Call for Chapters

Following on my work on witchcraft accusations against children, I've teamed up with Simon Bacon to work on an anthology exploring the many issues surrounding children/childhood and conceptualisations of monstrosity and evil. We're particularly keen to open up a wide-ranging debate from cinema to the criminal courts. If you've got an idea, send it in!

Book Project. Title:

Little Horrors: Representations of the Monstrous Child

Gone is the Victorian innocence of childhood. We have entered the age of the monstrous child, the little horror.

Each historical period can be seen to have prioritised a different facet of the child, the Victorian era idolised the innocence of the pre-pubescent child, the twentieth century the disaffected teenager, whilst the early twenty-first sems to be that of the monstrous child. Whilst global organisations such as UNICEF and Save the Children promote the sanctity of childhood as a fundamental human right, popular culture and empirical, sociological data would intimate something else. Here children are not configured as the wealth of the family and the community, but are seen as an economic burden, a luxury or even a parasite. Far from being the repository of all society holds dear about itself, the child becomes something at once uncontrollable and monstrous, not to be loved and cherished but feared and expelled. Whether supernatural or just plain wicked, the child becomes a liminal being caught outside of normalised categorization; not mature, not socilaised, not under the rule of law and not conforming to adult nostagia over what they should be.

Is there a relationship between the declining birth rate in the West and the increasing representation of children as an alien other? However, as witchcraft accusations against children in Africa and representations in the Asian horror film genre show, this is not just a Western phenomenon. So just what are the underlying reasons, if any? This volume aims to assemble the evidence from history, psychology, sociology, literature and media studies to map the extent and meaning of this representational development.

Topics to include:

Witch children, witchcraft accusations against children, children using witchcraft accusations
Magical children: children with magical or superhuman powers, the wunderkind
Werewolves and other shapeshifters: children as animals
Fairies and changelings: the folklore of strange children
Undead children: vampires, zombies and others
Ghosts and demonic children: children possessed, children as demons
Child crime and culpability: moral evil and legal responsibility
Monstrous children through history: physical deformity and mental health issues
Children as embodiments of other aspects of supernatural horror
The monstrous as a new role model for children
Children as adults and adults as children
Society and children and public and private spaces Immigration, post-colonialism and foreign adoption
War children and child soldiers

A brief bio and abstract of circa 300 words should be sent to -

For literature and media studies: Simon Bacon (baconetti [at] googlemail [dot] com)
For history and social sciences: Leo Ruickbie (leo [at] ruickbie [dot] com)

Deadline for abstracts: 1st September 2013


There's no project page as yet, but you'll find these same details at http://kcl.academia.edu/LeoRuickbie/Posts

Universal Vampire Book Project

Here's a description of the project from the editors:

The Universal Vampire Series, 2 Vols. 

Vol. 1 – The Universal Vampire: Origins and Evolution of a Legend 

Vol. 2 – The Hip and the Atavistic: Images of the Modern Vampire

Editors 

Barbara Brodman, Nova Southeastern University 

James E. Doan, Nova Southeastern University

Project Overview 

For almost 200 years, since the publication of John Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819), the vampire has been a mainstay of Western culture, appearing consistently in literature, art, music (notably opera), film, television, graphic novels and popular culture in general. Even before its entrance into the realm of arts and letters in the early 19th century, the vampire was a feared creature of Eastern European folklore and legend, rising from the grave at night to consume its living loved ones and neighbors, often converting them at the same time into fellow vampires. A major question exists within vampire scholarship: to what extent is this creature a product of European cultural forms, or is the vampire indeed a universal, perhaps even archetypal figure? 

