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Author Archives: Stacie Hanes

CfP: “It’s Happening Again”: Twenty-Five Years of Twin Peaks: EXTENDED DEADLINE!

“It’s Happening Again”: Twenty-Five Years of Twin Peaks: EXTENDED DEADLINE! (new submission date: September 30 2015)

 Call for Papers for “It’s Happening Again”: 25 Years of Twin Peaks, a proposed edited collection on the television show Twin Peaks. Eric Hoffman and Dominick Grace solicit essays for a new collection celebrating one of television’s greatest cult phenomena. Originally airing in 1990/91, Mark Frost and David Lynch’sTwin Peaks will be returning, just over twenty-five years after it went off the air, and this collection will explore the show in the context of its time, and its legacy. We are interested in papers on all aspects of the television program as well as on tie-ins and connected materials (e.g. the film Fire Walk with Me, the new Log Lady material added for the show’s run on Bravo, the book The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, etc.). Possible subjects include but are not limited to:

narrative and the televisual medium
cinema versus television textuality
Twin Peaks in relationship to Lynch’s oeuvre
Twin Peaks as pop culture phenomenon
Twin Peaks as satire
Twin Peaks as cult/experimental television
Twin Peaks and sexuality/gender/feminist contexts
generic explorations – specifically murder mystery/film noir, soap opera, horror, fantasy, science fiction, etc.

Completed papers can be submitted, in Word, to Dominick Grace (dgrace2@uwo.ca) or to Eric Hoffman (diamondjoecity@gmail.com). Papers should be between 5,000 and 7,000 words and should follow MLA guidelines. Inquiries and proposals are also welcome. Eric Hoffman and Dominick Grace are the co-editors of Dave Sim: Conversations, Chester Brown: Conversations and Seth: Conversations, all of which are part of the University Press of Mississippi’s Conversations with Comics Artists series.

Deadline for submission: September 30, 2015.

CfP: Panel: The Impact of War on Science Fiction or Fantasy Literature

Panel: The Impact of War on Science Fiction or Fantasy Literature

Northeast Modern Language Association

March 17-20, 2016

Hartford, CT

Paper Proposal/ Abstract   deadline: September 25th, 2015

Various wars have had a profound impact on many utopian, dystopian and apocalyptic science fiction and fantasy writers. For example, the repercussions of the Civil War were one of the factors of late nineteenth century society in America reflected in the “non-combative” revolution of Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward: 2000-1887.  In addition, war or the aftermath of war figures strongly in various novels and stories of Philip Dick, Marge Piercy, and Ursula Le Guin, among others. It seems that world events, many tumultuous, are reflected in some of their dystopian tales. Discussing the effect of war and the possibility of annihilation on literature, including early writers such as Lord [George Gordon] Byron who wrote the poem “Darkness” reflecting the end of the world after total annihilating warfare implies the need to perhaps use writing as a catharsis. The focus of this panel is to indicate the effect of war on literature at various periods in history.

Please e-mail your 200-250 word paper proposal/ abstract, subject line: War-SciFi Panel before 9/25/15.  Please send your proposal as an attached MS Word, doc or docx. In the body of your message, please include your proposal title, your name, affiliation, address, phone number and e-mail address and send to: Annette Magid <a_magid@yahoo.com<mailto:a_magid@yahoo.com>>.

Proposers need not be members of NeMLA to submit, but panelists must be members in order to present.

CfP: Texts and Contexts: The Cultural Legacies of Ada Lovelace

Call for Papers

Texts and Contexts: The Cultural Legacies of Ada Lovelace

“That brain of mine is more than merely mortal; as time will show.”

A workshop for graduate students and early career researchers

Tuesday 8 December 2015

Mathematics Institute and St Anne’s College, Oxford

The mathematician Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), daughter of poet Lord Byron, is celebrated as a pioneer of computer science. The notes she added to her translation of Luigi Menabrea’s paper on Charles Babbage’s analytical engine (1843) are considered to contain a prototype computer program. During her short life, Lovelace not only contributed original ideas to the plans for this early computer; she also imagined wider possibilities for the engine, such as its application to music, and meditated on its limitations. Lovelace leaves a legacy not just as a computer scientist, but also as a muse for literary writers, a model to help us understand the role of women in science in the nineteenth century, and an inspiration for neo-Victorian and steampunk traditions.

