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A peer-reviewed journal of studies in horror and related areas.
SPECIAL ISSUES: Calls for Papers
MONSTRUM 8.2 (December 2025)
CFP: Vegan and Animal Liberation Horror
CFP: Vegan and Animal Liberation Horror
Guest Editor: Mike Thorn
Joss Richer 2024
Christy Tidwell and Carter Soles note, in their introduction to Fear and Nature: Ecohorror Studies in the Anthropocene (2021), that “ecohorror is not defined only by fear of nature but also encompasses fear for nature” and thus that ecohorror “is not simply a venue for ecophobia" (14). Ecohorror, then, offers a unique vantage into our contemporary epoch, wherein factory farming and other Eurowestern practices of ecocidal, colonialist imperialism pose existential threats to human and more than human species.
Horror’s interest in the more than human world predates the relatively contemporary category of “ecohorror.” In Gothic Metaphysics: From Alchemy to the Anthropocene (2021), Jodey Castricano traces the genre’s ecological interests to its literary Gothic origins. She asserts that Gothic horror proves more prescient now than ever, stating: “In the time of the Anthropocene, the return of the concept of animistic interrelationship and interconnectedness cannot be overemphasized, if only because it is the harbinger of the failure of the Cartesian paradigm, which had once ‘seemed infallible to most Westerners’ and which has, arguably, contributed to the crisis facing the planet today with respect to climate change” (190).
In what ways, then, can horror fictions help us better understand relations between human and more than human animals? How do horror texts contend with the real-world horrors of capitalist human exceptionalism that justify the industrial exploitation and killing of more than human animals? How might horror’s “speculative” or “excessive” aesthetics offer insights into animals’ perceptual or experiential modalities? How does the horror genre employ its self-announcing affect to these ends?
Submissions are now open for Monstrum 8.2, a special issue devoted to horror and ecohorror’s engagements with veganism and animal liberation. We seek proposals for essays (5,000-7,000 words) devoted to horror texts, modalities, and philosophies with a focus on veganism or animal rights. Your essays might consider how issues of animal liberation present in canonical Gothic and horror fiction (e.g. the work of Shirley Jackson, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King), in the Weird literary tradition (e.g. Algernon Blackwood, Robert Aickman, Thomas Ligotti), in works of folk horror, in horror cinema, or in contemporary and “understudied” horror texts. They might consider issues of animal liberation in works of Indigenous horror (e.g. Eden Robinson, Stephen Graham Jones, Owl Goingback), or how veganism manifests in horror texts by publicly vegan and vegetarian writers and filmmakers (e.g. Rob Zombie, Kathe Koja, Clive Barker, Dario Argento). We are open to all manner of proposals pertaining to the intersection of horror and animal liberation, including videographic criticism (video essays).
Proposals should be no longer than 500 words and should be submitted no later than Friday, November 15. For inquiries or further information, or to submit a proposal, please contact Guest Editor Mike Thorn.
Proposal Guidelines
Proposals should include the following elements:
Horror’s interest in the more than human world predates the relatively contemporary category of “ecohorror.” In Gothic Metaphysics: From Alchemy to the Anthropocene (2021), Jodey Castricano traces the genre’s ecological interests to its literary Gothic origins. She asserts that Gothic horror proves more prescient now than ever, stating: “In the time of the Anthropocene, the return of the concept of animistic interrelationship and interconnectedness cannot be overemphasized, if only because it is the harbinger of the failure of the Cartesian paradigm, which had once ‘seemed infallible to most Westerners’ and which has, arguably, contributed to the crisis facing the planet today with respect to climate change” (190).
In what ways, then, can horror fictions help us better understand relations between human and more than human animals? How do horror texts contend with the real-world horrors of capitalist human exceptionalism that justify the industrial exploitation and killing of more than human animals? How might horror’s “speculative” or “excessive” aesthetics offer insights into animals’ perceptual or experiential modalities? How does the horror genre employ its self-announcing affect to these ends?