In Volume I, Part 1 of the collection, “Origins of a Legend: Early Mythic Images of the Vampire,” we hope to shed light on this question. By tracing the development of the early Norse draugr figure into later European lore, we may see the underpinnings of Dracula who, of course, first appears as a vampire in Anglo-Irish Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula, published in 1897. The Romantic vampire, upon which we focus in Part 2 of this volume of the collection, first coalesced around the figure of Lord Byron and his associates in the early 1800s; but what were its earlier sources? Could these have included the legendary Spanish “lady-killer,” Don Juan? And did they constitute resistance to the dominant culture of the time? As several of the essays in this collection deal with these literary connections, others will move outside Europe to explore vampire figures in Native American and Mesoamerican myth and ritual and the existence of similar or identical vampiric traditions in Asian and other non-European settings. 

Volume I, Part II, “A Tradition Takes Form: The Imprint of the Romantic Vampire,” will focus on various aspects of the classic Dracula of Bram Stoker, including the author’s use of colonized language and colonial discourse and manifestations of the Stoker image in film, literature and lore around the world. This set of essays will also examine from various perspectives the relations between other hallmark works of 19th-century vampire literature, such as J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, and modern films, including Interview with the Vampire and Let the Right One In. 

Volume II of the Universal Vampire Series, The Hip and the Atavistic: Images of the Modern Vampire, will be an eclectic mélange of essays, including a discussion of evolution and atavism in the vampire film, The Wisdom of Crocodiles (1998); critical pieces that examine the modern Asian vampire, on stage, in graphic novels and in film; images of the Vampire in contemporary Japan (where, according to its author, vampires should be “beautiful”); an analysis of the vampire in popular Russian culture; and the obligatory studies of vampires in The Twilight Saga and the True Blood series. Each volume in the collection will contain 15 original, thought-provoking essays, chosen to both augment and challenge the classical vampire corpus and examine the evolutionary path the legend has taken in modern arts and letters. 

Audience 

The book is intended for an informed popular audience interested in the vampire legend and its manifestations in literature, film, visual arts and popular culture. Given the popularity of the vampire and the almost insane pace at which authors, artists and film makers strive to present newer and more innovative takes on the legend, we anticipate that the book will appeal to a broad readership throughout the English-speaking world. With the growing number of academic conferences that focus on the theme of the vampire, and the proliferation of courses dealing with the vampire legend in colleges and universities, we are confident that a large academic audience exists as well.

Source: h-net

Universal Vampire Update

Just heard from the editors that the forthcoming multi-volume blockbuster The Universal Vampire is scheduled for publication in April 2012. The publishers were 'very impressed with the quality of the essays in the collection'. A brief description of my chapter can be found here http://www.academia.edu/1536481/Evidence_for_the_Undead

CFP: Esotericism and Health

Call for Papers ESSWE 4: Western Esotericism and Health

Datum: June 26, 2013 -to- June 29, 2013
Call for Papers: ESSWE4 - The Fourth International Conference of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism

Western Esotericism and Health

26-29 June 2013, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Issues relating to health (understood in a broad sense) can be seen as an intrinsic part of the field of esotericism, but surprisingly little attention has been given to how health is understood and construed in esoteric discourses. The conference is thus as an attempt to fill an important lacuna in the study of Western esotericism. Suggested topics include (but are not limited to), esoteric notions and discourses on health, sexuality and well-being, "occult" causes for disease, "occult medicine", notions of therapeutic benefits of magic and meditation, alchemical approaches to health, alternative forms of medicine, etc.

Keynote lecturers include:

Catherine L. Albense (University of California)
Peter Forshaw (University of Amsterdam)
James R. Lewis (Tromsø University)
Mark Sedgwick (Aarhus University)
Andrew Weeks (Illinois State University)
Alison Winter (University of Chicago)

Papers are invited in English. Proposals for 20 minutes’ papers (title and short abstract of approximately 250 words) should be sent to Henrik Bogdan (henrik.bogdan@religion.gu.se), with your name and academic affiliation, by January 15, 2013.

Conference Chairman: Henrik Bogdan, University of Gothenburg

Conference Committee: Egil Asprem, Henrik Bogdan, Olav Hammer, Kennet Granholm, Asbjørn Dyrendal and Jesper Aa. Petersen