Doug Cowan forthcoming book

0 | October 22nd, 2021 | Posted in Douglas Cowan, horror, religion

Doug Cowan, a friend and frequent guest of TheoFantastique, is finalizing his latest book, The Forbidden Body: Sex, Horror, and the Religious Imagination through New York University Press. Look for a future video conversation with Doug on the book here in the near future:

From creature features to indie horror flicks, find out what happens when sex, horror, and the religious imagination come together

Throughout history, religion has attempted to control nothing so much as our bodies: what they are and what they mean; what we do with them, with whom, and under what circumstances; how they may be displayed—or, more commonly, how they must be hidden. Yet, we remain fascinated, obsessed even, by bodies that have left, or been forced out of, their “proper” place. The Forbidden Body examines how horror culture treats these bodies, exploring the dark spaces where sex and the sexual body come together with religious belief and tales of terror.

Taking a broad approach not limited to horror cinema or popular fiction, but embracing also literary horror, weird fiction, graphic storytelling, visual arts, and participative culture, Douglas E. Cowan explores how fears of bodies that are tainted, impure, or sexually deviant are made visible and reinforced through popular horror tropes. The volume challenges the reader to move beyond preconceived notions of religion in order to decipher the “religious imagination” at play in the scary stories we tell over and over again.

Cowan argues that stories of religious bodies “out of place” are so compelling because they force us to consider questions that religious belief cannot comfortably answer: Who are we? Where do we come from? Why do we suffer? And above all, do we matter? As illuminating as it is unsettling, The Forbidden Body offers a fascinating look at how and why we imagine bodies in all the wrong places.

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Heather Macumber on the Monstrous in Revelation

0 | October 21st, 2021 | Posted in Bible, Bible as Horror, liminality, monster theory

Dr. Heather Macumber is the author of a new book titled Recovering the Monstrous in Revelation:

This book reads Revelation through the lens of the monster. Using monster theory, Heather Macumber approaches the cosmic beings in John’s Apocalypse as other and monstrous regardless of whether they are found in heaven or the abyss, with significant attention paid to the monstrous body and how it causes both unease and wonder. Intertwined with descriptions of cosmic monsters, this book also interrogates the role of John as a maker of horror stories, who casts his opponents as the other and monstrous. Despite the tendency to view John and the heavenly creatures as the heroes of this apocalyptic tale, Macumber aims to recover their own liminal and hybrid characteristics that mark them as monstrous.

Dr. Macumber teaches courses predominantly in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. Her research interests, though seemingly eclectic, all involve the intersection of the divine and earthly spheres.

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CFP Journal of Gods and Monsters Special Issues

0 | October 18th, 2021 | Posted in Journal of Gods and Monsters, paranormal, race

CFP Journal of Gods and Monsters Upcoming Special Issues

The Journal of Gods and Monsters is a peer-reviewed, open access journal that seeks to explore the connections between the sacred and the monstrous. “Religion” can refer to the world’s religious traditions or to ideas that are religious in a substantive sense, such as God, demons, or death and the afterlife.   However, the journal will also consider articles that explore the “religious” dimension of culture in a functional sense as relating to values, myths, and rituals.

Special Issue #1: Religion, Monstrosity, and the Paranormal

Lead Issue Editor: John Morehead

Deadline for Submission: March 15, 2022


Although typically dismissed and viewed as fringe phenomena by scholars, the paranormal is enduring. The Chapman University Survey of American Fears, which includes survey data on paranormal beliefs, those phenomena at odds with mainstream science and orthodox religion, reported in 2018 that large numbers of people find the paranormal of interest. Some 58% believe that places can be haunted by spirits, 57% believe in lost ancient civilizations like Atlantis, and 41% believe aliens once visited the earth in the ancient past. The paranormal often functions as a source of transcendence and meaning for people, even as it draws upon various forms of monstrosity. We would like to produce a theme issue of the journal on the paranormal intersecting with monstrosity and religion.

Special Issue #2: Candyman

Guest Editor: Joseph P. Laycock

Deadline for Submission: March 15, 2022

The Journal of Gods and Monsters seeks papers for a special issue on Candyman, to be guest edited by Joseph Laycock.  We especially seek papers interpreting the 2021 film directed by Nia DeCosta.  However, we also encourage papers that consider the previous films (1992, 1995, and 1999), as well as Clive Barker’s original story “The Forbidden” (1985).

Some possible angles of analysis might include:

  • The significance of ritual and summoning in the Candyman mythos
  • Candyman as monstrous object of horror and/or prophetic agent of justice
  • The nature and function of narrative and folklore in the Candyman mythos
  • Candyman as object of worship
  • The intersection of the monstrous with anxieties over race and (in 1992 film) miscegenation
  • How the religious dimension of the BLM movement has influenced the Candyman mythos
  • Themes of damnation, destiny, and the Gothic in Candyman

Submissions for BOTH special issues:

Proposals should be submitted directly to the journal via its online system, but authors may reach out to the guest editor for more information or to submit a 250-word abstract.

Submissions for both issues should be scholarly in nature, between 5000 and 10000 words, and are requested by March 15, 2022 (submissions after this date will be considered for future issues). We encourage submissions from all disciplines, geographic areas, and time periods. Articles should be submitted via the online system at https://godsandmonsters-ojs-txstate.tdl.org after registration. In the case of questions please contact the editorial team at editorsJGM@gmail.com or at their professional email addresses. Please reach out to John Morehead and Joseph Laycock individually with specific questions or concerns on each special issue.

