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Author Archives: Skye Cervone

Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) will admit game writers as of August 1, 2016. “Games in any medium may be used for qualification so long as the game has a narrative element, is in English, and in the science fiction, fantasy, horror or related genres.” Read the full announcement, including income qualifications, here.

CfP: International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts 38, “Fantastic Epics”

Please join us for ICFA 38, March 22-26, 2017, when our theme will be “Fantastic Epics.” We welcome papers on the work of: Guest of Honor Steven Erikson (World Fantasy and Locus Award nominee), Guest of Honor N.K. Jemisin (Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award nominee, Locus Award winner), and Guest Scholar Edward James (Pilgrim, Hugo, British Science Fiction Association, and Eaton Award winner). The hero(ine)’s tale is as old as storytelling itself. We trace our way from Gilgamesh to current practitioners of the art through routes that lead to – and beyond – other kingdoms, including those of Malazan and the cities of Gujaareh, Sky, and Shadow. Papers may tread the paths of Thomas the Unbeliever, Bren Cameron, Sundiata Keita, and Boudica, or follow a dark road through Gondor, Camelot, or any valley of shadow. We can find the Epic in the hall of Heorot and in the rooms of Schaherazade. Examinations of modern epics might include the American west, the Marvel Universe, or the world of Miyazaki. A journey, a quest, an awakening – all these and more are part of Fantastic Epics. We also welcome proposals for individual papers and for academic sessions and panels on any aspect of the fantastic in any media. The deadline for proposals is October 31, 2016. We encourage work from institutionally affiliated scholars, independent scholars, international scholars who work in languages other than English, and graduate students.

For more information on the IAFA and its conference, the ICFA, or to download a PDF version of this CfP, see http://www.fantastic-arts.org/. To submit a proposal, go to http://www.fantastic-arts.org/icfa-submissions/.

The submission portal opens on September 1st and closes on October 31st.

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

Gothic Traditions and Departures

Universidad de las Américas Puebla (UDLAP), Cholula, Mexico

18 – 21 July 2017

 

Where does Gothic begin and where does it end? Can we recognise a Gothic tradition or has Gothic always stood at the margins of the critical tradition? Over the past decades, we have witnessed a rekindled awareness of the popularity of Gothic in literature, media, and culture. Gothic has also become widely acknowledged around the world, and there are currently many studies dedicated to understand what it means in other regions, traditions, and cultures. On the other hand, the critical tradition has condemned Gothic for its excessive, formulaic, and immature plots and motifs, thus leaving it at the margins of more well-regarded works. The reconsidered significance of Gothic today prompts to think of it as an established tradition, but does it still offer points of departure through what Fred Botting refers to as its ‘negative aesthetics’ (2014)? More importantly, as we look again at the popularity of Gothic to address and understand both global and regional supernatural narratives, events, and experiences, it is also relevant to inquire about the influence of local traditional folklore and legends in the development and current understanding of Gothic. At the same time, this provides us with an opportunity to consider the relevance and presence of Gothic in contemporary debates on literature, art, and popular culture.

 

We seek to explore how Gothic today may be considered a tradition or a departure from tradition, as well as how it has been inspired by local traditions, legends, or true stories. We seek to address how we look at past Gothic in comparison with contemporary Gothic, that is, where Gothic is now and what Gothic is for today. This exploration is not limited to the literary Gothic, but also seeks to keep on addressing Gothic manifestations across arts, media, and popular culture.

 

Thus, we seek to make the following inquiries: Do we understand Gothic as a tradition or as a departure from tradition? What is the relationship between Gothic, folklore, and traditional myths and legends? What is the current state of Gothic? What is happening with Gothic now? Why is Gothic still relevant today? How do we understand local and regional Gothic manifestations when we compare them with global Gothic? Is Goth culture a tradition too? Does Gothic in media, other arts, and popular culture depart from its literary tradition?

