International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts

Deadline for Applications: Friday, February 28, 2014

No work of literature has done more to shape the way humans imagine science and its consequences than _Frankenstein_, Mary Shelley’s enduring tale of creation and responsibility. In _Frankenstein_, Shelley established the creature and creator tropes that continue to resonate with contemporary audiences and influence the way we confront emerging technologies, conceptualize scientific research, imagine the motivations and ethical struggles of scientists and weigh the benefits of research with its unforeseen pitfalls.

The Frankenstein Bicentennial Project – a global, interdisciplinary network of people and institutions headquartered at Arizona State University – will celebrate the bicentennial of the writing and publication of Frankenstein from 2016-2018 with exhibits, performances, scientific demonstrations, writing contests, film screenings, installations, public conversations and educational experiences that use the Frankenstein myth as a touchstone for science education, ethics and artistry.

From April 28-30, 2014, ASU will host a National Science Foundation-funded workshop to build a community of scholars across a wide variety of fields to collaborate on the project, to begin designing and planning public programs, intellectual endeavors and tangible outcomes like journal issues, books or performances as part of the Bicentennial celebration. We will accept at least 5 applicants to participate in the workshop, along with approximately sixty ASU faculty and invited guests. We will give preference to early-career researchers in relevant fields, but senior scholars should not be dissuaded from applying. All allowable, workshop-related travel expenses (e.g., economy round-trip airfare, 2-3 nights at the workshop hotel, transfers and meals).

If you are interested in participating in the workshop, we invite you to submit an application at http://frankenstein.asu.edu/apply. You will be asked to submit a 1-2 page CV and a cover letter discussing your interest in Frankenstein and what you could contribute to the workshop. You will also be asked to select which of our eight working groups you are most interested in:·

– Exhibits and Installations:Frankenstein and the Creation of Life·

– Frankenstein: A Critical Edition for Scientists and Engineers·

– “It’s Alive!” Frankenstein on Film·

– Monsters on Stage: Frankenstein in Theater and Performance·

– “MOOCenstein” – Frankenstein Goes Global·

– Engineering Life: Distributed Demonstrations·

– Reinventing the Dare: Frankenstein, Science Fiction and the Culture of Science·

– Bringing Nonfiction to Life: Frankenstein and Science Writing

Keynote: Professor Rob Latham (UC, Riverside): Senior Editor, Science Fiction Studies; editorial board member, The Journal of Science Fiction Film and Television and The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts.

University of East Anglia 31 May—1 June, 2014

Conference Organisers: Dr Mark P. Williams | Dr Jacob Huntley | Dr Matthew Taunton

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In May 1964 New Worlds #142 hits the newsstands. It is the first edition edited by Michael Moorcock and ushers in a creative, and much debated, reinterpretation of the aesthetics of Science Fiction. The “New Wave” has begun. This period of aesthetic innovation connected a great many of the pressing concerns of the day, from the apocalyptic threat of the Cold War to the potential of the Space Age, but it also preceded the concerns of subsequent generations including postmodernism, questions of identity and subjectivity, and the nature of history.

Fifty years after that landmark issue the ripples continue to be felt, washing through various modes of fantastic literature from slipstream to the New Weird, from cyberpunk to steampunk.

As a way of celebrating and acknowledging the influence of Moorcock’s tenure as editor of New Worlds starting with that seminal May/June issue, the University of East Anglia will be hosting a conference, The Science Fiction New Wave at Fifty over the weekend of 31st May – 1st June 2014.

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Professor Rob Latham is a senior editor of Science Fiction Studies and member of the editorial boards of The Journal of Science Fiction Film and Television and The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts.  He is currently completing a book on New Wave Science Fiction focusing on its connections to counterculture movements and debates of the 1960s and ’70s.

Submissions Extended

Submissions by Monday 10th March 2014

Papers are invited on any aspect of “New Wave” Science Fiction related to New Worlds, from key writers such as J G Ballard, Hilary Baily and M. John Harrison, to Moorcock himself, or comparisons between the British and American versions of “New Wave” and their relationships with Science Fiction as a mode.  We also welcome panel proposals of up to four papers with a unifying theme.

This conference emphasises the international and culturally dialogic qualities of “New Wave” SF and is particularly interested in papers exploring how the themes and concepts which drive the ‘movement’ have been transformed in the intervening decades, and how they manifest in contemporary fiction today.

Topics for discussion might include but are not limited to:

·       Inner Space versus Outer Space

·       The “New Wave” and the “New Weird”

·       New Worlds as inspiration for Steampunk and/or Cyberpunk

·       Time Travel and Subjectivity

·       Synthesis of the avant-garde and populism in the “New Wave”

·       Apocalypse and ecological catastrophe

·       “New Wave” and transgression

Writers for discussion might include

Hilary Bailey

J.G. Ballard

Samuel R. Delany

M. John Harrison

Michael Moorcock

Pamela Zoline

Alongside other writers and artists connected with or inspired by the “New Wave”

Abstracts

PAPERS

Please send abstracts of up to 500 words, together with author’s bio of 50 words.

PANELS

Full panel proposals should either have individual paper abstracts of 250 words with a brief statement of 150 words to describe the panel, or be one abstract of around 750 words.  These should be accompanied by a 50 word biographical statement for each panellist.

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Submissions to: Dr Mark P. Williams (Mark.Williams@uea.ac.uk); Dr Jacob Huntley (Jacob.huntley@uea.ac.uk); Dr Matthew Taunton (M.Taunton@uea.ac.uk).

