International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts

Call for Papers
Threshold, Boundary, and Crossover in Fantasy

Organised by Alex Gushurst-Moore, Mariam Hale, and Jun Qiang (PhD Students at the University of York)
As part of the York Fantasy Discussion Group

To be held in York 12th-13th March 2020

Keynote speakers: Professor George P. Landow (Emeritus Professor, Brown) and
Dr Rob Maslen (University of Glasgow)

‘There was nothing Lucy liked so much as the smell and feel of fur. She immediately stepped into the wardrobe and got in among the coats and rubbed her face against them, leaving the door open, of course, because she knew that it is very foolish to shut oneself into any wardrobe. Soon she went further in and found that there was a second row of coats hanging up behind the first one. It was almost quite dark in there and she kept her arms stretched out in front of her so as not to bump her face into the back of the wardrobe. She took a step further in – then two or three steps – always expecting to feel woodwork against the tips of her fingers. But she could not feel it.’ – C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, first published in 1950.

We invite proposals for 20-minute papers on the subject of ‘threshold, boundary, and crossover’ in fantasy. Creative interpretation of the theme is encouraged, and particular precedence will be given to papers looking at interdisciplinarity in fantasy studies. We wish to push the limits of how we interpret and understand fantasy as a categorical term, interrogating the idea put forward by art historian Walter Schurian that ‘the fantastic can also be found in other fields of art, such as literature, architecture, music and film; fantastical tendencies and currents can even be observed in the natural sciences, for example in the form of unusual, chance opinions and theories.’ As such, we welcome papers from scholars working in any field or discipline. Some thematic prompts include:

Interdisciplinarity
Intertextuality
Cross-cultural exchange
International exchange
National fantasies
Gender
Selfhood, self and other
Children/ YA/ Adult
Journey, pilgrimage, passage
Ancient/ Medieval/ Modern
Between worlds
Frames, framing devices and literal thresholds
Hermeticism
Retellings
Portals and transportation
Genre, categorisation, classification
Ideas of here and there
Fin-de-siècle
Youth and age
Fantasy and science fiction

To submit a proposal, please send (in one document) a biography of c. 100 words and a paper abstract of no more than 400 words to fantasythreshold2020@gmail.com by September 13th 2019. Queries can be directed to this email address also.

Call for Chapters – Screening Loss: An Exploration of Grief in Contemporary Horror Cinema

deadline for submissions:
September 30, 2019

full name / name of organization:
Associate Professor Jan Selving / East Stroudsburg University; Assistant Professor Erica J. Dymond / East Stroudsburg University

contact email:
screeninglosssubmissions@gmail.com

Horror films have long held a place in cinematic history as an expression of the monstrous, the un-nameable, and the unknown. They are a powerful point of catharsis in which viewers see their deepest fears played out onscreen, whether the threat is fully embodied or less concretely defined. As a result, grief and loss have always figured heavily in this genre.

This collection addresses horror films’ treatment of loss, specifically grief and how grief shapes, magnifies, and escalates the horrific. Selected films should be from the last twenty years. This contemporary approach will lend the collection a sense of urgency. Moreover, in addition to conventional horror films, we highly support explorations of less frequently examined films that contain a high degree of complexity in content and aesthetics. A24 films are the perfect example of this. Additionally, examinations of genre-defying films such as Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer and David Lowery’s A Ghost Story are especially encouraged.

We value inclusivity and welcome abstracts that focus on international films as well as those who are historically underrepresented.

The book is structured to be a reader for film seminars as well as a tool for research. As a result, each chapter will focus on a single film. And, while the chapters are narrow in this sense, we fully expect that contributors will wish to reference other films and works of art in their essays.

We welcome all theoretical approaches. Likewise, given the interdisciplinary nature of this collection, we invite abstracts from academics not only in film studies, English, and communications, but also psychology and sociology.

