International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts

CFP: Fourth Wave Feminism in Science Fiction & Fantasy

deadline for submissions:
June 30, 2018

full name / name of organization:
Valerie Estelle Frankel, editor

contact email:
valerie@calithwain.com

This anthology is seeking to define the new kinds of heroines that science fiction/fantasy films and television are producing right now (it may be split into two collections between these types). Multiple proposals are fine (certainly, non-genre programs are doing the same, but for the time being the scope will be limited to scifi and fantasy films). Hunger Games has been chosen as the cutting-off point – films and television should be later than 2012 and have significant heroines. Though the term is imperfect, these heroines will be described as fourth wave feminist – the authors in the collection can be the trendsetters who help define the term.

Authors are free to give it their own spin without perfect agreement, but fourth wave is being defined as more powerful and diverse heroines who needn’t be softened or sexualized or reduced to sidekicks like those of previous eras. There’s more acknowledgement of a world beyond the US, but the biggest issue setting the fourth wave apart is internet culture: on feminist blogs and online journals, everyone learns the terminology to the point where filmmakers as well as critics apply the Bechdel test and similar lenses. There are flame wars and trends like Gamergate but also diversity campaigns which the producers acknowledge. Filmmakers are discovering that diversity sells and they’re finally producing more of it, though not always perfectly. Basically, Wonder Woman, Black Panther, Frozen, Hunger Games, Force Awakens, and a few other blockbusters are breaking out a new kind of storytelling we’re documenting.

Your essay may analyze a single film on these issues or address a trend in one or more films – that are doing new feminism right or wrong in your opinion. Other media types like gaming or nongenre might be briefly touched on for comparison. You might also address a big issue like the Bechdel Test or whitewashing. Certainly, you’re welcome to use films and shows not mentioned here.

Deadline for proposals June 30 (roughly 300 words, optional bio or CV) to valerie at calithwain.com subject: FOURTH WAVE SUBMISSION

This is planned as a McFarland collection.

Possible topics and trends listed on https://www.academia.edu/36299656/CFP_Fourth_Wave_Feminism_in_Science_Fiction_and_Fantasy.

Call for papers: Sexual Violence, Social Movements, and Social Media

Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology

Issue 13B

Editors: Pallavi Guha, Radhika Gajjala, and Carol Stabile

Over the past decade, social media have both facilitated practices of racialized sexual violence (stalking, doxxing, harassment, bullying, revenge porn, genocide, etc.), while at the same time allowing survivors to report and draw attention to sexual violence, establishing patterns and sharing testimony about the crimes committed against them. Feminist activists throughout the world have been using social media to draw attention to and fight against racialized sexual violence. Using hashtags on Twitter and Instagram, posting images on Tumblr, blogging, and otherwise circumventing traditional structures of power that are protected by media gatekeepers, feminists have enhanced awareness and advocated for change.

This issue invites research and scholarship on a range of topics that examine racialized sexual violence and social media. We are particularly interested in work that contributes to theorizing and working toward social change.

Contributions in formats other than the traditional essay are encouraged; please contact the editors to discuss specifications and/or multimodal contributions. Drawings, sounds, and/or videos that come along with written explanations of their narratives are also welcome.

You can send your proposal as a .odt or .doc document before the June 20, 2018 deadline. Please use “Ada Issue 13B Contribution” for your subject line and include the following in the body of your message:

Your name and a short biography
A 150 word maximum abstract
A list of five keywords/tags
Preferred email address
Citation style used (if applicable)
Complete submissions should be sent by June 20, 2018 to editor@adanewmedia.org. Contributions should be no more than 2,500 words.

About Ada:

Ada is an online, open access, open source, peer-reviewed journal run by feminist media scholars. The journal’s first issue was published online in November 2012. Since that launch, Ada articles have received more than 500,000 page views. Ada operates a review process that combines feminist mentoring with the rigor of peer review. The peer review process is also open and transparent. We have detailed guidelines concerning the review process at the following link http://adanewmedia.org/beta-reader-and-review-policy/ and we encourage submitters to take a look before submitting to make sure that they are comfortable with such a process with public dimensions. For this issue, we will be experimenting with Google docs for our open peer review process.

We do not — and will never — charge fees for publishing your materials. Unlike for-profit journals, you own the copyright for your article. We share your scholarship using the Creative Commons License with which you are most comfortable.

Fantastic Beasts, Monstrous Cyborgs, Aliens and Other Spectres: Exploring Alterity in Fantasy and Science Fiction

Student Conference, English Department, University of Freiburg, 19-20 October 2018

Identity formation operates through processes of exclusion by defining the self against an other. As Sencindiver et al argue: “[O]therness has been inseparable from human identity and affairs from time immemorial – the birth of subjectivity ineluctably implicates the birth of its concomitant and allegedly dark twin”. Alterity is a concept of ongoing relevance and describes “the quality of strangeness inherent in the other”. The relationship between self and other is based on hierarchical power structures that stem from an essentialist mind-set and serve as justifications of exclusionary practices such as imperialism, sexism and anthropocentrism. With the emergence of postmodern theory in the 1960s, the validity of these hierarchies has been continually called into question. Especially the deconstruction of the divide between high and popular culture led to a pluralisation of perspectives, giving a voice to those who had formerly been excluded and silenced.