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Conference registration will be live from Monday 17th March 2014 onwards (see below).

further Information

Further information regarding registration opening and closing dates will be posted to the UEA Events page —

Click here or copy and paste the URL from below:

<https://www.uea.ac.uk/literature/news-and-events/events/-/asset_publisher/Ka8ymwr5xxD0/blog/the-science-fiction-new-wave-at-fifty-conference>

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ORGANISER PROFILES

Dr Mark P. Williams | https://independent.academia.edu/MarkPWilliams

Dr Jacob Huntley | https://www.uea.ac.uk/literature/people/profile/jacob-huntley

Dr Matthew Taunton | http://www.uea.ac.uk/literature/people/profile/m-taunton

Whether heroes of Antiquity such as Ulysses or Achill, biblical heroes like David or Judith, medieval folk heroes like Robin Hood or Joan of Arc, heroes of national revolution such as Danton or Marat, literary heroes and anti-heroes like Don Quijote or Faust or contemporary superheroes such as Lara Croft or Batman, heroes and heroines were always used as canvas and identificatory figures for individuals, social groups or societies as a whole.

Although a “postheroic age” is often postulated today, one can perceive a new boom of the heroic not only but especially within popular culture nowadays. Thereby, traditions are challenged by new types of heroes and hybrid forms and processes of trivialisation and diffusion stand alongside scepticism and taboos. helden.heroes.héros. e-journal on cultures of the heroic, an open-access journal published by the collaborative research center “Heroes – Heroization – Heroisms” at Freiburg University is exploring this tension between exceptionality of heroic figures and the social groups which they both stabilize and question.

Since the heroic can only ever be visible through representation and groups of followers can only be constituted through the medial dissemination of hero narratives, the second issue of the journal (summer 2014) will be concerned with the issue of “Popular Culture”. The issue will focus on figures, modes of presentation, media-specific phenomena and functions of popular representations of the heroic. What are characteristics of popular heroes? In which media are heroes and their heroic acts presented and who is selecting them? Are there connections between today’s heroes and the folk heroes of earlier times? These and similar questions should be discussed in the submitted contributions.

The Call for Papers is directed at researchers from all humanities and social sciences who are dealing with the representation of the heroic in popular media – not only of the 20^th and 21^st century, but of all ages. Contributions will be selected based on peer review and abstracts of 2000 characters (including spacing) as well as a short CV should be submitted until 31^st January 2014 to:

e-journal@sfb948.uni-freiburg.de

Fifth annual conference of the Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung e.V.

[Association for Research in the Fantastic]

at the Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt

September 11 – 14, 2014

In Homo Ludens (1938), his essential and seminal study that is frequently seen as the beginning of Game Studies as we understand them today, Johan Huizinga claimed an ontological connection between culture, as the quintessentially human endeavour, and play. Refuting the constantly raised accusations that play is a futile and escapist activity, Huizinga in contrast attributed it a significant function, both in its metaphorical (i.e. “it is important”), as well as its literal (i.e. “it signifies”) meaning (1971: 1). By its very nature, play opens up spaces and worlds beyond primary, everyday reality, new frameworks of meaning that are, however, not devoid of meaningful interactions with it. Culture, Huizinga argues, needs the free space of play to come into existence in the first place, to change and to adapt.

This intricate and complex web of interconnections between ludic otherworlds and the everyday life of individuals and groups is the core interest of the fifth annual conference of the Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung e.V. [Association for Research in the Fantastic]. We have deliberately chosen the very open and inclusive phrasing “ludic imaginary spaces” for the objects of the papers, so that the range of media fitting the description is as wide as it can be: hypertext and other ludic forms of text, board- and card games, pen&paper role-playing games, live-action role-playing games (LARPs), video and computer games, alternate reality games, and gamified activities of all kinds are possible, but this list must in no way be seen as exhaustive. No matter the medium chosen, what is essential is that there is this “free space of movement within a more rigid structure” that exists “because of and also despite the more rigid structures of a system ” that Eric Zimmerman has identified as essential to any definition of play (2004: 159). The organisers of this conference also would like to send a strong message that the conflicts over interpretive authority between Ludologists and Narratologists in playable media that have hindered Game Studies since the late 1990s are a thing of the past, so papers suggesting ways to bridge this gap will be especially welcome.

As the second focus of the conference, according to its title, is on the social and cultural exchanges between the secondary, or even tertiary realities created and the primary reality in which they are in turn created, played, and observed, possible approaches to these media reach from the implicit and explicit social and cultural politics of games and playable media on both the content and the structural level, to the regimes of representation and configuration present, the psycho-social phenomena surrounding the experiences created, to the political and social regulation of playful behaviour, and beyond. Game Studies are necessarily “a multidisciplinary field of study and learning with games and related phenomena as its subject matter” according to Frans Mäyrä (2010: 6), so theoretical perspectives from the whole range of academic disciplines and contributions from those working practically in the design and creation of ludic spaces would ideally come together to provide this fifth annual conference of the GFF with a kaleidoscopic overview of the full range of possibilities, problems, and the future potential of games and playable media in negotiating between the realms of the fantastic and everyday life.

As usual for GFF conferences, there will be an additional Open Track for all papers not directly related to the conference topic to safeguard a pluralism of perspectives in our research in the Fantastic. We thus invite papers of all aspects of the fantastic for this open track.

In the same vein, the GFF is happy to announce the availability of two student grants of €250 each as support of travel arrangements to the conference for the two most interesting student projects handed in. Apply for the student grant with abstract and bionote at the address below.

If you would like to contribute your voice to such a discussion of ludic imaginary spaces, we cordially invite you to send us a 350-word abstract to gff2014@aau.at detailing your projected 20-min paper in either German or English. Please do not forget to include your contact details, as well as a short bionote. The deadline for abstracts is December 31st, 2013.

Contact:

René Schallegger

Department for English and American Studies

Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt

Universitätsstraße 65 – 67

9020 Klagenfurt am Wörthersee / Austria