International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts

Call for Papers: Monsters and Monstrosity A Special Issue of The Popular Culture Studies Journal

Thanks to Norma Jones for supporting special issue. Please consider submitting and share widely.

Call for Papers: Monsters and Monstrosity
A Special Issue of The Popular Culture Studies Journal
Guest Editor: Bernadette Marie Calafell, University of Denver

Scholars, such as W. Scott Poole and Kendall Phillips, have argued that monsters, particularly those in horror, reflect or correspond to the cultural anxieties of a society. These cultural anxieties are often connected to struggles for power around race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability. Thus, historical context and power are central to studies of monstrosity. Given that we are immersed in what may be considered a horror renaissance, both in film and television, increasing violence against people of color in the U.S., and dangerous and toxic performances of white femininity and masculinity, this is a ripe moment to explore the relationship between monstrosity and popular culture, both literally and figuratively. Thus, this special issues solicits manuscripts that take interdisciplinary approaches to explore the theoretical and methodological possibilities of monstrosity. What can employing monstrosity as a theoretical framework or analytical tool contribute to the study of popular culture? Key questions driving this special issue include: What can monstrosity teach us about Otherness? How can it be used resistively? Conversely, how can monstrosity be used as a tool of oppression? In what ways we can be unpack figures, such as Donald Trump, through the lens of monstrosity? What constitutes monstrosity? How might we understand history differently through the construct of monstrosity? What are the necessary future directions for the study of monstrosity and popular culture? Critical rhetorical, critical qualitative (including critical auto-methodologies), and performative approaches to monstrosity are welcomed.

Potential areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

Twin Peaks and monstrosity
Monstrosity and comics
David Lynch’s uses of monstrosity
NBC’s Hannibal
Adult Swim
Monstrous remakes
History and monstrosity
Afrofuturism and monstrosity
Monstrosity and agency
Monstrous bodies
Monstrous consumption
Monstrosity and adolescence
Monstrosity, menstruation, or menopause
Fatness and monstrosity
Excess and monstrosity
Chicanxfuturism and monstrosity
Celebrity culture and monstrosity
Performance and monstrosity
Wrestling and monstrosity
Intersectional approaches to monstrosity
Feminist possibilities of monstrosity
American Horror Story
Queerness and monstrosity
Monstrosity and sports
Disability and monstrosity
Class and monstrosity
Game of Thrones
Monstrous politicians and politics
The 2016 U.S. Presidential election
Autobiography and monstrosity
Monstrous methodologies
Hybridity and monstrosity
White femininity and monstrosity
Monstrosity and military culture
Monstrosity and toxic masculinities
Monstrosity and white masculinity
Monstrosity and religion
Monstrosity and temporality
Chicana feminism and monstrosity
Monstrosity and Orientalism

Questions can be directed to Bernadette Calafell at Bernadette.Calafell@du.edu. Please electronically send submissions (three documents, MS WORD, MLA) to Bernadette Calafell via email at Bernadette.Calafell@du.edu by December 1, 2017.

1) Title Page: A single title page must accompany the email, containing complete contact information (address, phone number, e-mail address).
2) Manuscript: On the first page of the manuscript, only include the article’s title, being sure not to include the author’s name. The journal employs a “blind review” process, meaning that a copy of the article will be sent to reviewers without revealing the author’s name. Please include the works cited with your manuscript.
3) Short Bio: On a separate document, please also include a short (100 words) bio. We will include this upon acceptance and publication.

Essays should range between 15-25 pages of double-spaced text in 12 pt. Times New Roman font, including all images, endnotes, and Works Cited pages. Please note that the 15-page minimum should be 15 pages of written article material. Less than 15 pages of written material will be rejected and the author asked to develop the article further. Essays should also be written in clear US English in the active voice and third person, in a style accessible to the broadest possible audience. Authors should be sensitive to the social implications of language and choose wording free of discriminatory overtones.

