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In What’s the Use? (2019), Sara Ahmed examines “queer use as reuse” (198). She posits, “If I have considered queer use as how we dismantle a world that has been built to accommodate some, we can also think of queer use as a building project” (219-221). Here she highlights the potentiality of queer use, emphasizing its capacity to deconstruct a world full of biased systems, and facilitate creative and productive practices. How might we consider “queer use as reuse” (198) in videographic criticism of queer horror? What interventions, analysis, and critique might we manifest if we look at the form of the video essay in relationship to queer/horror media objects? Ahmed writes, “Queer use can also be about not ingesting something; spitting it out; putting it about. If queer use is not ingesting something, not taking it in, queer use can also be about how you attend to something” (207-8).

Submissions are now open for Monstrum 7.2, a special issue entirely comprised of video essays that “attend to” the intersections of horror and queerness. We seek proposals for 2–7-minute video essays that take up, speak to, or relate Ahmed’s notion of queer use in relation to horror. Likewise, video essayists might consider re/readings of the monstrous, where it is located, and how it is constructed (Jack Halberstam, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters, 1995); dis/identification practices and pleasures in queering and circulating negative and positive affect found in horror (Michael J. Faris, “The Queer Babadook: Circulation of Queer Affects” in The Routledge Handbook of Queer Rhetoric, 2022); and/or how “queer horror has turned the focus of fear upon itself, on its own communities and subcultures” (Darren Elliott-Smith, Queer Horror Film and Television: Sexuality and Masculinity at the Margins, 2016, 197).

We are interested in how the video essayist might situate queerness relative to horror through the analysis of specific media objects and/or texts and their formal techniques as productive, disruptive, interventionist, analytical, methodological, and/or confrontational. Does horror be/come in the process of queering or through its queer re/use? How/does horror lie within queerness itself? Video essayists may also consider the medium of the video essay or source media-object as ‘the body’, where the medium itself (film, television, web-based media object, etc.) and its production are horrific: What does the construction of the media object tell us about queer horror? What is the horror? How do queers and queerness encounter and contend with it? What might queer reuse of queerness look like through a horror lens? What are queer re-telling and reviewing practices of horror? 

Accepted proposals will also be asked to submit an accompanying statement of 750-1000 words to accompany the published video essay. 

Proposals should include the following elements:

1. Title: A descriptive title for your video essay.

2. Abstract: A concise summary (250-300 words) of your proposed video essay, identifying your object of study, and outlining the central thesis, methodology, and approach.

3. Methodology/Approach: Describe the methods and techniques you intend to use in your video essay, including how you plan to convey your ideas visually and aurally.

4. Thesis: Clearly articulate the main argument or concept you will explore in your video essay regarding the relationship between concepts of ‘horror’ and ‘queer’.

5. References: Provide a preliminary list of key texts, media objects, etc., that inform your project.

Timeline
The written component will be formatted according to standards set out in the current Chicago Manual of Style. Please see the Monstrum submission guidelines for more information.

Proposal Deadline: November 15, 2023
Notification of Acceptance: December 15, 2023
Submission of Final Video Essay and Artist's Statement: July 1, 2024
Revisions: July-November 2024
Publication: December 2024

For inquiries or further information, or to submit a proposal, please contact Dayna McLeod.