 

Topics could include, but are not limited to, the following:

 

-Gothic origins

-The Gothic as tradition

-The Gothic as a departure from tradition

-Gothic crossovers

-Gothic departures and journeys

-Gothic divergences

-Gothic digressions and deviations

-Gothic in popular culture

-Gothic and folklore

-Gothic and traditional legends

-Gothic and urban legends

-True histories of the Gothic

-Goth culture and traditions

-Goth culture as tradition

-Global Gothic vs local Gothic

-Gothic now vs Gothic then

-Post-Millennial Gothic

-20th Century Gothic

-Victorian Gothic

-Romanticism and the Gothic

-Pre-Gothic traditions

-Gothic and the media (old and new)

-Digital Gothic

-Gothic and the arts

-Performance Gothic

-Gothic Studies: past, present, and future

 

We welcome abstract proposals of no more than 300 words, along with a 50 word bio-note, for 20 minute papers. Please include your contact e-mail and affiliation. Abstracts may be submitted to igamexico2017@gmail.com. The submission deadline is December 16, 2016. We also welcome submissions for panels (consisting of three papers) that address specific topics.

 

Accepted proposals will be notified in early January 2017.

https://igamexico2017.wordpress.com/acerca-de/

MONSTROUS ENCOUNTERS – NORDIC PERSPECTIVES ON MONSTERS AND THE MONSTROUS

The Monster Network has a hand and a claw in this upcoming special issue of Women, Gender and Research that sets out to explore Nordic Monster Studies and the concept of the Nordic within international Monster Studies. The issue welcomes articles as well as artistic contributions.

Deadline for abstracts is 1st of September 2016.

Download PDF here.


Call for articles

Special issue of Women, Gender & Research:

Monstrous Encounters:

Nordic Perspectives on Monsters and the Monstrous

“Monsters do a great deal of cultural work, but they do not do it nicely. They not only challenge and question; they trouble, they worry, they haunt. They break and tear and rend cultures, all the while constructing them and propping them up. They swallow up our cultural more and expectations, and then, becoming what they eat, they reflect back to us our own faces …” (2013: 1). These are the first words of art historian Asa Mittman’s introduction to The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous. The introduction presents the field of ‘Monster Studies’, which has been developing across academic disciplines since the 1990s, illustrating the productive force of monsters and the monstrous as analytical tools, norm critical notions, and destructive/creative practices. Fittingly, then, not all monster studies come from Monster Studies, and monsters can be encountered in a wide variety of contexts and a multitude of topics.

With the special issue ‘Monstrous Encounters: Nordic Perspectives on Monsters and the Monstrous’, we wish to put a focus on and explore both research and artistic practices related to the subject of monsters and the monstrous within a Nordic context. This means that we welcome both monster studies work from within the Nordic countries, and work that explores the monstrous in a Nordic context. With the recent establishment of a Nordic based Monster Network and an increased attention to the critical and creative potential of monsters and the monstrous within academic and artistic settings (whether based in Nordic countries or related to Nordic issues), the time seems right to invite to a special issue that engages with this Nordic development.

At the same time, we also invite our contributors to question what ‘Nordic’ may mean. Indeed, this issue does not operate with a set understanding of ‘Nordic culture’, ‘Nordic identity’ or similar, but asks contributors to challenge and question, trouble and worry, break and tear at the imaginaries of such constructs. In other words, and regardless of the subject of your contribution, we invite you to do monstrous work that is not nice, but critical and challenging in its exploration of what kind of cultural work the figure of the monster can do. As such, we invite contributions that explore new ways of imagining the world and its inhabitants in a time where there seem to be a need for such reconfigurations. What does the monster reflect back to us in times like these, where borders are closing; xenophobia and racism abound in the wake of the so-called refugee crisis; capitalism stands practically unchallenged, even after the financial crisis; public sectors are experiencing severe cuts; climate change causes natural disasters; individuals and nation states worry about ageing populations, etc. Further still: Who are ‘we’ to begin with? And who, then, are ‘they’?

All monsters are boundary-pushing hybrids and ‘Monstrous Encounters: Nordic Perspectives on Monsters and the Monstrous’ is no exception. We therefore invite both non-traditional (such as essays and creative writing) and traditional scholarly work, as well as artistic contributions such as fiction, poetry and art.

