International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts

Invitation for submissions:

Issue Number 2 – Scheduled for publication in August 2014

Deadline: February 28, 2014

Please, submit through Alambique´s submission web page.

Note:  To submit you must first create or log-in with your bepress account.  If you need assistance with this please contact the Scholar Commons Administrator.

Alambique (ISSN 2167-6577) is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal devoted to scholarly research and criticism in the fields of science fiction and fantasy originally composed in Spanish or Portuguese. Alambique will accept scholarly articles written in English, however, as long as the main focus of the study concentrates on one of the Spanish or Portuguese cultural regions of the world. It will also accept scholarly articles written in Spanish, Portuguese and English that focus on relevant cultural contact areas, i.e. Catalan, Guarani, Nahuatl, etc. In addition, Alambique intends to publish old and/or largely forgotten literary works that helped forge the Spanish and Portuguese tradition in science fiction and fantasy. These texts, whenever possible, will have accompanying English translation.

Alambique currently does not include a review of books section.

Best

Miguel Ángel Fernández Delgado and Juan Carlos Toledano Redondo

____________________________________________________________

Convocatoria:

Número 2 – publicación prevista para agosto del 2014

Fecha límite: 28 de febrero del 2014

Por favor, envíe artículos a través de la página web de entregas de Alambique.

Nota: Para entregar en primer lugar debe crear o iniciar una sesión con su cuenta de bepress. Si necesita ayuda, por favor póngase en contacto con el administrador de Scholar Commons.

Alambique (ISSN 2167-6577) es una revista revisada por pares, de libre acceso, dedicada a la investigación académica y la crítica en los campos de la ciencia-ficción y fantasía compuesta originalmente en español y portugués. Alambique también acepta artículos académicos escritos en inglés, siempre y cuando el enfoque principal del estudio se centre en una de las regiones culturales del español y portugués en el mundo. Alambique también acepta artículos académicos escritos en español, portugués e inglés que se enfoquen en áreas culturales de contacto como el catalán, guaraní, náhuatl, etc.  Además, Alambique tiene la intención de publicar obras literarias antiguas y/o en gran medida olvidadas que ayudaron a forjar la tradición de la ciencia-ficción y la fantasía en español y portugués. Estos textos, siempre que sea posible, tendrán una traducción acompañante en inglés.

Alambique actualmente no incluye una sección de reseñas de libros.

Saludos cordiales de

Miguel Ángel Fernández Delgado y Juan Carlos Toledano Redondo

The deadline for the Call for Papers for the Academic track at Loncon3 is rapidly approaching: it is 31 December!

For details, see http://www.loncon3.org/call_for_papers.php

The Academic Track, embedded within the World Science Fiction Convention in London, is going to be one of the biggest SF and Fantasy academic conferences of 2014, and it is going to take place at what may be one of the most exciting Worldcons — and certainly one of the biggest — for a long time. The venue is spectacular, and it is close to the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich (which is hosting a big Steampunk exhibition to coincide with the Worldcon) as well as being an easy trip into the centre of London too, which has, well, one or two interesting places to visit…! By the time of the convention, my own website, www.fantasticlondon.co.uk, will be able to show you all the places in London worth visiting for their connections with science fiction and fantasy.

The range of what is being covered by the academic programme at Worldcon is enormous, not just literary sf but media sf, gaming, fandom, etc: see the call for papers. But we would still like more offerings of papers on literary sf, and we are still interested in attracting papers on the work of the guests of honour: Robin Hobb (Megan Lindholm), the late Iain M. Banks, John Clute, Bryan Talbot, Jeanne Gomoll or Chris Foss. But if you want to come and talk about your speciality, please do send in an abstract!

This interdisciplinary call for papers invites proposals for an edited volume on zombies in comics and graphic novels through the lens of medical discourse.

Like many tropes in science fiction, the zombie crosses discursive boundaries to become a metaphor used in clinical and scientific literature. For example, it becomes a figurative mediation for patients who experience “zombification” and  the “dehumanizing” effects of illness and/or medical treatment, such as the numbing affect of clinical depression or ataxic effects seen in psychiatric patients who perform the “Thorazine shuffle”—a physical side effect that connotes so much more than the inability to ambulate properly. These are medicalized examples of what Daniel Boon’s “The Zombie as Other: Mortality and the Monstrous in the Post-Nuclear Age” calls the “cultural zombie,” a non-literal figure of zombification engendered through its cultural milieu. However, metaphor is only one of the many iterations of the medicalized zombie.

Rather than understanding the zombie as a manifestation or representation of medical, technological, and ecological anxieties, this collection will explore how the zombie is also transmuted and complicated in graphic texts. While a central section of the text will address plague, contagion, and epidemiology narratives, we seek to move beyond merely identifying the similarities between the etiology of infectious disease and zombie plagues to question how medical discourse constructs and is constructed by popular iconography of the boundaries of life, illness and health.

