RDSP Proudly Sponsors AnnRadCon at StokerCon

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