 

As part of the University of Oxford’s celebrations to mark the 200th anniversary of Lovelace’s birth, this one-day workshop will bring together graduates and early career researchers to discuss the varied cultural legacies of this extraordinary mathematician. The day will feature an expert panel including graphic novelist Sydney Padua and biographer Richard Holmes, as well as a keynote address from Professor Sharon Ruston, Chair in Romanticism in the Department of English and Creative Writing at Lancaster University.

 

The day will conclude with a reception and buffet when there will be opportunities to meet with speakers from the Ada Lovelace 200 Symposium, which will also take place in the Mathematics Institute on the following two days (9-10 December). Researchers from all disciplines are invited to submit proposals for papers on the influences of Lovelace’s work, on topics including, but not limited to, literature, history, mathematics, music, visual art, and computer science. This might include:

 

  • Lovelace’s place in the study of the history of science;
  • Lovelace and women in science in the nineteenth century;
  • Early nineteenth-century scientific networks, including Lovelace’s relationship with such individuals as Charles Babbage and Mary Somerville. We also encourage papers which consider other scientific networks from this period, beyond Lovelace’s circle;
  • Lovelace and discussions about the role of the imagination in scientific practice in the nineteenth century;
  • Lovelace as translator and commentator;
  • Mathematics and music, and the musical possibilities Lovelace envisaged for Babbage’s engine;
  • Lovelace’s own textual legacies, such as her correspondence, childhood exercises and mathematical notes held in the Bodleian;
  • Lovelace’s technological legacies, from her seminal work on Babbage’s Analytical Engine to her impact on computer programming today;
  • Lovelace’s role in the steampunk tradition, from Gibson and Sterling’s The Difference Engine to Sydney Padua’s The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, and neo-Victorian fashion;
  • Efforts and activities to commemorate and memorialise Lovelace, from the recent Google Doodle to the annual Ada Lovelace Day.

 

Proposals, not exceeding 250 words, for 15-minute papers should be submitted to adalovelaceworkshop@ell.ox.ac.uk by Midnight, Friday 18 September 2015. Those who are accepted to speak at this graduate workshop will also be offered free registration for the Ada Lovelace 200 Symposium taking place on the following two days.

Ada Lovelace Postgraduate and ECR Workshop Organising Committee

Email: adalovelaceworkshop@ell.ox.ac.uk

Website: https://adalovelaceworkshop.wordpress.com/

Twitter: @AdaLovelacePGs

Call for Papers: Philip K. Dick Conference 2016

Call for Papers for the Acacia Group’s Philip K. Dick Conference to be held at Cal State Fullerton, April 29-30, 2016. Confirmed Special Guests: Dr. Ursula Heise, Jonathan Lethem, Tim Powers and James Blaylock.

Deadline for proposals: Interested individuals should submit a titled, 250-word abstract and complete contact information—name, institutional affiliation (if applicable), mail and email addresses, and telephone number—by December 1st, 2015. Submission email: dsandner@fullerton.edu 

Our theme: Philip K. Dick, Here and Now.

Philip K. Dick’s visionary works often occur in places he lived, set in a dystopic present just around the corner, the day after tomorrow. The conference calls for papers on Philip K. Dick’s works, and on his attention to setting (or undermining of setting?) in terms of both place and time. But we want much more besides. We call for papers on PKD’s presence and influence in sf literature and visionary literature. We want papers that explore how writers and film-makers have produced work influenced by his ideas. How does sf today, how does literature today, reflect his concerns, his style, his visions? How have his themes, such as a dis-ease with our surveillance society, our precarious hold on our identity, our uneasy relationship with  power, technology and progress, continued to resonate? What other writers explore the intersection of time, place and identity? Why does PKD’s work still feel so urgent to the problem of being human today? What does it mean that we continue to experience PKD, here and now? Write papers that tell us what PKD’s presence has meant and means to our culture and its conversation about itself. 

