Derek Johnston

@drdjohnston.bsky.social

1145 Followers 859 Following

Media lecturer: UK TV history, telefantasy, historical dramas. At Queen’s University Belfast.

A snow-covered field, with a tall ariel or pylon in the distance, the sun sitting at the top of the pylon.
Folk Horror on Television: Call for Proposals for an Edited Collection Editors: Derek Johnston and Diane A. Rodgers Since the first academic conference on the subject in 2014 to the present day, there has been a blossoming interest in the genre or mode of folk horror. There has been a particular boom in academic publishing on the subject in the past few years, including edited collections and monographs. However, this work has tended to focus on folk horror in film and literature, despite there being many televisual texts which can be seen as part of or closely related to the genre. The shared importance of ideas of identity of region and nation form a particular connection between television and folk horror. This collection would seek to address some of this gap. Authors are encouraged to engage with examples from a range of national and transnational contexts. Contributors are also urged to consider the breadth of different definitions of and approaches to folk horror, taking into account the concept of genres as cultural categories, defined by their usage rather than by particular textual characteristics. This can lead to a consideration not just of a wider selection of texts, but also to look beyond the text to consider what different audiences may be doing by claiming particular productions as 'folk horror'. We use here the broadest understanding of folk horror as that which also embraces the ‘wyrd’: texts which may be considered uncanny or unsettling rather than necessarily ‘horrific’. We are also keen to include a wide range of approaches to folk horror on television, whether textual studies, histories, fan studies, folkloristics, or other suitable approaches to broaden and deepen our understanding of the connections between folk horror and television. We have strong interest from Bloomsbury’s Spectres, Hauntings and Horrors series. Proposals of 500 words to derek.johnston@qub.ac.uk AND d.rodgers@shu.ac.uk. Closing date for proposals is 15 January 2026.
The cover of a hardback book with the title “The Quatermass Experiment”.
An open cardboard mailing box shows, nestled in brown packing paper, the cover of the book “Nigel Kneale and Horror”. The cover is in blue and grey tones, a broad band displaying the title, a circle showing the Hidden Horror Histories series title, and a greyscale image showing a hovering, three-legged, three-armed insectile Martian from “Quatermass and the Pit”.
A blue bilingual street name sign with white text reading “Rue de Bois Sauvage / Wildewoud Straat”