CfP OSL Symposium: Beyond the Threshold: Liminal Spaces and the Gothic Imagination

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Date: 5-6 February 2026
Venue: Utrecht University
Organizer: Bart Mulderij (University of Groningen)
Credits: 1-2 ECs
Open to: PhDs and ReMA students; OSL members have first access.

Registration will open Fall 2025


‘Beyond the Threshold: Liminal Spaces and the Gothic Imagination’ is a two-day symposium on liminality in Gothic fiction, taking place on 5 and 6 February 2026 at Utrecht University. The event will include presentations from international scholars and OSL members, as well as three keynote lectures (to be announced).

 

Gothic fiction has long been fascinated with liminality: the spaces and moments that exist between states, categories, and realities. From haunted houses and mist-shrouded landscapes to psychological and metaphysical thresholds, such spaces destabilise meaning and blur boundaries. This symposium invites scholars to explore how Gothic and speculative narratives use liminality to unsettle notions of selfhood, time, and reality, challenging rigid structures and embracing ambiguity.

 

This symposium seeks to examine the role of liminal spaces in Gothic, weird, and speculative fiction. How do thresholds, whether literal, symbolic, or psychological, shape narratives of horror, transformation, and the unknown? In what ways do these spaces reflect cultural anxieties, shifting ideologies, or the limits of human perception? How does the Gothic imagination turn the in-between into a site of both terror and possibility?

 

We welcome papers that engage with the following topics, among others:

 

  • Haunted spaces and architecture as sites of transition and disruption
  • Liminality in Gothic landscapes: mist, ruins, borderlands, and dreamscapes
  • Psychological and existential thresholds: madness, spiritualism, and altered consciousness
  • The supernatural as a liminal force: ghosts, revenants, and beings caught between worlds
  • The intersection of the Gothic and the uncanny: figures of doubling, doppelgängers, and the fragmented self
  • Temporal liminality: echoes of the past, cyclical hauntings, and disrupted timelines
  • Liminality in contemporary Gothic: digital hauntings, speculative spaces, and posthuman thresholds

 

We encourage interdisciplinary approaches and welcome contributions that examine liminality in literature, film, television, video games, and other media.

 

Submission Details:

Please submit a 250-word abstract and a brief biography (100 words) to osl@rug.nl by 1 November 2025. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 30 November 2025.

 

For inquiries, please contact: osl@rug.nl