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Monthly Archives: August 2017

Please join us for ICFA 39, March 14-18, 2018, when our theme will be “200 Years of the Fantastic: Celebrating Frankenstein and Mary Shelley.”

We welcome papers on the work of: Guest of Honor John Kessel (Nebula, Locus and Tiptree Award winner), Guest of Honor Nike Sulway (Tiptree and Queensland award winner; nominee for Aurealis and Crawford awards), and Guest Scholar Fred Botting (Professor, Kingston University London; author of Making Monstrous: “Frankenstein”, Criticism, Theory; Gothic; and Limits of Horror).

Mary Shelley and her Creature have had a pervasive influence on the fantastic. Brian Aldiss famously proclaimed Frankenstein as the first science fiction novel, fusing the investigation of science with the Gothic mode. Its myriad adaptation on stage, in film and beyond have continually reinvented Shelley’s tale for contemporary audiences, from James Whale’s iconic 1931 film through Showtime’s Penny Dreadful (2014-16). Frankenstein exists in many avatars and many languages. Its central invention of the scientifically created being has become a staple of the fantastic imaginary from Asimov’s robots through Ava in Ex Machina (Alex Garland 2014) or Samantha in Her (Spike Jonze 2013). Shelley Jackson’s early hypertext Patchwork Girl (1995) and Danny Boyle’s innovatively staged version of Nick Dear’s play both shows us how Frankenstein continues to push us toward innovations in form, while the novel’s interest in themes of scientific responsibility, social isolation, and gender inequality remain sharply relevant. We invite papers that explore the many legacies of Frankenstein on fantastic genres, characters, images and modes, especially those that explore the ongoing importance of women’s contributions to them, beginning with Mary Shelley. We also welcome proposals for individual papers, academic sessions, creative presentations, and panels on any aspect of the fantastic in any media.

The deadline for proposals is October 31, 2017. We encourage work from institutionally affiliated scholars, independent scholars, international scholars who work in languages other than English, graduate students, and artists.

To submit a proposal, go to http://www.fantastic-arts.org/icfa-submissions/.

To contact the Division Heads for help with submissions, go to http://www.fantastic-arts.org/annual-conference/division-heads.

To download a copy of the CfP, please click here.

We are deeply saddened to hear of the death of our Special Guest Emeritus, Brian Aldiss. Brian was a longtime friend of the IAFA and a giant in the field. He authored over 80 books, edited 40 anthologies, and was the winner of numerous awards, including the Hugo and Nebula Awards, the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and the IAFA Distinguished Scholarship Award. Please join us in offering our condolences to his family.

Gothic Animals: Uncanny Otherness and the Animal With-Out (edited collection)

deadline for submissions:
November 1, 2017

full name / name of organization:
Ruth Heholt and Melissa Edmundson

contact email:
me.makala@gmail.com

Gothic Animals: Uncanny Otherness and the Animal With-Out

‘The boundary between the animal and the human has long been unstable, especially since the Victorian period. Where the boundary is drawn between human and animal is itself an expression of political power and dominance, and the ‘animal’ can at once express the deepest fears and greatest aspirations of a society’ (Victorian Animal Dreams, 4).

‘The animal, like the ghost or good or evil spirit with which it is often associated, has been a manifestation of the uncanny’ (Timothy Clark, 185).

In the mid nineteenth-century Charles Darwin published his theories of evolution. And as Deborah Denenholz Morse and Martin A. Danahay suggest, ‘The effect of Darwin’s ideas was both to make the human more animal and the animal more human, destabilizing boundaries in both directions’ (Victorian Animal Dreams, 2). Nineteenth-century fiction quickly picked up on the idea of the ‘animal within’ with texts like R.L. Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray and H. G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau. In these novels the fear explored was of an unruly, defiant, degenerate and entirely amoral animality lying (mostly) dormant within all of us. This was our animal-other associated with the id: passions, appetites and capable of a complete disregard for all taboos and any restraint. As Cyndy Hendershot states, this ‘animal within’ ‘threatened to usurp masculine rationality and return man to a state of irrational chaos’ (The Animal Within, 97). This however, relates the animal to the human in a very specific, anthropocentric way. Non-humans and humans have other sorts of encounters too, and even before Darwin humans have often had an uneasy relationship with animals. Rats, horses, dogs, cats, birds and other beasts have, as Donna Haraway puts it a way of ‘looking back’ at us (When Species Meet,19).