Suggestions for films include but are not limited to:

Ari Aster’s Midsommer (2019)

Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer’s Pet Sematary (2019)

Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)

Robert Eggers’s The VVitch (a.k.a. The Witch) (2015)

Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook (2014)

Ari Aster’s Hereditary (2018)

David Lowery’s A Ghost Story (2017)

Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2015)

Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook (2014)

Tomas Alfredson’s Låt den Rätte Komma (Let the Right One In) (2008)

J. A. Bayona’s El Orfanato (The Orphanage) (2007)

Lars von Trier’s Antichrist (2009)

Takashi Miike’s Ôdishon (Audition) (1999)

Please submit a 500-word chapter abstract and a biography of no more than 250 words by September 30, 2019 to screeninglosssubmissions@gmail.com. All abstracts will be given full consideration. We will notify all applicants of the results by October 31, 2019. If selected, the contributor has until June 30, 2020 to submit her/his/their completed chapters.

The volume is intended for publication through Lexington Books, who has expressed interest in this project.

FRAMES Cinema Journal
Call for Papers: Magical Women, Witches & Healers
Issue 16, Winter 2019

Chief Editors: Ana Maria Sapountzi & Peize Li Book Review Editor: Patrick Adamson

Almost every culture on earth contains within its history some form of magic and magical women. From the high priestesses of Ancient Egypt to the oracles of Ancient Greece, the brujas of Latina America to the voodoo queens of the Caribbean and New Orleans, the shamanesses of Mongolia to the mudangs of Korea, the medicine women of Native America to the witches of Medieval Europe, female figures with the ability to harness and utilise earthly, cosmic, and spiritual forces have transcended cultures and proved an irresistible topic in history, myth, and folklore.

Since cinema’s inception and throughout its global history, the figure of the magical woman has appeared countless times and in a plethora of manifestations, her image and function designed and determined by national, cultural, historical, political, and ideological contexts.

The magical woman begins her flight in silent cinema, first appearing in films such as The Witch of Salem (Raymond B. West, USA, 1913) and Häxan (Benjamin Christensen, Sweden-Denmark, 1922). She then manifests in mid-century productions, such as Bell, Book and Candle (Richard Quine, USA, 1958) and Baeksabu-in/Madame White Snake (Shin Sang-ok, South Korea, 1960), and continues her presence in Viy/Spirit of Evil (Konstantin Yershove & Georgi Kropachyov, Russia, 1967), Himiko (Masahiro Shinoda, Japan, 1974),Suspiria (Dario Argento, Italy, 1977), Eve’s Bayou (Kasi Lemmons, USA, 1997), The Craft (Andrew Fleming, USA, 1996), and Practical Magic (Griffin Dunne, USA, 1999). In recent years, the figure has been foregrounded in works such as Tulen Morsian/Devil’s Bride (Saara Cantell, Finland, 2016), The Love Witch (Anna Biller, USA, 2016) and I Am Not a Witch (Rungano Nyoni, Zambia, 2017), confirming her resilience in and importance to cinema.

In light of the magical woman’s prominence across contemporary culture, the 16th Issue of Frames Cinema Journal seeks to investigate her new filmic manifestations in 21st century cinema and revisit those of the past century. Due to the rich nature and history of the magical woman figure, we are excited to hear from contributors working in a variety of aspects of film studies. We are particularly keen on papers which examine the figure from a feminist, historical, spiritual, ecological, and ideological perspective.

