Publication: Twenty-First Century Neo-Victorian Gothic: Deviance and Transgression on Page and Screen.
Deadline for proposal submissions: 1 April 2025.
Edited by: Prof. Rossie Artemis
For a volume in the Genre Fiction and Film Companion series published by Peter Lang Oxford, we solicit papers on the topic of Neo-Victorian Gothic literature and film adaptation in the twenty-first century.
Presentation
Neo-Victorian Gothic represents a contemporary revival of Gothic themes, often exploring deviance and transgression in the context of Victorian society as a challenge to the rigid structures imposed by Victorian society and a re-examination of marginalized voices and experiences. This genre not only revisits the aesthetic and narrative structures of the Gothic, but also critiques and reinterprets the cultural anxieties of both the Victorian and modern societies. Neo-Victorian texts frequently engage with themes of sexual and social deviance thus reflecting on contemporary concerns about identity, gender roles, and morality too.
The neo-Victorian Gothic critiques historical injustices, especially regarding gender inequality, violence, sexual transgression, and neurodiversity through intricately weaving together themes of deviance and transgression, with a critical lens on both Victorian history and contemporary culture. By revisiting Gothic conventions such as encounters with the uncanny in all its manifestations, with ghosts and the doppelgënger, neo-Victorian works illuminate the persistent shadows of social constraints and anxiety while advocating for a deeper understanding of identity and morality in both past and present contexts. Moreover, the genre heavily relies on intertextual references to Victorian literature, thus drawing parallels between the past and the present and reflecting on the continuity of certain social issues across time.
While aware of the many renowned masterpieces of neo-Victorian Gothic literature from the previous century, the proposed volume will explore how our twenty-first century engages with the topics of deviance and transgression. Will Self’s Dorian, An Imitation (2002), Julian Barnes’ Arthur and George (2005), Diane Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale (2006), John Harding’s Florence and Giles (2010), Rosie Garland’s The Palace of Curiosities (2013), Gregory Blake Smith’s The Maze at Windermere (2018), Nell Stevens’ Briefly, A Delicious Life (2022) are some of the many novels published in the past twenty-odd years. What is more, neo-Victorian novels are frequently adapted for the screen: for example, the novels of Sarah Waters’ Tipping the Velvet (2002), Fingersmith (2005), Affinity (2008) and Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White (2011) or more recent productions such as Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes films, and TV series like Sherlock, Ripper Street, Whitechapel, and Penny Dreadful. The Companion will therefore revisit the issues of deviance and transgression as embodied in literary texts and adaptations in the context of the challenges set by the contemporary reading audiences and viewers.
Please send abstracts of about 300 words and short bios for consideration by 1 April 2025 to Prof. Rossie Artemis at: artemis.r@unic.ac.cy
Authors will be notified about the status of their proposals by 1 May 2025, and the first drafts of essays (about 4500 words) will be expected by 1 November 2025.
For more information about Peter Lang’s Genre Fiction and Film Companion series, please visit: https://www.peterlang.com/series/gffc
(Posted 7 January 2025)
Publication and issue: EJES (European Journal of English Studies), Volume 30 (2026): “Cabinets of Curiosities: Collecting, Displaying, Consuming”.
Deadline for proposal submissions: 7 April 2025.
Guest editors:
Mark Hutchings (University of Salamanca),
Susana Oliveira (Universidade Aberta, Portugal), and
Veronika Schandl (Pázmány Péter Catholic University)
Issue presentation
There is perhaps no better illustration of the appetite for knowledge and understanding of the known and unknown world in Renaissance Europe than the cabinet of curiosity, commonly a room or a series of rooms with objects arranged, juxtaposed, categorised – the whole (or parts) of the cabinet of curiosity was designed to convey a visual, material theatre of wonder: the Wunderkammer. This pan-European practice emblematizes – literally, associatively, metaphorically, allegorically – the Humanist making of meaning through acquisition, enquiry, presentation, consumption, and transmission. In these ‘epochs of space’ (Foucault) the viewer is captivated by ‘marvellous objects’ (Greenblatt), reframed, newly (de)contextualised, and fetishized.
