International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts

The New Urban Gothic Edited Collection Call for Chapters

deadline for submissions:
August 30, 2017

full name / name of organization:
Holly-Gale Millette, Southampton University, Ruth Heholt, Falmouth University

contact email:
h.millette@soton.ac.uk

Urban Gothic is a subgenre of Gothic fiction, Gothic crime fiction, and television whose narratives spring from discourse on industrial and post-industrial urban society. Often dystopic, it was pioneered in the mid-19th century in Britain and the United States and developed in serialisations such as R. L. Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886); into novels such as Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). Much has been written on 19th century Anglo-centred Urban Gothic fiction and vampiristic, monstrous Urban Gothic, but less has been written on the 21st century reimagining and re-serialisation of the Urban Gothic in mechanised, altered, disabled, and dystopic states of being. Nor has writing on the Urban Gothic departed from the canonical London location or considered the Urban Gothic as the prime progenitor of the genre of Crime Fiction. The intention, therefore, is for The New Urban Gothic to explore the resurgence in serialised and grotesque narratives of degeneration, ecological and economic ruin, dystopia, mechanised future inequality, and crime narrative as evidenced in literature and new forms of media in an international context. Submissions are welcomed that address the historic specificities of urban difference and Gothic traditions, as well as inter-disciplinary studies and contemporary texts that link urban crime fiction and the Gothic.

Please send a 300-500 word abstract including keywords, along with 50-100 words of biodata to the editors h.millette@soton.ac.uk and ruth.heholt@falmouth.ac.uk by 30 August, 2017.

Deadline for final chapters of no more than 7,500 words (including notes and references): 1 May 2018.

Topics may include (but are not bound by):

Industrialization, Mechanisation and future dystopia in the Urban Gothic

New serializations of the Urban Gothic (Dickens – Netflix, etc.)

Outsiders (Gender, Race, or the Orient) in the New Urban Gothic

Identity and Belonging in the New Urban Gothic

Dark Tourism and the New Urban Gothic

Political Aesthetics (Grotesque) of the New Urban Gothic

LGBTQi and the New Urban Gothic

Disability and Mental Health in the New Urban Gothic

Sci-Fi and the New Urban Gothic in Space.

Gaming and the New Urban Gothic (X-Box, PS 3, Wii, PC, etc.)

Graphic Novels and the New Urban Gothic (Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Frank Miller, etc.)

Regional New Urban Gothic (Sheffield, New Orleans, Ontario, etc.)

Dockside New Urban Gothic (Limehouse, Hong Kong, Gdansk, Liverpool, Vancouver, etc.)

Japanese New Urban Gothic (or Korean, Chinese, Indian, Canadian etc)

Folklore and Popular Culture

deadline for submissions:
October 1, 2017

full name / name of organization:
Popular Culture Association

contact email:
kathryn.edney@regiscollege.edu

POPULAR CULTURE ASSOCIATION & AMERICAN CULTURE ASSOCIATION 2018 JOINT NATIONAL CONFERENCE

Indianapolis, IN
March 28-March 31, 2018

For information on the PCA/ACA, please go to http://www.pcaaca.org
For conference information, please go to http://www.pcaaca.org/national-conference/

DEADLINE: OCTOBER 1, 2017

We are considering proposals for sessions organized around a theme, special panels, and/or individual papers concerning folklore and popular culture. Sessions are scheduled in 1½ hour slots, typically with four papers or speakers per standard session. Presentations should not exceed 15 minutes. As always, proposals addressing any topic concerning folklore studies are welcome; the list below is merely suggestive:

Folklore in Popular Culture/Folklore as Popular Culture

Influence of folklore on other forms of culture (literature, film, music, etc.)

Folklore and Religion

The difference between oral and literary sources of tradition

Women in Folklore

Folklore and children

Uses of folklore

Folklore and the Digital Age

Folklore and Epic

Illustrators/Illustration of folklore

Folklore and memory/memory studies

Symbolism in folklore

The relationship between folklore and literary history

Folklore and music

If there are any questions, please contact the Area Chair:

Dr. Kathryn Edney

Interim Dean, School of Arts and Sciences

Regis College

235 Wellesley Street, Weston MA 02493

kathryn.edney@regiscollege.edu

Please note that ALL submissions must be made through the conference submission site: http://ncp.pcaaca.org . For individual papers, please submit a title, 100-word abstract, and your contact information. For themed paper sessions, each presenter must enter her/his own presentation; the session chair should contact Dr. Edney to ensure the papers are curated as a panel.

Beyond Afrofuturism

Extrapolation guest editors Lisa Yaszek and Isiah Lavender III seek original essays by scholars and artists who are interested in the question of what might co-exist with—or lie beyond—Afrofuturism. Ever since Mark Dery introduced the term in 1993, “Afrofuturism” has been one of the primary ways artists, scholars, and fans alike have discussed contemporary speculative fiction by people of the African diaspora. But as students of genre history know well, every two to three decades there is a sea change as the science fiction community redefines the thematic and stylistic concerns of “good” science fiction, and, in doing so, paves the way for new modes of speculative storytelling. As the term “Afrofuturism” nears its quarter-century of use, it is natural to ask: is Afrofuturism a “colored wave” within science fiction history, much like the New Wave or cyberpunk, or might its multigenre status provide some kind of energy that transcends (and transforms) science fiction history as we know it? What is Afrofuturism today, and is it the only—or the best—way to describe black speculative cultural practices across the globe? What might co-exist with—or lie beyond—Afrofuturism? Topics to explore might include, but are not limited to:

Afro-pessimism vs. Afrofuturism
Whites and Afrofuturism
Afrofuturism 2.0 and beyond
Replacing Afrofuturism; or, the death of Afrofuturism
Afrodiasporic versus African speculative art
Black speculative cultural practices across the globe
Inner city future projections as alternate scientific and social spaces
The promises and perils of trans-identities and/or spaces (national, racial, historical, temporal, cultural, social, physical, sexual, and/or psychological)
Disability studies and racial futures
Black futures in aural media (jazz, electronica, hip hop, and opera)
Black futures in visual media (TV, film, comics, painting, photography, sculpture, and digital art)
Afrofuturism’s impact on other ethnic futurisms like Indigenous Futurism and LatinX Futurism etc.

The editors invite submissions that respond to the focus of the issue and also welcome general inquiries about a particular topic’s suitability. Please submit 250 word abstracts, a working bibliography, and a brief CV electronically as MS Word attachments to Isiah Lavender III at isiahl@lsu.edu and to Lisa Yaszek at lisa.yaszek@lmc.gatech.edu by January 31, 2018.

Accepted articles should be between 5000 and 8500 words in length, including “Works Cited,” and prepared in MLA style, and forwarded as MS Word attachments.

CFP: “When the Astronaut is a Woman: Beyond the Frontier in Film and Television” special issue of Science Fiction Film and Television
Guest Editors: Lorrie Palmer and Lisa Purse

https://gerrycanavan.wordpress.com/2017/07/13/sfftv-special-is…-for-submissions/

With the release of Hidden Figures (Melfi, 2016), public perception of the iconic era of the space race was reconfigured. The central image of the white male astronaut was replaced by one in which women of color dominated mathematics, science, and technology, thereby prompting a new cultural conversation. Indeed, this narrative of science fact signals another significant re-embodiment in our science fictions: the female astronaut.

Spaceflight and the astronauts who embark on mythic journeys of exploration have long been in the shadow of the macho military test pilots of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions. These men evoke nostalgia through their Right Stuff swagger, their personae as space race Cold Warriors, and as a collective Kennedy-esque metaphor for the American frontier. In the postwar decades of space travel, “the body of the astronaut [was] increasingly used as a projection screen for anxieties concerning the stability of gender categories” (Brandt 2006), so it is significant that recent iterations are moving beyond the traditional white male astronaut. We see this in the diversification of representations of space travelers in television and fiction film, particularly along the lines of gender, race and sexuality, as corporations race to Mars with crowd-sourced crews, and entertainment media revise cultural narratives about space exploration.

This special issue of Science Fiction Film and Television, therefore, seeks to integrate this contemporary moment of challenge to the hegemonic imagery of space travel by examining the genre’s aesthetic and representational characteristics and their relation to wider cultural discourses around gender, race, technology and ecology, and to theoretical debates about the body, technoscience and the post-human.

Along these lines, contributors may wish to re-evaluate depictions of female astronauts in films like Contact (1997), Solaris (2002), Event Horizon (1997), or Supernova (2000), or to map more contemporary representational trends in films such as Interstellar (2014), The Martian (2015), the Star Wars or Star Trek reboots, or Ripley’s legacy in the recent installments of the Aliens franchise. Television series like Dark Matter (2015-), Ascension (2014), The Expanse (2015-), or the new Star Trek: Discovery (2017-) would be of particular interest to this special issue. At the heart of these texts are female astronaut-protagonists who must negotiate their relationship to the legacy of existing depictions of space exploration, while also speaking to their contemporary context. Ultimately then, we ask how the reconfiguration of space race history—now made visible in Hidden Figures—broadens the frontier of science fiction scholarship.

Please send proposals by 30 September 2017 to Lorrie Palmer, lpalmer@towson.edu and to Lisa Purse, l.v.purse@reading.ac.uk with an author’s bio and a short (5-7 entries) bibliography.

—

Science Fiction Film and Television also has a year-round open reading period. Preferred length for articles is approximately 7000-9000 words; all topics related to science fiction film, television, and related media will be considered. Typical response time is within three months. Check the journal website at Liverpool University Press for full guidelines for contributors; please direct any individualized queries to the editors, Gerry Canavan (gerry.canavan@marquette.edu) and Dan Hassler-Forest (dhasslerforest@gmail.com).

CALL FOR PAPERS

The George Slusser Conference on Science Fiction and Fantasy,
to be held at the University of California, Irvine, on April 26–29, 2018

Coordinators: Jonathan Alexander (University of California, Irvine)
Gregory Benford (University of California, Irvine)
Howard V. Hendrix (California State University, Fresno)
Gary Westfahl (University of La Verne)

Although the late George Slusser (1939–2014) was best known for coordinating academic conferences on science fiction and editing volumes of essays on science fiction, he was also a prolific scholar in his own right, publishing several books about major science fiction writers and numerous articles in scholarly journals and anthologies. His vast body of work touched upon virtually all aspects of science fiction and fantasy. In articles like “The Origins of Science Fiction” (2005), he explored how the conditions necessary for the emergence of science fiction first materialized in France and later in England and elsewhere. Seeking early texts that influenced and illuminate science fiction, he focused not only on major writers like Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, and H. G. Wells but also on usually overlooked figures like E. T. A. Hoffmann, Benjamin Constant, Thomas De Quincey, Honoré de Balzac, Guy de Maupassant, J.-H. Rosny aîné, and J. D. Bernal. His examinations of twentieth-century science fiction regularly established connections between a wide range of international authors, as suggested by the title of his 1989 essay “Structures of Apprehension: Lem, Heinlein, and the Strugatskys,” and he fruitfully scrutinized both classic novels by writers like Arthur C. Clarke and Ursula K. Le Guin and the formulaic ephemera of the contemporary science fiction marketplace. A few specific topics repeatedly drew his interest, such as the mechanisms of time travel in science fiction and the “Frankenstein barrier” that writers encounter when they face the seemingly impossible task of describing beings that are more advanced than humanity. And he aroused controversies by criticizing other scholars in provocative essays like “Who’s Afraid of Science Fiction?” (1988) and “The Politically Correct Book of Science Fiction” (1994). No single paragraph can possibly summarize the full extent of his remarkably adventurous scholarship.

The George Slusser Conference on Science Fiction and Fantasy seeks to pay tribute to his remarkable career by inviting science fiction scholars, commentators, and writers to contribute papers that employ, and build upon, some of his many groundbreaking ideas; we also welcome suggestions for panels that would address Slusser and his legacy. To assist potential participants in locating and studying Slusser’s works, a conference website will include a comprehensive bibliography of his books, essays, reviews, and introductions. This selective conference will follow the format that Slusser preferred, a single track that allows all attendees to listen to every paper and participate in lively discussions about them. It is hoped that the best conference papers can be assembled in one volume and published as a formal or informal festschrift to George Slusser.

Potential contributors are asked to submit by email a 250-word paper abstract and a brief curriculum vitae to any of the four conference coordinators: Jon Alexander (jfalexan@uci.edu), Gregory Benford (xbenford@gmail.com ), Howard V. Hendrix (howardh@csufresno.edu), or Gary Westfahl (Gwwestfahl@yahoo.com ). The deadline for submissions is December 31, 2017, and decisions will be provided by mid-January, 2018. Further information about the conference schedule, fee, location, accommodations, and distinguished guests will be provided at the conference website.

Eaton Journal of Archival Research in Science Fiction

The Eaton Journal of Archival Research in Science Fiction is a peer-reviewed, open-access, online journal hosted by the University of California at Riverside, affiliated with the UCR Library’s Eaton Collection of Science Fiction & Fantasy. Graduate student editors run the Eaton Journal, with scholarly review provided by an interdisciplinary executive board made up of SF scholars, research librarians, and archivists.

The Eaton Journal creates a space for science fiction scholars to share their findings and their experiences within the several archives dedicated to science fiction found throughout the world. The Eaton Journal is also the only journal dedicated to providing a place for archival librarians to discuss the challenges of managing significant science fiction collections and to share their best practices for facilitating as well as conducting archival research in SF.

The Eaton Journal seeks articles that fall under one of three categories:

Scholarly Articles with a significant research component: These articles are not simply notes and speculations regarding materials in an archive but rather use archival materials to build critical arguments that go beyond the textual and theoretical claims of conventional literary research. While these articles must still be textually and theoretically sound, we provide a venue for research that makes archival evidence its primary focus.

Methods and Transformations Articles: This is a space for articles that seek to expand the bounds of the SF archive, exploring new mediums, materials, or discourses as sites for speculative fiction scholarship. These articles generally seek to retheorize, redefine, and/or reframe the SF archive. Such articles may look to understudied archives (music, fan work, internet sites, etc.), and underserved communities within science fiction (drawing on gender, race, and sexuality studies), or may focus on SF performances, practices, and participatory events that challenge traditional archival methods.

Articles spotlighting neglected authors, emerging archives, and other research opportunities: The third type of article featured in the journal is that which identifies newly discovered or undeveloped archival resources, or points to authors whose archival traces offer particularly rich opportunities for scholarship. Spotlights can include, but are not limited to, interviews, editorials, transcripts of roundtable discussions and multimedia and creative works.

For Submission Information and Formatting Guidelines, visit our website at http://eatonjournal.ucr.edu/guidelines.html