Topics to discuss and analyse the magical woman figure through may include, but are certainly not limited to:
The magical woman and feminism/feminist issues.
The magical woman, gender, and sexuality.
The magical woman, and the female body and its experience.
The magical woman, emotion and feeling.
The magical woman and activism (e.g. feminist, eco-feminist, LGBTQIA+)
The magical woman and politics/geopolitics/ecopolitics.
The magical woman, ecology, and nature.
The magical woman, modernity, post-modernity, and/or capitalism.
The magical woman and traditional/modern setting.
The magical woman, religion and spirituality.
The magical woman, girlhood, and the girlhood experience.
The magical woman and motherhood.
The magical woman and sisterhood.
The magical woman and fashion.
The magical woman and female persecution and/or accused women.
The magical woman, national identity, and/or ancestry.
The historical, literary, and/or poetic magical woman figure and her filmic adaptation.
The magical woman and genre.
The magical woman and stardom.
The magical woman and film festival programming.
Notes for Authors:
Frames accepts written pieces and video essays for submission. Written pieces can be either essays for our Features section, which should be between 5,000-7,000 words (including footnotes, but excluding bibliography) or shorter articles for our Point-of-View (POV) section, which may be between 1,000-3,000 words (including footnotes, but excluding bibliography). Book reviews are typically 1,000 words. If you would like to publish a book review, please contact our Book Review Editor, Patrick Adamson, at pa41@st-andrews.ac.uk.

Video essays can be of varying length and should be discussed with the editors on a case-by-case basis. Video essay submissions must be sent to the editors in the form of a link using an online streaming source (Vimeo, YouTube, etc.)

All submissions to Frames should not be under consideration elsewhere, and should be original and previously unpublished.

Proposal abstracts should be no more than 250 words and must be accompanied by an indicative bibliography. A brief biography of approx. 150 words should be provided along with the abstract. Abstracts should be sent through as Word Documents and titled “Frames Issue 16 Author First name Author Surname” (e.g. Frames Issue 16 Jane Doe). Please submit your proposal to Ana Maria Sapountzi and Peize Li at framesjournal@gmail.com.

Timetable for Frames Cinema Journal Issue 16:
Abstract Proposal Deadline: 13/09/2019
Abstract Decision Announcement: 23/09/2019
First Draft Deadline (written & video content): 04/11/2019
Final Draft Deadline: 09/12/2019
Intended Publication Date: 16/12/2019
Abstracts are to be submitted no later than Friday 13 September, 2019, as they will not be considered after that. Authors should expect to be notified of the editorial committee’s decision by Monday 23 September, 2019.

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us.

Ana Maria Sapountzi & Peize Li
Frames Cinema Journal Chief Editors

email: framesjournal@gmail.com
website: framescinemajournal.com
twitter: @FramesJournal

Decentering the Anthropocene: Spanish Ecocritical Texts and the Non-Human

deadline for submissions:
September 16, 2019

full name / name of organization:
Maryanne Leone, Assumption College, and Shanna Lino, York University

contact email:
maleone@assumption.edu

Abstracts and articles are sought for an edited collection to be entitled Decentering the Anthropocene: Spanish Ecocritical Texts and the Non-Human. Ecocriticism examines literary and cultural representations of the natural environment and diverse life forms, often in the context of broader political, economic, and social issues and often with an ethical commitment to sustainability and environmental justice. In this context, ecocritical work may interrogate how texts treat anthropocentrism, or the centralization of humans’ perspectives, needs, and experiences over those of other beings.

As conversations about climate change and ecological degradation have become more urgent in the last 10-20 years, Spanish writers, directors, and artists are addressing the environment in their works with ever-increasing frequency. Scholars also have begun to take note, leading to the founding of research hubs such as GIECO (Grupo de Investigación en Ecocrítica) and the journal Ecozon@: Revista europea de literatura, cultura y medioambiente. Recent volumes in this field have considered, for example: contemporary ecocritical cultural production in the context of new materialisms; the intersection between ecology and ethics, politics, and culture in Spain from Francoism to the present day; the relationship between ecocriticism and feminism, myth, and youth literature; and ecocritical analyses of medieval literature.

This collection aims to expand critical study of representations of the environment in Spanish culture in two distinguishing manners: first, by exploring specifically the more-than-human; and second, by tracing the historical representation of these elements in Spanish works from the early-modern through the post-crisis periods. Our purpose is to highlight the central roles that the beyond-human has played in texts of all periods that counter those political, economic, and social strategies that have led to the current state of ecological devastation.

