Call for Papers – ACLA 2026 SeminarSeminar Title: Heteronormativity, Resistance and Censorship: Queer Gothic Narratives in South Asian DramaConference: American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) Annual Meeting 2026Dates: February 26 – March 1, 2026Venue: Montréal, Canada (in person)

Organizers: Muhammad Numan, Faham Zeeshan (UMT Lahore)

This seminar explores how South Asian television dramas are bringing queer narratives into conversation with Gothic aesthetics to produce stories that are unsettling, intimate, and politically charged. Haunted houses, spectral figures, and grotesque spaces have always had a presence in South Asian storytelling. In recent years, however, these elements have begun to intersect with depictions of queer desire, creating new ways of thinking about gender, sexuality, and class on screen.

As Katarzyna Ancuta and Deimantas Valančiūnas note in South Asian Gothic: Haunted Cultures, Histories, and Media (2021), there is “an urgent need to de-westernise Gothic methodologies” and to situate the Gothic within the histories, cultural contexts, and media practices of South Asia (1). This seminar takes that call seriously, asking how queer desire in South Asian dramas is both obscured and revealed through Gothic tropes. Drawing on Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s idea of the Gothic as a “coded language of same-sex desire” and Gauri Viswanathan’s reading of colonial Gothic as entangled with domination and resistance, we consider how grotesque atmospheres, spectral presences, and fluid gender roles open spaces for queer resistance in societies marked by conservatism and class stratification.

We invite contributions on topics including:

• Queer Gothic imagery in South Asian television dramas
• Depictions of queer bodies under heteronormative and class-based constraints
• Adaptations of Gothic tropes—haunted interiors, dangerous figures, forbidden spaces—for queer narratives
• The influence of censorship, audience reception, and media regulation on queer Gothic storytelling

As Judith Butler reminds us, “Resistance is never a single act but a reworking of the very terms by which we are constrained” (9). This seminar seeks to map those reworkings in the South Asian queer Gothic, finding in its shadows not only fear, but survival, intimacy, and collective transformation.

References

• Ancuta, Katarzyna, and Deimantas Valančiūnas, eds. South Asian Gothic: Haunted Cultures, Histories, and Media. University of Wales Press, 2021.
• Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of the Closet. University of California Press, 1990.
• Viswanathan, Gauri. Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India. Columbia University Press, 1989.
• Butler, Judith. Undoing Gender. Routledge, 2004.

Submission Portal and Detailed CFS: https://www.acla.org/seminar/9992ee36-7828-4bff-ab08-dc641cdf8890 Submission Dates: August 26 – October 2, 2025Decision Notifications: October 6 – 20, 2025As Judith Butler reminds us: “Resistance is never a single act but a reworking of the very terms by which we are constrained.” This seminar seeks to map those reworkings in the South Asian queer Gothic.For any queries, feel free to write at nauman.sa18@gmail.com cc to fahamzeeshan82@gmail.com.