Call For Chapters: EditedThe #Palgrave Handbook of #Monsters and #Monstrous #Bodies

 

Call for Chapters

The Palgrave Handbook of Monsters and Monstrous Bodies, under contract with Palgrave Publishers, is an interdisciplinary collection of chapters, that provides a snapshot of the evolving field of Monster Studies. This Handbook offers a comprehensive review of globalizing and expanding interdisciplinary explorations of monsters and monstrous bodies. It will become the only Handbook of its kind that focuses on both monsters and the monstrous by world-leading experts, established academics, emerging scholars, and new academics bringing together scholarship across disciplines about the monstrous in

multiple contexts and time periods.

We are seeking scholars of diverse identities, races, and genders, especially those from non-Western institutions or whose work examines monsters and monstrous bodies from global perspectives and nonnormative experiences and narratives to complete the text. Scholars will reflect on the tremendous growth and wide-ranging appeal of these engagements throughout the disciplines. The chapters will emphasize how cultures create ideas of monstrous bodies and utilize monsters as allegories for all manner of identities, issues, and socio-cultural experiences. The Handbook will serve as an interdisciplinary holistic reference to those interested in the links between monsters and socio-cultural attitudes.

CURRENT CONTRACTED CHAPTERS

1. “How To Create a Monster: From Anatomy To Trauma And All Points In Between” Sherry Ginn

2. “Abjection,” Dr. Katherine H. Lee, Indiana State University

3. “Imposing Order on the Monstrous: A Cultural Taxonomy of the Modern Zombie,” Rob Smid, Curry College Massachusetts

4. “Demonstrification: How Monsters Can Be Agents of Social Change,” Colleen Karn, Methodist College

5. “Holy Monsters: Bodies, Impairment and the Sacred in the Middle Ages,” Lisa R. Verner,

University of New Orleans

6. “In Sickness and in Hell: Monstrous Revenants and Infectious Disease,” Leah Richards, Ph.D., LaGuardia Community College, City University of New York

7. “Hell is a Teenage Girl”: Revenge and the Monstrous-Feminine in Jennifer’s Body” Hannah Hansen, Massey University New Zealand

8. “Monstrous Monster Makers: Examining Mad Scientists and their Creations,” Heather M. Porter,  M.S. & Michael Starr, University of Northampton, UK.

9. “Black Vampires and Antiblackness: New and Old Histories”, Deanna Koretsky, Spelman College

10. “Jordan Peele’s Horror Noire Oeuvre: Black Studies, White Students, and the Politics of DEI Curricula in this Era of Woke Culture,” Jayson Baker, Curry College,

11. “Let’s Do the Monster Mash” Dance Horror in Vampire Films,” Elizabeth Miller Lewis, The University of New Orleans

The Palgrave Handbook of Monsters and Monstrous Bodies

12. “A Monstrous Hunger: Female Vampires and Appetite,” Robin A. Werner, The University of New Orleans

13. “Monstrous Bodies: The Quadroons Balls of New Orleans,” U. Melissa Anyiwo, The University of Scranton

14. “Dumb show: Mute children in New Zealand literature and cinema,” Jenny Lawn Massey University New Zealand

15. “Obsessed with Fangs, Fur, and Tentacles: Monster Pornography and a Desire for Monstrous Sex,” Amanda Jo Hobson, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

16. “The Danger of the White Progressive,” Liza A. Talusan, PhD

17. “The Demamification of Black Women in Educational Leadership: Sirol’s Song,” Loris Adams, National Cathedral School.

TOPICS MAY INCLUDE, BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO:

✓ Monster Hunters of Eastern Europe

✓ African monsters and monstrous bodies in fiction and folklore

✓ Manga & Anime Monsters: Globalizing Japanese Storytelling

✓ (Re)Envisioning (Dis)Abilities and Monstrous Bodies in Global Media

✓ Monstrosity in Asian contexts

✓ Exploring Monstrosity in International Children’s Media

✓ The Monsters of Nollywood & Bollywood.

✓ Selling Black Bodies in Pain

✓ Monstrous Tourism in Ghana and the US

✓ Making monsters? Historical Narratives of the Other.

✓ Monstrous mythologies of the Diaspora.

✓ Animating Monstrous Bodies in Indie Comics and Graphic Novels

✓ The Impact of Independent and Self-Published Production on Monstrosity in fiction and film

✓ Queering the Monstrous

✓ Monstrous Children and the Horrors of Caretaking

✓ Monstrous Bodies: Envisioning Queer Feminist Pornography

✓ Nasty Women of Gothic Literature

✓ Monstrosity, Comedy, and the Awkward Blurring of Genres

✓ Exploring the Quotidian and the Profane in Contemporary Monsters-Next-Door Fictions

✓ Romancing the Monstrous, Or Why We Want to Date Monsters

✓ Monsters and/or Monstrous Bodies to Redress Cultural Appropriation

✓ Policing Monstrous Flesh

TIMETABLE:

✓ Thursday, February 29th, 2024 – Proposals & Bio due

✓ January 1st, 2025– 1st drafts due

✓ June 15, 2025 – 2nd drafts due

✓ October 30, 2025 – Final Drafts Due

Please email 300-word proposals with a short biographical statement (50 words) and inquiries to Melissa Anyiwo and Amanda Jo Hobson by Thursday, February 29th, 2024. The final chapters will be approximately 7000-9000 words.