Alternate beings evoked alongside the normative human may include animals, hybrid animal- humans, plant life, ghosts, spectres, avatars, angels and apparitions, robots, cyborgs, androids, monsters, vampires, witches, and others. Likewise, ecocritical readings of the more-than-human may refer to foci such as land- and seascapes, urban, suburban and non-urban topographies, parks, tourism, waterways, natural resources, and so on.

Ecocritical studies are encouraged of any form of Spanish cultural production from general and genre fiction (crime, sci-fi, vampire, graphic, nautical, mystical) to (cyber)poetry, theater, performance art, film, photography, or other art forms. Theoretical approaches may include ecosophy, anotherness, ecofeminisms, animal studies, intersectionality, ecojustice, and others.

Interested contributors should send 300-500 word abstracts, in English, and brief biographical statements via email to the editors Maryanne Leone (maleone@assumption.edu) and Shanna

Lino (slino@yorku.ca) by September 16, 2019. Essays are to be approximately 20-25 pages long, typed double spaced, written in English, and follow the 8th edition MLA guidelines, with endnotes and a list of works cited. The editors will contact authors regarding accepted abstracts by late September. Completed articles will be due January 6, 2020.

Spoofing the Vampire: What We Do in the Shadows and the Comedic Vampire

Editors: Simon Bacon & Ashley Szanter

contact email: spoofingthevamp@gmail.com

Project Overview

Editors Bacon and Szanter seek original essays for an edited collection on What We Do in the Shadows (2014) and the Comedic Vampire. While the majority of films, television series, comics, games and books portray the vampire as a deeply dramatic, Gothic figure, there are many examples of the vampire and its generic trappings as a source of comedy. Much of this is down to genuine comedic moments and situations, but often, and of particular interest here, is the parodying, pastiching, and self-referencing within the vampire genre itself and the spoofing of other vampire narratives. What We Do in the Shadows, both the original movie and the television series, is a well known example of this, but as early and as varied as Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (Barton: 1948) The Munsters (Burns: 1964-66), and Dance of the Vampires (Polanski: 1967), purposely nod and wink at earlier vampire texts. The vampire is nothing other than egalitarian in its targets choosing political, sexual, social and religious topics to lampoon, as well as innocent children, lovelorn teenagers, and the nostalgic elderly, the comedic vampire has spread its bat wings and taken a pretty bumpy flight into our homes and canons. This collection will explore the figure of the comedic vampire in all its incarnations and the implications of taking a beloved dramatic figure a little less seriously.

Chapters in the proposed collection can focus on aspects or intersections between one or more of the following categories:

– Notable comedic vampire film What We Do in the Shadows (2014) by Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement or the recent FX television adaptation of the same name.
– Examinations of the place/function of comedy in the vampire film genre. What role should comedy, laughter, or satire hold within the broader vampire zeitgeist? Consider Dark Shadows (2012), Fanged Up (2017), Vampires Suck (2010), Hotel Transylvania film series (2012-2018), Vampire Academy (2014), Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), Suck (2009), Mom’s Got a Date with a Vampire (2000), Dracula: Dead and Loving it (1995), Son of Dracula (1974), or any others not mentioned on this list.
– Address contemporary comedic vampire fictions through a particular scholarly lens.
– Political and social satire and/or comedy in a vampire work of fiction.
– Explore the comedic vampire phenomenon in written vampire fiction. Texts for consideration may include those by MaryJanice Davidson, Christopher Moore, Charlaine Harris, Gerry Bartlett, and especially the Fat Vampire series by Johnny B. Truant.
– The comedic vampire as the result of genre exhaustion for both the traditional vampire genre as well as the paranormal genre. Have we taken the dramatic vampire to its limits? Have audiences bored of the dramatic vampire tropes?
– Nationalism/national identity through comedy: Vampires (2010), Ko?ysanka (2010), Strigoi (2009).
– (Un)intentional comedy extracted from serious vampire content: Twilight series, True Blood, Vampire Diaries, The Originals, Buffy the Vampire Slayer [film or series], The Lost Boys, Dark Shadows television series, Blade film series. Could either be humor woven into the drama or external parodies.
– Address comedic vampires and intersectionality. Of particular interest to the editors are non-binary gender and sexuality, feminism, and alternative masculinity.
– The use of comedic vampires with narratives meant for children and young adults: Count Von Count, Count Duckula, Bunnicula, Young Dracula, Vampirina, Scream Street, and Vampire Sisters.