Submissions are now open for Monstrum 8.2, a special issue devoted to horror and ecohorror’s engagements with veganism and animal liberation. We seek proposals for essays (5,000-7,000 words) devoted to horror texts, modalities, and philosophies with a focus on veganism or animal rights. Your essays might consider how issues of animal liberation present in canonical Gothic and horror fiction (e.g. the work of Shirley Jackson, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King), in the Weird literary tradition (e.g. Algernon Blackwood, Robert Aickman, Thomas Ligotti), in works of folk horror, in horror cinema, or in contemporary and “understudied” horror texts. They might consider issues of animal liberation in works of Indigenous horror (e.g. Eden Robinson, Stephen Graham Jones, Owl Goingback), or how veganism manifests in horror texts by publicly vegan and vegetarian writers and filmmakers (e.g. Rob Zombie, Kathe Koja, Clive Barker, Dario Argento). We are open to all manner of proposals pertaining to the intersection of horror and animal liberation, including videographic criticism (video essays).
Proposals should be no longer than 500 words and should be submitted no later than Friday, November 15. For inquiries or further information, or to submit a proposal, please contact Guest Editor Mike Thorn.
Proposal Guidelines
Proposals should include the following elements:
- Title: A descriptive title for your essay.
- Abstract: A concise summary of your proposed essay, identifying your object of study, articulating the main argument, and outlining your methodology/approach. If you are proposing a videographic essay, describe the methods and techniques you intend to use in your video essay, including how you plan to convey your ideas visually and aurally.
- References: Provide a preliminary list of key texts, media objects, etc., that inform your project.
MONSTRUM 7.2 (December 2024) -- CLOSED TO SUBMISSIONS
CFP: Queer/ing Horror: Video Essays at the Intersection of Horror and Queerness
Guest Editor: Dayna McLeod
CFP: Queer/ing Horror: Video Essays at the Intersection of Horror and Queerness
Guest Editor: Dayna McLeod
In What’s the Use? (2019), Sara Ahmed examines “queer use as reuse” (198). She posits, “If I have considered queer use as how we dismantle a world that has been built to accommodate some, we can also think of queer use as a building project” (219-221). Here she highlights the potentiality of queer use, emphasizing its capacity to deconstruct a world full of biased systems, and facilitate creative and productive practices. How might we consider “queer use as reuse” (198) in videographic criticism of queer horror? What interventions, analysis, and critique might we manifest if we look at the form of the video essay in relationship to queer/horror media objects? Ahmed writes, “Queer use can also be about not ingesting something; spitting it out; putting it about. If queer use is not ingesting something, not taking it in, queer use can also be about how you attend to something” (207-8).
Submissions are now open for Monstrum 7.2, a special issue entirely comprised of video essays that “attend to” the intersections of horror and queerness. We seek proposals for 2–7-minute video essays that take up, speak to, or relate Ahmed’s notion of queer use in relation to horror. Likewise, video essayists might consider re/readings of the monstrous, where it is located, and how it is constructed (Jack Halberstam, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters, 1995); dis/identification practices and pleasures in queering and circulating negative and positive affect found in horror (Michael J. Faris, “The Queer Babadook: Circulation of Queer Affects” in The Routledge Handbook of Queer Rhetoric, 2022); and/or how “queer horror has turned the focus of fear upon itself, on its own communities and subcultures” (Darren Elliott-Smith, Queer Horror Film and Television: Sexuality and Masculinity at the Margins, 2016, 197).
We are interested in how the video essayist might situate queerness relative to horror through the analysis of specific media objects and/or texts and their formal techniques as productive, disruptive, interventionist, analytical, methodological, and/or confrontational. Does horror be/come in the process of queering or through its queer re/use? How/does horror lie within queerness itself? Video essayists may also consider the medium of the video essay or source media-object as ‘the body’, where the medium itself (film, television, web-based media object, etc.) and its production are horrific: What does the construction of the media object tell us about queer horror? What is the horror? How do queers and queerness encounter and contend with it? What might queer reuse of queerness look like through a horror lens? What are queer re-telling and reviewing practices of horror?
Accepted proposals will also be asked to submit an accompanying statement of 750-1000 words to accompany the published video essay.
