International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts

Call for Papers: RADICAL PERSPECTIVES ON HORROR CINEMA—EDITED BOOK

Horror cinema is perhaps more readily available today than ever before. With a mere keystroke, one can say hello to all sorts of terrors—from the apocalyptic creatures of BIRD BOX to the puritanical evil of THE WITCH and from the Turkish hell demons of BASKIN to the Korean zombies of TRAIN TO BUSAN. Notably, this resurgence in horror is not confined to our cinema and iPad screens; it is taking place all around us. We live in neo-fascist times, after all, and if some monsters are produced by Amazon, other monsters are destroying the Amazon. Indeed, real-life ghouls are taking power across the globe, rolling back women’s rights, harassing the LGBT community, amplifying racism and xenophobic bigotry, exacerbating wealth disparities, destroying the lives of countless immigrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers, and ensuring that a worldwide ecological catastrophe awaits us in the near future—all with the giddy encouragement of their mob-like supporters. Had George Romero lived long enough to make another Living Dead film, he would have surely given his zombies “Make America Great Again” hats.

Strangely, the synchronous timing of these phenomena—the simultaneous appearance of monsters on the movie screen and on the political scene—has not been widely acknowledged. Much of the literature about this ongoing wave of horror avoids politics altogether. Taking inspiration from the scholarship pioneered four decades ago by Robin Wood and his colleagues with the 1979 publication of THE AMERICAN NIGHTMARE: ESSAYS ON THE HORROR FILM, we are seeking essays for a new edited book on contemporary horror cinema. We are interested in essays that approach horror from a radical perspective—that is, essays that explicitly engage with anti-racist, gay liberationist, feminist, socialist, anti-imperialist, and/or decolonialist politics. While the subject of the essay might be killer clowns, flesh-eating zombies, or chainsaw-welding cannibals, the point is to probe questions of oppression and liberation.

We invite essay proposals that closely examine individual films (e.g., CAM, HEREDITARY, PSYCHO RAMAN) or groups of films (e.g., mumblegore, New French Extremity films, the work of Jordan Peele). Authors are not restricted to Hollywood horror, and we welcome discussions on films from around the globe. While the focus is on cinema, we will consider proposals that look at other media forms in relation to film, including television and video games. Moreover, while we are particularly interested in contemporary horror, compelling proposals on earlier films will also be considered. Indeed, we would prefer an essay that looked at a well-worn text like PSYCHO or THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE through a fresh lens than an essay that discusses a brand new horror gem in an overly descriptive or politically naïve way. All essays should situate horror in a greater political context, and we invite contributors to address ongoing events—from the endless “war on terror” and the global rise of rightwing populism to the emergence of new resistance movements like Black Lives Matter.

Please note that a great emphasis will be placed on writing style. While we welcome the use of terms and concepts from film and cultural theory, authors should strive for sharp, readable prose. We want to invite readers from as wide of an audience as possible, not alienate them.

Abstracts between 300-500 words and a short biographical statement are due on July 15. Decisions on acceptance will be communicated to individual authors by August 15. Accepted papers between 5000 and 9000 words (including footnotes) will be due on December 15.

Please send submissions and inquiries to:

Greg Burris, gregburris@gmail.com
Assistant Professor of Media Studies
American University of Beirut

Volume 31 Climate Fiction

Call for Papers (anticipated publication date: December, 2019/January, 2020)

Editor: Paweł Frelik (University of Warsaw) & Alison Sperling (Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Berlin)

Dan Bloom may have been the first to coin the much-debated moniker “cli-fi” back in 2007, but, as Susanne Leikam and Julia Leyda suggest in the special section of Amerikastudien, other terms have been used and include “climate fiction, petrofiction, Anthropofiction, ecofiction, or more particular concepts such as ecodrama, risk novel, and Anthropocenema,” all of which remain “entangled with specific long-standing cultural and critical traditions, ideological frameworks, socio-political and economic strategies, and affective motives.”

As a hyperobject (Morton 2013), climate resists representation and narrativization, but a spectrum of texts that approach and problematize it is both broad and rich. In the literary medium, some of these attempts have been marketed as science fiction (Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl [2009] comes to mind) while others circulate as cli-fi (Marcel Theroux’s Far North [2009] is a good example). Creative non-fiction has flourished, including Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (2014) and Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (2014). The media of film and television have figured equally prominently with the new cinema of disaster and post-apocalyptic series.