Abstract Due Dates

Preference will be given to abstracts received before Friday 26th July 2019. Abstracts should be no longer than 350 words and be accompanied by a current CV.

Final manuscripts of 5,000-6,500 words should be submitted in MLA style by Friday 28th February 2020.

Contact us and send abstracts to spoofingthevamp@gmail.com

CFP: “Digital Wellness”: Open Information Science Issue on Digital Humanities

deadline for submissions:
October 1, 2019

full name / name of organization:
Lucas Gworek DeGruyter

contact email:
Lukasz.Gworek@degruyter.com

On behalf of independent academic publisher De Gruyter, the open access journal Open Information Science, we are announcing a Call for Papers for Topical Issue: “Digital Wellness”: Open Information Science Issue on Digital Humanities.

Guest Editor

Valerie Karno, Director, Graduate School of Library and Information Studies, University of Rhode Island

Description

Since its inception, the digital humanities has considered the question “what is it to be human in relation to machines in the digital age?” This issue of Open Information Science asks for papers that consider how we can understand “digital wellness” as part of the ongoing inquiry into what acts, representations, and understandings exist around human-ness in the digital era. Particularly, this volume seeks to explore the possibilities of digital wellness provided through a range of disciplines and forms. We invite papers which consider architectures, platforms, and diverse disciplinary engagements with the opportunities and challenges surrounding digital wellness:

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

How are search engines addressing needs for wellness?
How do literary arts engage wellness literacies through multimodal creations?
How does the digital self interface with wellness?
How do digital borders interface with geographic borders towards impacting human wellness?
How does data creation and visualization impact user wellness?
How do digital formats and texts embrace animals, earth terrain, and environmental conditions towards understandings of wellness?
How is wellness conceived as integrated with or external to digital systems?
How do corporate digital organizational systems influence our notion of the digital person as imbricated in capital (in Multinational or Local companies)
How do digital wealth and investing systems inform our notions of the human and the circuit?
How do digital visual formats rearrange or constrain our conceptions of the human?
How do youth coding programs (like Hour of Code and Family Code Night) affect educational and familial relationships to the human as code?
How are tensions around big data balanced against an increasing number of “micro-forms”?

How to Submit

Submissions are welcome which attend to the following topics’ connections to wellness:

Biotechnology’s visualization of wellness
Computational approaches to wellness
Processing, designing, modeling, implementing wellness
Digital Rights Movements, Open Access, Curation, Data
Affect
Embodied Digital Culture
Archives
Gaming and Simulation
Scale
Networks
Project-based Learning
Relationships between Humanism, Post-Humanism, Earth Matter and Sea/Liquid Life
Distributed Work and Workplace Wellness
Links between the Virtual and the Local
Information Ethics and Wellness
Digital Sound and Wellness
Digital Wellness and Social Justice
Digital Wellness across Racial, Ethnic, Gendered, and Classed Borders
Meditation, Mindfulness, and Relaxation in the Digital Era

Please send 1-2 page Abstracts by June 1, 2019 to vkarno@uri.edu.

Papers will be due by October 1, 2019.

CALL FOR PAPERS – EDITED VOLUME

Decentering the Anthropocene: Spanish Ecocritical Texts and the
Non-Human

Maryanne L. Leone, Assumption College, and Shanna Lino, York
University

Abstracts and articles are sought for an edited
collection to be entitled Decentering the Anthropocene: Spanish Ecocritical
Texts and the Non-Human. Ecocriticism examines literary and cultural
representations of the natural environment and diverse life forms, often in the
context of broader political, economic, and social issues and often with an
ethical commitment to sustainability and environmental justice. In this
context, ecocritical work may interrogate how texts treat anthropocentrism, or
the centralization of humans’ perspectives, needs, and experiences over those
of other beings.

As conversations about climate change and
ecological degradation have become more urgent in the last 10-20 years, Spanish
writers, directors, and artists are addressing the environment in their works
with ever-increasing frequency. Scholars also have begun to take note, leading
to the founding of research hubs such as GIECO (Grupo de Investigación en
Ecocrítica) and the journal Ecozon@: Revista europea de literatura, cultura
y medioambiente. Recent volumes in this field have considered, for example:
contemporary ecocritical cultural production in the context of new
materialisms; the intersection between ecology and ethics, politics, and
culture in Spain from Francoism to the present day; the relationship between
ecocriticism and feminism, myth, and youth literature; and ecocritical analyses
of medieval literature.

This collection aims to expand critical study of
representations of the environment in Spanish culture in two distinguishing
manners: first, by exploring specifically the more-than-human; and
second, by tracing the historical representation of these elements in
Spanish works from the early-modern through the post-crisis periods. Our
purpose is to highlight the central roles that the beyond-human has played in
texts of all periods that counter those political, economic, and social
strategies that have led to the current state of ecological devastation.

Alternate beings evoked alongside the normative
human may include animals, hybrid animal-humans, plant life, ghosts, spectres,
avatars, angels and apparitions, robots, cyborgs, androids, monsters, vampires,
witches, and others. Likewise, ecocritical readings of the more-than-human may
refer to foci such as land- and seascapes, urban, suburban and non-urban
topographies, parks, tourism, waterways, natural resources, and so on.

Ecocritical studies are encouraged of any form
of Spanish cultural production from general and genre fiction (crime, sci-fi,
vampire, graphic, nautical, mystical) to (cyber)poetry, theater, performance
art, film, photography, or other art forms. Theoretical approaches may include
ecosophy, anotherness, ecofeminisms, animal studies, intersectionality,
ecojustice, and others.

Interested contributors should send 300-500 word
abstracts, in English, and brief biographical statements via email to the
editors Maryanne Leone (maleone@assumption.edu) and Shanna Lino (slino@yorku.ca) by September 16, 2019. Essays are to be approximately
20-25 pages long, typed double spaced, written in English, and follow the 8th
edition MLA guidelines, with endnotes and a list of works cited. The editors
will contact authors regarding accepted abstracts by late September. Completed
articles will be due January 6, 2020.

CFP: Technologies of Feminist Speculative Fiction

Collection edited by Sherryl Vint and Sümeyra Buran.

In 1985, Donna Haraway’s massively influential “Cyborg Manifesto” reoriented feminist thought in her call for women to engage with science and technology, to recognize in them and the new worlds they might make new resources for female emancipation and feminist critique. Now, over thirty year later, technology has remade much of the social world, from communications to reproduction to work. Our anthology seeks to bring together cutting-edge scholarship on the contemporary status of feminism and technology, as reflected in speculative fiction. We invite papers for an edited collection on intersections between contemporary technology and both feminist and queer readings of speculative fiction.

We are interested in both works that imagine the future of sexuality and gender in which biological reproduction is policed or controlled as a technology of social reproduction, and those that imagine futures in which women’s bodies are changed or controlled via new biotechnologies. We are interested in articles that explore anxieties about changing demographics, changing gender roles, or the placidity of the body from feminist and queer points of view. Although the examples listed below emphasize print texts, we are open to papers addressing works from any medium. Similarly, our examples focus on recently published work, reflecting our view that this topic is of substantial interest to contemporary writers, but we are open to proposals that address similar themes in earlier texts.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

· Works about how fertility is imagined as a scarce resource in dystopian futures premised on massive sterility and the oppressive control of reproductive women, such as Hulu’s adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale,Leni Zumas’s Red Clocks, Meg Ellison’s The Book of the Unnamed Midwife,Sarah Hall’s Daughters of the North or Carrie Vaughn’s Bannerless.

