Gothic Traditions and Departures

Universidad de las Américas Puebla (UDLAP), Cholula, Mexico

18 – 21 July 2017

Where does Gothic begin and where does it end? Can we recognise a Gothic tradition or has Gothic always stood at the margins of the critical tradition? Over the past decades, we have witnessed a rekindled awareness of the popularity of Gothic in literature, media, and culture. Gothic has also become widely acknowledged around the world, and there are currently many studies dedicated to understand what it means in other regions, traditions, and cultures. On the other hand, the critical tradition has condemned Gothic for its excessive, formulaic, and immature plots and motifs, thus leaving it at the margins of more well-regarded works. The reconsidered significance of Gothic today prompts to think of it as an established tradition, but does it still offer points of departure through what Fred Botting refers to as its ‘negative aesthetics’ (2014)? More importantly, as we look again at the popularity of Gothic to address and understand both global and regional supernatural narratives, events, and experiences, it is also relevant to inquire about the influence of local traditional folklore and legends in the development and current understanding of Gothic. At the same time, this provides us with an opportunity to consider the relevance and presence of Gothic in contemporary debates on literature, art, and popular culture.

We seek to explore how Gothic today may be considered a tradition or a departure from tradition, as well as how it has been inspired by local traditions, legends, or true stories. We seek to address how we look at past Gothic in comparison with contemporary Gothic, that is, where Gothic is now and what Gothic is for today. This exploration is not limited to the literary Gothic, but also seeks to keep on addressing Gothic manifestations across arts, media, and popular culture.

Thus, we seek to make the following inquiries: Do we understand Gothic as a tradition or as a departure from tradition? What is the relationship between Gothic, folklore, and traditional myths and legends? What is the current state of Gothic? What is happening with Gothic now? Why is Gothic still relevant today? How do we understand local and regional Gothic manifestations when we compare them with global Gothic? Is Goth culture a tradition too? Does Gothic in media, other arts, and popular culture depart from its literary tradition?

Topics could include, but are not limited to, the following:

-Gothic origins

-The Gothic as tradition

-The Gothic as a departure from tradition

-Gothic crossovers

-Gothic departures and journeys

-Gothic divergences

-Gothic digressions and deviations

-Gothic in popular culture

-Gothic and folklore

-Gothic and traditional legends

-Gothic and urban legends

-True histories of the Gothic

-Goth culture and traditions

-Goth culture as tradition

-Global Gothic vs local Gothic

-Gothic now vs Gothic then

-Post-Millennial Gothic

-20^th Century Gothic

-Victorian Gothic

-Romanticism and the Gothic

-Pre-Gothic traditions

-Gothic and the media (old and new)

-Digital Gothic

-Gothic and the arts

-Performance Gothic

-Gothic Studies: past, present, and future

We welcome abstract proposals of no more than 300 words, along with a 50 word bio-note, for 20 minute papers. Please include your contact e-mail and affiliation. Abstracts may be submitted to igamexico2017@gmail.com. The submission deadline is December 16, 2016. We also welcome submissions for panels (consisting of three papers) that address specific topics.

Accepted proposals will be notified in early January 2017.

https://igamexico2017.wordpress.com/acerca-de/

The call for papers for articles for the sections “Monograph” and “Miscellaneous” for the Vol. IV n.º2 issue of Brumal. Revista de Investigación sobre lo Fantástico /Brumal. Research Journal on the Fantastic is now open.

Scholars who wish to contribute to either of these two sections should send us their articles by december 15, 2016, registering as authors on our web page. The Guidelines for Submissions may be found on the Submissions section of the web page.

Monographic issue “The Fantastic in Comics” (José Manuel Trabado, Coord.)

The aim of this monographic issue is to offer an overview the possibilities of fantastic comics both on a narrative level and as regards graphic formulation. We also try to look into the relationship between different formats (comic strip, Sunday page, album, sketchbook, comic book, etc) and the introduction of fantastic, with the goal of understanding the basic mechanisms of the formulation of fantastic within comics and define its relevance in different eras. Authors should take into account the concept of fantastic hold by the review: “the always problematic coexistence between the possible and the impossible in a world similar to the real one. This explains why the contents of Brumal exclude some neighbouring categories, for examples cience fiction, the marvellous or fantasy, since in them such conflict is absent”.  However this neighboruing genres can be dealt with in cases of generic hybridization

Possible theme lines:

• Poetic and graphic narratives of fantastic comics
• Fantastic and its relationship with formats
• Authors for a canon of fantastic comics
• The importance of magazines in the consolidation of the fantastic. Fantastic as editorial line
• Cultural Traditions and fantastic comics: the fantastic and the bd, the fantastic in manga, the fantastic in superheroes comic books, etc.