Critical theorists such as John Storey have described popular culture itself as an other that is always defined against any other definitions of “culture” and “popular”. It follows that popular culture constitutes a hegemonic site of struggle and thus provides productive ground on which to contrast different discourses surrounding alterity, which can in turn confirm or subvert them. Popular culture is not a mere reflection of current cultural discourses but takes an active role, influencing the various ways in which we perceive and respond to otherness.

We are currently witnessing a proliferation of the genres of science fiction and fantasy, particularly in media such as film or television (consider for example the popularity of films and series such as Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Game of Thrones, the Star Wars sequels, recent Star Trek reboots & prequels and many more). The study of fantasy and science fiction is especially rewarding in the context of analysing representations of alterity. Both genres construct elaborate alternative worlds in which encounters between human characters and sentient nonhuman others call into question the nature of the human and, with it, the boundaries between self and other. The thought experiments that characterise fantasy and science fiction estrange our known reality which promotes an active examination of our world. They throw into relief what we consider as other and provide new models to encounter alterity outside of fiction in the ‘real’ world.

This conference aims to address the representation of alterity in fantasy and science fiction, its impact on cultural practices and its subversive potential. We are interested in the role of form, medium and (sub)genre in negotiations of alterity. We welcome papers analysing popular cultural texts from diverse cultural contexts. Please note that the language of the conference is English.

Potential discussion topics may include, but are not limited to:

different (re)configurations of the Other (racialised and gendered others, cyborgs, fantastic creatures, animal others, etc.)
socio-historical perspectives on alterity (reconfigurations of the notion of the subaltern, the uncanny, etc.)
fictional representations of liminal or hybrid identities
the influence of philosophy, ethics, science or anthropology (amongst others) on science fiction and fantasy
negotiations of otherness in different media (i.e. TV, film, podcasts, computer games, web-series, music, transformative works, art, literature, etc.)
the political impact of ethical representations of alterity
This student conference is organised by two Masters students of British and North American Cultural Studies at the University of Freiburg, Germany, Julia Ditter and Anne Korfmacher. If you are a student (B.A., M.A. or PhD level) and interested in presenting a 20-minute paper at our conference, please submit a short proposal (around 200-250 words) and a short biography (including your current study program) to exploringalterity@anglistik.uni-freiburg.de by 15 July 2018. There is no conference fee to be paid and technical equipment for the presentation will be provided. Conference participants will be responsible for organising and paying for their own accommodation and food.

Please see https://exploringalterity.wordpress.com/cfp/ for more information.

References:

Sencindiver, Susan Yi, Marie Lauritzen and Maria Beville. “Introduction.” Otherness: A Multilateral Perspective, Peter Lang, 2011, p. 17 (pp. 17-42).
Buchanan, Ian. “Alterity.” A Dictionary of Critical Theory, Oxford UP, 2010. Online.
cf. Storey, John. Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. Routledge, 2015. 7th Edition, pp. 13ff.

Special Issue of Horror Studies on Hispanic Horror

Call for papers

Papers are sought for a special issue of Horror Studies devoted to Hispanic horror. The notion of Hispanic used here is generally a broad one that focuses in the first instance on horror texts and production in the Spanish language and emanating from Spain, Latin America or other Spanish-speaking communities. However, the penetration into other cultures of texts, materials, ideas and personnel from Spanish-speaking cultures and communities means that even such a broad definition as this can be seen as too limiting. Papers are therefore also welcome that consider texts and production internationally and transnationally (including primary texts that are in some other language than Spanish), with the caveat that such papers should demonstrate the nexus with Spanish-language culture in terms of ideas, influences, texts and/or people.

Papers of 7-9000 words (including references, notes and abstract) should be submitted to the editor at ann.davies@stir.ac.uk by 30 April 2018. Publication of successful submissions is planned for 2019. As Horror Studies is an English-language journal, all submissions should be in English. Translation of papers from other languages is the responsibility of the author(s). All submissions should follow the publisher’s style guide: http://horrorstudiesjournal.com/…/Intellect-Journals-style-….

Please direct any queries to ann.davies@stir.ac.uk.

The editor. Prof Ann Davies is Chair of Spanish and Latin American Studies at the University of Stirling, Scotland. Her research encompasses the study of Spanish-language horror, Gothic and fantasy. Her most recent publication was Contemporary Spanish Gothic (Edinburgh University Press, 2017), and she is currently working on a monograph devoted to landscape, space and place in Spanish horror.