For documentation, The Popular Culture Studies Journal follows the Modern Language Association style, as articulated by Joseph Gibaldi and Walter S. Achtert in the paperback MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (New York: MLA), and in The MLA Style Manual (New York: MLA). The most current editions of both guides will be the requested editions for use. This style calls for a Works Cited list, with parenthetical author/page references in the text. This approach reduces the number of notes, which provide further references or explanation.

For punctuation, capitalization, hyphenation, and other matters of style, follow the MLA Handbook and the MLA Style Manual, supplemented as necessary by The Chicago Manual of Style (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). The most current edition of the guide will be the requested edition for use.

It is essential for authors to check, correct, and bring manuscripts up to date before final submission. Authors should verify facts, names of people, places, and dates, and double-check all direct quotations and entries in the Works Cited list. Manuscripts not in MLA style will be returned without review.

We are happy to receive digital artwork. Please save line artwork (vector graphics) as Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) and bitmap files (halftones or photographic images) as Tagged Image Format (TIFF), with a resolution of at least 300 dpi at final size. Do not send native file formats. Please contact the editor for discussion of including artwork.

Upon acceptance of a manuscript, authors are required to sign a form transferring the copyright from the author to the publisher. A copy will be sent to authors at the time of acceptance.

Before final submission, the author will be responsible for obtaining letters of permission for illustrations and for quotations that go beyond “fair use,” as defined by current copyright law.

Territory, Issue VII – Alternate Earths

Maps of the earth might be the most ubiquitous and recognizable type of map, but they also might be the most misleading and the most contested. There is the technical matter of projecting the planet, a three-dimensional object, onto the representational space of a two-dimensional plane, but at a more foundational level, we wonder: what is Earth?

Even the simplest answers aren’t so simple. The earth is round, but has been argued—often elaborately and compellingly—to be flat, hollow, expanding, eternal, illusory, embedded in platonic solids, resting on the back of a turtle that’s resting on the back of a larger turtle, and so on. The earth has seven continents and five oceans, but these are constantly shifting. The earth’s seven continents were once one, but this too is an argument, a narrative constructed from fossil records and glacial deposits. Many argue the earth is headed for destruction while others deny this claim. Many argue the earth is 4.5 billion years while others, less than 10,000.

Earth as planet, resource, globe, home, miracle, stage, habitat, mother, matter, worry, birthplace, and resting place. The earth is the ground beneath our feet, but it is anything but sure. There is always the possibility of an alternate earth, one that inverts, flattens, or otherwise undoes this sense of groundedness and centrality. The question is not whether alternate earths exist, but which you choose to inhabit.

Here are a few we find especially intriguing: Agartha & the hollow earth, Another Earth (2011), Antiterra, Atlantis, Aztlán, alternate histories, bhavacakra, The Books of Genesis & Revelations, brane cosmology, cli-fi, Cosmographia, creation myths, deep time, disaster films, The Drowned World, East of West, ecopoetics, ecumenopoles, eras & epochs, eschatons, the expanding earth, fictional universes, the flat earth & its societies, flood myths, geocentrism, The Global Village, heat death, heliocentrism, Hyperborea, hyperobjects, landfill, the last glacial maximum, Lemuria, ley lines, mappa mundi, Mother Earth / Gaia, Mu, the multiverse, Panthalassa, parallel universes, Pax Germanica, post-apocalyptic fiction, Saṃsāra, sea-level rise, The Southern Reach Trilogy, spirit worlds, supercontinents, T-O maps, terraforming, tidal islands, Waterworld (1995), the world tree, Yggdrasil, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union.

Issue VII will be published February 2018. To learn how to contribute, read our submissions guidelines.

Gothic Animals: Uncanny Otherness and the Animal With-Out (edited collection)

deadline for submissions:
November 1, 2017

full name / name of organization:
Ruth Heholt and Melissa Edmundson

contact email:
me.makala@gmail.com

Gothic Animals: Uncanny Otherness and the Animal With-Out

‘The boundary between the animal and the human has long been unstable, especially since the Victorian period. Where the boundary is drawn between human and animal is itself an expression of political power and dominance, and the ‘animal’ can at once express the deepest fears and greatest aspirations of a society’ (Victorian Animal Dreams, 4).

