International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts

With dozens of nonfiction books on Joss Whedon’s works from Buffy toAvengers, one critical area has been ignored: Whedon’s comics. In fact, he’s written several series for Marvel and DC, along with independents and the many issues of Angel, Buffy, and Serenity comics for IDW and Dark Horse. While a few isolated essays have tackled Buffy season eight or Whedon’s X-Men run, there is no anthology devoted to only Whedon comics. Now that’s about to change.

Essays on any aspect of Whedon’s comics (as described below) are welcome. The completed essays should be 4000-5000 words. Essays must adhere to MLA format and be friendly and approachable, yet academic in scope and content. New papers or presented conference papers rather than reprints are appreciated. This collection is not yet under contract, but I have several interested publishers who are awaiting a list of essays to be included. McFarland, who publishes most of the Buffy criticism collections, will likely be on board.

Proposal Guidelines: Please send a 350-500 word summary of your proposed essay pasted into your email, along with a short professional bio or cover letter.

Direct inquiries and proposals can be sent to Valerie Estelle Frankel, pop culture author and professor, at valerie at calithwain.com with a subject of WHEDON SUBMISSION.

Abstracts are due Aug 31, Complete papers Nov 30, 2014.

Essays on both canon and “less official” Whedon comics are welcome, as are comparisons between Whedon comics and other comics or other Whedon works. Discussion of comic conventions from canon to art to gender issues are also appreciated.  Other areas, like comparing Whedon’s Avengers movie, Agents of SHIELD, Doctor Horrible, or other shows to comics are also possible. On the shows, Buffy is compared to Spider-Man, Superman and Power Girl, Angel is compared to Batman so much Boreanaz was offered the role, Dark Willow parallels Dark Phoenix, Cordy and Fred are called Wonder Woman, and Xander and Giles are compared to Jimmy Olsen and Alfred…there’s paper material there, too. This anthology welcomes established Whedon scholars as well as enthusiastic new writers.

Which comics are Whedon’s? Canon comics include the following Whedon products (as Whedon wrote or supervised them).

BUFFYVERSE

Fray

Tales of the Slayers

Tales of the Vampires

Buffy: The Origin (reprinted in Buffy Omnibus 1)

Angel: Long Night’s Journey (#1-4) (reprinted in Angel: Omnibus 1)

“Always Darkest” (reprinted in Myspace Dark Horse Presents #4 or available online)

Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season Eight (Whedon wrote #1-5, 10, 11, 16-19)

Angel: After the Fall, Angel: The End, and spin-offs

Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season Nine (Whedon wrote #1-2)

Angel & Faith

Buffy Season Ten and Angel & Faith Vol. 2  2014-

See http://valeriefrankel.wordpress.com/2014/06/29/a-guide-to-the-buffy-and-angel-comics/ for a more elaborate Buffyverse comics guide and reading order.

X-MEN

Astonishing X-Men vol. 3: (#1-24) & Giant Size Astonishing X-Men #1 (reprinted as the collections Astonishing X-Men: Gifted, Dangerous, Torn, Unstoppable)

“Teamwork” (in Giant Size X-Men #3, available online)

SERENITY

Serenity: Those Left Behind

Serenity: Better Days

Serenity: The Shepherd’s Tale

“Serenity: Firefly Class 03-K64 – It’s Never Easy” (available online) by Zack Whedon

Serenity: Leaves on the Wind by Zack Whedon

DOCTOR HORRIBLE

Dr. Horrible and Other Horrible Stories by Zack Whedon

OTHER

“Some Steves” (in Stan Lee Meets The Amazing Spider-Man #1)

Runaways vol. 2 (#25-30) (reprinted as Dead End Kids)

Superman/Batman #26 (p. 20-21)

Sugarshock 1-3 (reprinted in Myspace Dark Horse Presents #1)

Please contact Valerie Estelle Frankel at valerie @ calithwain.com with any questions.

