cfp.english.upenn.edu

Reminder: Deadline June 15.

** The editors are particularly interested in abstracts on juvenile lit., gaming, new media, and comics. **

Call for Contributors

Undead in the West II: They Just Keep Coming (collected essays)

The frontier has long been framed as a landscape of life and death, but few scholarly works have ventured into the realm where the two become one, to explore portrayals of the Undead in the West – the zombies, vampires, mummies, and others that have lumbered, crept, shambled, and swooped into the Western from other genres. This sub-genre, while largely a post-1990 phenomenon, traces it roots to much deeper hybrid traditions of Westerns and horror or science fiction, and yet, also shows ties to the recent Western renaissance.

This volume, a companion to our forthcoming Undead in the West: Vampires, Zombies, Mummies and Ghosts on the Cinematic Frontier, will focus on the blending of the Western genre and the undead in media other than film: comics, graphic novels, gaming, new media, and literature. Scholarly explorations of material culture and fandom will also be considered.

Some questions to consider:

- What happens when traditional frontier figures, settings, symbols, and ideologies encounter these characters that defy the laws of nature?
- How are Western archetypes subverted or accentuated when confronted by the undead?
- How do zombies, vampires, and the like, affect our understandings and interpretations of the West, and vice-versa? Might these hybrid Westerns function as the new anti-Western, or do the undead facilitate a return to tradition?
- In what ways do undead Westerns consciously use the undead elements of the plot to comment on the nature of traditional Western heroes and villains?
- In what ways do these genre mash-ups revitalize the Western for a new generation of audiences and fans?

Please send your 500-word abstract to both co-editors, Cindy Miller (cynthia_miller@emerson.edu) and Bow Van Riper (bvanriper@bellsouth.net).

Publication timetable:

June 15, 2012 – Deadline for Abstracts
July 15, 2012 – Notification of Acceptance Decisions
Dec. 1, 2012 – Chapter Drafts Due
March 15, 2013 – Chapter Revisions Due
April 15, 2013 – Final Revisions Due
May 1, 2013 – Delivery to Publisher

Acceptance will be contingent upon the contributors' ability to meet these deadlines, and to deliver professional-quality work.