‘The animal, like the ghost or good or evil spirit with which it is often associated, has been a manifestation of the uncanny’ (Timothy Clark, 185).

In the mid nineteenth-century Charles Darwin published his theories of evolution. And as Deborah Denenholz Morse and Martin A. Danahay suggest, ‘The effect of Darwin’s ideas was both to make the human more animal and the animal more human, destabilizing boundaries in both directions’ (Victorian Animal Dreams, 2). Nineteenth-century fiction quickly picked up on the idea of the ‘animal within’ with texts like R.L. Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and H. G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau. In these novels the fear explored was of an unruly, defiant, degenerate and entirely amoral animality lying (mostly) dormant within all of us. This was our animal-other associated with the id: passions, appetites and capable of a complete disregard for all taboos and any restraint. As Cyndy Hendershot states, this ‘animal within’ ‘threatened to usurp masculine rationality and return man to a state of irrational chaos’ (The Animal Within, 97). This however, relates the animal to the human in a very specific, anthropocentric way. Non-humans and humans have other sorts of encounters too, and even before Darwin humans have often had an uneasy relationship with animals. Rats, horses, dogs, cats, birds and other beasts have, as Donna Haraway puts it a way of ‘looking back’ at us (When Species Meet,19).

Animals of all sorts have an entirely different and separate life to humans and in fiction this often morphs into Gothic horror. In these cases it is not about the ‘animal within’ but rather the animal ‘with-out’; Other and entirely incomprehensible. These non-human, uncanny creatures know things we do not, and they see us in a way it is impossible for us to see ourselves. We have other sorts of encounters with animals too: we eat animals, imbibing their being in a largely non-ritualistic, but possibly still magical way; and on occasion, animals eat us. From plague-carrying rats, to ‘filthy’ fleas, black dogs and killer bunnies, animals of all sorts invade our imaginations, live with us (invited or not) in our homes, and insinuate themselves into our lives. The mere presence of a cat can make a home uncanny. An encounter with a dog on a deserted road at night can disconcert. The sight of a rat creeping down an alley carries all sorts of connotations as does a cluster of fat, black flies at the window of a deserted house. To date though, there is little written about animals and the Gothic, although they pervade our fictions, imaginations and sometimes our nightmares.

This collection is intended to look at all sorts of animals in relation to the Gothic: beasts, birds, sea-creatures, insects and domestic animals. We are not looking for transformative animals – no werewolves this time – rather we want essays on fictions about actual animals that explore their relation to the Gothic; their importance and prominence within the Gothic. We invite abstracts for essays that cover all animal/bird/insect/fish life forms, from all periods (from the early Modern to the present), and within different types of media – novels, poetry, short stories, films and games.

Topics may include (but are not bound by):

Rats (plague and death)
Dogs (black and otherwise)
Killer bunnies
Uncanny cats
Alien sea creatures
Horses
Bulls
Cows (perhaps with long teeth)
Killer frogs
Beetles, flies, ants, spiders
Worms
Birds
Snakes and toads
Whales/Dolphins
Animals as marginalised and oppressed
Animals in peril
Animal and human intimacies and the breaking of taboos
Exotic animals/animals in colonial regions (Africa, Australia, Canada, the Caribbean, India)
Demonic animals
Dangerous animals (rabid dogs, venomous snakes, wolves)
Invasive animals
Animals and disease
Domestic animals
Uncanny animals
Animals connected to supernatural beings (Satanic goats, vampire bats)
Witchcraft and familiar spirits/animal guides
Rural versus urban animals
Sixth sense and psychic energy

Please send 500 word abstracts and a short bio note by 1 November 2017 to: Dr Ruth Heholt (ruth.heholt@falmouth.ac.uk) and Dr Melissa Edmundson (me.makala@gmail.com).

The collection is intended for the Palgrave MacMillan ‘Studies in Animals and Literature’ series. Completed essays must be submitted by 1 July 2018.

