International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts

Benjamin J. Robertson, University of Colorado, Boulder

I seek proposals for essays that explore the relationship between late capitalist culture/economics and texts which, in one manner or another, are “merely” generic. According to Fredric Jameson and others, late capitalism is characterized by new forms of business and financial organization, developments in media and the relationships amongst media, and planned obsolescence. By “merely generic,” I refer to those texts in any medium that seem less interested in pushing generic boundaries than in maintaining or perhaps hyperbolizing them (such as books by Robert Jordan and David Eddings) and/or belong to an obvious genre, but turn away from that broader genre in order to develop their own environments and/or conventions on massive scales (such as the expanded Stars Wars Universe). These texts may be: swiftly produced, developed in explicit and careful relation to others in their series or world, targeted at an existing audience already familiar with the genre, and crafted for easy consumption and quick obsolescence.

How do such merely generic texts define the cultural landscape of the postmodern/contemporary world? How does this cultural landscape condition them?

Possible topics include:

+The audience for merely generic texts. Can anyone enjoy them, or are they only consumable by those who have an established, if not hypertrophied, relationship to the broader genre in question?

+The development of groups of texts that predate the advent of late capitalism, but transform in some way afterwards or otherwise provide antecedents for more contemporary works, such as The Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew Mysteries.

+Proprietary universes—such as the Stars Wars, Star Trek, or Dragonlance universes—and questions of authorship.

+Fan fiction and other non-canonical or heterodox narratives set within established universes.

+Problems of continuity in the mega-text.

+The relationship between such merely generic texts and gaming, whether tabletop RPGs, first-person shooters, MMORGs, or other types of gaming.

+The economic or cultural conditions that govern the production of merely generic texts, such as the nigh-injunction that, after Tolkien, works of heroic fantasy should be published as trilogies.

+Mass-produced series of books for children, such as Goosebumps and Animorphs. How do these texts prepare youngsters for subsequent late capitalist consumption?

+The shift, especially in film, from generic concerns to the logic of the tentpole and/or the franchise.

+The development of the massive multimedia text in which the same storylines develop in print, in films, on television, etc. simultaneously.

+The residue of genre in a post-generic world. With increased

specializiation and fragmentation in daily life, does genre make any sense as a cultural form? Does genre become, or return to being, one niche product amongst others?

Obviously, numerous other avenues of inquiry exist and many of those mentioned here dovetail with one another. Please inquire at the email address below with suggestions or ideas.

Although I will consider a range of approaches, I am especially interested in essays that situate groups of texts or series in an historical moment or cultural frame. I am less interested in thematic and formal readings of individual texts.

Please send proposals of approximately 500 words as attachments (.doc, .docx, .pdf, .rtf, or .odt) to benjamin.j.robertson@colorado.edu by 15 January 2014. Again, also feel free to contact me with questions or other concerns.

Theme: Comics, Multimodality, and Composition

For 43.1 (Spring 2015)

Guest Editor: Dale Jacobs, University of Windsor

DESCRIPTION

Over the past ten years, composition has increasingly embraced writing and reading in multiple modes (words, but also images, sounds, video, spatial relationships, gestures, and other sign systems). In this movement towards multimodality, comics have been largely ignored. Comics, however, provide rich ground for exploration in relation to multimodality and composition. This special issue begins with the idea that comics are a valuable space of practice for multimodal literacies, both inside and outside the classroom.

Like other multimodal texts, comics form a multifaceted environment in which meaning is negotiated between creators and readers. Comics add another dimension to multimodality, which has often focused on digital texts, and can be used to link traditional alphabetic literacies with newer digital ones. Furthermore, as Michael Bitz argues in When Commas Meet Kryptonite:

Classroom Lessons from the Comic Book Project, “In the context of new media and literacies, comics are a rare bridge between the canon of reading skills that children are expected to master in school and the literacies that they embrace on their own and out of school” (11). Not only are comics important multimodal texts in their own right, but they can also function as an important bridge to other literacies both inside and outside the classroom.

This special issue of Composition Studies will explore how comics can be productively used in writing theory and practice. Articles, sequential narratives, short reflective essays, and Course Designs are all welcome, as are pieces on comics aimed at the “Composing With” section of the journal.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

• Comics as a way to connect reading and composing multimodal texts
• Comics literacies and digital literacies.
• Comics in relation to the NCTE Position Statement on Multimodal Literacies,
• the WPA Outcomes Statement, and/or the Framework for Success in
• Postsecondary Writing.
• Comics and/as collaboration.
• Comics, rhetoric, and the teaching of writing.
• Comics theory and the teaching of writing.
• Comics as a way to examine how students conceive and experience literacies
• outside of school and possible connections to school literacies.
• Specific ways to use comics in the composition classroom.
• Examinations of how Comics Studies can inform Composition Studies and vice versa

TIMELINE

Full-length submissions due August 1, 2014

Submission determinations sent by November 1, 2014

Revised manuscripts due February 13, 2015

CONTACTS

Direct queries about the special issue and full-length manuscripts in .doc

or .docx formats to Dale Jacobs at djacobs@uwindsor.ca.

