We are accepting proposals for our allied session at the Festival of Monsters Conference (10/14-10/18, 2026, Santa Cruz, CA). In keeping with the annual theme of “Language,” we are proposing a panel on Monstrous Dialects.
Modern adaptations of the zombie myth have a habit of assigning new language and dialect patterns to the undead. In addition to the typical cry of “braiiinnnnss!”, zombies are frequently given unique patois in popular culture instantiations of the genre: the game Urban Dead invented the language of Zamgrh for its representation of zombies (specifically, for zombies exhibiting a “death rattle,”); the tv show iZombie represents “Full-On Zombie Mode” partially through specific paralinguistic respirations; and gag gifts such as Steve Mockus’ How to Speak Zombie: A Guide for the Living identify “Zombie” as a unique dialect unto itself. This fixation on the vernacular of the undead is, perhaps, unsurprising given its origins – the first known use of the term “zombi” in English literature is from a short story, “The Zombi: or the Mulatto of Murillo’s Studio,” which positions the zombie as an ultimate horror for members of an oppressed group: a body that cannot be killed, and therefore a soul that is always enslaved. Jamie Thomas has examined the appropriation of the Swahili language in Zombie media in the book Zombies Speak Swahili: Race, Sci-fi, and Horror from Mexico to Tanzania and Hollywood, but a broader examination of how dialect and patois are built into monster myths has not yet been undertaken.
This panel seeks papers that will contribute to this consideration of the “Monster’s Dialect,” including:
·Examples of specific, known dialects attributed to monsters in media
·Explorations of unique zombie languages/accents
·Discussions of accent and dialect work in film adaptations of classic monster stories, such as the 2025 Frankenstein
·Examinations of dialects that are positioned as “monstrous”
·Broader considerations of dialect and the dialectic in monster media
Because participants in the Festival include members of the general public as well as people from within the academic community, we ask that proposals consider the Festival’s mixed audience. We welcome complex theoretical concepts, project postmortems, and scholarly interventions, but please make sure your abstract articulates the terms and stakes of your presentation as clearly as possible.
Please submit 150-word abstracts and 50-word bios to Alexia Ainsworth ([email protected]) by April 8th, 2026.
Conference registration fees are on a sliding scale:
Tenure-track faculty: $300
Independent Scholars: $275
Graduate Students: $250
UCSC Students + Faculty: Free
Applicants will also need to be members of the Society for the Study of the American Gothic.