The Department of American Literature and Culture at Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin, in cooperation with the Video Game Research Center, is organizing the second of the biannual ExRe(y) conferences. The two-day international conference titled “ExRe(y) 2018. Exhaustion and Regeneration in Post-Millennial North-American Literature and Visual Culture” will take place in Lublin, Poland, on 10-11 May, 2018.

To view the full CfP, please click exreycfp 2018.

Link: http://www.trap.no/en/project/science-fiction-short-story-competition

Borders have always been a central political problem. Discussions of national and territorial boundaries, ethnic geo-rootedness, many kinds of -exits, mark our news feeds. Digital border crossings challenge and hack into political manipulations as well as offer new possibilities of techno-cosmopolitanism and even of new possibilities in egalitarian social identity. Geopolitical borders often overlap with other kinds of borders such as socioeconomic borders, racial borders, and borders framing sexual identity.

The theme is dedicated to thresholds and borders, as well as new frontiers and new beginnings. In his essay «The race for space» Duke Ellington states that a society using its power to suppress its minorities never will achieve greatness. Our future is at stake, and we must explore possibilities in alternative futures, where borders can be and are transgressed.

Our aim in this competition is to promote the movement of science fiction works that, as a concept and as an artefact of the social, offer new possibilities in border crossings.

We would especially welcome work from authors from regions which, while making a mark especially in recent years in literary avenues, continue to be numerically under-represented in the global science fiction space. Such regions would include for instance the Nordic region, the Arab world, Africa, South Asia, East and Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and Central and South America. The competition is however border free, and is open to all internationally.

Entries need to be previously unpublished and not under consideration elsewhere. Stories need to range from 3000-3500 words, and should preferably be in English. Stories in other languages are equally welcome but they must be accompanied by an English translation. Story and cover letter must be submitted electronically in doc or rtf format. Only one entry per person is allowed.

Up to seven stories will be selected and competition winners will be published in a special themed volume (ISBN registered) in Spring 2018 and will be given a one-time award of NOK6000/~US$700. The deadline for entries is 1st September 2017.

Entries can be sent to the editor, Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay at allbordersaretemporary@gmail.com

CfP: QUEER TOLKIEN STUDIES
Paper Session(s) and or Roundtable

Please note that this call is for individual proposals to be sent to the two area chairs who will organize them into complete sessions to be uploaded into the conference database.
Please do *not* submit individual proposals through the conference database if you wish to be considered for these themed sessions.

PCA/ACA 2018 NATIONAL CONFERENCE
J.W. MARRIOTT INDIANAPOLIS DOWNTOWN, INDIANAPOLIS, IN
MARCH 28-31, 2018
http://pcaaca.org/national-conference/
SUBMISSIONS: SEPTEMBER 28, 2017

These sessions will be co-sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Studies and the Tolkien Studies areas:

Bruce E. Drushel, Ph.D.
Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Studies
Department of Media, Journalism, & Film
Miami University
Oxford OH 45056
drushebe@miamioh.edu

Robin Anne Reid, Ph.D.
Tolkien Studies
Department of Literature and Languages
A&M University-Commerce
Commerce, TX 75429
Robin.Reid@tamuc.edu

We wish to organize at least one paper session and one roundtable session for the conference.

PCA allows presenters to participate in one paper session as well as in one roundtable.

Submit a title and 100-word abstract with a working bibliography, a mailing address, institutional affiliation, and e-mail address to both area chairs by September 28, 2017. Please indicate clearly whether your proposal is for the paper session, or for the roundtable. If you wish to participate in both, you must submit two different proposals.

Presentations may focus on any aspect of textual production, audience reception, or textual coding that challenge established categories of gender and sexuality including but not limited to:

• Gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans* or queer readings of Tolkien’s or Jackson’s texts:;
• Readings that focus on non-normative but not clearly marked expressions of gender and sexuality in Tolkien’s or Jackson’s texts;
• Transformative or derivative works that queer Tolkien’s or Jackson’s texts;
• Intersectional queer readings of Tolkien’s or Jackson’s texts;
• Queer Theories/Theorists and Tolkien studies (including historical and biographical aspects as well as fiction and scholarship).