The aim of this special issue of EJES is to explore how we might apply the concept, as well as detect and analyse the practice: how, that is, the social activities underpinning the acquisition, display, and experience of these objects might be uncovered in a range of related cultural practices and material forms. Since the ‘cabinet of curiosity’ is not a label devised by modern scholars to account for a historical practice but an established concept in the Renaissance, it is possible to regard it as a transmutable and adaptable idea as much as delineating a precise phenomenon, such as the Wunderkammer we find celebrated in print illustrations. This special issue is interested in how the practice of collecting, displaying, consuming as process might be explored across the Renaissance landscape in the British Isles as well as in a transnational context.
Proposals are invited that might address (but are not limited to) topics related to any of the following:
- Agents, Anatomy halls, Animals, Antiquities, Archaeology, Architecture, Arcana,
- Archaism, Archives, Art, Artefacts, Assemblage, Astrology, Automata
- Baroque, Biography, Body parts, Books, Botany, Buildings
- Cabinets, Categories, Catalogues, Ceremony, Churches, Classification, Codices, Collage, Collecting, Collections, Colonialism, Commodities, Commonplace books, Consumption and consumerism, Corpus, Correspondence, Cosmetics, Cultural identity, Curatorship and curating, Curios
- Designs, Devotional objects, Dialects, Diaries, Digital Humanities, Diorama,
- Dictionaries, Diplomacy, Displaying, Documents, Dolls’ Houses, Drama
- Ecocriticism, Effects, Engravings, Exhibitions, Exotica
- Fairs, Festivals, Fiction, Fishing, Flora and fauna
- Galleries, Gardens, Gift-giving
- Houses, Household decor, Hunting
- Illuminations, Illustrations, Images, Instruments, Inventories
- Kunstkammern
- Landscapes, Libraries, Lighting, Lists, Literature
- Manuals, Manuscripts, Maps, Medical treatises, Memento Mori, Menageries,
- Miniatures, Miscellanies, Monsters, Money, Monuments, Museums
- Narrative, Natural Science, Networks, Notebooks
- Objects, Orientalism
- Patronage, Performance, Perpetual motion machines, Philosophy, Plants,
- Portraits, Poetry, Public sphere, Publishing
- Recipes, Relics, Ruins
- Scenes, Science, Skeletons, Souvenirs, Still life, Stories, Stuff
- Taxidermy, Technology, Theatres, Things, Trade, Trompe l’oeil paintings, Travel
- Uncanny
- Vanitas
- Wills, Wunderkammern
Detailed proposals of up to 1.000 words for full essays of 6.000-8.000 words or shorter pieces of 2.000-4.000 words should be sent to the guest editors by 7 April 2025:
- Mark Hutchings (Mark.Hutchings@usal.es),
- Susana Oliveira (Susana.Oliveira@uab.pt), and
- Veronika Schandl (schve06@gmail.com).
Selected authors should be able to submit a full-length draft by mid-July, and a final version by the end of October. This issue will be part of volume 30 (2026). All inquiries regarding this issue can be sent to the three guest editors. EJES employs Chicago Style (T&F Chicago AD 
) and British English conventions for spelling. For more information about EJES, see: http://www.essenglish.org/ejes.html.
Procedure
Potential contributors are reminded that EJES operates a three-stage review process:
- The revised articles will be subject to a double-blind peer review. On the basis of the peer review, and in consultation with the editorial board, the special issue editors formulate a
- Authors are invited to submit proposals (up to 1.000 words). The guest editors make a selection of proposals in consultation with the editorial board, and invite short-listed authors to submit a full-length draft.
- The contributors’ full-length draft is reviewed by the special issue editors, who may ask for (minor) revisions, and retain the right to reject an article if it does not meet the standards of the journal.
CFP
For further details, please check the original call inserted below.
(Posted 16 March 2025)
Publication and issue: EJES (European Journal of English Studies), Volume 30 (2026): “Accessing Shakespearean Drama through (Re)translation and Audiovisual Adaptation in the 21st Century”.
Deadline for proposal submissions: 20 April 2025.
Guest editors:
Judit Mudriczki (Károli Gáspár University, Hungary) and
Irene Ranzato (Sapienza University of Rome, Italy)
Issue presentation
Recent developments in adaptation studies, audiovisual translation and retranslation studies as well as the spread of concerns about accessibility and inclusiveness in academic and professional circles have called attention to the variety of intercultural and multimodal transfers of meaning in Shakespearean drama. This special issue invites discussion to explore a wide range of translation practices that shape and promote Shakespeare scholarship in the 21st century from various points of view.
While shifting attention from performability of drama texts to meeting the needs of audiences with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, we perceive the concept of accessibility in three different ways. First, we are interested in intralingual translation and retranslation practices that have long made Shakespeare’s plays available in languages other than English. As these practices are influenced and shaped by cultural factors, for example, censorship or canonization, we welcome case studies that discuss translation flows from an interdisciplinary perspective. Second, stage and film adaptations play a crucial role in bridging the distance between drama texts written for an audience in the early modern period and audiovisual performances in the 21st century. Third, as a result of such AVT practices as subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing or audio description, even hearing or visually impaired persons have been provided with access to media content including Shakespeare adaptations. The aim of this journal issue is to study how all these translation practices extend our understanding of the cultural dynamics of Shakespeare’s legacy today, as well as throw light on how re-interpretations of Shakespeare through language and media point towards the ever-changing landscape of global identities, technologies, and values.
We welcome contributions that bring together discussions from translation studies, film studies, media studies, cultural theory, and/or performance studies, etc., and address (but are not limited to) the following topics:
- translation flows of Shakespearean drama in the 21st century,
- interlingual translation and retranslation practices,
- intersemiotic translation and adaptation,
- the role of translation and adaptation in canonization,
- censorship and ideological manipulation in translation,
- the presence of postcolonial concerns in Shakespeare translations,
- inclusiveness and media accessibility of Shakespeare adaptations,
- audiovisual translation practices of screen adaptations,
- audio description and subtitling of Shakespeare on screen,
- surtitling Shakespeare performances.
Detailed proposals (up to 1,000 words) for full essays (approx. 7,500 words), as well as a short biography (max.100 words) should be sent to both editors by 20 April 2025:
- Judit Mudriczki (mudriczki.judit@kre.hu) and
- Irene Ranzato (irene.ranzato@uniroma1.it)
EJES operates in a two-stage review process.
- Contributors are invited to submit proposals for essays on the topic in question by 20 April 2025.
- Following review of the proposals by the editorial board panel, informed by external specialists as appropriate, the guest editors will invite the authors of short-listed proposals to submit full-length essays for review with a summer 2025 deadline.
- The full-length essays undergo a second round of review, and a final selection for publication is made. Selected essays are revised and then resubmitted to the guest editors in late 2025 for publication in 2026. EJES employs Chicago Style (T&F Chicago AD ) and British English conventions for spelling. For more information about EJES, see: http://www.essenglish.org/ejes.html and https:// www.tandfonline.com/toc/neje20/current
CFP
For further details, please check the original call inserted below.
(Posted 21 March 2025)
Publication: Female and queer bodies in speculative fiction and visual culture.
Deadline for proposal submissions: 20 April 2025.
Edited by: María Gil Poisa (University of Oviedo, Spain) and Débora Madrid Brito (University of La Laguna, Spain)
Presentation
This edited volume aims to explore different representations and interpretations of female bodies and queer bodies presented in speculative fiction and visual culture. Through a diverse and transnational perspective, this publication aims to illustrate how these bodies are constructed, contested, and reimagined within non-realist cultural frameworks. Speculative fiction and visual culture are understood here as encompassing a broad spectrum of artistic and narrative expressions within the realms of all the subgenres of horror, science fiction, fantasy, and alternate history, across a variety of media and disciplines. The centrality of the body for power, resistance, and stigma has long been recognized in critical academic discourses, particularly within fields such as Cultural Studies, Gender Studies, Critical Race Theory, and Queer Studies. This publication aims to foster a critical dialogue that traverses those disciplinary boundaries, offering innovative and intersectional insights into the ways in which female and queer bodies are imagined and interrogated in speculative and visual cultures. By foregrounding diverse perspectives and methodologies, we seek to contribute to ongoing discussions about the cultural, political, and theoretical significance of embodied subjectivities in non-realist genres. In order to do that, we invite contributors to engage with theoretical frameworks that have significantly shaped these disciplines, drawing on thinkers such as Donna Haraway, Julia Kristeva, Michel Foucault, Carol J. Clover, Barbara Creed, Linda Williams, bell hooks, and Laura Mulvey, among others. Contributors are encouraged to critically examine how female and queer bodies are depicted, regulated, and politicized in speculative and visual texts, interrogating the interplay between embodiment, identity, and sociocultural paradigms. By addressing contemporary debates on embodiment, identity, and representation, this volume promises to engage with a wide readership across global contexts.
We invite contributions that critically engage with a broad range of media and artistic forms, including but not limited to film and television, literature, comics and graphic novels, drama, fanfiction and fan creations, radio and podcasts, video games, contemporary art, drag performance, photography, and plastic arts. While submissions grounded in close readings of single texts or artworks are welcome, we particularly encourage chapters that adopt a comparative approach—examining two or more texts, creators, or artistic movements—or that situate their analysis within broader cultural, theoretical, or historical frameworks. Such comparative and interdisciplinary perspectives will allow for a richer, intersectional, and more dynamic exploration of the themes central to this volume.
Potential, but not exclusive topics, may include:
- Abjection, monstrosity, and Otherness
- Bodies and Horror
- Maternity
- Corporeality
- Power, surveillance, and control
- Agency and resistance
- Transformation
- Trans bodies
- Robots and cyborgs
- Posthuman and transhuman bodies
- Age
- Disability
- Species
- Mental Health and neurodivergence
- Stigma
Timeline
We welcome original and unpublished proposals. Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words before April 20th, along with a brief bio, to gilmaria@uniovi.es and dmadridb@ull.edu.es and the subject “Female and Queer Bodies Proposal + your name”. In your proposals, please clearly include an outline of the chapter’s objectives, theoretical framework, and analyzed works, authors, or movements. We particularly encourage proposals that bring fresh perspectives from underrepresented regions and voices in the Global South.
Authors of selected abstracts will be notified by June, with full chapters between 6,000 and 8,000 words expected by October 31st, 2025.
We are currently seeking a publishing house to support this volume, and we are committed to collaborating with a publishing house that values academic rigor, diverse perspectives, and innovative approaches to critical scholarship.
Contact details
For further inquiries, please contact the editors at gilmaria@uniovi.es and dmadridb@ull.edu.es.
CFP
For further details, please check the original call inserted below.
(Posted 4 April 2025)
Publication and issue: VPFJ (Victorian Popular Fictions Journal). 8.2 (Autumn 2026).
Deadline for proposal submissions: 30 April 2025.
Issue edited by: Manon Burz-Labrande (manon.burz-labrande@univie.ac.at) and Sarah Frühwirth (sarah.fruehwirth@univie.ac.at)
Presentation
This special issue of VPFJ seeks to examine the multifaceted presence of poison in nineteenth-century popular fiction and culture. We welcome contributions that engage with this rich and varied topic from various critical angles, for example, literary studies (e.g. poison and poisoners in nineteenth-century popular literature), gender studies (e.g. the gendered discourse surrounding poison in fiction and real-life), postcolonial studies (e.g. orientalisation/othering of poisons and poisoners in fiction and real-life), food studies (e.g. culinary poisons, food adulteration), the medical humanities (e.g. medical uses of poisons, the rise of toxicology), periodical studies (sensational reporting on food adulteration, poisonous sewer gas, advertisements of poisons, etc.), life writing (e.g. fictionalised accounts of the lives of nineteenth-century poisoners), drug and addiction studies (e.g. the poisonous qualities of opium/alcohol/tobacco and their fictional portrayals) and animal studies (e.g. venomous animals in popular fiction).
Timeline
- Deadline for proposal submission: 30 April 2025
- Deadline for full articles: 31 October 2025
CFP
For further details, please download and check the editors’ full original CFP.
(Posted 15 January 2025)
Publication: Psychoanalyzing the Post-Apocalypse: Psychoanalytic Approaches to 21st Century Fiction and Film.
Deadline for proposal submissions: 1 May 2025.
Issue edited by Cenk Tan and Ercan Gürova
Presentation
The term post-apocalypse evokes a haunting vision of life after catastrophe, where humanity must grapple with the consequences of global ruin. This genre, spanning literature, film, and other media, has captured our collective imagination by depicting worlds radically altered by disasters—be they natural, technological, or societal. Post-apocalyptic narratives often focus on survival, resilience, and the transformation of social order in the face of unimaginable loss (Collins 12-13). From barren landscapes and mutated ecosystems to crumbling urban ruins, these works reveal both the devastation left in the apocalypse’s wake and the fundamental human drive to rebuild, adapt, and find meaning in desolation (Hicks 15).
We invite chapter proposals for an edited volume, Psychoanalyzing the Post-Apocalypse: Psychoanalytic Approaches to 21st Century Fiction and Film, which aims to explore post-apocalyptic literature and cinema through psychoanalytic frameworks. This volume seeks to probe the psychic, existential, and societal anxieties reflected in post-apocalyptic narratives, offering insight into how these works confront, distort, and reimagine the human psyche in the wake of global crises. By investigating 21st-century post-apocalyptic novels and films, we aim to capture the haunting portrayals of trauma, survival, memory, loss, and hope that resonate with contemporary psychological and social challenges.
This collection will apply psychoanalytic theory to a range of post-apocalyptic narratives, examining themes of survival, trauma, identity, desire, repression, and the unconscious as they manifest in worlds marked by environmental, societal, or technological collapse. Scholars are encouraged to explore these topics through the lenses of Freudian, Jungian, Lacanian, and contemporary psychoanalytic frameworks. Interdisciplinary approaches are welcome, especially those incorporating critical theory, film studies, literary studies, and cultural studies.
Timeline
- Deadline for abstract submission: May, 1, 2025
- Deadline for chapter submission: September, 1, 2025
- Anticipated publication date: Early 2026
Website address
Contact details
psychoanalyzingpostapocalypse@gmail.com
(Posted 5 December 2024)
Publication: Twenty-First Century Neo-Victorian Gothic: Deviance and Transgression on Page and Screen.
Deadline for proposal submission: 5 May 2025.
For a volume in the Genre Fiction and Film Companion series published by Peter Lang Oxford, we solicit papers on the topic of Neo-Victorian Gothic literature and film adaptation in the twenty-first century.
Presentation of the volume
Neo-Victorian Gothic represents a contemporary revival of Gothic themes, often exploring deviance and transgression in the context of Victorian society as a challenge to the rigid structures imposed by Victorian society and a re-examination of marginalized voices and experiences. This genre not only revisits the aesthetic and narrative structures of the Gothic, but also critiques and reinterprets the cultural anxieties of both the Victorian and modern societies. Neo-Victorian texts frequently engage with themes of sexual and social deviance thus reflecting on contemporary concerns about identity, gender roles, and morality too.
The neo-Victorian Gothic critiques historical injustices, especially regarding gender inequality, violence, sexual transgression, and neurodiversity through intricately weaving together themes of deviance and transgression, with a critical lens on both Victorian history and contemporary culture. By revisiting Gothic conventions such as encounters with the uncanny in all its manifestations, with ghosts and the doppelgënger, neo-Victorian works illuminate the persistent shadows of social constraints and anxiety while advocating for a deeper understanding of identity and morality in both past and present contexts. Moreover, the genre heavily relies on intertextual references to Victorian literature, thus drawing parallels between the past and the present and reflecting on the continuity of certain social issues across time.
While aware of the many renowned masterpieces of neo-Victorian Gothic literature from the previous century, the proposed volume will explore how our twenty-first century engages with the topics of deviance and transgression. Will Self’s Dorian, An Imitation (2002), Julian Barnes’ Arthur and George (2005), Diane Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale (2006), John Harding’s Florence and Giles (2010), Rosie Garland’s The Palace of Curiosities (2013), Gregory Blake Smith’s The Maze at Windermere (2018), Nell Stevens’ Briefly, A Delicious Life (2022) are some of the many novels published in the past twenty-odd years. What is more, neo-Victorian novels are frequently adapted for the screen: for example, the novels of Sarah Waters’ Tipping the Velvet (2002), Fingersmith (2005), Affinity (2008) and Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White (2011) or more recent productions such as Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes films, and TV series like Sherlock, Ripper Street, Whitechapel, and Penny Dreadful. The Companion will therefore revisit the issues of deviance and transgression as embodied in literary texts and adaptations in the context of the challenges set by the contemporary reading audiences and viewers.
Submissions
- Please send abstracts of about 300 words and short bios for consideration by 5 May 2025 to Prof. Rossie Artemis at: artemis.r@unic.ac.cy
- Authors will be notified about the status of their proposals by 15 May 2025, and the first drafts of essays (about 4500 words) will be expected by 1 November 2025.
Further details
For more information about Peter Lang’s Genre Fiction and Film Companion series, please visit: Peter Lang Verlag | Genre Fiction and Film Companions
(Posted 15 April 2025)
Publication and issue: Prospero, A Journal of Foreign Literatures and Cultures. General issue: XXX, 2025.
Deadline for proposal submission: 30 May 2025.
Publication presentation
Prospero, Rivista di Letterature e culture straniere (A Journal of Foreign Literatures and cultures) University of Trieste, Italy, invites contributions for the forthcoming general issue, volume XXX (2025). Prospero is a double-blind peer reviewed, printed and entirely open access journal, published annually by EUT, Trieste University Press. It is indexed by MLA, Erih+, DoAJ, ProQuest. It publishes articles and essays in the field of literary studies which consider texts and textual analysis from a wide hermeneutic, philological and historical perspective. It specifically focuses on literary studies considered in their interdisciplinary and relationships with other cultural expressions.
The 2025 issue invites proposals on literatures in English as well as on literatures in German. Full articles, in English, German or Italian, should be comprised between 6000 and 10000 words, endnotes and bibliography included, according to the MLA style.
An abstract of maximum 350 words in English and a short bionote should be sent by May 4, 2025 to:
- Roberta Gefter Wondrich (gefter@units.it) and Marilena Parlati (marilena.parlati@unipd.it) for the section on literatures in English,
- Irene Fantappiè (irene.fantappie@unicas.it) and Federica La Manna (federica.lamanna@iulm.it) for the section on literatures in German, as well as to the journal email address prospero@units.it.
Contributors will be notified acceptance of their abstracts by May 30, 2025, and full articles will be due by September 15, 2025, to ensure publication after the peer-review process early in December 2025.
For queries and further information about the journal policy, please contact the editor in chief Roberta Gefter Wondrich at gefter@units.it and visit the website at:
https://www.openstarts.units.it/communities/bddf575c-df32-432c-a03d-cba533e93af5
CFP
For further details, please check the original call inserted below.
(Posted 14 April 2025)
Publication and issue: InScriptum: A Journal of Language and Literary Studies. Issue 6.
Deadline for proposal submissions: 15 June 2025.
Issue edited by
- Francesca Guidotti (University of Bergamo)
- Magdalena Ożarska (Jan Kochanowski University in Kielce)
Description
Studies in the literatures of English-speaking countries or comparative literature
Timeline
- Article submission: June 15, 2025
- Review: September 15, 2025
- Resubmission (if applicable): October 10, 2025
- Publication: November 30, 2025
Website address
https://inscriptum.ujk.edu.pl/
Contact details
(Posted 25 January 2025)