Miscellaneous Section

This Miscellaneous section is open all year to receive any type of article on any of the diverse artistic manifestations of the fantastic (narrative, theater, film, comics, painting, photography, video games), whether theoretical, critical, historical or comparative in nature, concerning the fantastic in any language or from any country, from the nineteenth century to the present.

http://revistes.uab.cat/brumal/index

In 2017, Orford Parish Books will be releasing WOULD BUT TIME AWAIT: AN ANTHOLOGY OF NEW ENGLAND FOLK HORROR (edited by s.j. bagley, editor [and interrogator] of THINKING HORROR: A JOURNAL OF HORROR PHILOSOPHY.)

Please read the guidelines before submitting a query and direct all queries to heksenhaus@gmail.com with the subject header ‘FOLK HORROR QUERY.’

(All stories sent without a prior query will be deleted, unread.)

WHAT WE DEFINE AS FOLK HORROR AND WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR.

For the purposes of this project, we are defining folk horror as horror literature in which the present (which can be a year/decade of the author’s choosing) collides with the history, folklore, traditions, and psychogeography of a region and where that collision has a significant impact on the present (as defined in the work.)

We are looking for work that uses the physical, historical, and social landscapes of New England as a focal point (rather than a story that could be set anywhere else but just happens to be set in New England.)

There is a long and rich history of horrific and strange folklore in New England but that doesn’t mean a writer needs to restrict themselves to it and writers are perfectly welcome to invent their own folklore, traditions, and fictional New England locations.

We should also stress that, while Folk Horror has largely been a rural construct, we by no means consider a rural location to be necessary to any working definition of the term.

A few examples of what we consider Folk Horror in literature:

Stephen King- ‘Pet Sematary.’

Stephen King- ‘Bag of Bones.’

Peter Straub- ‘Ghost Story.’

Peter Straub- ‘Floating Dragon.’

Toni Morrison- ‘Beloved.’

H.P. Lovecraft- ‘The Picture In The House.’

M.R. James- ‘View From a Hill.’

John Farris- ‘All Heads Turn When The Hunt Goes By.’

T.E.D. Klein- ‘The Ceremonies.’

Gary McMahon- ‘All Your Gods Are Dead.’

Thomas Ligotti- ‘The Last Feast Of Harlequin.’

Michael Mcdowell- ‘Blackwater.’

Thomas Tryon- ‘Harvest Home.’

Adam Nevill- ‘The Ritual.’

Adam Nevill- ‘Last Days.’

Shirley Jackson- ‘The Lottery.’

Alain Mabanckou- ‘African Psycho.’

Shirley Jackson- ‘The Summer People.’

Matthew M. Bartlett- ‘Gateways To Abomination.’

Arthur Machen- ‘The White People.’

Flannery O’Connor- ‘A Good Man Is Hard To Find.’

Marjorie Bowen- ‘What Remained Behind.’

Chinua Achebe- ‘Things Fall Apart.’

Gemma Files- ‘We Will All Go Down Together.’

Susan Cooper- ‘The Dark Is Rising.’

Mary Buchanan- ‘The Dark Backward.’

Kingsley Amis- ‘The Green Man.’

Ray Bradbury- ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes.’

Josephine Poole- ‘Moon Eyes.’

Josephine Poole- ‘Billy Buck.’

Daniel Mills- ‘Revenants.’

Clive Barker- ‘In The Hills, The Cities.’

Clive Barker- ‘The Forbidden.’

WHO CAN SUBMIT.

We are open to submissions from writers from every global region and every walk of life and, while each story needs to focus (in some manner) on the geographic region of New England (which consists of Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont) we certainly don’t require that every author needs to be from that region.

We expect and encourage diversity in regard to the voices involved in this project.

DEADLINES AND SCHEDULE.