· Explorations of dystopian texts which project futures of authoritarian policing of gender and sexuality, that is, compulsory heterosexuality imagined as a police state, such as Maggie Chen’s An Excess Male, Johanna Sinisalo’s The Core of the Sun, Jenna Glass’s The Women’s Waror Sarah Hall’s The Carhullan Army.

· Speculations about the future of assisted reproductive technologies such as cloning, IVF, parthenogenic reproduction, inter-species reproduction, ectogenesis, or machine reproduction, such as Carola Dibbell’s The Only Ones, Mur Lafferty’sSix Wakes, Anne Charnock’s Dreams Before the Start of Time, Jane Roger’s The Testament of Jessie Lamb, Louise O’Neill’s Only Ever Yoursor Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice.

· Works that explore how gender relations are manipulated and/or changed by a changing environment, whether this be new technologies used to control women, as in Christina Dalcher’s Vox, new developments in human morphology, as in Naomi Alderson’s The Power, or gendered experiences of artificial beings, as in Louisa Hall’s Speak.

Please send paper proposals of 500 words to Sümeyra Buran (sumeyra19@hotmail.com) by June 15, 2019. Proposals will be reviewed and full papers invited by August 1, 2019.

Call for Papers: RADICAL PERSPECTIVES ON HORROR CINEMA—EDITED BOOK

Horror cinema is perhaps more readily available today than ever before. With a mere keystroke, one can say hello to all sorts of terrors—from the apocalyptic creatures of BIRD BOX to the puritanical evil of THE WITCH and from the Turkish hell demons of BASKIN to the Korean zombies of TRAIN TO BUSAN. Notably, this resurgence in horror is not confined to our cinema and iPad screens; it is taking place all around us. We live in neo-fascist times, after all, and if some monsters are produced by Amazon, other monsters are destroying the Amazon. Indeed, real-life ghouls are taking power across the globe, rolling back women’s rights, harassing the LGBT community, amplifying racism and xenophobic bigotry, exacerbating wealth disparities, destroying the lives of countless immigrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers, and ensuring that a worldwide ecological catastrophe awaits us in the near future—all with the giddy encouragement of their mob-like supporters. Had George Romero lived long enough to make another Living Dead film, he would have surely given his zombies “Make America Great Again” hats.

Strangely, the synchronous timing of these phenomena—the simultaneous appearance of monsters on the movie screen and on the political scene—has not been widely acknowledged. Much of the literature about this ongoing wave of horror avoids politics altogether. Taking inspiration from the scholarship pioneered four decades ago by Robin Wood and his colleagues with the 1979 publication of THE AMERICAN NIGHTMARE: ESSAYS ON THE HORROR FILM, we are seeking essays for a new edited book on contemporary horror cinema. We are interested in essays that approach horror from a radical perspective—that is, essays that explicitly engage with anti-racist, gay liberationist, feminist, socialist, anti-imperialist, and/or decolonialist politics. While the subject of the essay might be killer clowns, flesh-eating zombies, or chainsaw-welding cannibals, the point is to probe questions of oppression and liberation.

We invite essay proposals that closely examine individual films (e.g., CAM, HEREDITARY, PSYCHO RAMAN) or groups of films (e.g., mumblegore, New French Extremity films, the work of Jordan Peele). Authors are not restricted to Hollywood horror, and we welcome discussions on films from around the globe. While the focus is on cinema, we will consider proposals that look at other media forms in relation to film, including television and video games. Moreover, while we are particularly interested in contemporary horror, compelling proposals on earlier films will also be considered. Indeed, we would prefer an essay that looked at a well-worn text like PSYCHO or THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE through a fresh lens than an essay that discusses a brand new horror gem in an overly descriptive or politically naïve way. All essays should situate horror in a greater political context, and we invite contributors to address ongoing events—from the endless “war on terror” and the global rise of rightwing populism to the emergence of new resistance movements like Black Lives Matter.

