**Call for Papers and Creative Pieces **

Gothic Nature: New Directions in Ecohorror and the EcoGothic

Issue III: Haunted Shores

Deadline for Paper Abstracts: Wednesday 28th July 2021

Deadline for Creative Pieces: Friday 10th September 2021

Guest Editors: Dr Emily Alder, Dr Jimmy Packham, and Dr Joan Passey

Editors-in-Chief: Dr Elizabeth Parker and Dr Michelle Poland

 **Call for Papers and Creative Pieces ** 

Gothic Nature and the Haunted Shores Research Network have teamed up to create the first ever themed issue of the Gothic Nature journal! Issue III of Gothic Nature will focus on ‘Haunted Shores’, following the success of the recent symposium on this theme, and will be published in Spring 2022. This issue will be guest edited by Dr Emily Alder, Dr Jimmy Packham, and Dr Joan Passey, who recently launched this exciting new research network.

Issue III invites you to step into the eerie and unstable edges of the deep dark blue. It seems that as awareness grows of encroaching coastal erosion, climate crisis, and ever more polluted and cluttered seas, there is thriving interest in explorations of both real and imagined murky waters. The coast, the shore, the beach—unsteady and unsettling meeting points between the sea and the land—figure prominently across the Gothic, horror, and weird traditions. In literary and cultural histories, the shoreline has often been conceived as a complex, contradictory space, representing both triumph and terror, freedom and confinement, strength and fragility, identity and displacement, life and death. These littoral and liminal spaces are sites of constant change, uncomfortable encounters, and sublime spectacles, which inspire unique opportunities to engage with the ecoGothic imagination critically and creatively.

For Gothic Nature III, we invite proposals for:

1. Papers that critically reflect, engage with, and explore any aspect and interpretation of ‘Haunted Shores’.

**Please note that work on issue III has already commenced so we can only accept a small number of papers for this open call. Turnaround of articles will be tight, hence the request for extended abstracts, with first full drafts of articles due in late September 2021 (although there may be some flexibility on this). Accordingly, we encourage those with papers on this topic already in progress, or those who are confident that they can produce a first draft within this timeframe, to submit a proposal.**

2. Creative pieces that reflect, engage with, and explore any aspect and interpretation of ‘Haunted Shores’. This includes short stories, poems, extracts of novels-in-progress, artwork, and other alternative modes and formats (e.g. recorded performances, creative readings).

For both critical and creative proposals, themes might include, but are not limited to:

• Nautical Gothic, nautical horror
• Gothic seas and the dark blue humanities
• Gothic seas/shores and social questions of politics, work, class, race, gender, or colonialism
• Climate crisis, coastal erosion, ocean pollution, fishing
• Aquatic Gothic monsters and nonhuman animals
• Coastal ghosts and sea spectres
• Haunted coastal communities
• Underwater Gothic ecologies
• Gothic geology: coastal sands, rocks, and cliffs
• International shores, beaches, islands
• Local and regional maritime myths, legends, and folktales
• Gothic weather: storms, tempests, sea frets
• Ghost ships, shipwrecks, disastrous voyages, monstrous mutiny
• Eerie seaside spaces: fairgrounds, caves, piers

For paper proposals: please send abstracts of 750 words, as well as a brief biography of 150 words, to Elizabeth Parker and Michelle Poland at gothicnaturejournal@gmail.com by Wednesday 28th July 2021 (or feel free to contact us informally should you wish to talk through ideas or have any queries).

For creative contributions: please send completed creative pieces, as well as a brief biography of 150 words, to Elizabeth Parker and Michelle Poland at gothicnaturejournal@gmail.com by Friday 10th September 2021 (or feel free to contact us informally should you wish to talk through ideas or have any queries).

About the Gothic Nature Journal

Gothic Nature is an interdisciplinary and peer-reviewed open-access academic journal seeking to explore the latest evolutions of thought in the areas of ecohorror and the ecoGothic. It publishes articles, reviews, interviews, and original creative pieces united in their interrogation of the darker sides of our relationship with the nonhuman and provides a space for all scholars working at the intersections of ecocriticism, Gothic and horror studies, and the wider environmental humanities. Gothic Nature aims to provide deeper understandings of the importance and implications of our monstrous, sublime, spectral, and uncanny constructions of Nature in the cultural imagination and productively explore how Gothic and horror might factor in our conceptions and experiences of contemporary real life ecological crisis.

Website: Gothic Nature Journal – New Directions in Ecohorror and the EcoGothic

Twitter: @gothicnaturejo

Founding editor: Dr Elizabeth Parker

Co-editors: Dr Elizabeth Parker and Dr Michelle Poland

Book Reviews editor: Professor Jennifer Schell

Film and TV Reviews editor: Assoc. Prof. Sara L. Crosby

Blog Editor: Dr Harriet Stilley

Website Designer: Michael Belcher

Editorial Board: Professor Stacy Alaimo, Professor Eric G. Anderson, Dr Scott Brewster, Dr Kevin Corstorphine, Dr Rachele Dini, Professor Simon C. Estok, Dr Tom J. Hillard, Professor William Hughes, Professor Dawn Keetley, Dr Ian Kinane, Dr John Miller, Professor Matthew Wynn Sivils, Professor Andrew Smith, Dr Samantha Walton

About the Haunted Shores Research Network

Haunted Shores is a global interdisciplinary research network dedicated to investigating the rich history of coasts and littoral spaces in Gothic, horror, and fantastic multimedia. For centuries our literature, art, and culture has regarded coastlines and shores with both wonder and anxiety, as liminal spaces that shape identities and ideologies. From nineteenth-century shipwrecks to twenty-first-century CGI kaiju, the constant reappearance of coastal spaces in Gothic texts demonstrates a need for in-depth study. The Haunted Shore Network aims to bring together researchers from around the globe, of various disciplines, to facilitate a space for learning and knowledge sharing.

Website: Haunted Shores – Coastlands, Coastal Waters, and the Littoral Gothic (wordpress.com).

Twitter: @ShoresHaunted