Nothing but Meat? Philosophical Zombies and Their Cinematic Counterparts
DAVE BEISECKER 191

Bibliography 207
Filmography 219
About the Contributors 223
Index 225


About the Author
Christopher M. Moreman is an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at California State University-East Bay, where he teaches courses in comparative religion.

Cory James Rushton is an associate English professor at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Horror Noir: Where Cinema’s Dark Sisters Meet
Paul Meehan

Print ISBN: 978-0-7864-4597-4
EBook ISBN: 978-0-7864-6219-3
77 photos, filmography, notes, bibliography, index
310pp. softcover (7 x 10) 2011
Price: $39.95

About the Book
This critical survey examines the historical and thematic relationships between two of the cinema’s most popular genres: horror and film noir. The influence of 1930s- and 1940s-era horror films on the development of noir is detailed, with analyses of more than 100 motion pictures in which noir criminality and mystery meld with supernatural and psychological horror. Included are the films based on popular horror/mystery radio shows (The Whistler, Inner Sanctum), the works of RKO producer Val Lewton (Cat People, The Seventh Victim), and Alfred Hitchcock’s psychological ghost stories. Also discussed are gothic and costume horror noirs set in the 19th century (The Picture of Dorian Gray, Hangover Square); the noir elements of more recent films; and the film noir aspects of the Hannibal Lecter movies and other serial-killer thrillers.Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vi
Preface 1
Introduction 3

1. Horror and Fantasy Elements in Classic Films Noir 11
2. Horror Noir in the 1930s 30
3. The Val Lewton/Jacques Tourneur Noir Legacy 53
4. Horror Noir from Radioland 73
5. Monster Noir 93
6. Gothic and Costume Noir 115
7. Horror Noir in the 1950s 145
8. Hitchcock’s Psychological Ghosts and Doppelgangers 167
9. Modern Horror Noir in the 1960s 186
10. Horror Noirs of the 1970s and 1980s 211
11. The Noir Horrors of Hannibal the Cannibal 237
12. The Mean Streets of Hell 254

Conclusion: Horror and Film Noir—The Dark Genres 277
Filmography 281
Chapter Notes 289
Bibliography 291

Index 293

About the Author
Paul Meehan has also written on UFOs in cinema, and is a contributor to the Noir City Sentinel, the journal of the Film Noir Foundation. He lives in San Francisco.

Deformed and Destructive Beings: The Purpose of Horror Films
George Ochoa 

Print ISBN: 978-0-7864-6307-7
EBook ISBN: 978-0-7864-8654-0
48 photos, notes, bibliography, index
235pp. softcover (6 x 9) 2011
Price: $40.00

About the Book
Why are audiences drawn to horror films? Previous answers to that question have included everything from a need to experience fear to a hunger for psychotherapy. This critical text proposes that the horror film’s primary purpose is to present monsters, best understood as deformed and destructive beings. These monsters satisfy the audience’s desire to know these beings, in particular those beings too fantastic and dangerous to know in real life. The text illuminates many aspects of the horror film genre, including epistemology, ethics, evaluation, history, monster taxonomy, and filmmaking techniques.

Table of Contents

Preface 1

PART I. THE HORROR FILM ANALYZED
1. Purpose 5
2. Knowing 18
3. DDB Profile 28
4. Structure 38
5. Essential Elements 47
6. Ethics 61
7. Meaning and Significance 72
8. Evaluation of a Good Horror Film 83
9. Evaluation of a Bad Horror Film 96

PART II. THE HORROR FILM IN CONTEXT
10. Genres 107
11. History: Beginnings to the 1950s 117
12. History: 1960s to the Present 131
13. Reputation 143
14. Taxonomy 151
15. Techniques 168
16. Directors 181
17. Stars and DDBs 194
18. Other Directions 201

Notes 209
Bibliography 215
Index 219


About the Author
George Ochoa is the author or coauthor of more than thirty nonfiction books. He is currently a medical writer at Applied Clinical Education in New York. Please visit his blog at deformeddestructive.blogspot.com.

Supernatural Romance in Film: Tales of Love, Death and the Afterlife 

Richard Striner

Print ISBN: 978-0-7864-4664-3
EBook ISBN: 978-0-7864-8487-4
22 photos, appendix, notes, bibliography, index
213pp. softcover (6 x 9) 2011
Price: $40.00

About the Book
Themes of love, death and the supernatural are mainstays in cinema, and this is the first scholarly work to address movies that explore all three. Twenty-two films are covered in short chapters, from The Mummy through What Dreams May Come, with plot synopses, critical analyses of the relationship of each to major philosophical and literary themes, and explorations of the critical responses.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vi
Introduction 1

The Mummy (1932) 5
Death Takes a Holiday (1934) 15
Topper (1937) 23
On Borrowed Time (1939) 30
Our Town (1940) 35
Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) 43
Cabin in the Sky (1943) 49
A Guy Named Joe (1943) 55
Blithe Spirit (1945) 61
A Matter of Life and Death (Stairway to Heaven) (1946) 68
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) 76
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947) 83
Portrait of Jennie (1948) 91
The Red Shoes (1948) 98
Brigadoon (1954) 110
Vertigo (1958) 118
Solaris (Russian version, 1972) 131
Somewhere in Time (1980) 137
Dead Again (1991) 152
Sleepless in Seattle (1993) 161
Sliding Doors (1998) 169
What Dreams May Come (1998) 174

Afterword 181
Appendix: Honorable Mentions 183
Notes 189
Bibliography 199
Index 201


About the Author
Richard Striner is a professor of history at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. He has written on political history, economics, architecture, historic preservation and film.



Dark Dreams 2.0: A Psychological History of the Modern Horror Film from the 1950s to the 21st Century

Charles Derry

Foreword by John Russell Taylor

Print ISBN: 978-0-7864-3397-1
EBook ISBN: 978-0-7864-5695-6
988 photos, notes, appendices, filmography, bibliography, index
447pp. hardcover (7 x 10) 2009
Price: $75.00


About the Book
Greatly expanded and updated from the 1977 original, this new edition explores the evolution of the modern horror film, particularly as it reflects anxieties associated with the atomic bomb, the Cold War, 1960s violence, sexual liberation, the Reagan revolution, 9/11 and the Iraq War. It divides modern horror into three varieties (psychological, demonic and apocalyptic) and demonstrates how horror cinema represents the popular expression of everyday fears while revealing the forces that influence American ideological and political values. Directors given a close reading include Alfred Hitchcock, Brian De Palma, David Cronenberg, Guillermo Del Toro, Michael Haneke, Robert Aldrich, Mel Gibson and George A. Romero. Additional material discusses postmodern remakes, horror franchises and Asian millennial horror. This book also contains more than 950 frame grabs and a very extensive filmography.


Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction to Dark Dreams 2.0 1

PART ONE: DARK DREAMS (1977)
Foreword to the Original Edition, by John Russell Taylor 15
Introduction 19
1—The Horror of Personality 21
2—The Horror of Armageddon 55
3—The Horror of the Demonic 88

PART TWO: MILLENNIAL NIGHTMARES (2009)
4—A Context; and Why What’s Not Happening in American Horror Isn’t 109
5—The Horror of Personality, Revisited 112
6—Sequels and Insincerity 200
7—The Horror of the Demonic, Revisited 203
8—The Horror of Armageddon, Revisited 231
9—Asian Millennial Horror 284
10—Postmodern Remakes, the Averted Gaze, and Some Glimmerings of the New 305
11—Guillermo Del Toro 315
12—David Cronenberg 330
13—9/11 and Beyond 342

Appendix I: A Proposed Canon of Modern Horror 347
Appendix II: Interviews with Horror Directors: Aldrich, Castle, Harrington, Romero, Friedkin (1977) 349
Appendix III: Filmographies (Compiled by Thomas G. Kohn) 365
Notes 409
Bibliography 413
Index 415


About the Author
Charles Derry is professor emeritus of motion picture studies at Wright State University. He has written widely on a variety of popular culture topics, including film, television and ideology.

Horror Film Festivals and Awards

Thomas M. Sipos

Print ISBN: 978-0-7864-6572-9
EBook ISBN: 978-0-7864-8796-7
34 photos, notes, lists, index
318pp. softcover (7 x 10) 2012
Price: $40.00

About the Book
The rise of independent horror filmmaking has spurred a growth of "indie" horror film festivals, promising promotional and distribution opportunities for selected motion pictures. Some filmmakers spend thousands of dollars on festival entry fees, only to be rejected everywhere. What occurs behind the scenes at these events? More than two dozen festival directors discuss how they secure money, sponsors and screening venues, and how they promote and run their events, as well as their criteria for selecting films. This book will help horror filmmakers take fuller advantage of festival opportunities, and assist festival directors in founding and improving events. Included are listings of 200+ film festivals and awards--current, defunct and prospective--and of previous award winners, spanning six continents and several decades.


Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii
Preface 1

1 How to Run a Film Festival on Pennies a Day! 5
2 How to Make an Award- Winning Horror Film! 37
3 Working the Film Festival! 65

Directory of Festivals and Awards 95
List of Award Winners (by Festival) 121

Notes 253
Index 257


About the Author
Thomas M. Sipos is the founder/manager of the Tabloid Witch Awards and a past film judge for the World Horror Convention. He has worked as a script reader, actor or extra on more than 70 productions and has written for Filmfax, Midnight Marquee and other magazines.