We’ve been very lax about adding news to the blog lately and we do apologise (work pressure, ill health, project deadlines, etc.). However, there does seem to be a lot going on and here are some recent CFPs for conferences and articles. Deadlines are approaching so do pay attention to that.
1. The International Association of Byron Societies, 47th Annual Conference
7-11 August 2023, University of San Francisco, California. Deadline: 1 March 2023.
In bicentenary tribute, the IABS 2023 conference will gather work on Byron and Romantic-era resistance while seeking to honor the global diversity of the Romantic age. Our gathering’s theme is “New Worlds,” and we invite papers both on and beyond Byron and his circle.
2. 2023 Festival of Monsters
The Center For Monster Studies, 13-15 October 2023, Santa Cruz. Deadline: 1 March 2023.
Our 2023 Festival of Monsters (Oct. 13-15 in beautiful Santa Cruz) includes an academic conference, performances, readings, presentations from monster-makers in theatre, film and television, and events in association with an exhibit at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History (MAH) entitled Werewolf Hunters, Jungle Queens, and Space Commandos: The Lost Worlds of Women Comics Artists.
We invite proposals for 20-minute papers or presentations on any aspect of monsters or monster studies.
3. The Brontë Society Conference: How beautiful the earth is still
Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds, 9 September 2023. Deadline: 1 March 20203.
The Brontë Parsonage Museum’s 2023 programme will explore and celebrate all things connected with our landscape, a landscape inextricably linked with the Brontës: animals, habitats, trees, flowers, foliage, weather, and more. Our events and activities will complement our special exhibition, The Brontës and the Wild, and draw on the theme of the natural world, providing opportunities to engage with issues and ideas around climate change and environmental sustainability.
4. Current Research in Speculative Fiction 2023, 12th Annual Conference
University of Liverpool, In Person and Online, 29–30 June 2023. Deadline: 25 March 2023.
Whether it is science fiction, fantasy, or horror, speculative fiction allows us to envision transformed worlds full of dread,
excitement, and wonder so utterly different from our own. We escape to imagine wizards who unravel reality, men who transform into cockroaches, and spaceships that warp time, all the while uncovering more about our past, present and future than many forms of conventional fiction. For CRSF’s 12th year, this hybrid event (taking place both in person and online) seeks to generate interdisciplinary discussions of metamorphosis in speculative fiction, exploring the transformations the genre allows and how changes both minuscule and grand manifest themselves within textual and visual cultures in the present day.
5. Severed Limbs and Monstrous Appetites: (Re)Defining Fairy-Tale Horror from the Seventeenth Century to the Present, Literature special issue
A special issue of Literature (ISSN 2410-9789). Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 April 2023.
If horror and the fairy tale are so easily intermingled, can horror then be considered as a distinctive feature of the literary fairy tale? In ‘Bluebeard’ (1697), after all, Perrault creates an atmosphere of mystery and expectation of violence before describing Bluebeard’s closet, which contains the numerous corpses of his murdered wives, whose clotted blood covers the floor. Blood, bodily mutilation, and body parts are in fact extensively represented in fairy tales. Before Disney’s sanitized film adaptations, tales such as the Grimm’s versions of ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Snow White’ (1812) depicted horrific images, such as severed limbs, cannibalism, and other types of bodily violence. As far as cannibalism is concerned, the Grimm’s ‘Hansel and Gretel’ and Perrault’s ‘Le Petit Poucet’ are among the most famous stories, but cannibalistic acts or desires are also central in lesser-known tales, such as Perrault’s version of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ or the Grimm’s ‘The Juniper Tree’.
What are the roles, functions, and meanings of horror in a fairy-tale narrative? This Special Issue of Literature aims to answer this question.
