Call for Papers

Special issue of Gothic Studies (Issue 29/3 – Nov 2027)

Arctic Gothic: Imaginings, Ecologies and Politics

Edited by Krista Collier-Jarvis (Mount Saint Vincent University,  Monica Germanà (University of Westminster) and Sara Wasson (Lancaster University)

The Arctic has, historically, been conceived in Western writing as either a barren wasteland or as monstrous landscape. Either way, the aesthetics underpinning conventional depictions of the world’s northernmost regions have, arguably, been defined by the gothic paradigms of the sublime, the inhuman and the Other. This special issue of Gothic Studies delves into both historical and contemporary representations of the Arctic to unveil more nuanced understandings of the overlaps and intersections of the Gothic and the Arctic. Resisting the view of the Arctic as a homogenous and changeless ‘tabula rasa’, the articles included in this special issue will, instead, investigate the heterogeneities, inconsistencies and ambiguities found in the literal and figurative fissures of the Arctic landscape. As well as examining the intricacies of historical and contemporary cultural responses to the Arctic, the issue’s interdisciplinary scope will also incorporate an exploration of the complex ecologies and colonial entanglements that have always affected – and continue to inform – the Arctic.

Completed research articles will be 5,000 words inclusive of notes and references and will be due on 31 July 2026. The editors would particularly welcome contributions by Indigenous researchers.

While prospective contributors may wish to think beyond these suggestions, the Editors would be particularly interested in receiving proposals addressing some of these questions:

• The Arctic and the vengeful dead: legacies of colonial and extractivist violence
• Vibrant matter: Gothic representation of ice, snow and their vital materiality
• The Arctic and grief: Ecological grief, mourning, and commemoration
• Critical Plant Studies and plant-centric representations of Arctic biomes
• Arctic coastlines as liminal spaces
• Arctic extinctions: Melting permafrost and the return of the dead
• Haunted Arctic and time: Geological past, spectral futures
• Indigenous Arctic ‘monsters’: ‘Inuit’ Gothic and cultural (mis)appropriation
• ‘Fairytales’ of the Arctic: Ice in the Western Gothic imagination
• Bloody Arctic: Whaling, wounds and imperial violence
• Arctic hysteria and ‘savage’ people: The Gothic Othering of Indigenous peoples

Please send (1) short bios and (2) 250-word abstracts to arctic.gothic.studies[@]gmail.com by 30 November 2025. Accepted authors will be notified by 15 January at the latest (with completed accepted papers due by 31 July 2026). Do get in touch with the guest Editors with any queries: Krista.Collier-Jarvis[@]msvu.ca, m.germana[@]westminster.ac.uk, and s.wasson[@]lancaster.ac.uk