International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts

Call for Papers

For a special issue on “Science Fictions” Studies in the Novel seeks critical responses to the genres of SF.  Essays would consider debates within SF’s various communities of genre and affiliation, as well as across these communities, with an emphasis on the SF novel or writings of any kind by noted SF novelists. Submission deadline is September 1, 2014; all questions and submissions should be directed to studiesinthenovel@unt.edu.

Guest Editor:  Farah Mendlesohn, Professor and Chair of English, Communication, Film and Media at Anglia Ruskin University, author of Rhetorics of Fantasy (Wesleyan 2008), and co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction (2003).

Postmodern Theory, Science Fiction and Race

In Science Fiction Culture, Camille Bacon-Smith comments that: “…when the ethnographer asks the question, ‘What does postmodern culture look like?’ the obvious place to find the answer is the science fiction community.” As a genre that embraces the impossible, science fiction/fantasy is fast becoming recognized as a genre well suited to demonstrate the cultural contradictions postmodern theory highlights.

Postmodern Theory also problematizes the idea of race, exposing it as a constructed aspect of identity. However, ethnic American authors have consistently written postmodern and science fiction/fantasy texts that challenge or question notions of racial identity in order to draw attention to issues of racial representation. This panel seeks to make connections between postmodern theory, racial identity and the genre of science fiction/fantasy in order to draw conclusions about the future of race in a postmodern culture.

Submissions can address (but are not limited to) any of the following: Representation of race in postmodern texts and/or science fiction/ antasy texts, postmodern theory and the science fiction/fantasy genre, ethnic American contributions to postmodern theory and/or
science fiction/fantasy.

By June 30, 2012, please send an abstract of no more than 250 words via email as a word document to: joysanchez@mail.usf.edu.

Call for Chapters:
On the Highway to Hell and Back: Critical Essays on the Television Series Supernatural

One-page Abstracts Due June 20^th, 2012

First complete draft (15-20 pages plus works cited) due by September 20^th, 2012.

Supernatural, now in its seventh season, has gained a cult status and has spawned comic books, novels, fan fiction, and an assortment of companion books.  Like other cult TV shows before it, such as The X-files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Angel, part of the series’ success lies in the way it combines plot and character with serious investigations of folklore, myth, religion, psychology, and family dynamics.  Supernatural’s story arcs have dealt with, and commented on, issues as diverse as fan culture, sexual orientation, father/son conflict, the changing nature of the U.S. family, and the Apocalypse.  This collection of critical essays will be thematic in nature, focusing on the social, psychological, philosophical, religious and mythic themes of the series.  Specifically it will examine how the series addresses horror in a postmodern context through character and story as well as the recurring use of symbols and plot devices such as the music, cars, the crossroads, biblical texts and religious icons.

Possible topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Representations of mythic and folkloric themes: fairy tales, non-Western folklore, urban myth/legend, shape shifters
• Representations of religious themes: God/gods, angels, demons, Satan, Book of Revelations, Western and non-Western religious themes etc
• Monsters and the monstrous in Supernatural
• Gender and sexuality
• Representations of mortality: personifications of Death, reapers, ghosts
• Family: fathers/sons, mothers, family/domesticity as safety, family as danger/curse  hunting as “family business.”
• Post-modernist themes: self-referential humor, the writer as God, representations of fans and fanfiction in the series
• Literary themes: Dracula, Biblical stories, vengeful spirits, the woman in white
• Music in Supernatural: original soundtrack and Dean’s “car tunes”

Please contact Susan A. George (sageorge13@yahoo.com) and Regina Hansen (rhansen@bu.edu) with questions or brief description (no more that 50 words) of your topic and a current CV before submitting an abstract.  One-page Abstracts Due June 20^th, 2012.  First complete draft (15-20 pages plus works cited) due by September 20^th, 2012.

2012 Conference of The Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association (NEPCA) St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York
26-27 October 2012
Proposals by 20 June 2012 (UPDATED)

Proposals are invited from scholars of all levels for papers to be presented in the Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Legend Area.

Presentations will be limited to 15-20 minutes in length (depending on final panel size) and may address any aspect of the intermedia genres of science fiction, fantasy, and/or legend as represented in popular culture produced in any country, any time period, and for any audience. Please see our website

(http://sf-fantasy-legend.blogspot.com/) for further details and ideas.