Articles submitted for publication in the Eaton Journal should be sent to the editors at: eatonjournal@gmail.com.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein at 200 (Science Fiction Studies, Special Issue)

deadline for submissions:
August 1, 2017

full name / name of organization:
Nicole Lobdell and Michael Griffin

contact email:
nicolelobdell@depauw.edu

Science Fiction Studies is currently soliciting proposals for a July 2018 special issue celebrating the bicentennial of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), a work that forever changed the genre of science fiction. In Frankenstein, Shelley experimented not only with subject matter, new scientific inventions and their many terrifying and horrific possibilities, but also narrative and form. Her use of multiple frame narratives, nested one within another, was a notable shift from the eighteenth-century novels she grew up reading, and her merging of popular culture’s fascination with science and the Gothic broadened the emerging genre of science fiction. Her refusal to provide a clear didactic lesson left readers to judge for themselves the actions of Victor Frankenstein, and the ending left the Creature’s fate unclear, the possibility of its survival forever impacting future readers and writers. Adaptations and appropriations of Shelley’s narrative and form have become staples of science fiction, and as such, Frankenstein holds a celebrated spot as a creative source that inspires subsequent science fiction.

Shelley’s novel did not always enjoy the critical acclaim and canonical status that it now holds. Nonetheless, Frankenstein continues to resonate and influence the definitions, forms, narratives, and media of contemporary science fiction and contemporary authorship. In what ways does Frankenstein’s influence transform how authors and readers understand the limits of science fiction? How do the genre-bending and metafictional components of Frankenstein influence definitions of science fiction? What does Frankenstein have to say about the current political climate and global issues such as citizenship, immigration, and war? These questions have inspired this call for papers, and the editors envision this special issue as a celebration of Mary Shelley, the legacy of Frankenstein, and the light it continues to cast on science fiction since its publication. Essays that explore the intersections of recent science fiction novels and critical approaches are particularly encouraged, as are essays that consider cross-media adaptations of Frankenstein or Frankenstein-inspired narratives. Other potential topics could include:

Adaptations (art, comics, theatre, videogames, etc.,)
Aesthetics
Animal Studies
Culture of 1818 & 2018 (citizenship, immigration, war)
Digital Humanities
Digital Media
Disability Studies
Feminisms
GeoHumanities
Globalization
Gothic
Immigration
Intertextuality
Medical Humanities
Neuroscience
Philosophy
Poetry
Popular Culture
Romanticism
Science and Technology (AI, robotics, etc.,)
Visual Culture

Please send proposals (300-500 words) by 1 Aug. 2017 to Michael Griffin (michael.griffin@lmc.gatech.edu) and Nicole Lobdell (nicolelobdell@depauw.edu). Completed papers (6000-8000 words) will be due by 1 Oct. 2017.

APOCALYPTIC TELEVISION

deadline for submissions:
August 1, 2017

full name / name of organization:
Michael G. Cornelius and Sherry Ginn

contact email:
DoctorGinn@gmail.com

CALL FOR PAPERS: APOCALYPTIC TELEVISION

Science fiction has always indicated that it is a matter of when—not if—some kind of Apocalypse will occur. When it does, what will happen to the organisms that inhabit Planet Earth? Will humans revert to some type of proto-human? Will they “rise” to the occasion and create something better? Will the strong survive, only to subjugate the weak? Will we come together as human beings to build new civilizations, or devolve as a species competing for scant resources in an environment inhospitable to our very existence? Science fiction has long explored the means and outcomes of apocalyptic cataclysms, and scholars have likewise expended considerable time and energy considering the artistic, cultural, and intellectual responses to the worst possible catastrophes the human mind can devise.

Michael G. Cornelius and Sherry Ginn are proposing a new collection of essays specifically to examine various televisual treatments of the Apocalypse. We are particularly interested in the serialization of the end of the world. The Apocalypse, after all, is an event, a singular happening with a cause, an outcome, and a response. Yet the nature of television prolongs some or all of these aspects of the end. Television allows for an extended examination of this singular (and singularly defining) event. What has this extended observation indicated about humanity? How does the nature of the Apocalypse alter when we revisit it week after week? What does it mean when the end of the world might never actually end?