Possible themes for contributions (these are only suggestions):

  • The monstrous and gender studies/feminist theory
  • Ethics of monsters
  • Queer monsters
  • Monstrous sexualities
  • The monstrous and postcolonial studies/critical race theory
  • Disability and the monster/monstrous
  • Ageing and the monstrous
  • The monster in art and popular culture
  • Monstrous technologies (digital technologies, biotechnology, etc.)
  • Medical monsters
  • Monstrous embodiment
  • Hauntology and spectrality
  • The monster and the environment/climate change/eco-theory
  • Animals and the monstrous
  • Posthumanist theory
  • Monsters of science fiction, horror, fantasy and speculative fiction

Editors of the special issue:

Morten Hillgaard Bülow, Ph.D, Co-ordination for Gender Research/Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Erika Johanna Kvistad, Ph.D, senior lecturer, University of Oslo, Norway.

Line Henriksen, Ph.D, founding member of the Monster Network.

Deadline for abstracts (max 200 words + 50 word bio): 1st of September 2016

Deadline for article/other contributions: 15th of March 2017

All contributions must be in English and should be submitted to: redsek [at] soc [dot] ku [dot] dk

Guidelines for submissions.

The call for papers for articles for the sections “Monograph” and “Miscellaneous” for the Vol. IV n.º2 issue of Brumal. Revista de Investigación sobre lo Fantástico /Brumal. Research Journal on the Fantastic is now open.

Scholars who wish to contribute to either of these two sections should send us their articles by december 15, 2016, registering as authors on our web page. The Guidelines for Submissions may be found on the Submissions section of the web page.

 

Monographic issue “The Fantastic in Comics” (José Manuel Trabado, Coord.)

The aim of this monographic issue is to offer an overview the possibilities of fantastic comics both on a narrative level and as regards graphic formulation. We also try to look into the relationship between different formats (comic strip, Sunday page, album, sketchbook, comic book, etc) and the introduction of fantastic, with the goal of understanding the basic mechanisms of the formulation of fantastic within comics and define its relevance in different eras. Authors should take into account the concept of fantastic hold by the review: “the always problematic coexistence between the possible and the impossible in a world similar to the real one. This explains why the contents of Brumal exclude some neighbouring categories, for examples cience fiction, the marvellous or fantasy, since in them such conflict is absent”.  However this neighboruing genres can be dealt with in cases of generic hybridization

Possible theme lines:

  • Poetic and graphic narratives of fantastic comics
  • Fantastic and its relationship with formats
  • Authors for a canon of fantastic comics
  • The importance of magazines in the consolidation of the fantastic. Fantastic as editorial line
  • Cultural Traditions and fantastic comics: the fantastic and the bd, the fantastic in manga, the fantastic in superheroes comic books, etc.

 

Miscellaneous Section

This Miscellaneous section is open all year to receive any type of article on any of the diverse artistic manifestations of the fantastic (narrative, theater, film, comics, painting, photography, video games), whether theoretical, critical, historical or comparative in nature, concerning the fantastic in any language or from any country, from the nineteenth century to the present.

http://revistes.uab.cat/brumal/index

SGMS 2016 CALL: World-Building in Asian Popular Cultures

deadline for submissions:
August 1, 2016

full name / name of organization:
Minneapolis College of Art and Design

contact email:

SGMS 2016 CALL: World-building in Asian Popular Cultures

The Call for Mechademia 10 states: “Japanese popular culture — manga, anime, games, and SF — abound in scenarios in which our contemporary reality appears to be but one possible outcome within an open situation.”

Since Mechademia began, scholars and academics have addressed the way that dark narratives have been used to explore possible outcomes of open situations. Written in the context of Japan’s postwar period and continuing into the present, these dark narratives served as critiques of those conditions. However, within the 21st century, we are seeing alarming new developments that require more than critique, but instead, inspire creative action in response to the darkening turbulence of our cultural present.

For this conference, we propose the challenge of thinking of worldbuilding as a creative act, where narrative practices combine with new technologies to construct images, objects, texts, and performances of alternative worlds. We are not only looking at the dark implications of this moment in world history, but the creative interventions and possibilities that are found in the construction of alternate worlds, for future worlds, for saving worlds.

