Monthly Archives: August 2010

Call for Papers on Joss Whedon and the “Whedonverse”

The Popular Culture Association and American Culture Associations have issued a series of calls for papers including the following: Call for Papers: Science Fiction and Fantasy Area: The Works of Joss Whedon National PCA/ACA & Southwest/Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Associations Joint Conference, April 20-23, 2011, San Antonio, TX Proposal submission deadline: December 15, […]

Christopher Knowles: Gods and Geeks in American Pop Culture

Patheos is a website that presents information on a variety of religious traditions. Over the course of the summer months the site has been looking at what the future holds for these religions, and in a recent focus on Paganism an essay was included that dovetails with the focus of TheoFantastique. Christopher Knowles wrote a […]

Kyle Bishop: American Zombie Gothic

I first became aware of Kyle Bishop and his work on zombies in film and culture for his PhD while researching the surge in academic work on horror. I then came across an article on his research in The University of Arizona’s UA News, “The Zombie: A New Monster for a a New World.” I […]

Cinefantastique Interview: Neil Lerner and Music in the Horror Film

I recently enjoyed exploring an important facet of horror through the book Music in the Horror Film, edited by Neil Lerner (Routledge, 2009). I was then able to interview Lerner who discussed the significance of the aural in horror cinema for Cinefantastique Online. Below is the introduction: I come from a generation of fantastic film […]

MONSTERS: Reverse SETI Apocalyptic

A new horror film debuts at the end of October titled Monsters. The film’s website describes the plot: Six years ago previously, a NASA probe returning to earth with samples of an alien life form, crashed over Central America. Soon after, new life forms began to appear, and half of Mexico was quarantined as an […]

Monsters and the Monstrous: Inter-Disciplinary.Net

Interest in the monstrous, including academic explorations of this topic, is of course, not limited to America. Some of my recent research found a global group with a strong European component. It is called Monsters and the Monstrous: Myths & Metaphors of Enduring Evil as part of Inter-Disciplinary.Net: A Global Network for Dynamic Research and […]

Vampire Evolution: Beyond Americanized and “Twilightized” Depictions

A while back I suggested that the development in vampires in film toward a darker expression of the iconic creatures in films like 30 Days of Night may represent a reaction against the popularity of the zombie, and an attempt at reasserting the dominance of the vampire. Now we are seeing depictions of the vampire […]

American Horror Film: James Kendrick and Spiritual Horror Films

As previously noted here in a discussion based upon an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, there is a growing body of academic books exploring horror films. One of those books is American Horror Film: The Genre at the Turn of the Millennium, edited by Steffen Hantke (University Press of Mississippi, 2010). While many […]

Open Graves, Open Minds Conference Update

In a previous post I mentioned the Open Graves, Open Minds: Vampires and the Undead in Human Culture conference which looked at various ways in which the vampire serves as a metaphor in culture. The conference was held in April of this year on the campus of the University of Hertfordshire in the UK. (See […]

Sacred Space: The Quest for Transcendence in Science Fiction Film and Television released Aug. 15

Sacred Space: The Quest for Transcendence in Science Fiction Film and Television by Douglas Cowan (Baylor University Press, 2010) goes on sale tomorrow, August 15. You can order a copy here now. Description: As humans, it is our trust in something larger than ourselves that invests our lives with meaning and value. We hope that […]

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