The conference will be held at CSUF’s Titan Student Union and Pollak Library. We encourage work from institutionally affiliated scholars, independent scholars, graduate students and advanced undergraduates. Acacia is the Graduate Student Group of the English Department at Cal State Fullerton.

Position Announcement: Research Associate, Portsmouth City Council’s Arthur Conan Doyle Collection

The Centre for Studies in Literature at the University of Portsmouth seeks to appoint a Research Associate to work on Portsmouth City Council’s Arthur Conan Doyle Collection, as part of a project on ‘Celebrities, Fans and Muses’.

The post is full-time, for 8 months and the closing date for applications is 21 September 2015.  Further details can be found on the University’s vacancies page: https://port.engageats.co.uk/ViewVacancy.aspx?enc=mEgrBL4XQK0+ld8aNkwYmIj7gyGvInud/iCDXh3jsBBMcvO9mYJN5Q6Dj8JRS0MrIO4VeAVfHG2RklGtAL5y9SIf0JuIcQKnxFI1Rdzz0fQ9SWqbHtyc+qOYX6zI60qLxNlSX+yMagAvFzDAZK8hbg==

Best wishes

Charlotte

Dr Charlotte Boyce

University of Portsmouth

CfP: Gender and Fantasy

Gender and Fantasy

In her seminal Fantasy: A Literature of Subversion, critic Rosemary Jackson calls fantasy “a literature of desire”, one that “traces the unsaid and unseen of culture, that which has been silenced, made invisible, covered over and made ‘absent'”. This issue of gender forum concerns itself with the manifold ways in which the fantasy genre is used to renegotiate these unseen desires, seeking to examine if and how it has moved on from the genre-specific stereotypes of wise wizard, wicked witch, strong hero, and damsel in distress. We are looking for contributions that analyse the role of gender in

• high and low fantasy

• the different subgenres (urban fantasy, dark fantasy, etc.)

• the genre’s classic as well as contemporary texts

• fantasy films

• fantasy TV shows

• theatrical representations

• the adaptation process (novel to film or vice versa)

• …

Abstracts of 400 words plus a brief biography should be submitted by October 15th, 2015. The deadline for the completed papers is January 7th, 2016. (Publication date: Early 2016)

gender-forum@uni-koeln.de

CfP: PULP STUDIES AREA Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association (PCA/ACA)

National Conference

March 22–25, 2016

Seattle, WA

Deadline for Abstracts is November 1, 2015

Pulp magazines were a series of mostly English-language, predominantlyAmerican, magazines printed on rough pulpwood paper. They were often illustrated with highly stylized, full-page cover art and numerous line art illustrations of the fictional content. They were sold for modest sums, and were targeted at (sometimes specialized) readerships of popular literature, such as western and adventure, detective, fantastic (including the evolving genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror), romance, and sports fiction. The first pulp Argosy, began life as the children’s magazine The Golden Argosy, dated Dec 2, 1882 and the last of the “original” pulps was Ranch Romances and Adventures, Nov. 1971.

The Pulp Studies area exists to support the academic study of pulp writers, editors, readers, and culture. It seeks to invigorate research by bringing together scholars from diverse areas including romance, western, science fiction, fantasy, horror, adventure, detective, and more. Finally, the Pulp Studies area seeks to promote the preservation of the pulps through communication with libraries, museums, and collectors. With this in mind, we are calling for papers and panels that discuss the pulps and their legacy.

Possible authors and topics:

• Magazines: Amazing Stories, Weird Tales, Wonder Stories, Fight Stories, All-Story, Argosy, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Spicy Detective, Ranch Romances and Adventures, Oriental Stories/Magic Carpet Magazine, Love Story, Flying Aces, Black Mask, and Unknown, to name a few.

• Editors and Owners: Street and Smith (Argosy), Farnsworth Wright (Weird Tales), Hugo Gernsback (Amazing Stories), Mencken and Nathan (Black Mask), John Campbell (Astounding).

• Influential Writers: H.P. Lovecraft, A. E. Merritt, Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, C. L. Moore, Fritz Leiber, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Robert Bloch, Donald Wandrei, Clark Ashton Smith, and Henry Kuttner. Proposals about contemporary writers in the pulp tradition, such as Joe Lansdale and Michael Chabon are also encouraged. New Weird writers and others, such as China Mieville, whose work is influenced by the pulps, are also of interest.

• Influences on Pulp Writers: H. Rider Haggard, Arthur Conan Doyle, Sax Rohmer, and Jack London were all influences, along with literary and philosophical figures such as Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Friedrich Nietzsche, Edgar Allen Poe, and Herbert Spencer.

• Popular Characters: Conan of Cimmeria; Doc Savage; Solomon Kane; Buck Rogers; Northwest Smith; The Domino Lady; Jiril of Joiry; Zorro; Kull of Atlantis; El Borak; The Shadow; The Spider; Bran Mak Morn; Nick Carter; The Avenger; and Captain Future, among others. Also character types: the femme fatale, the he-man, the trickster, racism and villainy, etc.

• Artists: Popular artists including Margaret Brundage (Weird Tales), Frank R. Paul (Amazing Stories), Virgil Finlay (Weird Tales), and Edd Cartier (The Shadow, Astounding).

• Periods: The dime novels; Argosy and the ancestral pulps; Weird Tales, Amazing Stories, and the heyday of the pulps; the decline of the pulps in the 50s and 60s; pulps in the age of the Internet.

• Theme and Styles: Masculinity, femininity, and sexuality in the pulps; the savage as hero, the woman as hero, the trickster as hero, colonialism in the pulps, racism and “yellow peril,” Modernism in the pulps, etc.

• Film and Television: Possible topics could include film interpretations such as Conan the Barbarian, pulp-inspired television such as Amazing Stories, and new work based in the “pulp aesthetic” such as Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

• Comics: Comic book incarnations of pulp magazines and series; “new weird” reinventions of the pulps such as the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and The Watchmen; comic adaptations of old pulp series such as The Shadow, The Spider, Doc Savage and others.

• Cyberculture: Cyberpulps such as Beneath Ceaseless Skies and pulp-influenced games such as the Age of Conan MMORPG or the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game.

These are but suggestions for potential panels and presentations. Proposals on other topics are welcome. For general information on the Pulp Studies area, please visit our website:

http://pulpstudies.weebly.com/

How to Submit Proposals: Proposals must be submitted through the official PCA conference website:

http://ncp.pcaaca.org/

Please send all inquiries to:

Justin Everett, PhD

Director of Writing Programs

University of the Sciences in Philadelphia

600 S. 43rd St.

Philadelphia, PA 19104

j.everet@usp.edu

Jeffrey H. Shanks, RPA

Southeast Archeological Center

2035 E. Paul Dirac Drive

Johnson Building, Suite 120

Tallahassee, FL 32310

jeffrey_shanks@nps.gov

Brian Aldiss: pioneer of British sci-fi

Brian Aldiss: pioneer of British sci-fi

By Jake Kerridge

Brian Aldiss, one of the pioneers of British science fiction, has written or edited more than 100 books. He has met Dylan Thomas, John Masefield and T S Eliot, been a drinking buddy of Kingsley Amis (“Kingsley would land one in a lot of trouble, I have to say”), and shared a Jacuzzi with Doris Lessing. He spent years enduring the caprices of Stanley Kubrick as they worked on a screenplay of Aldiss’s story “Super-Toys Last All Summer Long”, a project that eventually became Steven Spielberg’s A.I. – “a lousy film,” he says.

CfP: Haunted Europe: Continental Connections in English-Language Gothic

Writing, Film and New Media
9 – 10 June 2016.
Leiden University, The Netherlands

Keynote speakers:
Professor Robert Miles (University of Victoria)
Professor Roger Luckhurst (Birkbeck – University of London)
Professor Tanya Krzywinska (Falmouth University)
Lesley Megahey (director of the BBC film Schalken, the Painter)

The Leiden Research Institute for the Arts in Society (LUCAS) invites
proposals for papers that address continental connections in
English-Language Gothic Writing, Film and New Media. The aim of the
conference is to explore the representation and function of
continental European cultures, peoples and nations in English-Language
Gothic culture from the 1790s to the present. While the first wave of
British and Irish Gothic fictions developed and solidified the idea of
continental Europe as a fitting setting for Gothic Romance, little
sustained research has been done so far on the ways in which the
function and representation of the continent in English-language
Gothic culture has developed and changed since the seminal first-wave
fictions, and to what extent these developments and changes have had
an impact on the formation of British and Irish but also Australian
and American national, cultural and individual identities, for
instance. The ongoing debate in British politics and society
concerning the possibility of an EU referendum in 2017 seems to
warrant a scholarly investigation concerning the reputation and
representation of continental European culture in Gothic fiction. Such
political realities underscore the topicality and relevance of the
conference theme, and suggest that now is the right time to explore
how, why and to what extent Gothic representations of continental
Europe have played a part in the long, complex an often difficult
(love/hate) relationship between Britain, Ireland and the European
mainland, as well as the still often noted “special relationship”
between Britain and the USA. Paper topics can include, but are not
limited to:

Continental Europe as a socio-political ‘other’
Continental magic v. Anglo-American Enlightenment
Continental rationalism v. British and/or American Sensibility
The revolutionary continent in English-Language Gothic texts
The bohemian continent and the British artist
Haunting the continent: Gothic Tourism
Continental landscapes and the Gothic labyrinth
Language barriers in Gothic story-telling
Visualisations of and interactions with the Continent in British and
American “New-Media” texts

Please send a 200-word abstract, including a working title and brief
CV to m.newton@hum.leidenuniv.nl
Deadline for submission of abstracts: 1 November 2015.
Notification of participation: 21 December 2015.

Victorian Popular Fiction in the 21st Century

Victorian Popular Fiction in the 21st Century (Roundtable at NeMLA, Hartford, CT, USA March 17-20, 2016)

An ever increasing interest in Victorian popular fiction prompts us to ask why have we in Victorian Studies become so invested in the popular in recent years? How have certain theoretical fields such as gender studies, material culture/thing theory, post-colonial theory, etc. contributed to this rapid increase in interest? What does the popular do for us as scholars that the “canon” does not, or can we still think in terms of canonical and non-canonical texts in Victorian Studies? Is it still possible to think of a standard Victorian canon in a post-Google age when so many previously unavailable texts are now available at the tips of our fingers? How is the inclusion of the popular in the classroom changing Victorian Studies for our students? 

Topics might include:

  • Sensation fiction (Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Mrs. Henry (Ellen) Wood, Rhoda Broughton, Charles Reade)
  • Adventure fiction (Frederick Marryat, M. P. Shiel, R. M. Ballantyne, Bessie Marchant)
  • Speculative fiction (Edward Bulwer-Lytton)
  • Spiritualism, Mesmerism, or the Occult (Margaret Oliphant, Florence Marryat, Helena P. Blavatsky, Andrew Lang, Richard Marsh, Marie Corelli)
  • Drama and melodrama (George Meredith, Fanny Kemble, Caroline Norton, George Du Maurier, Fanny Stevenson, Lloyd Osborne, Dion Boucicault, Gilbert and Sullivan)
  • Satire and parody
  • Mystery and Detective fiction (E. W. Hornung, Charles Warren Adams, George W.M. Reynolds)
  • New Woman fiction (Amy Levy, Ouida, George Gissing, Mona Caird, Charlotte Mew, Sarah Grand, Olive Schreiner)
  • Sentimental or religious texts (Catherine Gore, members of the Booth Family, George MacDonald, Charlotte Yonge)

This roundtable welcomes submissions that address these questions and many more from scholars whose work examines the spectrum of Victorian popular fiction. Please submit a 250-word abstract and a one-page CV. Submit abstracts online by September 30th at https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/15788.