Our volume will 1)  addresses how science fiction and popular culture influence medicine as much as biomedicine influences science fiction and popular culture, such as the Center For Disease Control’s use of the zombie in their graphic novel public health campaign pertaining to epidemics; 2) reveal how a trope that has become popular across the entire media spectrum speaks to cultural anxieties pertaining to pathology, ecology, and (bio)medicalization in capacities unique to the graphic medium; and 3) explore how (bio)medicalized zombies are prefigured in earlier forms and then complicated in comics and graphic novels vis-à-vis medical discourse, such as Simon Garth, the workaholic executive who is turned into a zombie by a voodoo cult in the 1944 Menace comic anthology.

Possible topics and questions to explore include

• How do voodoo zombies prefigure bio zombies? How does their fantastical and racialized etiology complicate the emergence modern medicine after the fin de siècle?
• How does biomedicine interpret the zombie?
• How does the comic medium represent or complicate zombies in ways other mediums like film cannot?
• What does zombification mean in terms of neuroscience? In terms of epidemiology?
• What are the benefits and risk of using the zombie as a tool for public health? As a metaphor for illness? What kind assumptions do these approaches take? Do these examples reflect or critique actual instances of “living death,” undeath, contagion, or loss of rational agency?
• What does it mean to feel “like a zombie” when on an anti-depressant, anti-psychotic, or chemotherapeutic agent?
• How do families treat or perceive dependent loved ones who have had neurological damage from strokes as zombies that consume their time, resources, and lives?
• Is there a zombification that happens to doctors or medical students as they desensitize their natural abjection to death and affect?
• How can medicine or illness make one feel other than they are?
• How is medicine and illness dehumanizing?

While we welcome submission on the ever-popular Walking Dead series, we are especially interested in earlier (1940s-1970s) images of zombies in comics, graphic pathographies, and super hero iterations (e.g. Marvel Zombies).

Please send 500 word abstracts to Lorenzo Servitje (lserv001@ucr.edu) or Sherryl Vint (sherryl.vint@ucr.edu ) by February 10. 2014.

(abstracts: 30 November 2013, articles: 31 March 2014)

full name / name of organization:
Supernatural Studies Association Journal
contact email:
supernaturalstudies@gmail.com

The Supernatural Studies Journal is now accepting proposals for a themed issue on the supernatural in the nineteenth century (due Winter 2014), guest edited by Janine Hatter and Sara Williams.

Articles may examine any aspect of the representation of the supernatural within the context of worldwide literature, arts and material culture in the nineteenth century. We welcome any approach, but request that authors minimize jargon associated with any single-discipline studies.

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:
folklore & mythology, monstrosity, hybridity, vampires, shapeshifters, goblins, fairies and fairy tales, ghosts and hauntings, demons and angels, possession and/or mind control, death and dying, burial rites, occult, mysticism, spiritualism and séances, spirit photography, religion, superstition, voodoo, culture, philosophy, desire, politics, gender, race, sexuality and class.

Additionally, we are seeking reviews of books that engage with elements of the nineteenth century supernatural (800-1,000 words in length).

For articles: please send a 300-500 word abstract (or complete article, if available) and C.V. by 30 November 2013. All submissions will be acknowledged. Notification of acceptance will be e-mailed by 15 December 2013. If your abstract is accepted, the full article (3,000 – 6,000 words, including references using MLA style) will be 31 March 2014.

For reviews: please send a C.V. and description of the book you would like to review, or alternatively, see the journal’s website for available books.

Further information, including Submission Guidelines, are available at the journal site: supernaturalstudies.org

Please e-mail submissions to both j.hatter@hull.ac.uk and s.williams2@hull.ac.uk. If emailing the journal directly at supernaturalstudies@gmail.com please quote ‘nineteenth century’ in the subject box.

Friday 5th September 2014

University of Westminster

Doctor Who is the BBC’s longest-running drama television series and the world’s longest-running science fiction series. The massive public attention devoted to the show’s 50th anniversary and to its choice of new lead actor confirms that the programme merits serious academic attention. Politics, law and constitutional questions often feature prominently in Doctor Who stories, whether in the form of the Time Lords’ guardianship of the universe, the Doctor’s encounters with British Prime Ministers, or the array of governance arrangements in Dalek society. The show’s politics is also an adventure through time, from the internationalising moralism of the Barry Letts-Terrance Dicks years, the dark satire of Andrew Cartmel’s period as script editor and the egalitarianism of the Russell T. Davies era. Yet the politics and law of Doctor Who have yet to be the subject of wide-ranging scholarship. Proposals for 20 minute papers are therefore invited for a symposium on 5th September 2014, to be held in the University of Westminster’s historic Regent Street building just metres away from BBC headquarters. Possible subjects for papers might include, but are by no means limited to:

• Doctor Who’s ideology

• The Doctor’s political morality

• Comparison of politics of Doctor Who with politics of other

science fiction

• The merits/demerits of Harriet Jones as Prime Minister

• Doctor Who and devolution

• Portrayals of British sovereigns in Doctor Who

• Doctor Who’s politics of class, gender and sexuality

• Fan responses to “political” Doctor Who stories

• International law, intergalactic law and non-interference

• Globalisation and corporate domination

• Satire in Doctor Who

• Politics and law in audio adventures, comic books and novels

• War crimes and genocide

• The politics of UNIT and Torchwood

• The will of villains to secure power

• Political history and political nostalgia in Doctor Who

• Doctor Who’s construction of British national identity

Abstracts should be 250 words in length, and should be accompanied by a 100-word biography of the author. Abstracts should be sent to nicold@wmin.ac.uk – deadline for receipt of abstracts 17 January 2014.