“Another world is possible” has already become the animating force behind a large body of cultural production within Japanese popular cultures. Examples include the construction of possible worlds, parallel universes, and parallel histories across a multitude of platforms. These practices can be read, not just as warnings, but as examples of how worlds can be, and are being, actively created.

We call for submissions that explore the aesthetic, mediatic, and technological dimension of these possible worlds, with an eye to the construction of inspiration and imagination within its circulation, as well as socio-political possibilities or potentiality. How might these worlds dismantle the rigid boundaries of concepts informing our current reality and reveal the glimmering potential of the unbounded reality that is the stable of such narratives?

We invite contributions that may consider or engage but are not limited by any of the following topics:

  • Popular culture frequently juxtaposes different realities in the form of alternative timelines or bifurcating temporalities. How might imaginative narratives jostling time and space function as axes of a potential alternate world reality?
  • How might worldbuilding address and even transform the dark portend of the Anthropocene?
  • How do new storytelling practices and forms of communication support worldbuilding across alternative locations and temporalities?
  • What is the role language plays in creating alternate worlds? Does one have to change language to create an altered reality?
  • Science fictions often encourage us to approach history and broad societal currents in terms of ‘what if’ scenarios. Such scenarios invite us to understand history through counterfactual narrations.  But rather than dismiss such scenarios as non-factual, we ask: What are potential relationships to be found in the social and political implications of understanding our historical reality in such terms?
  • How do colonialism, social inequality and gender constitute frameworks toward the creation of alternate worlds? In what ways are these factors recontexualized in new fictional worlds?
  • How do musical scores and soundtracks create the affective atmospheres that shape worldbuilding practices in film, anime and gaming?

The deadline for submissions is August 1, 2016
 to MECHADEMIA@MCAD.EDU

We welcome panel submissions as well as individual paper proposals and encourage emerging scholars (undergraduates and advanced high school students) to submit proposals to our Emerging Scholar sessions. All proceedings are held at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

You have the option of participating remotely via Zoom Room video conferencing if travel to the conference is a hindrance for you. This will enable you to virtually attend the full conference sessions, and to present on a panel.

The Millennium Hotel will probably have conference rates, and as soon as we have confirmation on rates we will publish them.

The register as an attendee, or participant after receiving notification of acceptance, go to:

http://mcad.edu/events-fellowships/schoolgirls-mobilesuits

 

For Panel Submissions:

-Panel title:

-Panel participant names, email addresses, titles, and 150-200 word abstracts

 

For Individual Presentation Submissions:

Participant name, email address, title, and 150-200 word abstract

 

For Emerging Scholar Presentations (High School and Undergraduate Papers):

-Participant name, email address, title, and 150-200 word abstract

 

Deadline for submission is: Aug. 1, 2016.

See our Facebook Page for details:

https://www.facebook.com/SGMSatMCAD

In 2017, Orford Parish Books will be releasing WOULD BUT TIME AWAIT: AN ANTHOLOGY OF NEW ENGLAND FOLK HORROR (edited by s.j. bagley, editor [and interrogator] of THINKING HORROR: A JOURNAL OF HORROR PHILOSOPHY.)

Please read the guidelines before submitting a query and direct all queries to heksenhaus@gmail.com with the subject header ‘FOLK HORROR QUERY.’

(All stories sent without a prior query will be deleted, unread.)

WHAT WE DEFINE AS FOLK HORROR AND WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR.

For the purposes of this project, we are defining folk horror as horror literature in which the present (which can be a year/decade of the author’s choosing) collides with the history, folklore, traditions, and psychogeography of a region and where that collision has a significant impact on the present (as defined in the work.)

We are looking for work that uses the physical, historical, and social landscapes of New England as a focal point (rather than a story that could be set anywhere else but just happens to be set in New England.)

There is a long and rich history of horrific and strange folklore in New England but that doesn’t mean a writer needs to restrict themselves to it and writers are perfectly welcome to invent their own folklore, traditions, and fictional New England locations.

We should also stress that, while Folk Horror has largely been a rural construct, we by no means consider a rural location to be necessary to any working definition of the term.

A few examples of what we consider Folk Horror in literature:

Stephen King- ‘Pet Sematary.’