CfP (yearbook): Musik in der Science-Fiction / Music in Science Fiction

Deadline: April 30, 2018 (abstracts); October 15, 2018 (full articles)

We invite you to submit articles for the volume 64 (2019) “Musik in der Science-Fiction / Music in Science fiction” of the yearbook “Lied und Populaere Kultur / Song and Popular Culture”. The yearbook is published by the Zentrum fuer Populaere Kultur und Musik (Freiburg University).

For detailed information see: https://www.zpkm.uni-freiburg.de/publikation/jahrbuch/cfp-yearbook-64-music-in-sf (German and English).

Potential contributors are asked to submit abstracts of not more than 2,000 characters including spaces and a brief academic CV by 30 April 2018. By the end of May, you will receive feedback on the acceptance of your contribution. The contributions should cover 35,000 to 50,000 characters including spaces and should be submitted by 15 October 2018. Please send any inquiries or abstracts to Knut Holtstraeter (jahrbuch -at- zpkm.uni-freiburg.de). We accept contributions in German or English (AE or BE).

Sustainable Societies Project: Writing a Better Future
Write a short story set within a Utopia Writing competition: Sustainable Society. Free to enter, prizes and publication opportunities. Deadline 19th April 2018

Details on www.greenstories.org.uk

www.facebook.com/greenstoriessoton

@GreenstoriesUk greenstoriessoton

Email: greenstories@soton.ac.uk

Your stories do not have to be about climate change or sustainability directly. It can be any kind of story as long as it showcases potential sustainable solutions as suggested on our website. A rom-com, for example, could be set in a society that replaces ownership with borrowing and the heroine goes to a clothes library to pick up a dress and borrow jewellery for her big date; or the hero in a crime drama could use a carbon credit card and hear the news in the background reporting on the wellbeing index instead of GDP; or the characters in a legal drama could live in a city where everyone has gardens on their roofs, uses the latest green technologies, eats insect burgers and generates energy from their own waste, and so on. We are eager to read what your imaginations can come with!

Call for Contributions

Utopianism, Feminism, Environmentalism and Political Thought [Working Title]: Essays in Honor of Lucy Sargisson on the Occasion of Her Retirement

Edited by Raffaella Baccolini and Lyman Tower Sargent

Proposals/Abstracts Welcome

Due June 15, 2018

Submission Deadline

January 15, 2019

Lucy Sargisson recently retired as Professor of Utopian Studies at the University of Nottingham, and we invite submissions in any of the areas in which she worked, particularly,

Contemporary Feminist Utopianism
Intentional communities, particularly cohousing, ecovillages, and New Zealand communities
Environmentalism and Utopianism
Political Thought and Utopianism
Twenty-first Century Utopianism

We invite essays on all aspects of the utopian tradition that either respond to her work or take new directions related to her work.

A list of her publications is available on request from lyman.sargent@umsl.edu

Please send a 100-250-word abstract by May 15, 2018 to:

raffaella.baccolini@unibo.it and lyman.sargent@umsl.edu

Once acceptance letters are sent, full essays (approximately 6000 words) will be due by December 15, 2018.

CfP: Monumenta Mythica. A Journal of Modern Myths, Legends, & Folklore
(Einreichung bis 15.04.2018)

The myths, legends, and folklore of the world are both timeless and timely, giving context to the courses of nations and meaning to personal moments. They are reenacted in formal tableaux and reified in cosplay. They inform our religions and our television. They are us.

Monumenta Mythica, a new, online, peer-reviewed, open access journal from the Fandom and Neomedia Studies
(FANS) Association, is pleased to publish this Call for Papers (see below for German and Spanish). We also accept
reviews of works relevant to the fields of Monumenta Mythica as well as short documentary films.

The field is broadly construed and may include, but is not limited to:

• Popular religion
• Heroic cosplay
• Retellings and reinterpretations
• Twice-told tales
• New myths and legends
• Cultural syncretism
• Video game gods
• Modern medievalisms
• Reenactments and reenactors
• Folklore in film
• Infamous hoaxes
• Urban legends

We also accept reviews of media (books, graphic novels, films, video games, etc.) dated no more than three years
before the review submission. Documentaries submissions will be considered on a case by case basis and must
have English subtitles if primarily in another language. Documentaries may be no more than 15 minutes in total
duration.

All submissions must include an English abstract of no more than 250 words provided by the author. Article, review,
and other submissions may be made in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, or Japanese.
Successful submissions may be published in English, the original language, or both, at the discretion of the author.

All translations are the responsibility of the author. We are working on expanding the list of languages eligible for inclusion and welcome assistance in this matter, with special invitation to those fluent in Arabic, Chinese, and Hindi to join us as reviewers.

Please submit abstracts, papers, and reviews (with translation if relevant) with current CV to us for consideration.

The submission deadline is 15 April 2018. Authors of successful submissions will be notified by 1 May 2018. In
addition to publication in Monumenta Mythica, authors of accepted papers will be invited to present their work at the annual FANS Conference. All conference presentations will be in English. Successful documentary submissions will also be screened at the conference.

Authors may submit multiple items for simultaneous consideration.

URL: http://fansconf.a-kon.com/dRuZ33A/?p=900