Guillermo del Toro is one of the most interesting people currently involved in genre in its various expressions. He is an artist who embodies his art that comes as a result of his creative passions and deep reflection. One of the elements that make him so interesting is critical reflection on various elements that contribute to his approach at bringing genre to life. This includes his interests in monsters, myth, archetype, metaphor, Carl Jung, the paranormal, and even religion in the form of reactions against his Catholic upbringing. This volume will explore these and other facets that inform and shape del Toro’s approach to genre. I am seeking the submission of abstracts for chapters for this proposed volume. Possible topics may include the following in connection with Guillermo del Toro:

*Medieval Catholicism and its iconography

*Relationship between del Toro’s self-professed atheism/agnosticism and interests in monstrous transcendence

*Monsters as metaphor

*Jungian archetypes

*Joseph Campbell’s mythology

*Gods and monsters as overlapping and co-existing concepts

*Mexican folk creatures

*Lovecraft’s Cthulu mythos

*Faerie

*Paranormal experiences (particularly ghosts)

*Concept of the monstrous sacred

*Primal storytelling on the fantastic as spiritual function

*Fantasy as high art form

*Influence of Mexican culture

*Life experiences (e.g., his work in a morgue, the kidnapping of his father, and his reflections on the Spanish Civil War), and how this relates to his negative views of Catholicism and organized religion

*Bleak House “man cave” memorabilia and grotesque collection as inspiration for imagination

Abstracts of up to 350 words should be sent to my attention as the volume’s at johnwmorehead@msn.com. Submissions will be accepted through November 30. Once contributors are identified a proposal will be submitted to potential publishers. I work as a scholar, editor, writer, and commentator on the fantastic in pop culture. I am co-editor and contributor to The Undead and Theology (Pickwick Publications, 2012), and co-editor of Joss Whedon and Religion (McFarland, 2013). I have written essays on genre for various books and journals, book reviews for the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts and Extrapolation. I am a contributor to Cinefantastique Online and my blog TheoFantastique, and sit on the editorial board for GOLEM: The Journal of Religion and Monsters.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Pulp magazines were a series of mostly English-language, predominantly American, magazines printed on rough pulp 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 pulpArgosy, 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.  Suggested 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, C. L. Moore, Fritz Leiber, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, 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:  Robert Bloch, H. Rider Haggard, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jack London, and Edgar Rice Burroughs 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 Jiory; 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 (such as Charles Middleton’s Ming the Merciless), and more.
• Artists:  Popular cover 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 sex as related to the heroic in the pulps; the savage as hero, the woman as hero, the trickster as hero, etc.
• Film, Television and Graphic Arts:  Pulps in film, television, comics, graphic novels and other forms are especially encouraged.  Possible topics could include film interpretations such as Conan the Barbarian, comic book incarnations of pulp magazines and series; “new weird” reinventions of the pulps such as the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and The Watchmen; fan films; and newer productions, including the recently released Solomon Kane and Conan.
• 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/

• When submitting your paper, abstract, proposal, or panel please include your name, affiliation, and email address. For those submitting a panel, include the name, affiliation, and email address for each participant and note who will be the principle contact and panel chair.
• Abstracts should be approximately 250 words in length.
• Indicate if presentation media is required.  Projectors will be present in most locations, but presenters must supply their own computers.
• A preliminary version of the schedule will usually be posted on our website in January.  Due to the number of panels and participants, we are unable to accommodate individual scheduling requests.  We encourage participants to come for the entire conference.  The final version of the schedule will be distributed in hard copy at the conference with addendums if needed. For privacy reasons we do not publish email addresses in the online version of the program.
• Only one paper is accepted from the same presenting author. All presenters, including invited panel speakers and session chairs, must register and pay the conference registration fee. If you need an early confirmation for visa or budgetary reasons, please indicate this in your submission.

How to Submit Proposals:  Submit proposals through the following website:  http://ncp.pcaaca.org/

Please send all inquires to:

Justin Everett, PhD
Interim Director of Writing Programs
University of the Sciences in Philadelphia
600 S. 43rd St.
Philadelphia, PA 19104
j.everet@usp.edu

or

Jeffrey H. Shanks, RPA
National Park Service
Southeast Archeological Center
2035 E. Paul Dirac Drive
Johnson Building, Suite 120
Tallahassee, FL 32310
jeffrey_shanks@nps.gov