Queer Fears Network

The Queer Fears Network is a dedicated gathering of scholars, filmmakers and aca-fans whose work and interests extend to Queer Horror and Queer Gothic in Film, TV and Literature. It is run in collaboration with the University of Stirling Gender Research Group.

 

Current members include:

  • Dr Darren Elliott-Smith, (University of Stirling, Network founder)

  • Dr Robyn Ollett (Teeside University)

  • Sam Tabet (PhD candidate, University of Strathclyde)

  • Daniel Sheppard (PhD Candidate, Birmingham City University)

  • Ben Wheeler (Independent Researcher)

Previous events include:

Queer Fears Panel Discussion on Queer Horror and Knife + Heart (Gonzalez, 2018) in collaboration with Gender Studies Film Club Stirling, 16th July 2020. 

Paris, Summer 1979. Anne (Vanessa Paradis) produces third-rate gay porn. After her editor and lover Lois leaves her, she tries to win her back by shooting her most ambitious film yet with her trusted sidekick Archibald. When one of her actors is brutally murdered and Anne gets caught up in a strange investigation that turns her life upside-down.
Queer Horror-Thriller Knife + Heart unashamedly borrows from the Giallo genre and is infused with a woozy nostalgia for the world of 70s pornography.The screening (available via Mubi) will be supplemented by a panel discussion with published academics/fans of the Queer Horror/Gothic.
To access the screening you must be have a valid student/staff email address/account at a UK University, and sign up for a free educational account to MUBI see here for details: mubi.com/filmstudent
Attendees can then watch the film at a time that suits them, the Live Panel Discussion will be at 8pm Thursday 16th July via Zoom and can be attended by all – with a chance to chat and ask questions.
Link for the Zoom discussion panel and Q+A will be sent out on the Facebook group page.
Panel Discussion Video below: 

https://www.facebook.com/darren.elliottsmith.1/videos/642110016408233

 

The Queer Fears Symposium – held on 28 June 2019, The Odyssey Cinema, St Albans, Herts.

Where homosexuality in horror may once have been portrayed allusively, recent representations have moved towards more explicit depictions of sexuality. This call for papers invites scholarly investigations that aim to show that, in recent years, New Queer Horror has turned the focus of fear upon itself, on its own communities and subcultures. New Queer Horror designates film and television horror texts that are crafted by directors/producers who identify as gay, bi, queer or transgendered, or work that features homoerotic, or explicitly homosexual, narratives with ‘out’ LGBTQ+ characters.

This symposium argues that New Queer Horror projects contemporary anxieties within LGBTQ+ subcultures onto its characters and into its narratives, building upon the previously figurative role of queer monstrosity in the moving image. This symposium builds on the work of seminal queer horror academics (Benshoff, Halberstam, Scahill and Elliott-Smith) and seeks to explore the shifting approaches to the representation of queerness in horror film and television and via that examination also endeavours to develop a clearer understanding of the subgenre’s changing aesthetics, themes and depicted queer identities in the twenty first century.

The symposium also contained a specially programmed film screening and invited contributors to the forthcoming edited collection: New Queer Horror Film and TV, edited by John Edgar Browning and Darren Elliott-Smith (UWP October 2020).

Conference Programme below: 

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For further information on the Queer Fears Network please visit: 

www.queerhorrordoctor.com or email: darren.elliott-smith@stir.ac.uk