Below you can find a suggested listing of series that we would like to see discussed. This list is by no means exhaustive, and we welcome essays on any series that meets the post-Apocalyptic theme in some capacity or another. We are hoping for works that reflect the storied variety of series that have depicted some version of the Apocalypse on television, not simply those that are currently on the air. The editors plan on accepting only one essay per series (though we will also look at essays that tackle the subject matter more broadly as well). Please send a 500-word abstract and CV by the deadline indicated below.

The deadline for formal proposals is 1 August 2017, with notification of acceptance by 10 September. A first draft is expected by 1 January 2018 with final drafts due 1 June 2018. The collection is to be published by Lexington Books (a subsidiary of Rowman & Littlefield).

Please email DoctorGinn@gmail.com with your proposals and any questions you may have concerning the project.

Sherry Ginn, PhD

Rowan Cabarrus Community College

1531 Trinity Church Rd

Concord, NC 28027

USA

Casshan (1973-1974)

Planet of the Apes (1974, TV series)

The Changes (1975)

Survivors (1975-1977)

Ark II (1976)

Battlestar Galatica (1978-1979)

Thundarr the Barbarian (1980-1981)

The Tripods (1984-1985)

V (1984-1985)

War of the Worlds (1988-1990, TV series)

Not with a Bang (1990)

Woops! (1992)

Cadillacs and Dinosaurs (1993-1994)

Earth 2 (1994-1995)

Dragon Flyz (1996-1997)

Deepwater Black / Mission Genesis (1997)

Crusade (Babylon 5 spinoff, 1999)

The Last Train (1999)

Blue Gender (1999-2000)

Thunderstone (1999-2000)

The Tribe (1999-2003)

Chris Colorado (2000)

Cleopatra 2525 (2000-2001)

Dark Angel (2000-2002)

2030 CE (2002-2003)

Jeremiah (2002-2004)

Desert Punk (2004-2005)

Battlestar Galatica (2004-2009)

Jericho (2006-2008)

Grand Star (2007-2008)

Casshern Sins (2008-2009)

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008-2009)

Survivors (2008-2010)

Power Rangers R.P.M. (2009)

Life After People (2009-2011)

V (2009-2011)

The Walking Dead (2010-)

Terra Nova (2011)

El Barco (2011-2013)

Falling Skies (2011-2015)

Day Zero (2011-)

Revolution (2012-2014)

Under the Dome (2013-2015)

Attack on Titan (2013-)

Dominion (2014-2015)

Guardians Evolution (2014-2015)

Knights of Sidonia (2014-2015)

The 100 (2014-)

The Last Ship (2014-)

The Leftovers (2014-)

The Strain (2014-)

Z Nation (2014-)

The Refugees (2015)

You, Me and the Apocalypse (2015-2016)

12 Monkeys (TV series, 2015-)

Between (2015-)

Fear The Walking Dead (2015-)

Into the Badlands (2015-)

The Last Man on Earth (2015-)

Zoo (2015-)

Aftermath (2016)

Containment (2016)

3% (2016-)

Colony (2016-)

Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress (2016-)

Travelers (2016-)

Van Helsing (2016-)

Extinct (2017-)

THE AMERICAN WEIRD:
ECOLOGIES & GEOGRAPHIES
(Call for Papers)

“The one test of the really weird is simply this—whether or not there be excited in the reader a profound sense of dread, and of contact with unknown spheres and powers.”
—H.P. Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature” (1927)

“This whole world’s wild at heart and weird on top.”
—David Lynch, Wild at Heart (1990)

For H.P. Lovecraft, the weird conveys “a subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes and entities on the known universe’s utmost rim.” Taking its cue from Lovecraft’s enduringly influential conceptualization, this conference examines and broadens the notion of weirdness towards an ecology and geography of the weird as a new field of theoretical and practical resonances. What we call THE AMERICAN WEIRD comprises not only an aesthetics evoked by literary practices or films from the genres of the gothic or horror, but also by other forms of cultural expression, such as music, sculpture, photography, and performance art. The conference theme also aims to address new theoretical perspectives on humanity’s relation to the world, perspectives that have recently been proposed by what might be called the “new demonologists” (e.g. Graham Harman, Eugene Thacker, and others).

