The Virtual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (VICFA) 2025

Embodied Spirits

September 17-21, 2025

Featuring Guests of Honor 

Kim Bo-Young, Djuna, Vince Gerardis,

Jonathan Maberry, and Mimi Mondal

Distinguished Scholar Mads Haahr

From the world’s earliest stories—such as those of spirits dwelling in the dirt beneath the fingernails of Ereshkigal, Mesopotamian Queen of the Great Earth—folktales and myths have long imagined spirits embodied in unexpected natural forms and places, such as the spirit of slain Osiris resurrected as a heron in a willow tree, Baital the Indian vampire hung like a bat in an East Indian walnut tree, and Daphne transformed into a laurel tree to escape lecherous Apollo.

Embodied spirits appear across media and genres, inhabiting not only ancient myth and religion but also science and technology. From the haunted AI of Ex Machina and She to the ghost-in-the-machine horrors of Unfriended, Black Box, and The Ring, spirits manifest in forms both comforting and terrifying. They persist through folklore and its modern retellings, such as R. R. Virdi’s Grave Beginnings and The Binding series, the cursed lovers of Ladyhawke, and enduring transformation tales such as The Wild Swans. Spirits inhabit spaces (The Haunting of Hill House, Silent Hill), symbols (the linden tree in Hannah Crafts’ Bondwoman’s Narrative), and shadows of protest (Angelina Weld Grimké’s “Tenebris”). Natural forces also become vessels: Audre Lorde’s “Afterimages” floods the Pearl River with the spirit of Emmett Till, while Grace Ogot’s “The Rain Came” unleashes divine pity on a girl marked for sacrifice.

Whether animating flesh, metal, cloth, bone, books, or even teeth, spirits return to accomplish justice, comfort, or vengeance. They reappear to the bereaved in works such as Ben Okri’s The Famished Road, Morrison’s Beloved, and Jacobs’s “The Monkey’s Paw.” In P. Djèlí Clark’s Ring Shout, The Haunting of Tram Car 015, and “The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington,” spirits infest the material world like a zombie plague. Some inhabit machines, such as in Stephen King’s Christine, while others are trapped by powerful figures, as in Kai Ashante Wilson’s “The Devil in America” and William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist. In more apocalyptic visions, spirits raise armies of fear, as in Bird Box: Barcelona.

Embodied Spirits invites engagement with how embodied spirits persist, haunt, and empower across both cultural and technological landscapes as well as different cosmologies. This call for proposals seeks to bridge the speculative and the critical, exploring Embodied Spirits in fantastic media and cultures. Proposals may consider any of the kinds of stories listed above; we invite critical frames of reference such as—but not limited to—the following:

• Hauntology: Resurfacing unresolved historical traumas and suppressed cultural or familial memories destabilizing the present.

• Afrofuturisms, Asian Futurisms, Indigenous Futurisms, LatinX Futurisms, and Middle Eastern Futurisms: Spectral figures as embodiments of colonial violence or agents of justice, vengeance, or reconciliation in postcolonial and Diaspora contexts unsettling hegemonic narratives.

• Postcolonial Theory: Spectral hauntings as allegories for colonial trauma; the role of embodiment in navigating trauma, identity, or cultural memory.

• Cyberpunk: Manifestations of spirits across technological platforms and digital spaces.

• The Spiritual: Conceptualizations, invocations and embodiments of spirits as animistic natural elements, spiritualist communications, esoteric knowledge systems, and theological doctrines.

• Eco-Criticism: Spirits as manifestations of environmental justice or natural agency.

• Reinterpretations of traditional folklore and myth through contemporary lenses: Spectral manifestations that challenge dominant narratives.

Set your imagination free to explore Embodied Spirits at VICFA 2025, with Guests of Honor Kim-Bo Young (I’m Waiting for You and Other Stories, Snowpiercer), Djuna (Counterweight, Everything Good Dies Here), Vince Gerardis (House of Dragon, Dark Winds), Jonathan Maberry (Rot & Ruin, V-Wars), and Mimi Mondal (Luminescent Threads, "In the Mists of Manivarsha"), as well as Distinguished Scholar Dr. Mads Haahr (Random.org, Haunted Planet).

As always, proposals on topics transcending this year’s theme are welcome.

Please submit abstracts of 300-500 words along with a brief bio statement by June 30, 2025 to https://form.jotform.com/251195173129154

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Please visit our sister organization, Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung.

The Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung (GFF) [Association for Research in the Fantastic] is the first academic association in the German-speaking world committed to furthering research on the fantastic in art, literature and culture. It strives to broaden scholarly and cultural insight in this area. To that end, the association publishes its membership journal "Zeitschrift für Fantastikforschung" twice a year as well as its own book series "Beiträge zur Fantastikforschung". In addition, an annual conference provides the opportunity for a membership assembly, taking place in different locations each year.