film and television

Current Research in Speculative Fiction 2025

15th Annual Conference

Boundaries: transgression, subversion, deconstruction

July 3rd & 4th 2025

University of Liverpool (Hybrid)

All bodies are, in some sense; engines driven by the health or disease of their owners, jackets of flesh that are the physical sum of their wearers. But to become your disease? To become the consumption itself? (Kathe Koja, The Cipher)

That's how the madness of the world tries to colonize you: from the outside in, forcing you to live inits reality. (Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation)

This call for papers seeks contributions examining the relationship between narratives and ecological issues, focusing on the ways storytelling addresses ecological challenges. Narratives – whether literary, cinematic, or multimodal – have the potential to critique environmental exploitation, envision sustainable futures, and explore human and non-human interconnections. The intersection of ecocriticism and storytelling offers fertile ground for discussions about the role of culture in shaping ecological consciousness and practices.

CFP: ‘My Wild Heart Bleeds: Exploring Sheridan Le Fanu’s ‘Carmilla’and its legacy’

Sheridan Le Fanu published his sapphic vampire tale ‘Carmilla’ in 1872, reworking the vampire genre, and creating a figure who has inspired subsequent original works and reimaginings. This collection focuses on new explorations and readings of ‘Carmilla’ and its ongoing legacy, from adaptations and reimaginings to more subtle influences on the figure of the female vampire and the vampiric tradition more broadly.

Theme: Worlds Beyond

The Jack Williamson Lectureship at Eastern New Mexico University (ENMU) invites scholars, academics, and researchers to submit abstracts for academic papers and/or proposals for panel presentations focused on the intersection of speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy, horror, and hybrid genres) with the evolving notion of the (post)human. The theme for this year's Lectureship is "Worlds Beyond” with distinguished guest of honor Darcie Little Badger, the Locus, Nebula, Ignyte, and Newberry Honor Award winning author of Elatsoe and A Snake Falls to Earth. The event will also feature several other speculative fiction authors.  

EXTENDED DEADLINE

CFP SPECIAL ISSUE OF ANGLES - NEW PERSPECTIVES ON THE ANGLOPHONE WORLD 

PUBLICATION DATE: APRIL 2027

THE LIVES AND AFTERLIVES OF COOKIE MUELLER: TALES, KINSHIPS, PERSISTENCE

This call for papers seeks one specific chapter on Medusa for a volume intended for the series, Villains and Creatures.

Each chapter of the volume is intended to be an overview of depictions of Medusa in specific kinds of media; nevertheless, the arguments/theses of each chapter should still be original, using past works and research to develop a current (new) perspective on Medusa.

The chapter needed involves Modern Drama.

Chapters will be due in August 2025. Chapters should be approximately 5,000 to 6,500 words, with Chicago-style endnotes and a bibliography page.

‘With the tremendous acceleration of life, mind and eye have become accustomed to seeing and judging partially or inaccurately, and everyone is like the traveller who gets to know a land and its people from a railway carriage.’ (Friedrich Nietzsche, 1878)

We are inviting proposals for a multidisciplinary conference on the aesthetics of the railway. Taking place on two trains from Vienna to Bucharest and from Bucharest to Istanbul, the conference will itself be a mobile experience.

Although initially dismissed as “a holiday from history” (Will), a “frivolous if not decadent decade” (Rich), and a “time of trivial pursuits” (Halberstam) (cf. Chollet and Goldgeier 2008), the 1990s have increasingly been recognized as a pivotal historical moment. Scholars have underscored its defining impact, with Wegner characterizing the decade as “life between two deaths,” framed by the end of the Cold War and the events of 9/11 (2009).

Since the release of Jordan Peele’s landmark 2017 film Get Out, Black horror has been catapulted to the fore of the American cultural imagination. From Lovecraft Country to Antebellum to adaptations of Candyman and Interview With the Vampire, contemporary depictions of the Black horrific continue to revise and reorient the horror genre. Black horror distinguishes itself by turning the horror genre away from white anxieties about an ominous and ephemeral Other and towards an examination of the horrifying qualities of everyday Black Life.

Keynote speaker: Dr. Nick Davis - Northwestern University 

Submission form: https://forms.gle/NseVDG44o6pggdao7

If you face any difficulties in the submission process or have questions about the conference, please email aberrations@tft.ucla.edu 

What Ever Happened to Gary Cooper?

21st Century American Television and the Rise of MAGA

Call for Papers: Edited Collection on Sai Paranjpye

ReFocus: the Films of Sai Paranjpye 

Contact Email: Tanushree Ghosh 

Deadline for Abstracts: May 30th, 2025     

Middle Cinema, Realism, and Everyday Life: Rethinking the Cinema of Sai Paranjpye

After the Catastrophe. Contemporary Post-Apocalyptic Narratives”

Call for contribution: https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between/announcement/view/123

Horror Studies Now: A Two-Day Conference (29-30 May 2025, Northumbria University, UK)

Researchers working in the broad field of “Horror Studies”, are invited to submit abstracts about their research for an in-person conference, hosted by the Horror Studies Research Group at Northumbria University (https://research.northumbria.ac.uk/horrorstudies), on 29-30 May 2025.