We’ve had a fabulous response to our CFP for the Sea changes: The fairytale Gothic of mermaids, selkies, and enchanted hybrids of ocean and river conference. We’ll keep you updated with news on what looks to be an amazing event.
First, there’s a great opportunity for postgraduates and ECRs to ‘offer an original contribution to the field of Gothic Studies’ and win The International Gothic Association Early-Career Essay Prize 2024-25. But do hurry–the deadline is 1 March 2025!
Calls for papers (conferences)
CFP: Horror Studies Now 2025
Northumbria University, UK; 29-30 May 2025
Deadline: 14 March 2025
The event seeks to explore areas and approaches that have not yet been adequately accounted for or represented in the field, encompassing (but not limited to):
The diversity of perspectives, identities, and voices that comprise Horror Studies and horror production Independent horror production, alternative histories, and horror produced outside of Europe and North America The field’s methodological richness, including archival approaches, audience research, practice-based research, and new theoretical perspectives The breadth of cultural perspectives that inform Horror Studies and horror media Papers that address horror in all its media forms including games, film, comics, music, social media, television, literature, art, and so forth
Events
The Green Children of Woolpit
Deborah Hyde, Writer and Folklorist
Greenwich Skeptics in the Pub; The Duke of Greenwich91 Colomb St, Greenwich, SE10 9EZ; 19:30 19 March 2025
One of my favourite stories; a tale of eerie fae and close to OGOM’s current research into Gothic fairies.
Two children appeared in the harvest fields of twelfth-century East Anglia. They were wearing strange clothes, they didn’t speak English … and they were green. We would probably dismiss this as a story or strange imagining, except that there are two independent and reputable sources for the tale. What can we say today about this strange event? Were the people of Woolpit visited by the fairies?
Race and the Development of the European Fairy Tale
In stories retold for generations, wondrous worlds and magnificent characters have defined the genre of European fairy tales with little recognition of a defining aspect – racism and racialised thinking. Within the classic tales of Giambattista Basile, Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, the Grimms, and Andrew and Nora Lang, Kimberly J. Lau teases apart and historicises the racialised themes and ideologies embedded within fairy tales spanning the early 17th to early 20th centuries. Lau provides a new framework for understanding European fairy tales in the milieux in which they were created, bringing distant and ethereal worlds back to earth. Free and open to all.
Scottish and Irish Gothic
Scottish Writing in the Nineteenth Century (SWING)
University of Edinburgh; 14:00-18:00 11 April 2025
Join us for a research seminar exploring Scottish and Irish Gothic on 11th April 2025.
There follows a series of exciting events by The Folkore Society:
The Soldier’s Tale
The Folklore Society Presidential Address 2025 by Prof. David Hopkin looks at traditional narratives of soldiers
16 September 2025 5:30 – 6:30pm GMT (Online)
Following my 2024 lecture on ‘The Sailor’s Tale’, in this address I look at another occupational group–soldiers–who were also associated with a specific genre of oral literature. Perhaps surprisingly, the fairytale was soldiers’ preferred genre of narrative, albeit of a particular kind. A shared fund of narratives circulated among soldiers of different European nations, well into the early twentieth century.
Folklore and the Digital: One-day Online Conference
Looking at digitisation and digital tools in preserving folk traditions, and creating new ones
29 March 2025 9:30am – 5:30pm GMT (Online)
Following on from our ‘Digital Folklore’ conference in June 2024, we are holding a one-day online conference ‘Folklore and the Digital’, looking at the digitisation of folklore collections, large language models, digital tools in preserving folk traditions and creating new ones, social media and digital communities.
Connecting Folklore, History and Theory in the 21st Century: Irish Folklore
Sarah Covington turns to examples from Ireland to think in new ways about the relationship between history and folklore
17 June 2025 7 – 8:30pm GMT+1 (Online)
This talk will use the folklore of Ireland as a way to urge scholars and students to think in new ways about the relationship between history and folklore, and the how both could be transformed by more recent theoretical “turns.”
Scandinavian Changelings
Tommy Kuusela, On Scandinavian legends and folk beliefs about changelings from court records, customs and rites, and memorates
6 May 2025 7 – 8:30pm GMT+1 (Online)
In this talk, I will look at stories of changelings from Scandinavia and concentrate on those that are not strictly folk legends, but rather stories that spring from everyday folk belief: including court records, customs and rites, and memorates. These cases make it clear that parents fully believed that their children had been changed. From these records we learn of acts that were meant to force counter exchanges, leading to charges of murder, superstition or witchcraft.
Resources
We have links to many affiliated websites (of key authors and academic groups, for example) and blogs, plus relevant journals on our home page and the Blog and Resources pages–we think you’ll find them very useful. We’ve just added links to Deborah Hyde’s page (she ‘wants to know why people believe in weird stuff’ – its’ a fascinating site for sceptics of the supernatural) and to the revamped (I really didn’t intend that!) site of The Association for the Study of Buffy+. There’s also a link to the brilliant bibliography for romance studies, the Romance Scholarship DB.