Direct general questions about Composition Studies to compstudies@uc.edu.

Visit our website for more information:

http://www.uc.edu/journals/composition-studies.html.

——————————

Laura Micciche

Associate Professor of English

University of Cincinnati

Cincinnati, OH 45221

513.556/6519

laura.micciche@uc.edu

For a panel on the academic track at Loncon3 – the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention: http://academicloncon3.wordpress.com/

Science/Speculative and Fantasy fiction are genres in which many things (arguably anything) is possible. This ought to include exploring alternatives to normative and heteronormative representations of sexuality, sexual identities, practices and activities. On this panel our aim will be to consider how, why and to what extent these non-realist genres push the boundaries of representation relating to sexuality. Proposals are invited for academic papers on topics including, but not limited to:

Sex and relationships in SF&F

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Queer and Asexual representation in SF&F

LGBQA authors of SF&F

Queer SF&F

BDSM in/and SF&F

Alternative Sexualities in SF&F

Relationships between SF&F and queer theory and politics

Authorial responsibility regarding representation of sexualities, sexual identities, practices and activities

Potentials and possibilities for non-normative representations of sexualities in SF&F

In particular, papers are sought on the work of the guests of honour for Loncon3 – Iain M. Banks, John Clute, Malcolm Edwards, Chris Foss, Jeanne Gomoll, Robin Hobb and Bryan Talbot.

Please send a 300 word abstract and brief biography to j.roberts@bbk.ac.uk by December 1st 2013.

Dr Jude Roberts

Associate Lecturer

London Semester Programme

Birkbeck College

University of London

For a book-length collection entitled War Gothic, we invite essays on the intersection of the gothic tradition in literature, art, cinema, television, as well as in visual and digital media, with the representation of war and the military in its various manifestations.

Submissions should fall roughly into either the category of “Literary Gothic” or “Visual Gothic,” which may extend from engravings, paintings and posters to video games and online culture. Historical reference points range from civil wars to national, colonial, and post-colonial conflicts, the Cold War and post-Cold War global conflicts.

Submissions might address literary and artistic responses to war framed within gothic traditions, but also the use of these gothic traditions in the discourse of war itself, i.e. in non-literary texts like historiography, non-fiction, military manuals, etc.

Strongly encouraged are submissions, especially in the areas of visual media, which move beyond representational analysis to address the overlap of and complicity between gothic discourse and the realm of military experience, i.e. the development and exchange of technologies, of financial, organizational, institutional, and logistical structures.

Topics ranging across the wide historical scope of the Gothic in different national traditions might include, yet are not limited to:

–         military mobilization: imagining the enemy

–         war propaganda: heart and minds

–         the discourse of militarism and militarization

–         the experience of combat

–         the space of the battle field

–         the home front: shelters, homes, hospitals

–         the veteran: medicine, trauma, biopolitics

–         gender discourse: warriors, soldiers, cannon fodder

–         military technology: destruction and reconstruction

–         high-tech/low-tech war: from swords to drones

–         remembering war: memoirs and monuments

Abstracts of no more than 300 words and a short CV should be submitted to the editors by December 31, 2013 . Final essays should be between 6000-8000 words, in MLA style, and will be due June 30, 2014.

The two co-editors of the collection are Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet (University of Lausanne), editor, with Justin E. Edwards, of The Gothic in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture (2012) and author of The Poetics and Politics of the American Gothic (2010); and Steffen Hantke (Sogang University, Seoul), editor of Horror: Creating and Marketing Fear (2004), Caligari’s Heirs: The German Cinema of Fear after 1945 (2007), American Horror Film: The Genre at the Turn of the Millennium (2010), and, with Rudolphus Teeuwen, of Gypsy Scholars, Migrant Teachers, and the Global Academic Proletariat: Adjunct Labor in Higher Education (2007).

For all questions, proposals, and rough draft submissions, please contact Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet (agnieszka.soltysikmonnet@unil.ch) and Steffen Hantke (steffenhantke@gmail.com or shantke@sogang.ac.kr) before December 31, 2013.

Proposals are invited for essays which explore non-normative representations of gender and sexuality in a range of contemporary popular fantasy, including, but not limited to: tv episodes and series, films, computer games and MMORPGs, novels and short stories, comics and graphic novels, role-playing games and fanfiction.

In creating a fantasy world anything is possible, therefore writers, artists, directors and producers of fantasy worlds must acknowledge a degree of responsibility for their world beyond that of other creators. Given that they can create a world and its inhabitants to be any way at all, why it is that a fantasy world is created -like this- is a valid question to ask.

This collection will consider the ways in which contemporary writers, artists, directors and producers use the opportunities offered by popular fantasy to exceed or challenge gender and sexuality norms. In contrast to many claims made about the fantasy genre being necessarily conservative/reactionary, this collection will explore the ways in which this genre can be and is being used to reflect on the contingency of our gender and sexuality norms.

