For this edited collection, we invite proposals for essays that focus on and engage with petrogothic and petrohorror, emerging fields that examine the textual artifacts of hydrocarbon cultures through the lens of gothic and horror studies.
Petrogothic and petrohorror scholarship serves to address the anxiety, terror, and disquiet surrounding “petromodernity,” a term coined by scholar Stephanie LeMenager to describe the role of oil in constructing the material and social culture of contemporary globalized society. While the extraction, production, and combustion of hydrocarbons—primarily coal, oil, and natural gas—has enabled a luxurious standard of living in the Global North, it has also caused widespread destruction on almost every scale. Our premise for this collection is that humanities scholars need to examine the ingrained presence of petrocultures in contemporary cultural artifacts—including those invoke anxiety, fear, revulsion, horror, and terror—in order to counter the continued use of polluting fossil fuels and understand the corrosive influences of contemporary energy regimes. We recognize that over the last several years, some scholars have criticized petrogothic and petrohorror texts for their so-called invocations of “gloom and doom.” However, in this collection, we wish to add nuance to this discussion. Rather than treating these texts as monolithic, we propose to examine their intricacies and complexities so as to learn more about what they have to say about contemporary oil cultures. In so doing, we seek to gain greater insight into the feelings, constructions, and structures of fear (as well as other connected affects) that pervade human interactions with hydrocarbons and manifest themselves in collective and individual petrogothic and petrohorrific expressions.
To better address the manifestations of petrohorror and petrogothic in the contemporary imagination, we invite proposals for essays that engage with literature, film, graphic novels, comics, theatre, music, art, or any other oily texts. We are particularly interested in proposals for essays that center marginalized perspectives and address environmental justice issues.
Chapters might examine (but are not limited to) any of the following themes as a means of approaching petrohorror and the petrogothic:
- Temporality
- Geology and Fossils
- Extinction
- Monstrosity
- Spectrality
- Apocalypse
- Petromaterialisms
- Infrastructure and Technology
- Vehicular Cultures
- Plastics and Petrochemicals
- Pollution and Toxicity
- Waste Streams
- Illness and Disease
- Climate Change
- Environmental Justice
- Indigenous Epistemologies
- Necropolitics
- Capitalism and Colonialism
- Global and Regional Concerns
- More-Than-Human Perspectives
Please send a 300-word abstract and a 100-word bio to editors Madalynn Madigar ([email protected])and Jennifer Schell ([email protected]) by August 31, 2025. Full essays of 6,000 to 7,000 words will be tentatively due by June 30, 2026.