Submissions will be open until April 2017, at which point we will no longer be accepting submissions or queries.

Publication date is summer 2017 (with a more firm date to come.)

PAYMENT.

We will be paying a flat rate of $75USD upon acceptance for first rights in print and digital.

STORY CRITERIA.

Length: 2,000-10,000 words.

Each story MUST either be set in New England or contain elements of New England folklore and history.

Each story MUST be folk horror (which we fully and happily acknowledge as being a broad and diverse term but we are defining as stated above.)

No reprints.

No simultaneous submissions.

SOME THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND BEFORE SUBMITTING:

New England is an ethnically diverse region of the United States with a long (and often sordid) history so please keep the contemporary effects of that history in mind when submitting and avoid work that portrays the indigenous people and tribes of New England in a racist, bigoted, or stereotypical sense and please avoid stereotypes of the poor, and economically disenfranchised, all races, genders, sexes, sexualities, (dis)abilities, faiths, and anything that targets marginalized people.

In general, we are looking to avoid depictions of sexual violence (unless written with extreme care, an actual point beyond the simple violence of it, and, above all, empathy toward victims of sexual violence.)

https://orfordparishbooks.com/2016/06/21/call-for-submissions-for-new-england-folk-horror-anthology/

TRANSNATIONAL SCIENCE FICTION FILM AND MEDIA

Like the Western, noir, and musical, the science fiction film occupies a well-defined niche of cinema and media studies, complete with its own catalogue of specialized theory and criticism (Calvin 2014). Science fiction is also a category of film that has come to embody an era and its conditions. As Jim Kitses observed in the introduction to The Western Reader (1998), “an era of radical capitalism with its relentless global commodification, downsized status of the individual, and increasingly technological, mediated world of experience, has solidly positioned science fiction and neo-noir as the post-modern genres of choice, with their hybrid, the formidable “tech-noir” (Terminator, Blade Runner, Alien), logically the post-modern genre par excellence” (16).

Perhaps on account of this positioning of science fiction film and especially its noir correlate, the study of science fiction film (see for example Cornea 2007; Kuhn 1990, 1999; Sobchack 1997; Telotte 1995, 2001) has rivaled the study of its prose form and has dominated studies of what Paweł Frelik (2016) recently called the “ocularies of science fiction,” that is, the genre’s visual megatext. While scholars and critics alike have turned their attention to issues such as literal and metaphorical space (Kuhn 1999), the problems of technology (Telotte 1995), the politics of alternative futures (Booker 2006), and even race (Nama 2008) in monograph-length works, research on science fiction films focuses overwhelmingly on American, and to a lesser extent European, films—their histories, contexts, audiences, and politics.

Meeting the wider turn in cinema and media studies head on, a handful of essays and a new collection (Feeley and Wells 2015) have begun to conceive of science fiction film as a transnational genre, a global or world phenomenon. Challenging the idea that science fiction is a decidedly Western or even a particularly American film genre, this panel seeks papers that ask what the study of science fiction film and related (audio)visual media can add to the increasingly complex and interrelated discussions of transnational film production, circulation, and reception; of transnational film as a category; and of competing categories (e.g. “world,” “global”) for understanding film and (audio)visual media as they move across national, cultural, and linguistic boundaries.

In other words, what does it mean to think of science fiction film transnationally? Is there such a thing as (the) transitional science fiction film? What are its histories, forms, politics, audiences, etc.? Although emphasizing film as the medium of study and conceiving of science fiction in broad terms as a visual megatext—a set of generically interrelated and recognizable visual tropes (see Broderick 1995 for an early discussion of megatext as frame for science fiction narratives)—the panel also hopes to encourage the exploration of media beyond film, to consider, for example, science fiction television, comics, and video games in conversation with discourses on film, science fiction, and the transnational, world, or global.