Animals of all sorts have an entirely different and separate life to humans and in fiction this often morphs into Gothic horror. In these cases it is not about the ‘animal within’ but rather the animal ‘with-out’; Other and entirely incomprehensible. These non-human, uncanny creatures know things we do not, and they see us in a way it is impossible for us to see ourselves. We have other sorts of encounters with animals too: we eat animals, imbibing their being in a largely non-ritualistic, but possibly still magical way; and on occasion, animals eat us. From plague-carrying rats, to ‘filthy’ fleas, black dogs and killer bunnies, animals of all sorts invade our imaginations, live with us (invited or not) in our homes, and insinuate themselves into our lives. The mere presence of a cat can make a home uncanny. An encounter with a dog on a deserted road at night can disconcert. The sight of a rat creeping down an alley carries all sorts of connotations as does a cluster of fat, black flies at the window of a deserted house. To date though, there is little written about animals and the Gothic, although they pervade our fictions, imaginations and sometimes our nightmares.

This collection is intended to look at all sorts of animals in relation to the Gothic: beasts, birds, sea-creatures, insects and domestic animals. We are not looking for transformative animals – no werewolves this time – rather we want essays on fictions about actual animals that explore their relation to the Gothic; their importance and prominence within the Gothic. We invite abstracts for essays that cover all animal/bird/insect/fish life forms, from all periods (from the early Modern to the present), and within different types of media – novels, poetry, short stories, films and games.

Topics may include (but are not bound by):

Rats (plague and death)
Dogs (black and otherwise)
Killer bunnies
Uncanny cats
Alien sea creatures
Horses
Bulls
Cows (perhaps with long teeth)
Killer frogs
Beetles, flies, ants, spiders
Worms
Birds
Snakes and toads
Whales/Dolphins
Animals as marginalised and oppressed
Animals in peril
Animal and human intimacies and the breaking of taboos
Exotic animals/animals in colonial regions (Africa, Australia, Canada, the Caribbean, India)
Demonic animals
Dangerous animals (rabid dogs, venomous snakes, wolves)
Invasive animals
Animals and disease
Domestic animals
Uncanny animals
Animals connected to supernatural beings (Satanic goats, vampire bats)
Witchcraft and familiar spirits/animal guides
Rural versus urban animals
Sixth sense and psychic energy

Please send 500 word abstracts and a short bio note by 1 November 2017 to: Dr Ruth Heholt (ruth.heholt@falmouth.ac.uk) and Dr Melissa Edmundson (me.makala@gmail.com).

The collection is intended for the Palgrave MacMillan ‘Studies in Animals and Literature’ series. Completed essays must be submitted by 1 July 2018.

The Department of American Literature and Culture at Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin, in cooperation with the Video Game Research Center, is organizing the second of the biannual ExRe(y) conferences. The two-day international conference titled “ExRe(y) 2018. Exhaustion and Regeneration in Post-Millennial North-American Literature and Visual Culture” will take place in Lublin, Poland, on 10-11 May, 2018.

To view the full CfP, please click exreycfp 2018.

Call for Applications: R.D. Mullen Fellowships

 

Named for the founder of our journal, Richard “Dale” Mullen (1915-1998), the Mullen fellowships are awarded by Science Fiction Studies to support archival research in science fiction.

 

We have four categories of awards:

  1. Postdoctoral Research Fellowship

Amount: Up to $2500

Number: 1 award is available each year

Qualifications: Candidates must have received their PhD degree 2 years or less from the date of applying. Also eligible are those who have essentially completed but not yet defended the dissertation. Applicants who hold (or are contracted to begin) a tenure-track position are not eligible. The relation between the new research and the topic of the dissertation should be clarified in the proposal. The Committee understands that the two are likely to be related, but the additional research needed for the post-doctoral project should be explained.

  1. PhD Research Fellowship

Amount: Up to $2000

Number: 3 awards are available each year

Qualifications: Research must be in support of a dissertation topic that requires archival research. The proposal should make it clear that applicants have familiarized themselves in some detail with the resources available at the library or archive they propose to use. Projects with an overall sf emphasis, other things being equal, will receive priority over projects with a more tangential relationship to the field.

  1. MA Thesis Research Fellowship

Amount: Up to $1000

Number: 2 awards are available each year

Qualifications: For students in an MA program in a humanities department that does not award the PhD, in support of MA thesis research. (Non-thesis-track MA students are not eligible.) The award is for travel in support of archival research on the MA thesis topic; the proposal should specify which materials are unique to the archive and/or essential to the project. This is not an award in support of conference travel. Among the two letters of recommendation, one must be from the MA thesis adviser, confirming that the thesis proposal has been accepted and the committee formed.

  1. Collaborative Undergraduate Research Award

Amount: Up to $500

Number: 1 award is available each year

Qualifications: For upper-division students (most likely senior majors in English or related humanities fields) to conduct archival research and write a term paper. This award can cover local travel to archives as well as funding for such expenses as copying. A faculty mentor (who will co-sign the proposal) will guide the student through the proposal process, the research process, and evaluate the subsequent paper. The work could be done as additional to regular upper-division class or in the context of a tutorial, Directed Independent Study, or BA thesis. The final report would be dual, chiefly written by the student but with a brief final statement by the faculty mentor describing the outcome.

 

Application Process

 

All projects must centrally investigate science fiction, of any nation, culture, medium or era.

 

Proposals should concisely but clearly

  1. Define the project,
  2. Include a statement describing the relationship of this project to science fiction as a genre and to sf criticism as a practice,
  3. Specify the relevant sf holdings of the archive(s) to be consulted, and
  4. Offer a research plan that is practical for the time-frame proposed.

Applications may propose research in—but need not limit themselves to—specialized sf archives such as the Eaton Collection at UC Riverside, the Maison d’Ailleurs in Switzerland, the Judith Merril Collection in Toronto, or the SF Foundation Collection in Liverpool. Proposals for work in general archives with relevant sf holdings—authors’ papers, for example—are also welcome.

 

For possible research locations, applicants may wish to consult the partial list of sf archives compiled in SFS 37.2 (July 2010): 161-90. This list is also available online at: <http://sfanthology.site.wesleyan.edu/files/2010/08/WASF-Teachers-Guide-2Archives.pdf>.

 

Applications should be written in English and should

  1. describe the proposed research and clarify the centrality of science fiction to the project’s overall design,
  2. show familiarity with the specific holdings and strengths of the archive in which the proposed research will be conducted to explain why archival research is essential to the project, and
  3. provide a work plan and budget.

Students who receive awards must acknowledge the support provided by SFS’s Mullen Fellowship program in any completed theses, dissertations or published work that makes use of research supported by this fellowship. After the research is conducted, each awardee shall provide SFS with a 500-word report on the results.

 

A complete application consists of

  • a cover letter clearly identifying which fellowship or award is sought that addresses the three main questions identified above,
  • a project description (approximately 500 words) with a specific plan of work,
  • an updated curriculum vitae,
  • an itemized budget, and
  • two letters of reference, including one from the faculty supervisor (a letter of collaborative support from a faculty member is required for the undergraduate awards).

Successful candidates will be reimbursed for expenses incurred conducting research, up to the amount of the award, once they complete the research and submit relevant receipts.

 

Applications should be submitted electronically to the chair of the evaluation committee, Sherryl Vint, at sherryl.vint@gmail.com.  Applications are due April 2, 2018 and awards will be announced in early May.

 

The selection committee for 2017-2018 consists of SFS Advisory Board members Barry Grant and Elizabeth Ginway and SFS editors Istvan Csicsery-Ronay and Sherryl Vint.

Link: http://www.trap.no/en/project/science-fiction-short-story-competition

Borders have always been a central political problem. Discussions of national and territorial boundaries, ethnic geo-rootedness, many kinds of -exits, mark our news feeds. Digital border crossings challenge and hack into political manipulations as well as offer new possibilities of techno-cosmopolitanism and even of new possibilities in egalitarian social identity. Geopolitical borders often overlap with other kinds of borders such as socioeconomic borders, racial borders, and borders framing sexual identity.

The theme is dedicated to thresholds and borders, as well as new frontiers and new beginnings. In his essay «The race for space» Duke Ellington states that a society using its power to suppress its minorities never will achieve greatness. Our future is at stake, and we must explore possibilities in alternative futures, where borders can be and are transgressed.

Our aim in this competition is to promote the movement of science fiction works that, as a concept and as an artefact of the social, offer new possibilities in border crossings.

We would especially welcome work from authors from regions which, while making a mark especially in recent years in literary avenues, continue to be numerically under-represented in the global science fiction space. Such regions would include for instance the Nordic region, the Arab world, Africa, South Asia, East and Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and Central and South America. The competition is however border free, and is open to all internationally.

Entries need to be previously unpublished and not under consideration elsewhere. Stories need to range from 3000-3500 words, and should preferably be in English. Stories in other languages are equally welcome but they must be accompanied by an English translation. Story and cover letter must be submitted electronically in doc or rtf format. Only one entry per person is allowed.

