CFP: Locating the Gothic

October 22-25, 2014

Limerick School of Art and Design and Mary Immaculate College, Limerick

The Gothic is a mode that is intimately connected to location. Sites and spaces both define and demarcate the limits of Gothic aesthetics and have shaped the way varieties of the Gothic have developed over time. From hazy moors and dense forests, to urban labyrinths, contemporary cyberscapes and postmodern dystopias, the Gothic has traversed many varied landscapes, both internal and external, historic and contemporary, from which fearful and disturbing atmospheres emerge. Psycho-geographical underpinnings in the Gothic are often the basis for key Gothic experiences such as the sublime and the uncanny. The correlations between space and identity, site and narrative, are central to this and evoke new and interesting approaches to Gothic art, literature, and culture. Thus, we seek to engage with the notion of location as it underpins the literary, artistic, and physical formations of Gothic, and as it may allow us to ‘locate’ the Gothic, or versions of the same in artistic, critical and cultural terms. We are particularly interested in papers which approach alternative forms of Gothic spatiality, particularly those which discuss the Gothic in contemporary art and media. Proposals should be e-mailed to Maria Beville and Tracy Fahey by 1st May 2014.

Themes suggested (but not limited to) the following:

- Urban Gothic/Rural Gothic
- Regional Gothic/National Gothic
- Gothic Utopias/Dystopias/Heterotopias
- Spatially based contexts of Gothic (i.e. mythology, folklore, oral traditions)
- Colonial/Postcolonial/Transcultural Gothic
- Dramatic spaces Gothic places and spaces; Psychogeography and the Gothic
- Gothic and Architecture
- Cartography and the Gothic Spatial structures of Gothic
- Cybergothic/Gothic and multimedia/digital media
- Limits and boundaries in the Gothic
- The Gothic and Domestic space
- Locating the Gothic in genre/locating the Gothic in culture

For more information about the conference and the linked festival, please click here.