Against the backdrop of new ontologies and epistemologies of the weird, the following questions will form the conceptual backbone of THE AMERICAN WEIRD: What are the ecologies and geographies of the weird today, and how are they conceived, perceived, and reworked? Which strands of contemporary critical theory and philosophy have engaged in a dialogue with the discourses of and on the weird, and what is specifically “American” in THE AMERICAN WEIRD? If weirdness is more than a mere index of parody and/or subversion, how might one conceive of a politics or an ethics of the weird?

These and related questions on THE AMERICAN WEIRD will be explored in a three-day conference at the University of Göttingen. Possible topics, which can come from different genres, historical periods, and/or media include, but are not restricted to:

– American literature from Charles Brockden Brown and Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories to the authors of “the new weird,” like Jeff VanderMeer, China Miéville, and Thomas Ligotti. What are the aspects and intricacies of the literary evolution of the weird in America? What is specifically American about this evolution? What has changed in weird literature since the publication of Lovecraft’s essay on “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” on both a poetic and political level?
– the sculptural work of artists such as Lydia Benglis, Louise Bourgeois, Charles Ray, and others. How does this type of artistic practice negotiate normativities and weirdness? How do the materials, size, and content matter of their art contribute to the way they subvert viewing habits and expectations?
– the music of THE AMERICAN WEIRD, from the musical instruments of Harry Partch, via artists like Tom Waits or Mike Patton, all the way to the tunes of Joanna Newsom and the “New Weird America” or “Freak Folk” movement, and the protagonists of so-called “outsider music” such as Daniel Johnston or Wesley Willis. What exactly is necessary to make music weird or “outsider”? Is it the actual music, the self-presentation of the artists, their perception (or lack thereof), their non-affiliation with the industry?
– the photography of Diane Arbus, Cindy Sherman, and others. What are the liminal spaces that open up between the camera’s alleged “reality effect” and evocations of weird America and its “freaks”? How does Sherman challenge notions like subjectivity and objectivity and what effects and affects are contained in her “vomit pictures”?
– the eco art, land art, or bio art of Robert Smithson, Joe Davis, and others. How do these practices expand the notion of what counts as art, where it begins and ends? What and where are the locales in which it takes place, grows, and decays? Does the participation of plants or bacteria in a dynamic artwork redistribute agencies in the process of creating art and constitute a truly hybrid mode of being beyond the nature-culture divide?
– the filmic visions of Tod Browning, David Lynch, David Cronenberg, and others, as well as recent TV-series that resonate with the aesthetics of the weird, such as True Detective, The Walking Dead, and Stranger Things. How to film the weird? Is there a moving image of American weirdness?
– the comics and graphic novels of Robert Crumb, Charles Burns, Daniel Clowes, and others. How to picture THE AMERICAN WEIRD in separate panels and what is specific about this kind of narrating weirdness?
– the different theoretical approaches which assess the cultural productions of THE AMERICAN WEIRD, from subcultural discourses to contemporary materialism, ecocriticism, and realism. What is the function of the weird as a concept vis-à-vis notions of the uncanny, the grotesque, the abject, and the carnivalesque? What are the milieus, theories, histories, and practices of THE AMERICAN WEIRD?

We invite scholars of American studies and related fields such as cultural studies, film and media studies, comparative literature, art history, and philosophy to submit a short abstract (approx. 300 words) and a short bio-statement by August 15, 2017 to the conference organizers Julius Greve (julius.greve@uni-oldenburg.de) and Florian Zappe (florian.zappe@phil.uni-goettingen.de). The conference will take place from April 12-14, 2018 at the University of Göttingen and is organized by the North American Section of the English Department in cooperation with the Institute for English and American Studies of the University of Oldenburg.