Please note that a great emphasis will be placed on writing style. While we welcome the use of terms and concepts from film and cultural theory, authors should strive for sharp, readable prose. We want to invite readers from as wide of an audience as possible, not alienate them.

Abstracts between 300-500 words and a short biographical statement are due on July 15. Decisions on acceptance will be communicated to individual authors by August 15. Accepted papers between 5000 and 9000 words (including footnotes) will be due on December 15.

Please send submissions and inquiries to:

Greg Burris, gregburris@gmail.com
Assistant Professor of Media Studies
American University of Beirut

Volume 31 Climate Fiction

Call for Papers (anticipated publication date: December, 2019/January, 2020)

Editor: Paweł Frelik (University of Warsaw) & Alison Sperling (Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Berlin)

Dan Bloom may have been the first to coin the much-debated moniker “cli-fi” back in 2007, but, as Susanne Leikam and Julia Leyda suggest in the special section of Amerikastudien, other terms have been used and include “climate fiction, petrofiction, Anthropofiction, ecofiction, or more particular concepts such as ecodrama, risk novel, and Anthropocenema,” all of which remain “entangled with specific long-standing cultural and critical traditions, ideological frameworks, socio-political and economic strategies, and affective motives.”

As a hyperobject (Morton 2013), climate resists representation and narrativization, but a spectrum of texts that approach and problematize it is both broad and rich. In the literary medium, some of these attempts have been marketed as science fiction (Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl [2009] comes to mind) while others circulate as cli-fi (Marcel Theroux’s Far North [2009] is a good example). Creative non-fiction has flourished, including Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (2014) and Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (2014). The media of film and television have figured equally prominently with the new cinema of disaster and post-apocalyptic series.

A number of excellent publishing projects have already investigated various vistas of climate, including Kristi McKim’s Cinema as Weather (2013) and Janine Randerson’s Weather as Medium (2018) as well as the recent special issues of Science Fiction Studies and Studies in the Novel. This issue of Paradoxa aims to build on these efforts but also expand the critical conversation. While we are interested in both in-depth analyses of individual texts and more general, theoretical discussions, we also seek to explode and slipstream the very term “climate fiction.” The term has been one used most often to date but, treating genre labels as practices rather than objects, we wish to invite new perspectives on thinking how our cultural production can engage the hyperobject in question.

The texts, bodies of texts, and media of interest include but are not limited to:

science fiction and fantasy foregrounding climate both terrestrial and extraterrestrial
non-genre and slipstream science fiction
non-fantastic climate fiction
narrowly and broadly understood cli-fi
climate cinema, climate television, climate comics, and climate video games
narratives of catastrophic and violent weather
indigenous climate fictions
non-Anglophone texts
texts originating in the Global South

Specific themes and tropes include but are not limited to:

atmospheric conditions and crises
climate change and climate crisis
climate justice and injustice
human and inhuman timescales and perspectives
hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and earthquakes
change of climate and terraforming
climate and non-human agencies and perspectives

Possible approaches to such texts include but are not limited to:

economic and political contexts
aesthetic and formal aspects of representing climate
speculative realism

We are particularly interested in texts or bodies of texts that have received little critical attention thus far.

Abstracts of up to 500 words should be submitted by 15 June 2019 to the editors p.frelik@uw.edu.pl and alison.sperling@ici-berlin.org. Authors of selected abstracts will be notified by 30 June 2019. Full drafts (5,000 to 7,000 words) will be due by 30 September 2019. Publication of the issue is provisionally scheduled for December 2019/January 2020.