Contemporary Indigenous Horror
N/A
Call for proposals:
Contemporary Indigenous Horror
Deadline for submissions:
June 30, 2025
Name of organizer:
Dr. Naomi Simone Borwein
Dr. Krista Collier-Jarvis (Mi’kmaw/L’nu)
Contact email:
Dr. Naomi Simone Borwein (nborwein@uwo.ca)
Dr. Krista Collier-Jarvis (Krista.Collier-Jarvis@msvu.ca)
Contemporary Indigenous Horror
Edited by Dr. Naomi Simone Borwein and Dr. Krista Collier-Jarvis
Building on discussions in the edited volume, Global Indigenous Horror (University Press of Mississippi, 2025), this is a call for chapter proposal submissions focused on the topic of Contemporary Indigenous Horror. Beautiful, luminous and resonant moments of horror exist in the work of writers like Shane Hawk, Kim Scott, Tiffany Morris, Waubgeshig Rice, or Ambelin Kwaymullina. But Indigenous horror tales thrive in many narrative or storying forms—from
fiction, plays, and music, to graphic novels, art installations, or experimental films fortified by
sonic and oral manifestations.
In response to the inaugural essay collection, Global Indigenous Horror (2025), Judith Leggatt states, “Global Indigenous Horror is a timely and welcome addition to the growing field of Indigenous Horror studies.” Over the past decade, there has been a (re)surgence in Indigenous works focusing on tales of horror, such as Anoka: A Collection of Indigenous Horror (2011; Hawk); Ajjiit: Dark Dreams of the Ancient Arctic (2011; Tinsley and Qitsualik); Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Anthology Collection (2023; Hawk and Van Alst Jr.); Whistle at Night and They Will Come: Indigenous Horror Stories (2023; Soop); Midnight Storm, Moonless Sky: Indigenous Horror Stories (2022; Soop); Taaqtumi: An Anthology of Arctic Horror Stories (2019), Moosebumpz: Scary Stories from the Rez, and The Land Has Spoken— Tales of Indigenous Horror (2024; Hawk and Rogers), and Zegaajimo: Indigenous Horror Fiction (2024; Akiwenzie and Adler), just to name a few.
Responding to the widening gap between Indigenous horror and academic responses to it, editors Naomi Simone Borwein and Krista Collier-Jarvis solicit contributions for Contemporary Indigenous Horror. Shane Hawk broadly defines horror as that which “prioritizes the fear factor, often using graphic depictions of violence, monstrous beings, or otherworldly threats to achieve its effect. The ultimate purpose of horror is to confront the reader with their deepest fears, creating an experience that is visceral and unsettling.” When taken up by Indigenous storytellers, horror often engages with a colonial past that has never really passed, and as such, it haunts contemporary Indigenous peoples and communities. Indigenous horror thus often blends traditional stories as well as Indigenous ways of knowing and being with contemporary issues. In many cases, Indigenous horror is about our lived experiences, not as the victim of ongoing coloniality, but as resistance. According to Elizabeth Edwards and Brenna Duperron, “Indigeneity is a resistance — in the usual sense of opposition, repudiation, and refusal to comply […but also] resistant to assimilation. Indigeneity is the lived and embodied experience of peoples who have participated in that resistance” (94). In many other cases, Indigenous horror is about what Scott Gordon calls “colonial whiplash,” where “white people who haven’t turned into zombies [or other monsters] are at the mercy of the oppressed”—their Indigenous saviours. And in other cases, what Indigenous horror is has yet to be revealed.
Chapters (6,000-8,000 words including bibliography) may examine modern, contemporary representations of Indigenous Horror from a variety of perspectives. With a focus on analysis of current horror (narrative) production by self-identifying artists, writers, and other creators, some areas of consideration include, but are not limited to:
- the future of Indigenous Horror;
- Indigenous futurisms;
- Indigenous futurism in relation to Afrofuturism;
- the post-apocalyptic;
- after the Anthropocene (or other labels);
pre-contact/post-contact; - Indigenous “monsters”;
- Indigenous identity/identities;
- unsettling, activism;
- love, reciprocity, and horror;
- Indigenous horror and visual, digital, or textual sovereignty;
- mixed media, experimental media;
- virtual, embodied, extended, or augmented reality;
- multisensory installation and the horror experience;
- ecological discourses and horror manifestations in relation to speculative narratives;
- interrogation of “rewilding” and alternatives;
- decolonization of Indigenous stereotypes in mainstream Horror and their counterparts in
Indigenous narratives; - authentic Indigenous horror images, visions, “metaphors” or “motifs”;
- social media and h/Horror in relation to fiction marketization;
- sonic landscapes of horror;
- systems of Indigenous horror that move between fiction, film, music, and other media;
- NDN and Horror media;
- inter-tribal horror/Horror and trans-Indigeneity or pan-Indigeneity;
- exploration of various land-based, place-based, sky-based, star-based, or water-based
horrors in narratives by Indigenous creators; - blood, heredity, categorization, and holocaust/genocide narratives;
- reconciliation;
- virtue signalling, horror, media cultures and spaces;
- metacommentary;
- analysis of Indigenous Gothic and Horror;
- Indigenous Horror fiction and ways of knowing;
- reading (and teaching) Indigenous horror fiction;
- horror systems as epistemologies;
- Indigenous Horror fiction and scholarship;
and more.
This follow-up collection seeks contributions from self-identified Indigenous scholars in any stage of their academic journey. We also encourage submissions from allies to the community. To acknowledge the various ways in which Indigenous scholarship may emerge, we welcome both traditional as well as more exploratory approaches, including submissions of proposals for non-fiction works by self-identified Indigenous storytellers reflecting on the process of writing, or otherwise producing, horror.
Please send a 250-word abstract and a 100-word bio to editors Naomi Simone Borwein (nborwein@uwo.ca) and Krista Collier-Jarvis (Krista.Collier-Jarvis@msvu.ca) by June 30, 2025.
Accepted chapters will be due June 30, 2026.
Naomi Simone Borwein