To inquire regarding book or media reviews for either special issue, please contact Brandon Grafius (bgrafius@etseminary.edu).

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Forthcoming volume – Recovering the Monstrous in Revelation (Horror and Scripture)

0 | September 29th, 2021 | Posted in Bible, monster theory, monstrous

I just became aware of another great, forthcoming book, one that combines biblical studies and monstrosity.

Recovering the Monstrous in Revelation by Heather Macumber

This book reads Revelation through the lens of the monster. Using monster theory, Heather Macumber approaches the cosmic beings in John’s Apocalypse as other and monstrous regardless of whether they are found in heaven or the abyss, with significant attention paid to the monstrous body and how it causes both unease and wonder. Intertwined with descriptions of cosmic monsters, this book also interrogates the role of John as a maker of horror stories, who casts his opponents as the other and monstrous. Despite the tendency to view John and the heavenly creatures as the heroes of this apocalyptic tale, Macumber aims to recover their own liminal and hybrid characteristics that mark them as monstrous.

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Forthcoming volume on the paranormal

0 | September 28th, 2021 | Posted in paranormal

I was pleased to learn of a forthcoming academic volume exploring the paranormal by Rachael Ironside and Robin Wooffitt. Ironside posted the book cover on Facebook, but no other information is available yet. It is titled Making Sense of the Paranormal: The Interactional Construction of Unexplained Experiences. This book should come out through Palgrave MacMillan in November, and more information will be shared as it becomes available. Here’s the back cover description:

This book is a study of how people collaboratively interpret events or experiences as having paranormal features, or are evidence of spiritual agency. The authors study recordings of paranormal research groups, as they conduct real life investigations into allegedly haunted spaces and the analyses describe how, through their talk and embodied actions, participants collaboratively negotiate the paranormal status of events they experience. By drawing on the study of the social organization in everyday interaction, we show how paranormal conversational and embodied practices of the group. In this, the book contributes to the sociology of anomalous experience. Although this study focuses on paranormal investigation groups, we explore the relevance of our findings for social science topics such as dark tourism, participation in religious spaces and practices, and the attribution of agency. This book will be of interest to academics and postgraduate researchers of language and social interaction, discourse and communication, cultural studies; social psychology, sociology of religious experience, parapsychology, communication and psychotherapy.

Rachael Ironside is Senior Lecturer at Robert Gordon University, Scotland. Her research interests include social interaction and anomalous experience. She has also published more widely on the role of supernatural folklore and how it impacts our experience and understanding of place and cultural heritage.

Robin Wooffitt is Professor of Sociology at the University of York, UK. He is interested in language, interaction, and anomalous experiences. He is author or co-author of eight books, including Conversation Analysis (with Ian Hutchby, 2008), and Telling Tales of the Unexpected: The Organization of Factual Discourse (1992).

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New issue of WONDER magazine

0 | September 15th, 2021 | Posted in Lint Hatcher, Wonder magazine

I had the privilege of making a small contribution to this magazine in the form of a toy review. This is the first issue of a resurrected publication. It’s worth picking up and checking out.

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New “The Matrix Resurrection” trailer

1 | September 9th, 2021 | Posted in The Matrix

The trailer for The Matrix Resurrection dropped today.

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FORWARD on “The secret Jewish history of Frankenstein”

0 | September 9th, 2021 | Posted in Frankenstein, Golem, Jewish monsters

FORWARD, a publication devoted to discussion of interest to Jewish Americans, includes an interesting story:

“Author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born on this day, Aug. 30, in 1797 in London. Shelley is best known as the author of the Gothic novel “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus” and as the wife of the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mary Shelley was something of a radical in her time: a believer in free love, a proto-feminist, an atheist and a prolific female author when the prevailing notions of womanhood did not include writing novels and biographies. Among dozens of writings that challenged her father’s political theories and her husband’s notion of Romanticism, Shelley’s legacy includes the age-old question: Was the premise of her “Frankenstein” based on the Jewish folktale of the Golem?”

Read the story here.

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New issue of The Journal of Gods and Monsters

0 | August 30th, 2021 | Posted in gods, Journal of Gods and Monsters, monsters, monstrous

A new issue of The Journal of Gods and Monsters is now available, Vol. 2., No. 1 (2021).
View and download here.

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Shadow Puppetry and Horror

0 | July 30th, 2021 | Posted in horror

Previously I’ve written on what I consider to be the best scene in all of the Harry Potter films, the shadow play of the “Tale of Three Brothers.” It is based on the ancient art of shadow puppetry, and this post comes out of an article on the topic in the current issue of RUE MORGUE, Issue 201 July/August 2021. The article is titled “Shadow Show,” and it is written by Carly Maga. It takes as its starting place the use of shadow puppets as part of the new CANDYMAN film trailer. I’ve always found this form of storytelling and horror interesting, and a little creepy. This article discusses some of the reasons why. Whether in CANDYMAN or HARRY POTTER, or a form of it in the opening of BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA, shadow puppetry represents a form of storytelling that lends itself well to horror and the dark recesses of our mind. Check out RUE MORGUE for more.

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