From Gothic monstrosity in the 18th century to “kill your queers” in the 21st; from repression to the legacies of violence, rage, and trauma; from creating safe, often beautiful spaces to discuss fear and dread to the “death perception” that comes with a close, long, and personal knowledge of decay, destruction and the impact of time…queerness has been intimately associated with horror from the earliest iteration of the genre.
The page, screen, or speaker is no barrier to these feelings or these ways of knowing. Those pieces categorized as “queer horror” are often those that provide insight for queer audiences, about telling stories, about imagining alternative realities or ways of being, and about fighting back. Representations of queerness in horror have additionally always been fraught, from Norman Bates (Psycho) and Buffalo Bill (Silence of the Lambs) to Miriam Blaylock (The Hunger) and Catherine Tramell (Basic Instinct). While such depictions offer insight into the history of queer representation in an increasingly heteronormative, gentrified, imperialistic society, they also point to a legacy of how queer horror has failed queer audiences, and perpetuated systems of harm. This conference makes room for considerations of those tensions, with a particular eye towards the ways in which queerness can be, and has been, envisioned beyond these problematic representations.
Within and a part of this understanding, the Horror Studies Working Group at the University of Pittsburgh is proud to extend our work on Queer Horror by announcing the first Queer Horror Conference. We envision this event to showcase research and creation, as well as a specific vehicle for learning about some of the resources advocating for queer communities and their legacy and for building a supportive community of scholars. We hope to accomplish this, in part, by hosting this conference in an online space, to enable participation from as diverse a group as possible. Likewise, we are honored to showcase the work of queer organizations that work at the conjunction of queer advocacy, education, and history.
Presentation topics may include but are by no means limited to:
Historical approaches to representations of queerness in horror
Queer short horror film(s), art practice, or other creative pieces
Considerations of how queerness is/is not represented on the horror film festival circuit
Experimental or avant-garde queer horror
New media (including podcasts, web series, games, and short form pieces) that engage queerness and horror broadly
Literary representations of queerness in the horror genre
Queer horror as a framework for imaging queer futurities or potential
Intersections of queerness, disability, race, religion, and other axes of marginalization in horror and horror-adjacent cultural production
The positionality of queer creators in horror genre spaces (literary, filmmaking, scholarly, etc.)
The act and/or experience of creating queer horror
We welcome both individual abstracts and full panels that deal with any aspect of the intersection of queerness and horror, interpreted in as broad, interdisciplinary, and intersectional a manner as possible. We also welcome and encourage non-traditional forms of conference presentations, including art talks, readings, or works-in-progress. We also plan to host a creative showcase on the evening of Friday, February 7, and welcome submissions of concept art, writing, and other aspects of the creative process.
In the interest of encouraging collaboration and support discussions, presentations should be no more than 15 minutes. Likewise, we sincerely hope that conference participants will take part in as much of the two-day conference as possible.
Scholars and practitioners from all career stages, including independent scholars, undergraduate and graduate students are welcomed and encouraged to reach out. We also welcome expressions of interest from those who are interested in attending the conference without participating.
Proposals should be submitted via our Submission Portal, no later than December 8, 2024. Notice of acceptance will be sent by December 20, 2024.
Please reach out with any questions or requests of accommodations to QueerHorrorConference@gmail.com. We also welcome questions regarding accessibility or suggestions for organizations from your community who may be interested in participating.