Call for Articles: Gothic Studies on the Horror of Things

Our open call to articles initiative, entitled ‘Gothic Studies on the Horror of Things,’ is by a necessity of its pervasive, aesthetic nature, a broad and all-encapsulating thematic collection will engage the study of horror and the Gothic through literature, film, music, lifestyle, television, architecture, visual arts, and electronic gaming.

We are genuinely interested in the dark, the forbidden, the secret. Nevertheless, fundamentally, all our submissions should ask and strive to address (or redress) on their terms what is “horror” and what is “Gothic,” employing in the process individual or multiple methods of theoretical inquiry and diverse disciplinary or interdisciplinary approaches from across the humanities, social sciences, and beyond.

This thematic collection concerns itself with the vocation of exhuming, from the dark recesses of human experience, any number of cultural products from any historical moment or geography that might help uncover some of horror’s and the Gothic’s more captivating junctures and profound meanings. Submissions should be scholarly but remain accessible to the advanced student or knowledgeable general reader interested in the subject.

Contributions to the following themes are especially encouraged:

• Theories of horror and monstrosity;
• Horror, the Gothic, and pedagogy;
• National Gothic(s) and horrors;
• Female Gothic horror histories;
• Specialised themes in Gothic and the Horror;
• Ethnographic approaches to Gothic and the Horror;
• Gothic Horror by the decade;
• Lost Gothics;
• Post-millennial Gothic Horror(s).
• Psychoanalysis and the Horror of Things
• Race and the Horror of Things
• Gender and the Horror of Things
• Conclusion: ‘The Gothic’ as a Site of Horror

How to submit

Please, view the Submission Guidelines for detailed information about submitting an article.

Initial submissions

Articles should be submitted through the online submission form.

Copies of articles containing similar or related work under consideration or in press at other mediums should be included in the submission as additional supplementary information.

The cover letter of your manuscript should include suggestions for Editorial Board members who might advise on reviewers for your paper. We also urge you to suggest appropriate reviewers we might approach. We do however reserve the right not to contact your suggested reviewers. Manuscripts that are within the scope and seem, on initial assessment, to be technically sound, will be peer-reviewed. At the submission stage, authors may also indicate a limited number of individuals who should not review the paper. The name must identify excluded individuals.

Peer review

The corresponding author will be notified by e-mail when we decide whether or not the paper will be peer-reviewed. Papers judged to be of potential interest to our readership are sent for formal review, typically to two reviewers. The journal uses double-blind peer review. A decision is then made, based on the reviewers’ advice, from among several possibilities:

The cover letter of your manuscript should include suggestions for Editorial Board members who might advise on reviewers for your paper. We also urge you to suggest appropriate reviewers we might approach. However, we reserve the right not to contact your suggested reviewers. On initial assessment, manuscripts that are within the scope and seem to be technically sound will be peer-reviewed. At the submission stage, authors may also indicate a limited number of individuals who should not review the paper. The name must identify excluded individuals.

• Accept
• Accept after minor revision
• Probably acceptable after significant revision with re-review
• Unacceptable as is, but worth reconsideration if extensively revised
• Reject

Decision after review

In cases where the referee has requested well-defined changes to the manuscript that do not appear to require extensive further experiments, we may request a revised manuscript that addresses the referees’ concerns. The decision letter will specify a deadline.

In cases where the referees’ concerns are more wide-ranging, we will typically reject the manuscript. However, if the consensus is that the manuscript is of potential interest to the medium, they may express interest in seeing a future resubmission. The resubmitted manuscript may be returned to the original or new referees. In such cases, revised manuscripts will not retain their earlier submission date.

In either case, the revised manuscript should be supplemented by a cover letter explaining how the manuscript has been changed.

An invited revision should be submitted via the revision link to the online submission system provided in the decision letter, not as a new manuscript.

Final submission and acceptance

When all editorial issues are resolved, the article is formally accepted. The received date is the date on which we received the original manuscript. The preferred date is when the acceptance letter is sent.

Contributors are sent proofs; however, the production process does not allow minor changes. Only changes in the title, author list or significant scientific or historical errors will be permitted at this stage. The publishing team will approve all corrections. We reserve the right to make the final decision about matters of style and the size of tables and figures.

Appeals

Even in cases where we do not encourage resubmission, some authors may ask that we reconsider a rejection decision. These are considered appeals, which, by policy, must take second place to the standard workload. In practice, this means that decisions on appeals often take several weeks. Only one appeal is sanctioned for each manuscript, and appeals can only occur after peer review. The Publisher will make final decisions on appeals following consultation with the appropriate Editorial Board member(s).

Decisions are reversed on appeal only if we become convinced that the original decision was a severe mistake, not merely a borderline call that could have gone either way. Further consideration may be merited if a referee made substantial errors of fact or showed evidence of bias, but only if a reversal of that referee’s opinion would have changed the original decision. Similarly, disputes on factual issues need not be decided unless they are critical to the outcome. Thus, most appeals will be rejected after carefully considering the authors’ points.

If an appeal merits further consideration, we reserve the right to send the authors’ response or the revised paper to the original referee(s).

Making an article proposal

Authors interested in submitting a paper for any of the collections listed below should send a short abstract-length summary to the Editorial Office outlining the scope of their proposed paper; any general enquiries can also be directed to this address.

This is a rolling collection and as such submissions and proposals will be welcome without a deadline, assuring its continuity.