Call for papers – ‘Rethinking Early Photography’: 16th-17th June 2015, University of Lincoln

Keynotes: Kate Flint, Lindsay Smith, Kelley Wilder

Attitudes to photography have undergone a radical shift in recent times. Partly in response to these contemporary changes, historians, curators and photographic practitioners have begun to re-examine older forms of photography: exploring the wide variety of historical technologies and techniques, finding surprising ways in which images were manipulated and determining how an ideology of photographic realism was maintained. Yet there remains a need for scholars to explore questions of early photographic ‘authorship’, singularity and objectivity in much greater detail.

Scholarly studies of nineteenth-century photography have been heavily influenced by later theoretical constructions. As an alternative, Daniel Novak has posited a ‘Victorian theory of photography’. Yet this theory remains unelaborated. Similarly, Elizabeth Edwards and others have called for a move away from the traditional Art History model of analysing photography. This interdisciplinary conference will explore the question of what such an analysis, and such a theory, might look like.

Possible questions and areas of interest for the conference include:

•           How do technological narratives influence our understanding of photography?

•           Photography as a business; photographers as workers.

•           The hegemony of nineteenth-century photographic realism, and resistances to it.

•           Can/should we do away with the Art History model of photography?

•           Alternatives to the photographer-as-author model of photographic exhibition and analysis.

•           To what extent can we think of photography as being separate to other print and visual media?

•           The role of photography in the creation of nineteenth-century celebrity.

•           Early photography as represented in literature, art and film.

•           Photographs as networks; photographs as objects.

•           When does ‘early’ photography end?

•           Does digital photography allow us to ‘read back’ the performativity of images from earlier periods? How might the revival of Victorian photographic techniques by current practitioners influence historians?

Organisers: Owen Clayton, Jim Cheshire, and Hannah Field.

To submit proposals for 20 minute papers, please send an abstract of 200-250 words to rethinkingphotography@gmail.com<mailto:rethinkingphotography@gmail.com>. The deadline is 12th Jan 2015, 5pm (GMT).

Call for chapters: ‘Mediated Pedagogies’

What stories are told about teaching and learning on television? And how do these stories, in fictional and factual genres, reflect, refract and construct myths, anxieties and pleasures about teaching and learning?

This edited collection will examine the ways in which particular representations explore, engage with and model pedagogic assumptions and approaches. The chapters could explore, but are in no way restricted to, for example:

        •       the construction and implications of different pedagogic models, e.g., training, apprenticeship, experiential, reflective;

        •       assumptions and tensions around teaching, learning and being a learner;

        •       evidence of ‘education’ – cultural capital, factual recall, know-how, know-how-to;

        •       the political economy of TV – public service/commercial contexts and pedagogic representations;

        •       how particular ‘learning journeys’ are manifested;

        •       the relationships between particular representations and wider educational policy debates;

        •       learning relationships (tutor/student, mentor/mentee etc.);

        •       the modelling of pedagogy/andragogy/heutagogy;

        •       historical/generic shifts and consistencies;

        •       the generation of dialogue between TV texts and their paratexts;

        •       manifestations of power, oppression and emancipation.

This brief list gives some idea of programmes that are explicitly concerned with education and pedagogic contexts, but should not be read as prescriptive or limiting – representations of teaching and learning will also be found in less obvious places.

Jamie’s Dream School

Mr Drew’s School for Boys

Tool Academy

Educating Essex/Yorkshire

Bad Education

Chalk

Summer Heights High

Waterloo Road

Big School

Teachers

The Unteachables

Campus

Fresh Meat

The Wire

The Last Chance School

The Roux Scholarship

Chef’s Protege

Masterchef

Ladette to Lady

Hidden Talent

Faking It

In the first instance expressions of interest are welcomed in the form of a 200-300 word outline proposal for a chapter, together with a very brief biography. Writers of the most interesting proposals will then be contacted with a view to developing the outline into a 5-6,000 word chapter.

Please note that there is no contract with a publisher at this stage, although Palgrave Macmillan have expressed interest in the proposal. A further approach will be made when a compelling package of outlines has been assembled.

Expressions of interest by October 1st 2014 please, and informal queries and discussion welcomed in the meantime.

Call for Papers: ‘Victorian Modernities’

Co-sponsored by the Centre for Victorian Literature and Culture (University of Kent) and the Dickens Project (University of California, Santa Cruz) at the University of Kent

25-27 June 2015

With keynote speakers Professor Jonathan Grossman (UCLA) and Dr Ruth Livesey (Royal Holloway) and featuring a magic lantern show performed by Joss Marsh and David Francis from the Kent Museum of the Moving Image

On 9 June 1865 at 3.30pm, Charles Dickens came close to losing his life when the South Eastern train in which he was travelling from Folkestone to London derailed while crossing a viaduct near Staplehurst in Kent. While Dickens and his travelling companions – Ellen Ternan and her mother – survived, ten passengers were killed and forty were injured. The accident affected him greatly, and he continued to suffer ‘sudden rushes of terror, even when riding in a hansom cab’, as he confessed a year after the event. The grim ghost story that emerged from this traumatic experience to be published in All the Year Round – ‘No. 1 Branch Line. The Signalman’ – contrasts markedly with the ebullient celebration of railway speed in ‘A Flight’ – his earlier account of travelling from London to Paris for Household Words. While Dickens’s early responsiveness to the symbolism of the railway and embrace of the connections enabled by new technological and industrial processes may have made him a ‘leader of the steam-whistle party par excellence’ as Ruskin claimed, his writing also resonates with many of the anxieties and instabilities we associate with modernity.

The 150^th anniversary of the Staplehurst railway accident in June 2015 provides us with an occasion to reflect upon the ambivalence that distinguished the Victorians’ multifaceted engagement with the complex concept we now refer to as modernity. We welcome proposals that address any aspect of Victorian modernities and especially encourage interdisciplinary approaches. Topics may include but are not limited to:

• ·      Modern mobilities: transport, travel and tourism
• ·      Victorian New Media: print, audio and visual technologies
• ·      Cosmopolitanism and the Victorian global imagination
• ·      Industrial fatigue, shock and trauma
• ·      Victorian advances in science and medicine
• ·      Neo-Victorianism
• ·      Commodity culture and consumerism
• ·      Modern spaces and temporalities, including the city
• ·      Victorian avant-garde movements and/or new genres
• ·      New Victorian social types: new women, decadents, dandies etc
• ·      Narratives of belatedness, decay, apocalypse or nostalgia: challenges or resistances to modernity in the Victorian period

Deadline for proposals (20 minute papers): 31 January 2015

Please submit 300 word abstracts for 20 minute papers to: victorianmodernities2015@gmail.com

Enquiries can be sent to Cathy Waters (c.waters@kent.ac.uk) or Wendy Parkins (w.j.parkins@kent.ac.uk)

Call for Papers: Special edition of Symbiosis: A Journal of Transatlantic Literary and Cultural Relations on the ‘Irish Transatlantic: Act of Union (1800) to the Present Day’

The Autumn 2015 issue of Symbiosis: A Journal of Transatlantic Literary and Cultural Relations will take as its focus the literary and cultural exchange between Ireland and the Americas from the Act of Union (1800) to the present day. We seek to provide a window onto the expansive and multifarious nature of Irish transatlantic studies, publishing a range of articles which illustrate the depth and breadth of contemporary scholarship in this area. Despite the unquestionable historical, material and political connections between these two geographical locations, the Irish dimension to transatlantic studies is often overlooked. Burgeoning interest in transatlantic studies has led to the publication of innovative book series on the topic; while this is an exciting move in scholarship, the number of texts that display sustained engagement with Irish transatlantic concerns is surprisingly low. Similarly, although the historiography of the Irish diaspora is a rich field, transatlantic Irish literary and cultural studies is an uneven area of inquiry; notably, while the Famine years have received plentiful commentary, there is a dearth of scholarship considering the decades preceding this.

We hope to touch upon emergent areas of enquiry, such as spatial mappings of Atlantic geography attendant to the richly rhizomatic nature of transatlantic exchange; examinations of Irish-American ethnic identity informed by critical race studies; and the impact of digital humanities on the field at large. The editors’ research interests lie in early nineteenth century and contemporary literary culture so they would be particularly receptive to articles investigating transatlantic exchange within these periods.

