[Commlist] CfP: (Don’t) Look Back: Our Nostalgia for Horror and Slasher Films

Revised Call for Papers: (Don’t) Look Back: Our Nostalgia for Horror and 
Slasher Films
Editors: Karrȧ Shimabukuro and Wickham Clayton

On first consideration it may not seem like “nostalgia” and horror and 
slasher films have any clear connections. Usually nostalgia is applied 
to events and experiences that have a pleasant connotation, even if 
these pleasant feelings are a result of a rose-tinted view of the past. 
While nostalgia can refer to personal feelings as well as larger 
communal or cultural memory and pleasure, there is also an implied 
action to it- that someone is seeking to reclaim, or revisit a specific 
time period or place for an explicit reason. Applying this understanding 
to remakes, revisions, reimaginings helps us understand what the purpose 
of these reworked creations are, the work they’re doing, and how they 
build on and expand on an already understood and accepted set of 
narratives, tropes, characters, and beliefs.
Since the national and global trauma of 9/11 we have seen dozens of 
remakes, reboots, revisions, and reimaginings of horror and slasher 
films from the 1970s and 80s. Each work seeks to capture some element of 
the original- the simple understanding of good and evil, the audience 
reaction to scares, an aesthetic homage, the commercial popularity. If 
we shift our perspective to view these films through the lens of 
nostalgia, we can see that many of these narratives are grounded in 
trauma, the performance of it, the aftermath, how people survive and 
later work through it. Whether it is a movie, mini-series, television 
show, or video game, these remakes can be organized according to several 
subtopics that perform different work within the media and reflect 
different fears, anxieties, and desires of a specific historical and 
cultural moment, although the argument could be made that some texts 
belong in a variety of categories, and there is noticeable overlap.
We’re interested in texts from BIPOC scholars, especially chapters that 
apply new approaches to well-known films. Poltergeist (1982/2015) falls 
into the trap of appropriating Indigenous stories and lore, setting 
these figures and beliefs in the past, erasing them from the present 
narrative. To date an Indigenous scholar has not examined this. In a 
similar manner, while the nuclear setting of The Hills Have Eyes 
(1977/2006) is often considered in analysis, the Southwest setting, 
origin of colonial seizure of Native lands for nuclear testing, and the 
use of appropriated land, has not been.
Similarly, “traditional” horror films have often erased their Black 
characters or used them in exploitative ways. We’d welcome proposals 
that discuss films that seek to revise or fill the gap these films have. 
We’d also love to see proposals on traditionally racialized monsters in 
horror like zombies, and movies that present a new presentation of 
horror, calling out to but not replicating Anglo structures or tropes.

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