With this in mind, proposals are invited for essays of c.7000 words exploring representations of the following in contemporary popular fantasy across all media and cultural formats:

Trans* characters;
Non-binary gender, genderqueer and genderfluid characters;
LGB characters;
Queer characters;
Asexual characters;
Cisgender women and men characters which challenge or do not conform to heteronormativity;
Non-monogamy and non-monogamous characters and relationships;
Non-normative femininity/masculinity;
BDSM and alternative sexualities and sexual practices;
Intersections between gender and sexuality and race, class, dis/ability, mental health, and national and regional identities.

In addition to:

The work of LGBTQI or poly-identified writers, artists, directors, producers, etc. in all fields of contemporary popular fantasy;
Relationships between popular fantasy and feminism, gender studies, queer theory and politics;
Authorial responsibility regarding the representation of gender and sexuality;
Potentials and possibilities for non-normative representations of gender and sexuality in popular fantasy.

These lists are far from complete and should be taken only as a starting point, rather than definitive.

The intention in this collection is engage directly and explicitly with an enormously successful popular genre which is often overlooked by literary and cultural criticism, rather than to look at ‘the fantastic’ broadly conceived. This is not to ignore the permeable boundaries of popular fantasy and the ways in which this genre is in continual dialogue with other genres. Essays exploring liminality – as long as they maintain a primary focus on gender and sexuality – are welcome.

The scope of the contemporary is as unstable as the boundaries of genre and therefore is open to discussion. Generally speaking texts under discussion should have been produced, released or published within the last 20 years, however if there is a clear reason for expanding this timeframe earlier texts may be considered. Please do get in touch to discuss your ideas.

Once selected the table of contents and abstracts will be submitted to Ashgate Publishing, who have expressed an interest. Final inclusion in the published volume will be subject to peer review.

Please send proposals of 500 words plus a short biography to j.roberts@bbk.ac.uk by 15th December.

Dr Jude Roberts
Associate Lecturer
London Semester Programme
Birkbeck College
University of London

How does twenty-first century genre-literature engage with the history and literature of the Middle Ages? This session invites submissions which explore genre medievalisms from any angle. How do contemporary social and cultural trends and concerns intersect with the medieval in genre fiction? Are shifts within a genre or across genres discernible? How do genre conventions shape the use of medieval material and vice versa? Do modern works reflect medieval history or literature? How do authors approach the Middle Ages and medieval material? What roles do audiences and/or publishers play? How important the idea the a work reflects historical reality, and to whom does it matter? What is the role of research? These are just some of the questions papers might consider.

Papers addressing works first published in the twenty-first century, including ongoing series which may have begun earlier, are sought. They may address individual works or series, the corpus of any author or broad trends in any popular genre including, but not limited to: fantasy, science fiction, crime, westerns, children and young adult fiction, horror, historical fiction and cross-genre works.

The session is sponsored by the Tales After Tolkien Society www.talesaftertolkien.org which supports all scholarly work on medievalism in genre literature.  All submissions should be directed to Dr Helen Young via Helen.young@sydney.edu.au by 15^th September 2013. They should conform to conference policies and be accompanied by a Participant Information Form, available here.

We are currently seeking additional chapters to broaden two collections of essays that address time travel in the media. The collections, to be published by McFarland, will be edited by Joan Ormrod (Manchester Metropolitan University) and Matthew Jones (UCL).

The first collection addresses time travel as a genre, including its history, narratives, tropes and cultural contexts. The second addresses the philosophical and theoretical concepts that underpin and are utilized by time travel stories.

We are interested in a broad range of media formats, including but not limited to film, television, video games, new media, comics, radio, anime and manga.

The collections are aimed at:

• undergraduate and postgraduate students in film and media, cultural studies, philosophy, social sciences, history and science programmes.

• science fiction and fantasy fandoms

We are currently inviting 500-word proposals for 5000-7000 word chapters.

We received an incredibly positive response to our first call for papers and are now seeking to fill a number of clearly defined gaps in the collections. As such, we are interested in chapters that address:

– Philosophical, theoretical and scientific approaches to time travel.

– Time travel in various cultures:

• manga, anime and/or broader Asian popular culture texts.
• Time travel in Bollywood and/or broader Indian culture.
• Non-Western cultures – eg Latin America.
• Western cultures beyond the US and the UK, such as Australia, Europe and Canada.

– Case studies of specific time travel texts within either their socio-cultural or theoretical and philosophical contexts.

Proposals and a 50-word biography should be sent to timetravelcollection@gmail.com

Deadline: 14th September 2013

http://www.loncon3.org/call-posters-science-and-social-science

Call for Posters
Sponsored by Anglia Ruskin University.

Loncon 3, the World Science Fiction Convention, 2014, is calling for posters for its Science and Social Science Exhibits. We welcome posters which will present the cutting edge of research in our universities.

Poster Proposals to: Dr. Nicholas Jackson, Warwick University

Nicholas.Jackson AT warwick.ac.uk
Deadline for Poster Proposals: 1st April 2014 (acceptances by 1st May).
Presenters of accepted poster will have free access to the Exhibits Hall that can be upgraded to a full membership for £50.

For full details, see link.