Call for Papers: Special issue of Horror Studies

“Paranormal TV”

Helen Wheatley, in Gothic Television, argues that beginning in the early 1990s, gothic texts became particularly visible in television; like the gothic, paranormal-themed television became especially prevalent beginning in the 1990s and, again like the gothic, paranormal television has cut across genres, with particular visibility in paranormal reality television (starting with UK programs such as Most Haunted and then becoming popular in the United States with Ghost Hunters and similar fare), along with the procedural and the recently cancelled Medium and The Ghost Whisperer as well as family melodrama (American Horror Story, Supernatural).

While a great number of scholars have produced important work on horror and television, my proposed issue of Horror Studies represents the first collection of scholarship concerning itself solely with paranormal horror in the medium of television. Taking both a contemporary and historical approach, articles appearing in this issue will present rigorous yet lively explorations of paranormal-themed television programs as generic hybrids drawing upon established genres, while also potentially examining questions of production, paratexts, reception, etc.

Although I am particularly interested in television dealing with ghosts, I also welcome scholarship on texts featuring demons, aliens, witches, vampires, werewolves, and assorted “things that go bump in the night,” demonstrating the diversity of paranormal television and its study. Horror Studies is an interdisciplinary journal, and I am accepting submissions from a wide range of disciplines and theoretical perspectives.

The proposed issue will consist of approximately six articles, including a short editorial introduction, along with 2-3 reviews of recent works pertinent to the study of horror, particularly paranormal horror.

Articles will be 5,000-8,000 words and make use of Harvard reference style. Contributors should send a 500-700 word abstract for their article, with a title, to guest editor Drew Beard at abeard3@uoregon.edu. The deadline for submitting abstracts is September 15, 2012.

Book reviews will be 1,000-2,000 words in length. Queries can be sent to abeard3@uoregon.edu.

Horror Studies is a journal devoted to the study of horror. This journal will publish in all fields of the humanities, provided the scholarship deals centrally with a work or works generally connected to horror. While we anticipate that fields traditionally concerned with horror such as film studies and literary studies will inform the bulk of the journal’s articles, we also intend to solicit and cultivate study in allied fields such as art history, musicology, theatre history, and dance history. The goal of the journal will be to promote excellence in the scholarly study of horror in expressive culture, and interaction between scholars interested in the study of horror from diverse disciplines.