*Apologies for cross-posting*

A colleague in English Literature at Bristol has asked me to send this CfP, of interest to film and media researchers:

Haunted Europe:

Continental Connections in English-Language Gothic Writing, Film and New Media

9 - 10 June 2016.

Leiden University, The Netherlands

Keynote speakers:

Professor Robert Miles (University of Victoria)

Professor Roger Luckhurst (Birkbeck – University of London)

Professor Tanya Krzywinska (Falmouth University)

Lesley Megahey (director of the BBC film Schalken, the Painter)

The Leiden Research Institute for the Art in Society (LUCAS) invites proposals for papers that address continental connections in English-Language Gothic Writing, Film and New Media. The aim of the conference is to explore the representation and function of continental European cultures, peoples and nations in English-Language Gothic culture from the 1790s to the present. While the first wave of British and Irish Gothic fictions developed and solidified the idea of continental Europe as a fitting setting for Gothic Romance, little sustained research has been done so far on the ways in which the function and  representation of the continent in English-language Gothic culture has developed and changed since the seminal first-wave fictions, and to what extent these developments and changes have had an impact on  the formation of British and Irish but also Australian and American national, cultural and individual identities, for instance. The ongoing debate in British politics and society concerning the possibility of an EU referendum in 2017 seems to warrant a scholarly investigation concerning the reputation and representation of continental European culture in Gothic fiction. Such political realities underscore the topicality and relevance of the conference theme, and suggest that now is the right time to explore how, why and to what extent Gothic representations of continental Europe have played a part in the long, complex an often difficult (love/hate) relationship between Britain, Ireland and the European mainland, as well as the still often noted “special relationship” between Britain and the USA. Paper topics can include, but are not limited to:

·       Continental Europe as a socio-political ‘other’

·       Continental magic v. Anglo-American Enlightenment

·       Continental rationalism v. British and/or American Sensibility

·       The revolutionary continent in English-Language Gothic texts

·       The bohemian continent and the British artist

·       Haunting the continent: Gothic Tourism

·       Continental landscapes and the Gothic labyrinth

·       Language barriers in Gothic story-telling

·       Visualisations of and interactions with the Continent in British and American “New-Media” texts

Please send a 200-word abstract, including a working title and brief CV to Dr Michael Newton at [log in to unmask]

Deadline for submission of abstracts: 1 November 2015.

Notification of participation: 21 December 2015.