[Commlist] cfp: Folk Horror Conference

CALL FOR PAPERS:

*FOLK HORROR IN THE 21^ST CENTURY*

/Folk Horror in the 21^st Century/, is a two-day conference to be hosted 
by Falmouth University (UK) on Thursday September 5 and Friday September 
6, 2019. The conference organizers Ruth Heholt (Falmouth University, UK) 
and Dawn Keetley (Lehigh University, USA) invite proposals on all 
aspects of folk horror, in all periods, across all regions and in all 
mediums, exploring the meanings and manifestations of the folk horror 
renaissance in the 21^st century.

Keynote and plenary speakers: Tanya Krzywinska (Falmouth University), 
Catherine Spooner (Lancaster University) and Bernice Murphy (Trinity 
College Dublin).

Since at least 2010, critics and bloggers have been working to define 
folk horror, understand its appeal, and establish its key texts, 
including what has become the central triumvirate of the folk horror 
canon of the 1960s and 1970s—/Witchfinder General/ (Michael Reeves, 
1968), /Blood on Satan’s Claw/ (Piers Haggard, 1971), and /The Wicker 
Man/ (Robin Hardy, 1973).

The 1960s and 1970s also saw a rise in folk horror texts in British 
literature and TV series: /Robin Redbreast/ (1970), BBC’s /A Ghost Story 
for Christmas/ (1971-78), /Penda’s Fen/ (1974), /Children of the /Stones 
(1977), and Alan Garner’s novels /The Owl Service/ (1967) and /Red 
Shift/ (1973).

Critics have also begun to uncover a rich pre-history for the folk 
horror of the 1960s and 70s, looking back to the 19^th and early 20^th 
century fiction of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Arthur Machen, and M. R. James. 
But the history of folk horror can be traced still further back, to 
/Beowulf/, /Sir Gawain and the Green Knight/, Shakespeare, and the 
mystical poetry and witchcraft plays of the seventeenth century.

At the same time, directors in the 21^st century have been re-inventing 
the genre with such new incarnations with films such as /The Blair Witch 
Project/ (1999), /Eden Lake/ (2008), /Wake Wood/ (2009), /Kill List/ 
(2011), /A Field in England/ (2013), /The Witch/ (2015), /The Hallow/ 
(2015), /Without Name/ (2016), /Apostle/ (2018), and /Hereditary/ (2018).

Literature too has seen a renaissance of folk horror novels and texts: 
Adam Nevill’s /The Ritual/ (2011), Andrew Michael Hurley’s /The Loney/ 
(2014) and /Devil’s Day/ (2017), Thomas Olde Heuvelt’s /Hex/ (2016), 
Joyce Carol Oates’ /The Corn Maiden/ (2011)//and John Langan’s /The 
Fisherman/ (2016).

This conference will aim to explore and represent the ‘state of the art’ 
of folk horror scholarship about all periods and regions, and so we 
invite submissions that take up any aspect of folk horror in film, TV, 
literature, art, or music. We are also extremely interested in the idea 
of Global folk horror from Africa, Asia and South America for example.

These topics could include, but certainly aren’t limited to:

·history of folk horror

·definitions of folk horror

·religion and folk horror

·the political trajectories of folk horror (conservative retreat, 
progressive renewal etc.)

·agriculture and folk horror

·national identity and folk horror (local vs global, rural vs urban)

·gender, race, and / or class in folk horror

·transgressing and limiting borders

·the devil

·the figure of the witch

·paganism in folk horror

·blogging and folklore

·New ‘myths’ such as Slenderman

·Digital games as folk horror

·the built and natural environments of folk horror

·folk horror in the “lost decades” of the 1980s and 1990s

·re-inventing folk horror in the late 20^th and early 21^st century

·the Gothic/EcoGothic and folk horror

·folk horror in the digital age

·female-authored/directed folk horror

·global folk horror

·transnational folk horror

·oral histories/tales

Please send abstracts of 300 words and a short bio to conference 
organizers Ruth Heholt of Falmouth University 
((ruth.heholt /at/ falmouth.ac.uk)) and Dawn Keetley of Lehigh University 
((dek7 /at/ lehigh.edu) <mailto:(dek7 /at/ lehigh.edu)>) by April 1, 2019. We are both 
also very happy to answer any questions at any point. We plan to put 
together an edited collection that includes select conference papers.

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