Up to seven stories will be selected and competition winners will be published in a special themed volume (ISBN registered) in Spring 2018 and will be given a one-time award of NOK6000/~US$700. The deadline for entries is 1st September 2017.

Entries can be sent to the editor, Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay at allbordersaretemporary@gmail.com

CfP: QUEER TOLKIEN STUDIES
Paper Session(s) and or Roundtable

Please note that this call is for individual proposals to be sent to the two area chairs who will organize them into complete sessions to be uploaded into the conference database.
Please do *not* submit individual proposals through the conference database if you wish to be considered for these themed sessions.

PCA/ACA 2018 NATIONAL CONFERENCE
J.W. MARRIOTT INDIANAPOLIS DOWNTOWN, INDIANAPOLIS, IN
MARCH 28-31, 2018
http://pcaaca.org/national-conference/
SUBMISSIONS: SEPTEMBER 28, 2017

These sessions will be co-sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Studies and the Tolkien Studies areas:

Bruce E. Drushel, Ph.D.
Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Studies
Department of Media, Journalism, & Film
Miami University
Oxford OH 45056
drushebe@miamioh.edu

Robin Anne Reid, Ph.D.
Tolkien Studies
Department of Literature and Languages
A&M University-Commerce
Commerce, TX 75429
Robin.Reid@tamuc.edu

We wish to organize at least one paper session and one roundtable session for the conference.

PCA allows presenters to participate in one paper session as well as in one roundtable.

Submit a title and 100-word abstract with a working bibliography, a mailing address, institutional affiliation, and e-mail address to both area chairs by September 28, 2017. Please indicate clearly whether your proposal is for the paper session, or for the roundtable. If you wish to participate in both, you must submit two different proposals.

Presentations may focus on any aspect of textual production, audience reception, or textual coding that challenge established categories of gender and sexuality including but not limited to:

• Gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans* or queer readings of Tolkien’s or Jackson’s texts:;
• Readings that focus on non-normative but not clearly marked expressions of gender and sexuality in Tolkien’s or Jackson’s texts;
• Transformative or derivative works that queer Tolkien’s or Jackson’s texts;
• Intersectional queer readings of Tolkien’s or Jackson’s texts;
• Queer Theories/Theorists and Tolkien studies (including historical and biographical aspects as well as fiction and scholarship).

Plans for a Queer Tolkien Studies anthology (co-edited by Robin Anne Reid, Christopher Vaccaro, and Stephen Yandell) will be discussed at the PCA sessions.

The Department of Language & Literature at Signum University is currently seeking preceptors to join the faculty team in our Imaginative Literature concentration.

Please visit the university’s website for more information: https://signumuniversity.org/news/wanted-fantasyscience-fictionpop-culture-preceptor/

Investigating Identities in Young Adult (YA) Narratives: Symposium on the 13/12/2017 at The University of Northampton UK

deadline for submissions:
October 8, 2017

full name / name of organization:
The University of Northampton UK

contact email:
anthony.stepniak2@northampton.ac.uk

Investigating Identities in Young Adult (YA) Narratives

Symposium on the 13/12/2017 at The University of Northampton UK

From JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series to Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, Young Adult (YA) narratives have grown exponentially over the past twenty years. Adopting a range of genres and platforms including the Bildungsroman and the coming of age teen drama, YA narratives represent a significant cultural means to explore the formation of identity in all its varied aspects. This one day symposium at the University of Northampton will investigate the representation of identity constructions in relation to narrative form in YA narratives both past and present.

Suggested topics may include, but are no means limited to:

– Representations of racial/ethnic identity in YA narratives

– Representations of gender and/or sexual identity in YA narratives

– The representation of identity in YA narratives in relation to the notion of class

– Interrogations of YA narrative’s treatment of LGBTQIA+ identities

– The effect of trauma on identity in YA narratives

– YA narratives and the notion of the outsider or other

– The relationship between genre and the notion of identity in YA narratives

– The representation of non-binary identities in YA narratives

– The transition from childhood to adulthood in classic (children’s) literature

– The representation of disability in relation to the notion of identity in YA narratives

– The use and function of supernatural identities in YA narratives

Being an interdisciplinary symposium focused on narrative, papers from across the subject areas of literature, screen studies, history, popular culture and education studies are invited. The symposium welcomes papers on both YA literature and screen adaptations, and from scholars working on earlier periods as well as contemporary culture.

The symposium invites papers from academics, early career researchers and postgraduate research students alike.

Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be sent to both sonya.andermahr@northampton.ac.uk and anthony.stepniak2@northampton.ac.uk by the 8th October 2017.