Stephen King- ‘Bag of Bones.’

Peter Straub- ‘Ghost Story.’

Peter Straub- ‘Floating Dragon.’

Toni Morrison- ‘Beloved.’

H.P. Lovecraft- ‘The Picture In The House.’

M.R. James- ‘View From a Hill.’

John Farris- ‘All Heads Turn When The Hunt Goes By.’

T.E.D. Klein- ‘The Ceremonies.’

Gary McMahon- ‘All Your Gods Are Dead.’

Thomas Ligotti- ‘The Last Feast Of Harlequin.’

Michael Mcdowell- ‘Blackwater.’

Thomas Tryon- ‘Harvest Home.’

Adam Nevill- ‘The Ritual.’

Adam Nevill- ‘Last Days.’

Shirley Jackson- ‘The Lottery.’

Alain Mabanckou- ‘African Psycho.’

Shirley Jackson- ‘The Summer People.’

Matthew M. Bartlett- ‘Gateways To Abomination.’

Arthur Machen- ‘The White People.’

Flannery O’Connor- ‘A Good Man Is Hard To Find.’

Marjorie Bowen- ‘What Remained Behind.’

Chinua Achebe- ‘Things Fall Apart.’

Gemma Files- ‘We Will All Go Down Together.’

Susan Cooper- ‘The Dark Is Rising.’

Mary Buchanan- ‘The Dark Backward.’

Kingsley Amis- ‘The Green Man.’

Ray Bradbury- ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes.’

Josephine Poole- ‘Moon Eyes.’

Josephine Poole- ‘Billy Buck.’

Daniel Mills- ‘Revenants.’

Clive Barker- ‘In The Hills, The Cities.’

Clive Barker- ‘The Forbidden.’

WHO CAN SUBMIT.

We are open to submissions from writers from every global region and every walk of life and, while each story needs to focus (in some manner) on the geographic region of New England (which consists of Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont) we certainly don’t require that every author needs to be from that region.

We expect and encourage diversity in regard to the voices involved in this project.

DEADLINES AND SCHEDULE.

Submissions will be open until April 2017, at which point we will no longer be accepting submissions or queries.

Publication date is summer 2017 (with a more firm date to come.)

PAYMENT.

We will be paying a flat rate of $75USD upon acceptance for first rights in print and digital.

STORY CRITERIA.

Length: 2,000-10,000 words.

Each story MUST either be set in New England or contain elements of New England folklore and history.

Each story MUST be folk horror (which we fully and happily acknowledge as being a broad and diverse term but we are defining as stated above.)

No reprints.

No simultaneous submissions.

SOME THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND BEFORE SUBMITTING:

New England is an ethnically diverse region of the United States with a long (and often sordid) history so please keep the contemporary effects of that history in mind when submitting and avoid work that portrays the indigenous people and tribes of New England in a racist, bigoted, or stereotypical sense and please avoid stereotypes of the poor, and economically disenfranchised, all races, genders, sexes, sexualities, (dis)abilities, faiths, and anything that targets marginalized people.

In general, we are looking to avoid depictions of sexual violence (unless written with extreme care, an actual point beyond the simple violence of it, and, above all, empathy toward victims of sexual violence.)

https://orfordparishbooks.com/2016/06/21/call-for-submissions-for-new-england-folk-horror-anthology/

TRANSNATIONAL SCIENCE FICTION FILM AND MEDIA

Like the Western, noir, and musical, the science fiction film occupies a well-defined niche of cinema and media studies, complete with its own catalogue of specialized theory and criticism (Calvin 2014). Science fiction is also a category of film that has come to embody an era and its conditions. As Jim Kitses observed in the introduction to The Western Reader (1998), “an era of radical capitalism with its relentless global commodification, downsized status of the individual, and increasingly technological, mediated world of experience, has solidly positioned science fiction and neo-noir as the post-modern genres of choice, with their hybrid, the formidable “tech-noir” (Terminator, Blade Runner, Alien), logically the post-modern genre par excellence” (16).