Plans for a Queer Tolkien Studies anthology (co-edited by Robin Anne Reid, Christopher Vaccaro, and Stephen Yandell) will be discussed at the PCA sessions.

Investigating Identities in Young Adult (YA) Narratives: Symposium on the 13/12/2017 at The University of Northampton UK

deadline for submissions:
October 8, 2017

full name / name of organization:
The University of Northampton UK

contact email:
anthony.stepniak2@northampton.ac.uk

Investigating Identities in Young Adult (YA) Narratives

Symposium on the 13/12/2017 at The University of Northampton UK

From JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series to Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, Young Adult (YA) narratives have grown exponentially over the past twenty years. Adopting a range of genres and platforms including the Bildungsroman and the coming of age teen drama, YA narratives represent a significant cultural means to explore the formation of identity in all its varied aspects. This one day symposium at the University of Northampton will investigate the representation of identity constructions in relation to narrative form in YA narratives both past and present.

Suggested topics may include, but are no means limited to:

– Representations of racial/ethnic identity in YA narratives

– Representations of gender and/or sexual identity in YA narratives

– The representation of identity in YA narratives in relation to the notion of class

– Interrogations of YA narrative’s treatment of LGBTQIA+ identities

– The effect of trauma on identity in YA narratives

– YA narratives and the notion of the outsider or other

– The relationship between genre and the notion of identity in YA narratives

– The representation of non-binary identities in YA narratives

– The transition from childhood to adulthood in classic (children’s) literature

– The representation of disability in relation to the notion of identity in YA narratives

– The use and function of supernatural identities in YA narratives

Being an interdisciplinary symposium focused on narrative, papers from across the subject areas of literature, screen studies, history, popular culture and education studies are invited. The symposium welcomes papers on both YA literature and screen adaptations, and from scholars working on earlier periods as well as contemporary culture.

The symposium invites papers from academics, early career researchers and postgraduate research students alike.

Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be sent to both sonya.andermahr@northampton.ac.uk and anthony.stepniak2@northampton.ac.uk by the 8th October 2017.

Disasters, Apocalypses, and Catastrophes: PCA/ACA 2018 3/28-3/31 Indianapolis

deadline for submissions:
October 1, 2017

full name / name of organization:
Pop Culture/American Culture Association

contact email:
disasterculture@yahoo.com

PCA/ACA 2018 Indianapolis, IN

Disasters, Apocalypses, and Catastrophes (Ficociello and Bell)

The PCA/ACA annual conference is March 28 through March 31 in Indianapolis, Indiana

Key Dates:

Jul 1 Database Opens for Submissions

Oct 1 Registration Opens

Oct 1 Deadline for Paper Proposals

Oct 15 All Sessions Entered into the Database by Area Chairs

Nov 15 Early Bird Registration Rate Ends

Dec 1 Preliminary Program Available

Dec 15 “Drop Dead” Date: Participants Not Registered Removed from Program

Jan 1, 2018 Final Program to the Publisher

All Proposals & Abstracts Must Be Submitted Through The PCA Database: http://pcaaca.org/national-conference/

Please submit a proposal to only one area at a time. Exceptions and rules

CALL FOR PAPERS

Disasters, Apocalypses, and Catastrophes

In a hyper-mediated global culture, disaster events reach us with great speed and digital detail, and we begin forming, interpreting, and historicizing catastrophes simultaneously with people worldwide. Are we inside the era of disasters or are we merely inundated by mediated accounts of events categorized as catastrophic? How do these mediated accounts affect policy, poverty, and the public? Of particular interest is the question of what role do academics play in disaster culture and policy?

Disasters, Apocalypses, and Catastrophes offers a forum for these questions and critical approaches surrounding the culture of disasters, catastrophes, accidents, and apocalypses in global art, literature, media, film, and popular culture. Disasters, Apocalypses, and Catastrophes will address broader disciplinary topics and innovative intersections of humanities, musicology, social science, literature, film, visual art, psychology, game studies, material culture, media studies, ecology, and information technology.

