Shirley Jackson Studies invites proposals exploring the role of the body and embodiment in the works of Shirley Jackson. The bodily experience—fear, appetite, illness, gendered expectations, and the social regulation of bodies—shapes both the psychological and supernatural dimensions of Jackson’s work, which frequently interrogates the boundaries between self and society, mind and body, domestic space and physical vulnerability.
From the ritualized violence of “The Lottery” to the embodied psychic sensitivity of Eleanor Vance in The Haunting of Hill House to the vulnerability of Miss Strangeworth’s aging body in “The Possibility of Evil” to “The Daemon Lover,” in which the anxiety of a woman alone in a public space manifests itself through exhaustion and disorientation, Jackson’s texts reveal how bodies become sites of discipline, anxiety, transformation, and resistance. Her depictions of domesticity, motherhood, illness, appetite, and social conformity invite rich discussion through lenses such as gender studies, disability studies, affect theory, and horror studies.
This panel seeks papers that examine how Jackson’s work represents the body as a locus of power, vulnerability, and social control. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
· Gendered bodies and domestic confinement
· Food, appetite, and consumption
· Illness, disability, and mental health
· Ritual, violence, and sacrificial bodies
· Embodiment and haunting
· Bodies and space (houses, rooms, domestic architecture)
· Adolescence, sexuality, and bodily anxiety
· The grotesque or abject body
· Social discipline and conformity
· Feminist and queer readings of embodiment
· Affect, sensation, and the body in horror
· Adaptations of Jackson’s works and the visualization of bodies
We welcome papers engaging any of Jackson’s fiction, nonfiction, and adaptations.
Submission Guidelines
Please use this link to submit a proposal and professional bio by May 31, 2026.