Perhaps on account of this positioning of science fiction film and especially its noir correlate, the study of science fiction film (see for example Cornea 2007; Kuhn 1990, 1999; Sobchack 1997; Telotte 1995, 2001) has rivaled the study of its prose form and has dominated studies of what Paweł Frelik (2016) recently called the “ocularies of science fiction,” that is, the genre’s visual megatext. While scholars and critics alike have turned their attention to issues such as literal and metaphorical space (Kuhn 1999), the problems of technology (Telotte 1995), the politics of alternative futures (Booker 2006), and even race (Nama 2008) in monograph-length works, research on science fiction films focuses overwhelmingly on American, and to a lesser extent European, films—their histories, contexts, audiences, and politics.

Meeting the wider turn in cinema and media studies head on, a handful of essays and a new collection (Feeley and Wells 2015) have begun to conceive of science fiction film as a transnational genre, a global or world phenomenon. Challenging the idea that science fiction is a decidedly Western or even a particularly American film genre, this panel seeks papers that ask what the study of science fiction film and related (audio)visual media can add to the increasingly complex and interrelated discussions of transnational film production, circulation, and reception; of transnational film as a category; and of competing categories (e.g. “world,” “global”) for understanding film and (audio)visual media as they move across national, cultural, and linguistic boundaries.

In other words, what does it mean to think of science fiction film transnationally? Is there such a thing as (the) transitional science fiction film? What are its histories, forms, politics, audiences, etc.? Although emphasizing film as the medium of study and conceiving of science fiction in broad terms as a visual megatext—a set of generically interrelated and recognizable visual tropes (see Broderick 1995 for an early discussion of megatext as frame for science fiction narratives)—the panel also hopes to encourage the exploration of media beyond film, to consider, for example, science fiction television, comics, and video games in conversation with discourses on film, science fiction, and the transnational, world, or global.

Papers might consider, but are certainly not limited to, the following guiding topics:

  • Transnational SF and global crises/catastrophes, especially environmental and geopolitical
  • Adaptations of texts across national, cultural, linguistic, and medium boundaries, especially with consideration of shifting political, aesthetic, and generic concerns
    • e.g. Snowpiercer (2013), from Jacques Lob’s French Le Transperceniegegraphic novel to Bong Joon-ho’s English-language, global-cast South Korean dystopian film, in which the only survivors are a black boy and a Korean woman.
  • Transnational science fiction films and audiences, and the circulation of science fiction film out of, into, and outside the U.S. and Europe
  • Transnational blockbusters and global audiences
    • e.g. Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens as global phenomenon/text
  • Transnational (or world or global) SF film production and distribution (e.g. art/indie vs. blockbuster)
  • The (in)stability of “science fiction” as a genre across national, cultural, linguistic, and medium boundaries
  • Popular subgenres of transnational science fiction media
  • Troubling the terms “world,” “global,” and “transnational” as they relate to “science fiction” (itself slippery) film and other media
  • Transnational science fiction beyond film: television, comics, video games
    • e.g. the “kaiju” and “mecha” genres of Japanese manga as transnationally and transmedially circulated subgenres of SF; the manga boom in 1990s America and the subsequent, related anime boom on U.S. television; massive popularity, aesthetics, and generic concerns of SF games

Proposals should include a 250-300 word abstract and a brief bio. Please send all materials to Sean A. Guynes at guynesse@msu.edu by August 10, 2016.  Decisions will be made by August 15 and the panel proposal will be submitted by August 31.

If you are interested in being a respondent, please notify Sean A. Guynes and include a brief bio and a CV (keep in mind the new SCMS policy that now limits members to one role at the conference).

TRANSITIONS – New Directions in Comics Studies

deadline for submissions:
August 26, 2016

full name / name of organization:
Birkbeck, University of London


TRANSITIONS – New Directions in Comics Studies
at Birkbeck College, London, on Saturday November 19th 2016.

Organised in collaboration with Comica- London International Comics Festival, Transitions at Birkbeck College is unique in offering a regular comics studies symposium and meeting point in London, a platform for emerging research at an event that is free of charge and open to all. Originally convened by PhD students in 2009, Transitions has become an annual fixture in the UK comics scholars’ calendar.

