Ghosts in the Flesh – Call for Articles
Following the recent success of Ghosts in the Flesh, a two day postgraduate conference held at the University of Kent, we are calling for contributions to a future issue of Skepsi: the online interdisciplinary research journal, run by postgraduate students of the University of Kent’s School of European Culture and Languages, and now in its sixth year.
While ghosts in the Western tradition have often been associated with other-worldliness or liminality, the aim of this issue is to examine critically discourses and texts which emphasise the corporeality and physicality of ghosts and the ghostly. Allowing ghosts to occupy the centre rather than the periphery challenges — and allows us to reconsider anew — a number of key oppositions such as: life and death, inside and outside, corporeality and incorporeality, self and other, present reality and past memory, and so on.
Some of the questions in which we are interested include: In what ways can a ghost embody a material or corporeal presence? What is the impact of viewing the figure of the ghost as a non-liminal entity in theory and culture? How does our understanding of ghosts as a material presence challenge our perceptions of the ghostly?
Bearing in mind ideas such as these, we are looking for articles that explores issues of ghostliness and in/corporeality in a number of fields, including but not limited to the following:
- Ghosts in Literature and Cinema (Gothic Literature and its critiques, Magical Realism, the double)
- Virtual Reality and Digital Arts (virtual space, digital performance theory, MMO RPG’s, simulation games)
- Memory and Architecture
- Memory and Archaeology or History
- Theatre (repetition, embodiment)
- Philosophy and Theology (mind-body dualisms and their critiques, “difficult atheism” in continental philosophy)
- Critical theory (psychoanalytic theory, literary theory)
Submissions are invited from academic staff, postgraduate students and independent scholars. Any of the submitted articles selected by the Editorial Board after peer review will be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal, to be published in Spring 2014.
Articles, which should not exceed 5,000 words, should be sent, together with an abstract of about 250 words and brief biographical details about the author, to:
The deadline for submission is 15/12/13.