Fear Studies in an Age of Fear

A One-Day Conference at the University of Warwick

31 January 2025

‘Fear Studies in an Age of Fear’ is the inaugural event of the ‘The Fear Network’: a new cross-faculty research group at the University of Warwick bringing together people interested in how ‘negative’ emotions — fear, anxiety, humiliation, disgust, and so on – shape cultural and political life.

Our topic is, of course, integral to many historical and social contexts, but it is also highly timely. We come together in a new age of fear: of wars, pandemics, and environmental collapse; of rising populisms and deepening divisions; of disinformation campaigns, economic crises, and political extremisms. Our conference ‘Fear Studies in an Age of Fear’ is therefore underpinned by some urgent questions: How can we better grasp the meeting point of emotive subjectivity with collective social conditions? How have negative affects formed modern selfhood and in what ways have they been weaponised in political contexts? Why do we seek out frightening experiences but recoil from a frightening world? These overarching themes also lead us to more specific concerns about today’s world: How do current political actors exploit negative emotions, and how might a greater understanding of this exploitation mitigate their power? How does the rise of AI and the attendant fears about loss of human agency have its roots, in part, in historical fears of technological development? How do cultural forms register and reimagine ‘negative’ emotions, sometimes for collective, radical, and interventionist ends?

For our inaugural conference we seek proposals for 15-20 minute papers and/or academic posters that speak to these wider interests. We believe that our central questions cannot ultimately be answered within the scope of traditional disciplinary enquiry, so while we are open to any approach to the topic from any disciplinary perspective we also hope to bring together researchers whose work speaks across conventional departmental boundaries. Warwick’s ‘Fear Network’ consists of colleagues from across the intellectual spectrum of the university’s departments and centres, brought together to work on pressing, difficult, and necessary contemporary questions.

Topics for papers or posters may include:

• The role of negative emotions in political history and current affairs
• Fear and environmental threat
• Negative emotions in crime and justice
• AI and fears of technology
• Identity and the sociology/politics of fear
• Conspiracy, disinformation, and cultures of fear
• Recreational fear
• Terror and terrorism
• Negative emotions in storytelling – tragedy, abjection, and so on
• Horror as genre and emotion
• The philosophy and psychology of negative emotions
• Visualising fear
• Writing fear
• Fearful responses to cultural texts and objects
• Affect studies and the history of emotions

The deadline for receipt of proposals is October 25^th 2024.

This is a hybrid conference, and there will be a limited number of spaces available on the programme for remote speakers.

Please send proposals for individual papers or pre-organised panels (no more than four people) to ageoffear@warwick.ac.uk. Proposals should be less than 400 words and come with a brief biography/CV for each presenter.

Queries and questions can be sent to the conference address or to the conference organiser Mark Storey at M.J.Storey@warwick.ac.uk

To sign up to the network's mailing list please visit here.