We are still especially supportive of postgraduate and early career presenters, but open to any new and ongoing research in our field. Our aim is to provide a platform for debate and a space from which further collaborations can emerge, to further strengthen our area of study and academic community, and to support connections between comics scholars working in diverse academic departments and contexts.

We welcome abstracts for 20 minute papers, or pre-constituted panels of three, on topics including, but not limited to:

-comics, comix, graphic novels, manga, manhwa, bande dessinée

-superheroes, genre comics, religious comics, documentary comics, children’s comics

-politics of representation in comics, formal approaches, trauma and comics, transgressive comics, propaganda and comics

– readers and fandoms, creators, publishing histories, transnational approaches, comics and the law, web-comics and comics exhibitions

Alongside traditional panel presentations we would like to trial the more interactive format of a 20-minute workshop, potentially as a way of data collection and/or feedback on research-in-progress. Please indicate your preference by stating PAPER or WORKSHOP following your abstract title.

You can apply by email to transitionssymposium@gmail.com.
Please attach your abstract of 250-300 words plus short biographical note (preferably as a Word document), indicating ‘abstract’ in the email subject line and your name in the file’s title.

The deadline for submissions is August 26th 2016.

Reimagining the Future – Utopian Perspectives

deadline for submissions:
January 31, 2017

full name / name of organization:
ANTAE

contact email:
antaejournal@gmail.com

Call for Papers

Reimagining the Future: Utopian Perspectives

The postgraduate journal antae is pleased to announce a special issue around the idea of alternative futures, in particular ones that can be described as “utopian”. This issue shall be published in conjunction with the Institute of Utopian Studies—for the time being, a utopian institution seeking to provide a platform for debate on ideas of radical social change and alternative concepts of living together, which aims to facilitate debate about departures from hegemonic ‘realism’: alternative futures, alternative spaces.

As such, artists, scholars, writers and activists are here encouraged to submit contributions engaging with utopia as a concept for socio-political change: utopian approaches to current political issues, visions of new public spheres, and imaginative projections of different realities. This shall not only be limited to participants of the ‘Away Day’ (happening on November, 2016, at the University of Malta), but also to any other postgraduate students or established academics interested in the multifaceted idea of utopia/s.

The notion of ‘utopian perspectives’ emphasises that constructions of utopian states, since More’s Utopia, have provided ideal models through which one can scrutinise existing socio-political realities. In this sense, utopia is not an absolute aim, but a platform for debate, for exploring alternatives. Utopian perspectives offer different viewpoints with regards to current social realities: (i) they help to sharpen a critical view of the present status quo and its hegemonic discourses; and (ii) they serve to highlight seeds of alternative existing options, spaces and practices, utopian potentials in the present. These two perspectives can also be linked; for example, when basic principles of democracy are interpreted as unfulfilled utopian ideas in present societies (ii), which highlights existing inequalities and exclusions (i).

In light of the above, the editors of antae welcome submissions on or around re-imagined utopias. All issues are open-access and employ a three-tier peer-review process. The authorial guidelines can be viewed here, and the deadline for submissions to antaejournal@gmail.com is the 31st of January, 2017. Submissions should be in the form of finalised papers of around 5,000 to 7,000 words. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

– Utopian Communities
– Utopian Perspectives on Socio-Political and Environmental Issues
– Utopian Political Publics
– Utopia Without Borders – Beyond the Nation State
– Urban Utopias
– Futures Studies
– Technological Utopias, Science Fiction
– Radical Education, Radical Emancipation – towards a Utopian Revolution
– Freedom and Utopia – Freedom as a (Collective) Praxis?
– Utopia as an Imposition or a Liberation?
– Utopia and Work, Utopia and Idleness
– After Capitalism
– Utopian Cultures
– Utopia and (Public) Happiness
– Gender, Sexuality and Love in Utopian Perspectives
– Utopian Bodies, Subjects, Individuals Creating and Living (in) Utopia
– Utopia and the Good Life?
– Beyond Reality

For more information about the journal, or to view previous issues, visit us at www.antaejournal.com; for further information about the Institute of Utopian Studies, visit our social media page here. In case of queries, please do not hesitate to email us on antaejournal@gmail.com.