Potential topics may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Methodologies and/or mappings for Irish transatlantic study
• Transatlantic applications of (post)colonial theory
• Gender across Atlantic space
• Religion and spiritual practices
• Transatlantic intersectionality
• The role and function of literary form
• Effects of the Act of Union on the publishing trade
• Transatlantic circulations and critical receptions of texts
• Exchange of correspondence and letters
• Areas of consonance and dissonance between cross-currents of diasporic and migrant experience
• Northern Irish exchange with North America
• Replication and development of local and/or regional Irish identities after migration
• The Big House in literary and cultural imagination(s)
• Transatlantic medical humanities
• Cultural performance, theatre and performing arts (particularly music and dance)
• Contemporary constructions of Irish-American identity in popular culture
• Critical race studies and ‘white innocence’
• Irish folklore and Celtic mythology within North America

We are seeking articles of between 5,000 and 7,000 words in length (inclusive of notes and bibliographic material), written in accordance with MLA style. Deadline for submissions: 31st December 2014; submissions should be sent to muireann.crowley@ed.ac.uk and a.c.garden@sms.ed.ac.uk.

The Speculative Literature Foundation is looking for volunteer jurors willing to read roughly 10-15 applications each (a few pages, along with a writing sample up to 10,000 words), over the space of about a month for the Gulliver Travel Research Grant. (You would be joining other jurors already working for the grant.) One writer will be awarded $800 for the travel grant to be used to cover airfare, lodging, and/or other travel expenses to assist in speculative literature research for their work.

The apocalypse has often been the narrative and thematic subject of millennial media. We invite essays for a collection that explores the topics/themes/ideas in and socio-cultural implications of apocalyptic media in the millennium (2000-2015). Within this context, the term apocalypse can be interpreted in the broadest sense. We seek essays that critically engage every stage of the apocalypse from initial threat through aftermath and reconstruction. We intend to focus primarily on TV series and theatrical films. Tentatively, the book will include sections about apocalyptic subjects related to The Infected, Natural Disaster, Unnatural Disaster, and Alien Invasion.

We anticipate that this collection will include 16-20 essays, and as a working guide, the essays should be 3500-4500 words. Essays must adhere to the most current MLA format.

Submission Guidelines: Please send a 500-word proposal in Word, followed by a short bibliography showing the paper’s scholarly and theoretical context. Please also include a short professional description of yourself.

We are particularly interested in essays that include analyses of two or more films or single TV series, with special consideration given to television series and other forms of new media. At this stage of the project, no further essays will be accepted on The Walking Dead, Godzilla (2014), Fido, The World’s End, This is the End, Sleepy Hollow (TV), Supernatural (TV), Children of Men, Cloverfield, and Pacific Rim.

Submission deadline: July 12, 2014

Direct inquires and proposals to: theapocalypsebook@gmail.com

Editors: Amanda Firestone, Leisa A. Clark, and Mary F. Pharr

The Victorian Period in Twenty-First Century Children’s Literature:

Representations and Revisions, Adaptations and Appropriations

A significant aim of contemporary literature for young people is to provide a window into a variety of historical periods and cultural milieus. Such representations of the past have educational, creative, and political resonances, reflecting both on historical periods and contemporary values. However, since the turn of the twenty-first century, we seem to have reached a critical mass of works for children that engage the Victorian period in particular.

Perhaps the most visible form that this trend has taken is Neo-Victorianism, a literary and cultural phenomenon that has shaped contemporary fiction for children and young adults through the general prevalence and popularity of Neo-Victorian series such as the Enola Holmes novels and the Gemma Doyle trilogy. A recent special issue on the child in Neo-Victorian Studies also indicates that the critical discussion inspired by this genre has specific implications for studies of youth culture.