Proposal Guidelines
Proposals should include the following elements:
The written component will be formatted according to standards set out in the current Chicago Manual of Style. Please see the Monstrum submission guidelines for more information.
Proposal Deadline: November 15, 2023
Notification of Acceptance: December 15, 2023
Submission of Final Video Essay and Artist's Statement: July 1, 2024
Revisions: July-October 2024
Publication: October 31, 2024
For inquiries or further information, or to submit a proposal, please contact Dayna McLeod.
Submissions are now open for Monstrum 7.2, a special issue entirely comprised of video essays that “attend to” the intersections of horror and queerness. We seek proposals for 2–7-minute video essays that take up, speak to, or relate Ahmed’s notion of queer use in relation to horror. Likewise, video essayists might consider re/readings of the monstrous, where it is located, and how it is constructed (Jack Halberstam, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters, 1995); dis/identification practices and pleasures in queering and circulating negative and positive affect found in horror (Michael J. Faris, “The Queer Babadook: Circulation of Queer Affects” in The Routledge Handbook of Queer Rhetoric, 2022); and/or how “queer horror has turned the focus of fear upon itself, on its own communities and subcultures” (Darren Elliott-Smith, Queer Horror Film and Television: Sexuality and Masculinity at the Margins, 2016, 197).
We are interested in how the video essayist might situate queerness relative to horror through the analysis of specific media objects and/or texts and their formal techniques as productive, disruptive, interventionist, analytical, methodological, and/or confrontational. Does horror be/come in the process of queering or through its queer re/use? How/does horror lie within queerness itself? Video essayists may also consider the medium of the video essay or source media-object as ‘the body’, where the medium itself (film, television, web-based media object, etc.) and its production are horrific: What does the construction of the media object tell us about queer horror? What is the horror? How do queers and queerness encounter and contend with it? What might queer reuse of queerness look like through a horror lens? What are queer re-telling and reviewing practices of horror?
Accepted proposals will also be asked to submit an accompanying statement of 750-1000 words to accompany the published video essay.
Proposal Guidelines
Proposals should include the following elements:
- Title: A descriptive title for your video essay.
- Abstract: A concise summary (250-300 words) of your proposed video essay, identifying your object of study, and outlining the central thesis, methodology, and approach.
- Methodology/Approach: Describe the methods and techniques you intend to use in your video essay, including how you plan to convey your ideas visually and aurally.
- Thesis: Clearly articulate the main argument or concept you will explore in your video essay regarding the relationship between concepts of ‘horror’ and ‘queer’.
- References: Provide a preliminary list of key texts, media objects, etc., that inform your project.
The written component will be formatted according to standards set out in the current Chicago Manual of Style. Please see the Monstrum submission guidelines for more information.
Proposal Deadline: November 15, 2023
Notification of Acceptance: December 15, 2023
Submission of Final Video Essay and Artist's Statement: July 1, 2024
Revisions: July-October 2024
Publication: October 31, 2024
For inquiries or further information, or to submit a proposal, please contact Dayna McLeod.
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PROPOSING SPECIAL ISSUES
AND SPECIAL FEATURES/DOSSIERS Monstrum accepts proposals for themed Special Issues consisting of from 7 to 10 feature essays (including videographic essays) and related material, and themed Special Features/Dossiers of an issue consisting of from 3 to 5 feature essays (including videographic essays) and related material. By “related material,” we refer to additional contributions including, but not limited to, book/film reviews, interviews, translations, and so on. For more information on proposing a special issue click here. |
PROPOSER UNE ÉDITION SPÉCIALE
OU UN DOSSIER SPÉCIAL Monstrum accepte les propositions de numéros thématiques composés de 7 à 10 essais (y compris des essais vidéographiques) et de matériel connexe, ainsi que des dossiers thématiques composés de 3 à 5 essais (y compris des essais vidéographiques) et de matériel connexe. Par « matériaux connexes », nous entendons toute autre contribution, y compris, mais sans s'y limiter, des critiques de livres/films, des interviews, des traductions, etc. Pour plus d'informations sur la proposition d'un numéro spécial, cliquez ici. |
