Raw Dog Screaming Press is proud to be sponsoring the Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference this year. AnnRadCon is held annually in conjunction with the Horror Writer’s Association’s largest gathering, StokerCon. This year’s conference will be a hybrid event and anyone with a ticket for StokerCon can attend AnnRadCon. If you haven’t signed up for StokerCon yet there’s still time to get a ticket and we highly recommend attending either virtually or in person.
While StokerCon’s primary focus is fiction, AnnRadCon is a place for writers to explore the cultural importance of horror as a genre. In 2016 Michele Brittany and Nicholas Diak created the Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference to provide horror scholars with a venue to present their work. It’s an opportunity for individuals to share completed research or work-in-progress horror studies projects that continue the dialogue of academic analysis of the horror genre.
The conference has also been the genesis of the Horror Writer Association’s first academic release,
Horror Literature from Gothic to Post-Modern: Critical Essays, comprised entirely of AnnRadCon presenters which was released by McFarland in February, 2020.
The schedule for AnnRadCon is set for this year but if you have a paper or article you are interested in submitting keep an eye on their Twitter account, @AnnRadCon1, for the call for proposals for next year. There is also a message board maintained by the HWA where you can find current calls for proposal to do with horror.
To get a better idea of what AnnRadCon is like here’s an example of one of the presentations from last year’s AnnRadCon by Brenda S. Tolian.
Scheduled Presentations
Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference 2022
Brittany, Michele • Beauty in the Grotesque: Bernie Wrightson’s Lifelong Obsession with Frankenstein’s Monster
Colavito, Rocky • Kolchak at Fifty: The Night Stalker Redux, “It’s hard to believe; isn’t it?”
Diak, Nicholas • Correlating the Contents: Mimetic Desire in “The Call of Cthulhu”
Flood, Deirdre • “Let’s Show This Prehistoric Bitch How We Do Things Downtown”: Apathy, Class, and Belonging in 1980s New York City Monster Movies
Gordon, Rebecca Stone • A Panic on the 4th of July: Municipal Malfeasance, Mutation, and Monstrosity in Barry Levinson’s The Bay
Hurley, Gavin • The Diabolical Dialectics of Clive Barker’s The Damnation Game
Joseph, Rhonda Jackson • I Am My Sister’s Keeper: The Dynamics of Black Sisters in Candyman (2021), Lovecraft Country, and Eve’s Bayou
Keown, Bridget Elizabeth • “Why did it take me so long to see you?”: On Queer Ghosts and Hauntings
Kutlu, Tugce • Mourning in Horror: Grief in the 21st-Century Horror Films
Lukancic, Khara • The Intertextuality and Evolution of Racial Politics: Triangulating Night of the Living Dead, Get Out, and “Sundown” (Lovecraft Country)
Maloney, Tim • The Objectification, Commodification and Fetishization of the Female Body in Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho
Pardue, Karley • Bathing Bad: Feminine Vengeance and Masculine Vulnerability in the Showers of Horror
Prentice Jr., Donald • Articulations of Beauty in the film Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
Saha, Debadrita • Mapping the Reimagination of the “Traveling Heroine” of Female Gothic in the Sinister House of Secret Love Series
Salsbury, Ellie • Macardle’s Irish Gothic Horror Writing: Hitting Too Close to Home
Sanford, Jonathan Brooks • Between the Known and the Unknown: Stranger Things, the Signifying Body, and the Permeable Border Between the Symbolic and the Real
Siraki, Anita • Distortions in the Looking Glass: The Hidden Horrors of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and its Effects on Contemporary Black Horror
Smith, Farah Rose • Disability, Monstrosity, and the Cosmic Order: Nature vs. Supernature and the Taxonomy of Monsters in Register des Buches der Croniken und Geschichten
Surratt, Lindsey • Shadows at Play in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Tolian, Brenda • Gaia Screaming
Wetmore, Kevin • Killing It on the Field: Athletics and Sport in Horror Cinema
Wise, Talmage Joseph • Anatomical Theatre: Freak Show Horrors in Jekyll and Hyde
Woodard, Sean • Narcissistic Love and Object A: Obsession and Desire in Fade to Black
Yankovich, Margaret • “It’s Like I Can Feel God Move Inside Me”: The Religious Ecstasy of Sensual Vampirism in Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass
Yatron, Cassandra • Rats and the Queer Vampire: Dracula as a Commensal Creature
Yost, Charles • Crazy Cat Women: The Contemporary Rebrand of Literary Witchcraft