People encounter the uncanny every day - the familiar object or person or place that becomes unfamiliar or strange or that is seen or experienced differently. Because the uncanny is familiar yet strange or inexplicable, it calls into question the “taken-for-granted” status of everyday objects and places. It creates a dual vision, or cognitive dissonance, within the experiencing subject due to the paradoxical nature of being attracted to or comfortable with an object or place yet simultaneously repulsed or unnerved by it. A nightmare space heightens a feeling of uncanniness and is more threatening and terrifying than bizarre and uncomfortable. Like the doubling associated with the uncanny, nightmare spaces can be encountered or created and involve repetition and (perhaps temporary) anxiety. The conference welcomes papers from any discipline that explore nightmarish or uncanny places/spaces but papers on other topics or themes will be accepted as long as a spatial dimension takes center stage. If there is sufficient interest, IASESP will also include up to two panels of video conference presentations. Revised papers can also be submitted for consideration in the IASESP peer-reviewed journal, Environment, Space, Place, published by the University of Minnesota Press.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Amusement Parks
• Asylums
• Battlefields
• Borders
• Bureaucracies
• Closed/Tight Spaces
• Concentration/Death Camps
• Cruise Ships
• Cyberspace
• Dark Forests
• Environmental Calamities
• Gentrification/Urban Renewal
• Ghost (or Deindustrialized) Towns
• Graveyards
• Gridlocked Highways
• Hell/Hades
• Movies/TV Shows
• Novels, Short Stories, and Plays
• Open/Wild Spaces
• Prisons
• Purgatory
• Refugee Camps
• Reunions
• Road Trips
• Shopping Malls
• Vacations
• Workplaces