Although Doctor Who creator Sydney Newman wanted his show to be educational and avoid so-called “bug-eyed monsters,” the popularity of the Daleks in the second serial ensured that it would be better known for scaring kids into hiding behind the sofa.  Adaptable as the science-fiction program is to fit a variety of other genres (e.g. the Western, screwball comedy, romance, period drama), horror dominates its cultural memory and ongoing practice.  While there have been some critical essays over the years examining this aspect of the show, no book has been devoted to a more sustained examination of the generic work of horror in Doctor Who.  This edited collection will remedy that absence.

From arborescence to the rhizome, plants have long served as models for thinking in philosophy, biology, and the arts. In recent years, scholars including Michael Marder, Catriona Sandilands, and Jeffrey Nealon have brought renewed attention to the agency and dynamism of the vegetal, at the same time that the future of plant life has come to be at risk in the wake of climate change and the impending collapse of ecosystems. This panel invites papers that explore ways of thinking about and with plants in the shadow of the Anthropocene. How do writers and visual artists, past and present, help us renegotiate our relationship to the vegetal today?

Dear All,

My Colleagues and I at the University of East Anglia are putting together a special edition of Loading… journal on the Kingdom Hearts franchise as a transmedia phenomenon. The issue is based on an expansion of papers we gave at a panel at the DiGRA conference at Ritsumeikan university in Kyoto last year. But we are looking for additional articles to complement those we already have in order to attempt to address as wide a group of topics as possible through the lens of this important franchise. Our ambition is that this could become an important repository of research and theorising on this game series and the topic of transmedia production and fandom.

I’ll paste the CFP below but the link is here also: