*CALL FOR PAPERS: Monstrous Cultures: Embracing
and Resisting Change in the 21st Century (Edited
Collection) DEADLINE 3/1/2011*
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Eds: Marina Levina, PhD and Diem-My Bui, PhD (Eds.)
Book Description: In her famous book, *Our Vampires, Ourselves* (1997), Nina
Auerbach writes that each age embraces the vampire it needs. This statement
speaks to the essential role that monster narratives play in culture. They
offer a space where society can safely represent and address anxieties of
its time. In the past decade, our changing world faced fears of terrorism,
global epidemics, economic and social strife, new communication
technologies, immigration, and climate change to name a few. These fears
reflect an evermore-interconnected global environment where rapid mobility
of people, technologies, and disease have produced great social, political,
and economical uncertainty. It is safe to say that, over the past decade,
we have been terrorized by change. The speeding up of cultures,
technologies, and environments what Paul Virilio refers to as a defining
organization concept for contemporary world has also led to a surge in
narratives about vampires, zombies, werewolves, ghosts, cyborgs, aliens, and
other monstrous bodies. Popular films and television shows, such as Popular
films and television shows, such as *True Blood, Twilight, 28 Days/Weeks
Later*, *Paranormal Activity*, *District 9*, *Battlestar Galactica*, *Avatar,
The Walking Dead*, and other multiple monstrous iterations have allowed us
to deal with the profound acceleration in changing symbolic, economic, and
technological systems. This collection purports to explore monstrous
culture at the advent of the 21st century. As a whole, it argues that
monstrous narratives of the past decade have become omnipresent specifically
because they represent social collective anxieties over resisting and
embracing change in the 21st century. They can be read as a response to a
rapidly changing cultural, social, political, economic, and moral landscape.
And while monsters always tapped into anxieties over a changing world, they
have never been as popular, or as needed, as in the past decade. This
collection explores monstrosity as a social and cultural category for
organizing, classifying, and managing change. Moreover, it puts monster
narratives within the cultural perspective of change in the 21st century.
Contribution Details: We are seeking chapters that engage with monstrosity
in the 21st century from critical cultural studies and media studies
perspectives. We are especially interested in works that engage with
monstrosity as a social and cultural category for organizing, classifying
and managing change in the past decade. Chapters can be either case studies
of particular monstrous media narratives or theoretical explorations of
monstrosity in the 21st century. Possible topics can include, but not be
limited to:
Narratives of terrorism as monstrosity in popular culture
Alien films and immigration
Cyborgs, cylons, and the changing notions of humanity
Ghosts, ghouls and the specters of 9/11
Zombies and viral pandemics
Zombies and the economic crisis
Monsters and globalization
Robotics, machines and mechanical monstrosity
Network as a monster
New technologies, social media, and other monstrous information technologies
Genetics, biotechnology and the production of monstrous bodies
Cloning and Cloned Bodies
Vampires and addiction narratives
Vampires and the New Sexuality
Racial, ethnic, and religious identity in monstrous narratives.
We have strong interest in the collection from several publishers and we
expect to place the collection shortly after abstracts are submitted.
Submission Deadlines:
March 1st 500 word abstract + brief bio and short publication CV (Word or
PDF format)
April 1st Acceptance notification
August 1st Draft of Chapters is due, about 6,000 words
Sept 30th Feedback from Editors
Dec 1st Final Chapters are due
Please direct all questions and submissions to (monsterculture2011 /at/ gmail.com)
Editors Bios:
Marina Levina is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Communication
at the University of Memphis. Her research focuses on critical studies of
science, technology and medicine, network and new media theory, visual
culture, and media studies. She is an avid fan of monster and horror
narratives and has written articles and book chapters on critical meaning of
monsters, and especially their connection to scientific and medical cultural
anxieties. She has also repeatedly taught a course on monster films. Recent
publications include an edited collection *Post-Global Network and Everyday
Life* (with Grant Kien Peter Lang, 2010); a chapter in the volume *A
Foucault for the 21st Century: Governmentality, Biopolitics and Discipline
in the New Millennium* (edited by Sam Binkley and Jorge Capetillo, Cambridge
Scholars Publishing, 2009), and articles in* Journal of Science
Communication* and in *Spontaneous Generations: History and Philosophy of
Science and Technology*. *You can find her at *www.marinalevina.com*.***
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Diem-My T. Bui currently is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department
of Communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her, research
interests include transnational feminist media studies, critical cultural
studies, ethnic studies, popular culture, and film. Her work examines
cultural production, cultural memory, and embodiments of difference in
representations of Vietnamese women in the U.S. cultural imaginary. Her
publications are included in the journal *Cultural Studies--Critical
Methodologies* and in an edited book, *Globalizing Cultural Studies* (2007).
She has taught courses on communication, Asian American studies, film
studies, and popular culture.
Marina Levina, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Communication
University of Memphis
143 Theater Communication Bldg
Memphis, TN 38152
Office: 901-678-2577
Fax: 901-678-4331
(mlevina /at/ memphis.edu)
http://www.marinalevina.com/