However, Victorian influences and impulses extend beyond works that can be categorized as Neo-Victorian. Historical fiction and timeslip fantasy set in the Victorian period interact with the past through placing the modern reader in the position of the nineteenth-century child, while steampunk fiction imagines alternate histories and technologies that emerge from the nexus of Victorian culture. Contemporary texts also engage Victorian fiction through adaptations and retellings: films such as Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (2010) and Disney’s Treasure Planet (2002) reconfigure the iconic works of Lewis Carroll and Robert Louis Stevenson for a twenty-first century audience, as do intertextual retellings such as April Lindner’s Catherine and Cara Lockwood’s Wuthering High, both young adult novels that update and revise the narrative of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights.

This proposed volume seeks essays that analyze how twenty-first century texts for young audiences across a variety of media–including print, film, television, and digital formats–interact with Victorian literature and culture. What do such works reveal about contemporary understandings or assumptions regarding Victorian values and sensibilities? What has made the Victorian era such a productive and inspiring space for so many authors and young audiences of the twenty-first century? What is lost and what might be gained by reframing a text for Victorian adults for a contemporary audience of young people?

 Topics may include but are not limited to

▪       the Victorian text as intertext in contemporary literature

▪       neo-Victorian literature

▪       steampunk fiction

▪       representations of the Victorian past in time-slip fantasy and/or ghost stories

▪       contemporary retellings of iconic Victorian stories

▪       the portrayal of the Victorian period in contemporary nonfiction

▪       film adaptations of Victorian literature

▪       representations of Victorian cultural icons (Queen Victoria, Charles Darwin,  Jack the Ripper)

▪       Victorian sensibilities and aesthetics as influences on contemporary fiction

▪       historical fiction set in the Victorian period

We are currently seeking a book contract for this volume. Submit a 500-word abstract, along with a working bibliography and a brief, up-to-date CV by August 1, 2014 to Sara K. Day and Sonya Sawyer Fritz at Vic21Collection@gmail.com. Completed essays of 5000-7000 words will be due by March 1, 2015.

46th Annual Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)
April 30-May 3, 2015
Toronto, Ontario
Host: Ryerson University

Hotel: The Fairmont Royal York

Session Title: Spectral Uprisings as Imperialist Critique: Rethinking the Anglo-Indian Gothic

Session Chair: Melissa Edmundson Makala

Session Description:
This panel invites submissions that examine and reevaluate the supernatural literature that arose out of the British Raj. Exploring this area allows us to ask larger questions, such as: What is the place of Anglo-Indian Gothic within the broader genre of Imperial Gothic? Can postcolonial theory be used to interpret the colonial Indian Gothic? How is ghostly activity a form of native rebellion that reflects very real fears behind these fictional tales? How were writers influenced by the work of Kipling and why has his work dominated the genre for so long? What literary influence have Anglo-Indian women had on this genre?

In particular, this panel aims to explore how the Anglo-Indian Gothic was an important cultural statement on the anxieties that existed between the British colonizers and their native Indian subjects. The genre thus provides an alternative way of looking at the negative effects of imperialism and provides a place for subversive social commentaries disguised within an entertaining Gothic tale. Anglo-Indian Gothic writers offer glimpses into the British imperial world of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and their ghost stories offer additional insight for modern-day readers about the impact the British colonial presence had on the countries and peoples under the dominion of the Empire at its heights.

Suggested topics for this panel include: ghosts, second sight, madness, disease, violence/crime, dead/undead bodies, cultural anxiety, revenge, colonial children, the occult, reincarnation, curses, haunted dwellings, Gothic representations of the Indian Uprising, the Gothic landscape, Indian writers, reappraisals of Kipling, Anglo-Indian women writers, gender issues, and publication histories of Anglo-Indian Gothic works.

Submission Deadline: September 30, 2014

This year, NeMLA is switching to a user-based system to accept and track abstract submissions. In order to submit an abstract using the button for a CFP entry, you must sign up with NeMLA and log in. Using this new system, you can manage your personal information and review and update your abstract following submission. Interested participants can access the session information and submit abstracts by clicking on the following link:

https://nemla.org/convention/2015/cfp.html#cfp15256

Interested participants may submit abstracts to more than one NeMLA session; however, panelists can only present one paper (panel or seminar). Convention participants may present a paper at a panel and also present at a creative session or participate in a roundtable.

Please direct enquiries to Dr. Melissa Makala: me.makala@gmail.com.