Papers might consider, but are certainly not limited to, the following guiding topics:

• Transnational SF and global crises/catastrophes, especially environmental and geopolitical
• Adaptations of texts across national, cultural, linguistic, and medium boundaries, especially with consideration of shifting political, aesthetic, and generic concerns
  • e.g. Snowpiercer (2013), from Jacques Lob’s French Le Transperceniegegraphic novel to Bong Joon-ho’s English-language, global-cast South Korean dystopian film, in which the only survivors are a black boy and a Korean woman.
• Transnational science fiction films and audiences, and the circulation of science fiction film out of, into, and outside the U.S. and Europe
• Transnational blockbusters and global audiences
  • e.g. Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens as global phenomenon/text
• Transnational (or world or global) SF film production and distribution (e.g. art/indie vs. blockbuster)
• The (in)stability of “science fiction” as a genre across national, cultural, linguistic, and medium boundaries
• Popular subgenres of transnational science fiction media
• Troubling the terms “world,” “global,” and “transnational” as they relate to “science fiction” (itself slippery) film and other media
• Transnational science fiction beyond film: television, comics, video games
  • e.g. the “kaiju” and “mecha” genres of Japanese manga as transnationally and transmedially circulated subgenres of SF; the manga boom in 1990s America and the subsequent, related anime boom on U.S. television; massive popularity, aesthetics, and generic concerns of SF games

Proposals should include a 250-300 word abstract and a brief bio. Please send all materials to Sean A. Guynes at guynesse@msu.edu by August 10, 2016.  Decisions will be made by August 15 and the panel proposal will be submitted by August 31.

If you are interested in being a respondent, please notify Sean A. Guynes and include a brief bio and a CV (keep in mind the new SCMS policy that now limits members to one role at the conference).

Reimagining the Future – Utopian Perspectives

deadline for submissions:
January 31, 2017

full name / name of organization:
ANTAE

contact email:
antaejournal@gmail.com

Call for Papers

Reimagining the Future: Utopian Perspectives

The postgraduate journal antae is pleased to announce a special issue around the idea of alternative futures, in particular ones that can be described as “utopian”. This issue shall be published in conjunction with the Institute of Utopian Studies—for the time being, a utopian institution seeking to provide a platform for debate on ideas of radical social change and alternative concepts of living together, which aims to facilitate debate about departures from hegemonic ‘realism’: alternative futures, alternative spaces.

As such, artists, scholars, writers and activists are here encouraged to submit contributions engaging with utopia as a concept for socio-political change: utopian approaches to current political issues, visions of new public spheres, and imaginative projections of different realities. This shall not only be limited to participants of the ‘Away Day’ (happening on November, 2016, at the University of Malta), but also to any other postgraduate students or established academics interested in the multifaceted idea of utopia/s.

The notion of ‘utopian perspectives’ emphasises that constructions of utopian states, since More’s Utopia, have provided ideal models through which one can scrutinise existing socio-political realities. In this sense, utopia is not an absolute aim, but a platform for debate, for exploring alternatives. Utopian perspectives offer different viewpoints with regards to current social realities: (i) they help to sharpen a critical view of the present status quo and its hegemonic discourses; and (ii) they serve to highlight seeds of alternative existing options, spaces and practices, utopian potentials in the present. These two perspectives can also be linked; for example, when basic principles of democracy are interpreted as unfulfilled utopian ideas in present societies (ii), which highlights existing inequalities and exclusions (i).

In light of the above, the editors of antae welcome submissions on or around re-imagined utopias. All issues are open-access and employ a three-tier peer-review process. The authorial guidelines can be viewed here, and the deadline for submissions to antaejournal@gmail.com is the 31st of January, 2017. Submissions should be in the form of finalised papers of around 5,000 to 7,000 words. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

– Utopian Communities
– Utopian Perspectives on Socio-Political and Environmental Issues
– Utopian Political Publics
– Utopia Without Borders – Beyond the Nation State
– Urban Utopias
– Futures Studies
– Technological Utopias, Science Fiction
– Radical Education, Radical Emancipation – towards a Utopian Revolution
– Freedom and Utopia – Freedom as a (Collective) Praxis?
– Utopia as an Imposition or a Liberation?
– Utopia and Work, Utopia and Idleness
– After Capitalism
– Utopian Cultures
– Utopia and (Public) Happiness
– Gender, Sexuality and Love in Utopian Perspectives
– Utopian Bodies, Subjects, Individuals Creating and Living (in) Utopia
– Utopia and the Good Life?
– Beyond Reality

For more information about the journal, or to view previous issues, visit us at www.antaejournal.com; for further information about the Institute of Utopian Studies, visit our social media page here. In case of queries, please do not hesitate to email us on antaejournal@gmail.com.