Proposals Due by Thursday, February 29th, 2024

Editors:

Amanda Jo Hobson, Associate Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, amandajohobson@gmail.com

U. Melissa Anyiwo, Associate Professor History, Director Black Studies, The University of Scranton melissa.anyiwo@scranton.edu

Call for Papers #CONRAD IN THE FAR EAST, Editor: Pei-Wen Clio Kao (National Ilan University) Vol. 36 of #CONRAD: #EASTERN AND #WESTERN PERSPECTIVES, Editor: Wiesław Krajka

 The Maria Curie-Skłodowska University – Columbia University Press Conrad Project

Lublin: Maria Curie-Skłodowska University Press; New York: Columbia University Press, to be published in 2027.                                                                  

 

This Call for Papers invites contributions from Conrad scholars, whether based in the Far East or outside the Far East, to address issues of Conrad’s relation to the Far East. We encourage the Conradians to reread and rethink Conrad’s works from the perspective of the Global South, and reconsider how Conrad’s modernist works have inspired and motivated our critical mentality as well as positionality. We welcome academic articles based on the perspective of the Third World as inspired by the decolonizing waves of the 1960s. We also suggest analysis of Conrad’s Eastern or Malay tales in relation to his maritime life. A comparison of Conrad and his Asian counterparts or followers is also particularly in alignment with our volume profile.

 

In “Decolonizing University” (2024), Paul Giles proposes three agendas regarding teaching and studying literature in the university: decolonizing the iconography in the university; decolonizing the curriculum; and decolonizing the racial representation in the university. The thrust of the decolonizing university project is not to discard the Western cultural as well as literary tradition, but to incorporate Africa, Latin America, Asia and Oceania into the epistemological frame. As Asian Anglo-American literary scholars based in the Far East, the curriculum and pedagogies of decolonizing university have incited us to rethink our epistemic and political positionality, and reevaluate our given philosophical framework or even biases. Besides, as the literary scholars from the Global South who are situated in the heyday of postcolonialism, how to make relevance of Conrad’s works to our time has become a pressing issue awaiting the Asian Conradians to address.

 

During 1883 to 1888, Conrad sailed to Singapore, and the impression of this seaport city has become the materials for his later writing career. Conrad’s influences have gone beyond the confines of Europe and America to reach the Third World, including Asia. Numerous Asian scholars and critics are claimed or self-proclaimed protégé of Conrad. We could see the legacy or traces of Conrad in the works of Asian academic moguls like Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, and Homi Bhabha, etc. In the 2014 film adaptation of Conrad’s “The Secret Sharer,” Peter Fudakowski transformed both the setting and the characters from the European to the Far Eastern. We can see familiar faces of the Chinese and the Taiwanese stars in the film, which demonstrates the importance of Conrad’s influence in Asian literary as well as cinematic circles. 

 

Terry Collits maintains that there are two methodologies for the contemporary readers to read Conrad’s works. One is “objective reading,” which is to see literature as the vehicle of disseminating moral truth. Another is “subjective reading” that centers on the reader’s subjective historical-spatial position. The 19th-century literary critic Matthew Arnold served as the representative of the former approach. In “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time” (1864) Arnold emphasized the way to treat literary works as an object, and the responsibility of the literary critics “to see the object as in itself it really is.” The latter approach is embodied in the works of the contemporary American leftist critic Fredric Jameson. He highlighted the importance of historical context in The Political Unconscious (1981), and argued that the reader’s subjective positionality has affected the interpretation of literature. We encourage both “close reading” and “political reading” to approach Conrad’s works and tease out the embedded meanings for the Far Eastern readers and beyond.

   

Topics included in this volume are listed as follows, and other related topics are also welcome:

 

˙Conrad and postcolonialism

˙Conrad and the Global South Studies

˙Conrad and decolonization

˙Conrad and the Third World Perspectives

˙Comparative studies of Conrad and Asian writers

˙Conrad and Asian studies

˙Conrad’s biography and the Far East

 

Please send 300–500-word abstracts, along with brief 100–150-word biographies, to Pei-Wen Clio Kao at peiwen.clio.kao@gmail.com before August, 2024. The full manuscripts are due in September of 2025. All manuscripts will undergo double blind peer-review for consideration. As of now, the book volume is set for publication in 2027.