General Topics

Eco Criticism, Eco Culture

Trump Administration and Climate Policy

Global Warming, Climate Change

Deniers of climate change

Disaster capitalism

War Ecology

Slow Violence

Hyperobjects

Native Cultures and Eco-policies

TV and Film: The Walking Dead, The Leftovers, Falling Skies, The Dome, etc.

Zombie and Apocalyptic imaginaries

Social Media and disasters

Doomsday preppers

History and disasters
Eco/Culture Events

Disasters in popular culture
Time and temporalities of disasters
Representations and narration of disaster
Disasters and personal narratives
Disaster aesthetics
Cultures of risk and uncertainty
Disaster metaphors, concepts and symbolic forms
Ethics and politics of disasters
Natural disasters in climate rhetoric
Disaster literature and art
Notions of national identity through disaster representation
Portraying suffering in news, digital culture, literature, and TV
Affective responses to disaster in local, national, and global contexts
Celebrity humanitarianism and disaster engagement
Distinctions between man-made and natural disaster
Public, private, and nonprofit responses to disaster
The ideological and financial interests of global capitalism in the recovery process
Epidemics, pandemics, and disease

All Proposals & Abstracts Must Be Submitted Through The PCA Database: http://pcaaca.org/national-conference/
Please submit a proposal to only one area at a time. Exceptions and rules

Questions may be addressed to either:

Robert Ficociello
Holy Family University

Philadelphia, PA

disasterculture@yahoo.com

Robert Bell
Loyola University
New Orleans, LA
504.865.3094

disasterculture@yahoo.com

The New Urban Gothic Edited Collection Call for Chapters

deadline for submissions:
August 30, 2017

full name / name of organization:
Holly-Gale Millette, Southampton University, Ruth Heholt, Falmouth University

contact email:
h.millette@soton.ac.uk

Urban Gothic is a subgenre of Gothic fiction, Gothic crime fiction, and television whose narratives spring from discourse on industrial and post-industrial urban society. Often dystopic, it was pioneered in the mid-19th century in Britain and the United States and developed in serialisations such as R. L. Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886); into novels such as Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). Much has been written on 19th century Anglo-centred Urban Gothic fiction and vampiristic, monstrous Urban Gothic, but less has been written on the 21st century reimagining and re-serialisation of the Urban Gothic in mechanised, altered, disabled, and dystopic states of being. Nor has writing on the Urban Gothic departed from the canonical London location or considered the Urban Gothic as the prime progenitor of the genre of Crime Fiction. The intention, therefore, is for The New Urban Gothic to explore the resurgence in serialised and grotesque narratives of degeneration, ecological and economic ruin, dystopia, mechanised future inequality, and crime narrative as evidenced in literature and new forms of media in an international context. Submissions are welcomed that address the historic specificities of urban difference and Gothic traditions, as well as inter-disciplinary studies and contemporary texts that link urban crime fiction and the Gothic.

Please send a 300-500 word abstract including keywords, along with 50-100 words of biodata to the editors h.millette@soton.ac.uk and ruth.heholt@falmouth.ac.uk by 30 August, 2017.

Deadline for final chapters of no more than 7,500 words (including notes and references): 1 May 2018.

Topics may include (but are not bound by):

Industrialization, Mechanisation and future dystopia in the Urban Gothic

New serializations of the Urban Gothic (Dickens – Netflix, etc.)

Outsiders (Gender, Race, or the Orient) in the New Urban Gothic

Identity and Belonging in the New Urban Gothic

Dark Tourism and the New Urban Gothic

Political Aesthetics (Grotesque) of the New Urban Gothic

LGBTQi and the New Urban Gothic

Disability and Mental Health in the New Urban Gothic

Sci-Fi and the New Urban Gothic in Space.

Gaming and the New Urban Gothic (X-Box, PS 3, Wii, PC, etc.)

Graphic Novels and the New Urban Gothic (Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Frank Miller, etc.)

Regional New Urban Gothic (Sheffield, New Orleans, Ontario, etc.)

Dockside New Urban Gothic (Limehouse, Hong Kong, Gdansk, Liverpool, Vancouver, etc.)

Japanese New Urban Gothic (or Korean, Chinese, Indian, Canadian etc)