A number of excellent publishing projects have already investigated various vistas of climate, including Kristi McKim’s Cinema as Weather (2013) and Janine Randerson’s Weather as Medium (2018) as well as the recent special issues of Science Fiction Studies and Studies in the Novel. This issue of Paradoxa aims to build on these efforts but also expand the critical conversation. While we are interested in both in-depth analyses of individual texts and more general, theoretical discussions, we also seek to explode and slipstream the very term “climate fiction.” The term has been one used most often to date but, treating genre labels as practices rather than objects, we wish to invite new perspectives on thinking how our cultural production can engage the hyperobject in question.

The texts, bodies of texts, and media of interest include but are not limited to:

science fiction and fantasy foregrounding climate both terrestrial and extraterrestrial
non-genre and slipstream science fiction
non-fantastic climate fiction
narrowly and broadly understood cli-fi
climate cinema, climate television, climate comics, and climate video games
narratives of catastrophic and violent weather
indigenous climate fictions
non-Anglophone texts
texts originating in the Global South

Specific themes and tropes include but are not limited to:

atmospheric conditions and crises
climate change and climate crisis
climate justice and injustice
human and inhuman timescales and perspectives
hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and earthquakes
change of climate and terraforming
climate and non-human agencies and perspectives

Possible approaches to such texts include but are not limited to:

economic and political contexts
aesthetic and formal aspects of representing climate
speculative realism

We are particularly interested in texts or bodies of texts that have received little critical attention thus far.

Abstracts of up to 500 words should be submitted by 15 June 2019 to the editors p.frelik@uw.edu.pl and alison.sperling@ici-berlin.org. Authors of selected abstracts will be notified by 30 June 2019. Full drafts (5,000 to 7,000 words) will be due by 30 September 2019. Publication of the issue is provisionally scheduled for December 2019/January 2020.

CFP (edited collection): Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene | Brian Attebery, Tereza Dědinová and Marek Oziewicz (Eds.)

“Fantasy’s main claim to cultural importance resides, I believe, in the work of redefining the relationship between contemporary readers and mythic texts. … [If we take] myth … to designate any collective story that encapsulates a world view and authorizes belief, … fantasy offers a glimpse into the process by which mythic patterns transmit cognitive structures even without the sanction of official belief. … Fantasy’s enduring appeal is [its] capacity for mythopoiesis: the making of narratives that reshape the world.”
(Brian Attebery, Stories about Stories: Fantasy and the Remaking of Myth)

“The Anthropocene is a belief that humanity has already changed the living world beyond repair … [and that] the destiny of the planet is to be completely overtaken and ruled by humanity. … Like most mistaken philosophies, the Anthropocene worldview is largely a product of well-intentioned ignorance.”
(Edward O. Wilson, Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life)

In October 2018, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a special report stating that unless “unprecedented,” “rapid and far-reaching” changes are made, our planet will find itself spiraling into irreversible and catastrophic climate change. Technological and political challenges aside, the reversal of the current ecocidal trajectory requires a radical transformation of how we imagine ourselves in relation to the biosphere. One key space where this work of collective dreaming occurs is myth, fantasy and other genres of speculative fiction. Fantasy and myth have been used to explore the notions of heroism, identity, and power; raise questions about the meaning and purpose of life; express social criticism and speculate about the unseen. But what do these questions mean at a time when human activity has altered the planet in game-changing ways?

The aim of this collection is to explore the new challenges and opportunities for fantasy and myth that arose out of highly contested debates over climate change, pollution, vanishing habitats, extinctions, mass pauperization and migrations, and other effects of the Anthropocene. What does fantastic literature have to say about the human-caused changes of the Anthropocene? Do myths about a lost Eden justify the destruction of habitats and species or do they encourage us to change the way we live? What makes fantasy and myth relevant in the Anthropocene? How exactly can they function as vehicles for hopeful dreaming that steers clear of naïvete and helps us imagine alternatives to the Capitalocene’s vision of petrochemical Ragnarok? Can myth and fantasy point a way to restoring the connection with the natural rather than the supernatural? Can they articulate a vision of non-anthropocentric life, in which humans are part of rather than rulers of the biosphere?

Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene seeks original contributions dealing with any sort of interaction between fantastic or mythopoeic fictions and the realities of climate change, megacities, the carbon economy and the other alterations we have made to the environment. While we recognize the contribution of dystopia and science fiction to this debate, this collection aims to offer a sustained reflection upon the nexus of fantasy, myth, and the Anthropocene. We encourage contributors to draw upon a range of theoretical approaches and cultural positions: Indigenous futurism, Donna Haraway’s Chthulucene, solarpunk, energy humanities, human-animal studies, posthumanism, ecocriticism, evocriticism, and whatever else offers insight into the present age and the stories we tell about it. We welcome proposals that examine graphic novels, picturebooks, short stories, novels, films, narrative games and apps, and other mixed-media formats. We are particularly interested in contributions that engage with works for the young audiences, Indigenous futures, minority and postcolonial fantasy, recent and under-discussed works, including international and global narratives, and works originally published in languages other than English—as well as how these diverse works stimulate conversations about the Anthropocene with young people. We seek chapters on how exactly myth and fantasy accept, ignore, or interrogate the Anthropocene’s key issues and assumptions. Whose visions of change do they articulate or exclude? Ultimately, can fantasy and myth help us rethink what it means to be human at the time Amitav Gosh has dubbed “The Great Derangement”?

This collection is intended for publication with a major academic publisher in the US or Europe.

Deadlines
• Submission deadline for abstracts (max 350 words, incl. title and 5 keywords), accompanied by the author’s CV: August 31, 2019
• Authors notified of preliminary acceptance: September 30, 2019
• Publisher identified and preliminary contract finalized: fall 2019
• Submission deadline for chapters (about 5000 to 6000 words, max. word length and documentation style pending publisher’s requirements): June 15, 2020
• Peer review completed. Revision suggestions sent to authors: September 30, 2020
• Revised chapter drafts submitted for final editorial review: November 15, 2020
• Final manuscript submitted for copy-editing by the publisher: early spring 2021

If you have any questions, please contact the co-editors at fmapublication@gmail.com

Literary Monsters

deadline for submissions:
May 20, 2019

full name / name of organization:
Speculative Fiction Association

contact email:
lisa.bro@uga.edu

In today’s culture, it’s almost impossible to avoid “monsters.” Straight from mythology and legend, these fantastic creatures traipse across our television screens and the pages of our books. Over centuries and across cultures, the inhuman have represented numerous cultural fears and, in more recent times, desires. They are Other. They are Us. This panel will explore the literal monsters–whether they be mythological, extraterrestrial, or man-made–that populate fiction and film, delving into the cultural, psychological and/or theoretical implications.

Please submit a 250-300 word abstract, a brief bio, and any A/V needs by May 20, 2019 to Dr. Lisa Bro at lisa.bro@mga.edu

SAMLA will be held at the Westin Peachtree Plaza Atlanta, Georgia this year from November 8-10. Those accepted must be members of SAMLA to present.

The Age of the Pulps: the SF magazine, 1926–1960

DEADLINE EXTENDED to June 15, 2019

Contact—: Thomas Connolly (thomas.connolly@mu.ie)

The genre of science fiction was “born” in April 1926, when Hugo Gernsback published the first issue of Amazing Stories. Of course, stories of technological speculation and scientific fantasy were to be found long before the brightly coloured pages of the pulp magazines—yet Amazing Stories is credited with providing early SF with its first dedicated publication venue. The subsequent decades were a remarkably fertile period in the history of Anglophone SF—from Gernsback’s single SF magazine, the field grew to include nearly 20 others by 1939, and the subsequent “Golded Age” saw the arrival of the most familiar names of twentieth-century SF into the field.

The pulp magazines therefore occupy a central place in the history of Anglophone SF—as Mike Ashley has argued, “it remains a truism that no country has developed its own body of science fiction writers without having a regular SF magazine and the majority of the leading SF writers throughout the world learned their craft through the SF magazine”. It is here that SF consolidated into an established and self-reflexive genre, and here too that we find the beginnings of the SF “mega-text”—the body of common meanings, references and tropes shared, as Damian Broderick has argued, between SF works. Although the literary quality of the pulp SF stories is often questionable, these stories nevertheless respond in dynamic and complex ways to the social and political conditions of interwar America. As John Cheng notes, the writers of pulp SF “genuinely believed that science held imaginative potential and progressive purpose”. At the same time, the growth of fandom—fan clubs, letter sections, conventions—blurred the lines between producers and consumers of SF, and the age of the pulps comprised a period of fertile crossover between readers, authors, and editors.

We are seeking proposals for articles exploring any aspect of pulp SF from Gernsback’s initial magazine up to the waning of American magazine SF in the late 1950s. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

• Female and POC writers in the SF pulps
• Capitalist modernity, globalisation and the experience of space and time
• Technocracy, technological imperialism and “super-science”
• Space opera, aliens and imperialism
• The publishing milieu and commercial practices of the early pulps
• Non-narrative content in pulp SF magazines—advertisements, editorials, fan letters
• The “Golden Age” and the Second World War
• The crossover between American pulp writers and writers from other countries
• The relationship between SF and other pulp genres (detective fiction, westerns, romance fiction, etc.)
• Fandom and the interactions between readers, writers and editors
• Genre formation and the growth of the SF “mega-text” in the pulps
• Examinations of specific magazine titles or pulp SF authors
• The relationship between pulp SF and other SF venues (the paperback, Hollywood cinema, television, etc.)
• The SF pulps as popular fiction, and the tension between “high” and “low” art

Although the primary focus of this collection is intended to be the American pulp SF scene between 1926 and 1960, submissions that examine pulp SF alongside other magazine traditions (e.g., non-Anglophone magazine SF, the British magazine tradition) will also be considered.

Submission—: Please submit abstracts of 400 words (alongside a brief bio) to Thomas.Connolly@mu.ie by 1 June 2019. Informal queries are welcome. Finalised articles expected by 15 November 2019.

Productive Futures: The Political Economy of Science Fiction

Bloomsbury, London, 12-14 September 2019

Guest authors: Aliette de Bodard, Zen Cho, Tade Thompson
Keynote speakers: Dr Caroline Edwards, Dr Joan Haran

The history of science fiction (SF) is a history of unreal economics: from asteroid mining to interstellar trade, from the sex-work of replicants to the domestic labour of the housewives of galactic suburbia, from the abolition of money and property to techno-capitalist tragedies of the near future.

LSFRC invites abstracts of 300 words, plus 50 word bios, addressing economic themes in SF, and/or exploring how SF can help to widen and evolve our sense of the economic. We encourage submissions from collaborators across disciplines and/or institutions. Please submit to lsfrcmail@gmail.com by 31st May 2019.

For the full length call for papers, and more information, please visit http://www.lsfrc.co.uk/…/call-for-papers-productive-futures/ or email lsfrcmail@gmail.com. We have a gath.io page: https://gath.io/s6knwgTzC

Facebook: London Science Fiction Research Community
Twitter: @LSFRC_

Call for Chapters: Reclaiming the Tomboy: Posthumanism, Gender Representation, and Intersectionality

deadline for submissions:
July 31, 2019

full name / name of organization:
Dr. Jen Harrison / East Stroudsburg University; Dr. Holly Wells / East Stroudsburg University; Dr. Erica Joan Dymond / East Stroudsburg University

contact email:
reclaimingthetomboy@gmail.com

We are currently seeking chapter submissions for an edited volume exploring the evolution of the tomboy figure from classic literature through to modern popular culture, through the lens of posthumanist theory. As recent critics have discussed, the figure of the tomboy is complex and multifaceted, represented across many different modes and employing a vast array of different narrative, visual, and rhetorical styles and techniques. Over time, tomboy figures have illustrated a shift in the conceptualization of gender, sexuality, race, and other identity politics and philosophies. In their unashamed breaching of identity borders and boundaries, these figures are the ideal locus for exploration of the way in which posthumanism itself represents an evolution in identity and rights philosophies.

This volume invites cutting-edge literary and cultural studies scholarship, with a particular focus on representation and intersectionality as they are illuminated by posthumanist theory. Submissions of an interdisciplinary nature (humanities and other disciplines) are particularly welcome. Some potential areas of exploration might include (but are not limited to):

Historical representations of the tomboy
The tomboy in news and media representations
The tomboy in education
The tomboy in the professional world
Material culture and artefacts pertaining to tomboys
Bodies and identitywithin tomboy culture
Postcolonial and ecocritical readings of tomboy representations
Tomboys and the criminal justice system
Violence and the tomboy
Physical/mental health and the tomboy
Tomboys in music, film, gaming, and television

However, this list is nowhere near exhaustive and we are happy to consider any submission which focuses on tomboys and posthumanism.

We hope to include chapters by authors from a variety of disciplines and viewpoints, reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of current studies in posthumanism and intersectionality, as well as the diversification of popular culture. Please submit a 500-word chapter abstract and a biography of no more than 250 words by July 31, 2019, to reclaimingthetomboy@gmail.com.

All proposed abstracts will be given full consideration, and submission implies a commitment to publish in this volume if your work is selected for inclusion. If selected, completed chapters will be due by December 31, 2019.

