Some CFPs for articles and a conference–deadlines approaching!
1. FOGO Conference 2023: Folklore and Gothic: Supernatural Presences and Environments in Europe and the Americas
Universidad de León (España), 5-7 July 2023. Deadline: 1 April 2023.
This conference aims to open a space of dialogue to analyze the intersections of Gothic and folklore, focusing on fairy tales, the representation of nature, and the treatment of horror. What is the relevance of the ghosts, cemeteries and stormy nights that remain in our subconscious as images and spaces of fear? How can fictional horror represent the climate emergency? How can we explore literature, film and other media through the lens of the monster and the ghost? Ultimately, what is the interaction between folklore, horror and the Gothic?
2. Creature Redux: Considering the Pasts, Presents, and Futures of Chimera in Fiction and Popular Culture
Academic anthology edited by Samantha Baugus and Ayanni Cooper. Deadline: 31 March 2023.
This collection aims to combine the meanings of chimera in our own chimerical creation–monster, animal, mythological, fantastical–to propose a “neither this nor that,” but an “all of the above.” Though we look to center fictional representations of chimera, we encourage writers to think broadly about the figure and what she could be or represent across genres and time.
Through this collection, we look to investigate junctions, crossings, and mixtures of creatures that push, challenge, and distort the boundaries of the human in numerous ways. What the human is, has been, or could be is a question that possesses serious and highly relevant implications in our contemporary moment. How does the chimera’s inherent hybridity complicate our understanding of the familiar and the other? We seek analyses that center the idea of the chimera in fictional texts of any medium, genre, place, or time period.
3. Special Issue ‘Severed Limbs and Monstrous Appetites: (Re)Defining Fairy-Tale Horror from the Seventeenth Century to the Present’
Special issue of Literature journal. Deadline: 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.
4. Journal of Dracula Studies
Call for scholarly articles. Deadline: 1 May 2023.
We invite manuscripts of scholarly articles (4000-6000 words) on any of the following: Bram Stoker, the novel Dracula, the historical Dracula, the vampire in folklore, fiction, film, popular culture, and related topics.
