*CFP* CALL FOR PROPOSALS, SCREENING STEPHEN KING SYMPOSIUM

Screening Stephen King Symposium

School of Film, Media and Communication, University of Portsmouth

May 1, 2020

With dozens of publications – including novels, novellas, short story anthologies and non-fiction works – to his name, Stephen King has been an acknowledged publishing force for more than four decades. King’s works soon proved ripe for adaptation for both cinema and television. Ranging from Brian De Palma’s Carrie (1976) to IT: Chapter 2 (2019), and from the Salem’s Lot (1979) CBS miniseries to streaming series such as Mr Mercedes (2017–2019) and Castle Rock (2018–), King has been a regular fixture on screens large and small throughout his career. Linked indelibly to tales of terror and suspense, with a keen eye for life’s deepest mysteries and an uncanny knack for pinpointing sources of dread, King has come to symbolise the horror genre.

May 2020 marks forty years since the US cinematic release of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), an adaptation famously deplored by King himself though lauded by critics and subsequently held up as a landmark horror film. The recent release of Doctor Sleep (2019), a sequel to both King’s bestselling novel and Kubrick’s film, has helped renew interest in a tale of significance both to King’s body of work and to the horror genre as a whole. With this context in mind, the upcoming symposium seeks to bring together scholars with an interest in King’s work on the screen.

Papers are welcome on, though not limited to, the following topics:

• retrospectives of 40 years of The Shining 
• analyses of particular films/shows 
• debates pertaining to authorship 
• King’s role as author/involvement in screen projects 
• adaptations, remakes and reimaginings 
• evolving media formats 
• transmedia storytelling/worldbuilding 
• genre (e.g. crime drama, mystery, science fiction, thriller) 
• Gothic and horror tropes 
• issues of representation (e.g. age, childhood, gender, race, sexuality)

Proposals

Please send 250 word abstracts to Rebecca.Janicker@port.ac.uk by February 14, 2020. Any queries are very welcome at the same email address.