If you are interested in proposing a paper or panel of papers, please send a proposal of approximately 300 to 500 words and a one to two page CV to both the Program Chair AND to the Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Legend Area Chair at the following addresses (please note “SF/Fantasy/Legend Proposal” in your subject line):

Tim Madigan
Program Chair
tmadigan@sjfc.edu

Michael A. Torregrossa
Science Fiction, Fantasy and Legend Area Chair Popular.Culture.and.the.Middle.Ages@gmail.com
http://sf-fantasy-legend.blogspot.com/

The Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association (NEPCA) is a regional affiliate of the American Culture Association and the Popular Culture Association. NEPCA is an association of scholars in New England and New York, organized in 1974 at the University of Rhode Island. We reorganized and incorporated in Boston in 1992. The purpose of this professional association is to encourage and assist research, publication, and teaching on popular culture and culture studies topics by scholars in the northeast region of the United States. By bringing together scholars from various disciplines, both academic and non-academic people, we foster interdisciplinary research and learning. We publish a newsletter twice per year and we hold an annual conference at which we present both the Peter C. Rollins Book Award and an annual prize.

Membership in NEPCA is required for participation.

Annual dues are currently $30 for full-time faculty and $15 for all other individuals.

Further details are available at http://users.wpi.edu/~jphanlan/NEPCA.html

Preternature Volume 3:1
The Early Modern Witch (1450-1700)

The publication of early witchcraft texts created witches by generating controversy about them. Witch-dramas, pamphlets, testimonies about witch-encounters, sermons, and accounts of trials published the anxieties, related the long standing suspicions, and sensationalised the physical manifestations that made women into witches. Sometimes accompanied by woodcuts, many texts insisted on the reality, materiality, and immediacy of witches and their familiars. In these writings, the early modern witch was represented as both a perpetrator of violence and the victim of it. The early modern witch is thus a fascinating enigma: a legal entity and a neighbourhood resource or nuisance, she purportedly engaged in natural and supernatural forms of wisdom with the potential to heal or harm others, or even herself. The words she spoke could become malefic by intent, if not by content. According to the sensationalist constructions of witchcraft, her body was contaminated by the magics she used: she fed familiars with blood, grew spare parts, could not weep, and would not sink. In accounts focused on bewitchment and possessions, the witch vomited pins or personified pollution and a culturally legitimate cunning-person such as a physician or minister or exorcist acted as curative. Despite the skepticism about witches that followed Reginald Scot’s assertions and the decline of legal examinations trials, the early modern witch is an enduring force in the cultural imagination. Witchcraft continues to be the focus of academic articles, scholarly volumes, digital resources, archaeological.

This issue of Preternature, in association with the “Capturing Witches” conference, invites contributions from any discipline that highlight the cultural, literary, religious, or historical significance of the early English witch. Contributions should be roughly 8,000 – 12,000 words, including all documentation and critical apparatus, adhere to the journal style guide, and be formatted in the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition (style 1, employing endnotes). Contributions must be submitted through the Preternature CMS.

Queries about journal scope and submissions can be made to the Editor, Dr. Kirsten C. Uszkalo. Queries concerning books to be reviewed can be made to the Book Reviews Editor, Dr. Richard Raiswell. Queries concerning this special volume, The Early Modern Witch (1450-1700), can be sent to special volume editors, Professor Alison Findlay and Dr. Liz Oakley-Brown. Final submissions are due November 30, 2012.

Full journal style guides are available at http://preternature.org. Information on the early English witch can be found at the WEME project at http://witching.org. Details on the “Capturing Witches” conference can be found at http://www.transculturalwriting.com/?page_id=1535

Preternature is a subscription based bi-annual publication, published through the Pennsylvania State University Press, and available in print or electronically through JSTOR, Project Muse, and as a Kindle e-book.

Invitation to the Third Annual Conference of the Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung (GFF), at the University of Zurich from 13th to 16th September 2012

The third conference of the Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung will take place at Zurich University, from 13th to 16th September 2012.

The fantastic raises a significant number of questions about cultural and social developments and challenges existing boundaries. With regard to transitions and the crossing of boundaries, the focus of this conference will lie on objects, norms, knowledge, ascribed meanings and potential spectrums of interpretation associated with the fantastic. The aim is to explore representations of worlds and subjects, reality and fiction, in order to contribute to a further assessment of the cultural relevance of the fantastic – in its contemporary, historical, social and medial dimensions.

Speakers from Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, France, Great Britain, Ireland, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Poland, Rumania, Russia, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Turkey and the USA will present and discuss their papers in more than thirty sections, either in English (E) or German (G).

Keynotes will be presented by Renate Lachmann (G), Hans Richard Brittnacher (G), John Clute (E), Dieter Petzold (E), Alexander Knorr (G) and Marleen S. Barr (E). The wellknown authors Jan Koneffke (G) and Lev Grossman (E) and the illustrator John Howe (E) will also be present to speak about their work and be available for discussion.

The conference will take place in the main building of Zurich University, in the town centre, with good connection to public transport. It starts on Thursday, at 01:30 p.m., and ends on Sunday, at 01:00 p.m.

Up to date information is available on our conference homepage: http://www.ipk.uzh.ch/tagungen/gff2012.html, where you also find the programme, some information about accommodation, the registration fee, and the registration form, to be handed in by 31.07.2012. Hotel bookings should be made as early as possible.

We are looking forward to welcome you at Zurich University.

Arthurian Film / TV / Electronic Games Collection (6/1/12)

The Virtual Society for the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages is seeking proposals of 500 words for essays devoted to Arthurian-themed film, television, and/or electronic games. We are particularly interested in approaches that explore issues of transformation and/or diversity in these works.

Please submit proposals and CV to popular.culture.and.the.middle.ages@gmail.com by 6/1/12 and note “Are You From Camelot Proposal” in the subject line.

Completed essays should be between 5000 to 8000 words and submitted to the editors by 12/1/12 or earlier.

http://are-you-from-camelot.blogspot.com/

SCIENCE FICTION, FANTASY, AND LEGEND AREA
http://sf-fantasy-legend.blogspot.com/

2012 Conference of The Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association (NEPCA) St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York

26-27 October 2012

Proposals by 1 June 2012

Proposals are invited from scholars of all levels for papers to be presented in the Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Legend Area.

Presentations will be limited to 15-20 minutes in length (depending on final panel size) and may address any aspect of the intermedia genres of science fiction, fantasy, and/or legends as represented in popular culture produced in any country, any time period, and for any audience. Please see our website

(http://sf-fantasy-legend.blogspot.com/) for further details and ideas.

If you are interested in proposing a paper or panel of papers, please send a proposal of approximately 300 to 500 words and a one to two page CV to both the Program Chair AND to the Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Legend Area Chair at the following addresses (please note “SF/Fantasy/Legend Proposal” in your subject line):

Tim Madigan
Program Chair
tmadigan@sjfc.edu

Michael A. Torregrossa
Science Fiction, Fantasy and Legend Area Chair Popular.Culture.and.the.Middle.Ages@gmail.com

The Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association (NEPCA) is a regional affiliate of the American Culture Association and the Popular Culture Association. NEPCA is an association of scholars in New England and New York, organized in 1974 at the University of Rhode Island. We reorganized and incorporated in Boston in 1992. The purpose of this professional association is to encourage and assist research, publication, and teaching on popular culture and culture studies topics by scholars in the northeast region of the United States. By bringing together scholars from various disciplines, both academic and non-academic people, we foster interdisciplinary research and learning. We publish a newsletter twice per year and we hold an annual conference at which we present both the Peter C. Rollins Book Award and an annual prize.

Membership in NEPCA is required for participation. Annual dues are currently $30 for full-time faculty and $15 to all other individuals.

Further details are available at http://users.wpi.edu/~jphanlan/NEPCA.html.

Science Fiction Film and Television (http://liverpool.metapress.com/content/121631/) is seeking articles for a special issue in on world sf cinema and television.

Although excluding the US from discussions of world cinema and television creates a problematic opposition(ality), we are seeking critical work on sf from other national/transnational, and especially non-Anglophone, contexts, both historical and contemporary.

We are particularly, but not exclusively, interested in work which introduces and/or offers fresh insights into specific national cinemas/televisions, or which reconceptualises sf by relativising US/First Cinema variants as culturally-specific approaches rather than generic norms, or which addresses the following:

• globalisation
• transnationalism
• imperialism, neo-imperialism, post-imperialism
• colonialism, decolonisation, neo-colonialism, post-colonialism
• sf from the Third World/Developing World/Global South
• indigenous, Fourth World and Fourth Cinema sf
• the subaltern
• nationhood, national identity, regional identity
• race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality
• global networks, informational black holes
• borders, borderlands
• homelands, migrations, diasporas
• national, international or transnational contexts of production, distribution or consumption
• specific production cycles

Submissions should be made via our website at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/lup-sfftv.

Any queries should be directed to the editors, Mark Bould (mark.bould@gmail.com) and Sherryl Vint  (sherryl.vint@gmail.com).

The deadline for submission to this special issue is September 1 2013.