The volume is intended for publication with Lexington Books, who have formally expressed interest in the project; we anticipate a final completion date of September 1, 2021

All questions regarding this volume should be directed to the editors at reclaimingthetomboy@gmail.com.

We look forward to what we hope will be a stimulating and exciting array of submissions on this fascinating topic!

Call for Papers: Edited Collection Fan Studies: Methods, Ethics, Research

deadline for submissions:
May 3, 2019

full name / name of organization:
Paul Booth/Rebecca Williams

contact email:
pbooth@depaul.edu

Despite the increasing visibility of fan studies as a discipline, there remains scant work that turns its focus specifically to methodological issues. This relative neglect may be due to its status as a somewhat unruly or ‘undisciplined discipline’ (Ford 2014), which takes its theoretical cues from others including sociology, media and cultural studies, psychology, and literary studies. However, as its presence begins to grow and more scholars discover the work being undertaken, it is timely and appropriate for those working within the field to turn their attention more decisively to issues of methods.

We are therefore developing the edited collection Fan Studies: Methods, Ethics, Research for the Fandom and Culture series at the University of Iowa Press as the first fan studies primer for classroom use that focuses not on the history of the field, but on the distinctive methodologies, discipline-specific ethical questions, and research foci of fan studies. To this end, and because fan studies is both “fast-moving” (Hellekson 2018) and “multi-disciplinary (Turk 2018), we are hoping for an immensely varied collection that doesn’t posit just one avenue for fan studies research, but rather unveils a diverse bounty of approaches that overlap, contradict, complement, and complicate each other.

As fan studies grows, it is important to reflect the vast array of perspectives that make up the field. In this collection, we are thus aiming for a variety of topics. Each chapter of 6000 words (inclusive of bibliography) should include a specific methodological approach to a particular type of fan studies research, filtered through the applied interest of the researcher. (That is, we are not looking for theoretical “This is what digital ethnography is” but rather case study-focused “this is how I used digital ethnography to research Doctor Who”). Each chapter should be written in an accessible style (intended for advanced classroom use) and should include both methodological explanations and personal research findings. In addition, we are particularly interested in chapters that make connections between methodology, ethics, and research as they relate to a particular type of fan studies work.

The collection has already secured chapters on a wide range of methodological approaches and topics, but we are still seeking to commission chapters in the following areas:

Research on Fan Social Activism
Content Analysis
Netnography
Platform Studies
Discourse Analysis
Policy/legal research
Research Across the Life Course

Please do contact us if you have any queries.

If you are interested in contributing to the collection, please send a 300 word abstract, along with a short author biography to Paul Booth (pbooth@depaul.edu) and Rebecca Williams (Rebecca.williams@southwales.ac.uk) by Friday 3rd May 2019.

Call for Travel to Collections Proposals

Department of Special and Area Studies Collections

University of Florida, George A. Smathers Libraries

Travel grants up to $2,500 are available to undertake research between August 1, 2019 and June 30, 2020 with UF’s Special and Area Studies Collections. Proposals are due Friday, May 17, 2019 with award notifications expected the week of June 17, 2019.

Judging criteria include prioritization for interdisciplinary research / use of more than one collection and a feasible, tangible publication outcome (e.g., an article, dissertation or book chapter). Awardees must travel 100 miles or farther to be eligible.

In addition to grants for use of any collection, proposals on the following topics will dedicated funding:

Jewish culture, life, religion in Florida, Latin America, and/or the Caribbean
African American experience and history
Constitutional law, and women and people of color in the legal profession
The American era of the Panama Canal, the Panama Canal Zone and Panama Canal Museum materials
History of science, biomedicine and the humanities, and intellectual property

Please direct submissions to Suzan Alteri. These must include:

Title and description of proposed project (approx. 500 words), including identification of relevant materials for consultation
Budget estimate for travel, lodging and other expenses including:
Transportation costs to and from Gainesville
Housing costs for a maximum of two weeks
Statement affirming applicant’s commitment to submit a report at the end of the residency, including permission to use the report for promotions
CV or résumé
Name, postal address, telephone number, and a valid email address

Awardees must use our collections onsite and submit a report (approx. 500 words) describing the research visit by June 30, 2020. Distribution of award occurs after submission of report and payment paperwork. Dates of research should be coordinated with appropriate curators.

Please note that researchers from outside the US who stay 10 days or longer will be required to apply for a J-1 Visa.

QUESTIONS? If you have questions about the suitability of your proposal or need information on any aspect of the program, please contact Suzan Alteri by email lib-baldwin@uflib.ufl.edu