The Department of American Literature and Culture at Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin, in cooperation with the Video Game Research Center, is organizing the second of the biannual ExRe(y) conferences. The two-day international conference titled “ExRe(y) 2018. Exhaustion and Regeneration in Post-Millennial North-American Literature and Visual Culture” will take place in Lublin, Poland, on 10-11 May, 2018.
To view the full CfP, please click exreycfp 2018.
Call for Applications: R.D. Mullen Fellowships
Named for the founder of our journal, Richard “Dale” Mullen (1915-1998), the Mullen fellowships are awarded by Science Fiction Studies to support archival research in science fiction.
We have four categories of awards:
Amount: Up to $2500
Number: 1 award is available each year
Qualifications: Candidates must have received their PhD degree 2 years or less from the date of applying. Also eligible are those who have essentially completed but not yet defended the dissertation. Applicants who hold (or are contracted to begin) a tenure-track position are not eligible. The relation between the new research and the topic of the dissertation should be clarified in the proposal. The Committee understands that the two are likely to be related, but the additional research needed for the post-doctoral project should be explained.
Amount: Up to $2000
Number: 3 awards are available each year
Qualifications: Research must be in support of a dissertation topic that requires archival research. The proposal should make it clear that applicants have familiarized themselves in some detail with the resources available at the library or archive they propose to use. Projects with an overall sf emphasis, other things being equal, will receive priority over projects with a more tangential relationship to the field.
Amount: Up to $1000
Number: 2 awards are available each year
Qualifications: For students in an MA program in a humanities department that does not award the PhD, in support of MA thesis research. (Non-thesis-track MA students are not eligible.) The award is for travel in support of archival research on the MA thesis topic; the proposal should specify which materials are unique to the archive and/or essential to the project. This is not an award in support of conference travel. Among the two letters of recommendation, one must be from the MA thesis adviser, confirming that the thesis proposal has been accepted and the committee formed.
Amount: Up to $500
Number: 1 award is available each year
Qualifications: For upper-division students (most likely senior majors in English or related humanities fields) to conduct archival research and write a term paper. This award can cover local travel to archives as well as funding for such expenses as copying. A faculty mentor (who will co-sign the proposal) will guide the student through the proposal process, the research process, and evaluate the subsequent paper. The work could be done as additional to regular upper-division class or in the context of a tutorial, Directed Independent Study, or BA thesis. The final report would be dual, chiefly written by the student but with a brief final statement by the faculty mentor describing the outcome.
Application Process
All projects must centrally investigate science fiction, of any nation, culture, medium or era.
Proposals should concisely but clearly
Applications may propose research in—but need not limit themselves to—specialized sf archives such as the Eaton Collection at UC Riverside, the Maison d’Ailleurs in Switzerland, the Judith Merril Collection in Toronto, or the SF Foundation Collection in Liverpool. Proposals for work in general archives with relevant sf holdings—authors’ papers, for example—are also welcome.
For possible research locations, applicants may wish to consult the partial list of sf archives compiled in SFS 37.2 (July 2010): 161-90. This list is also available online at: <http://sfanthology.site.wesleyan.edu/files/2010/08/WASF-Teachers-Guide-2Archives.pdf>.
Applications should be written in English and should
Students who receive awards must acknowledge the support provided by SFS’s Mullen Fellowship program in any completed theses, dissertations or published work that makes use of research supported by this fellowship. After the research is conducted, each awardee shall provide SFS with a 500-word report on the results.
A complete application consists of
Successful candidates will be reimbursed for expenses incurred conducting research, up to the amount of the award, once they complete the research and submit relevant receipts.
Applications should be submitted electronically to the chair of the evaluation committee, Sherryl Vint, at sherryl.vint@gmail.com. Applications are due April 2, 2018 and awards will be announced in early May.
The selection committee for 2017-2018 consists of SFS Advisory Board members Barry Grant and Elizabeth Ginway and SFS editors Istvan Csicsery-Ronay and Sherryl Vint.
Link: http://www.trap.no/en/project/science-fiction-short-story-competition
Borders have always been a central political problem. Discussions of national and territorial boundaries, ethnic geo-rootedness, many kinds of -exits, mark our news feeds. Digital border crossings challenge and hack into political manipulations as well as offer new possibilities of techno-cosmopolitanism and even of new possibilities in egalitarian social identity. Geopolitical borders often overlap with other kinds of borders such as socioeconomic borders, racial borders, and borders framing sexual identity.
The theme is dedicated to thresholds and borders, as well as new frontiers and new beginnings. In his essay «The race for space» Duke Ellington states that a society using its power to suppress its minorities never will achieve greatness. Our future is at stake, and we must explore possibilities in alternative futures, where borders can be and are transgressed.
Our aim in this competition is to promote the movement of science fiction works that, as a concept and as an artefact of the social, offer new possibilities in border crossings.
We would especially welcome work from authors from regions which, while making a mark especially in recent years in literary avenues, continue to be numerically under-represented in the global science fiction space. Such regions would include for instance the Nordic region, the Arab world, Africa, South Asia, East and Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and Central and South America. The competition is however border free, and is open to all internationally.
Entries need to be previously unpublished and not under consideration elsewhere. Stories need to range from 3000-3500 words, and should preferably be in English. Stories in other languages are equally welcome but they must be accompanied by an English translation. Story and cover letter must be submitted electronically in doc or rtf format. Only one entry per person is allowed.
Up to seven stories will be selected and competition winners will be published in a special themed volume (ISBN registered) in Spring 2018 and will be given a one-time award of NOK6000/~US$700. The deadline for entries is 1st September 2017.
Entries can be sent to the editor, Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay at allbordersaretemporary@gmail.com
CfP: QUEER TOLKIEN STUDIES
Paper Session(s) and or Roundtable
Please note that this call is for individual proposals to be sent to the two area chairs who will organize them into complete sessions to be uploaded into the conference database.
Please do *not* submit individual proposals through the conference database if you wish to be considered for these themed sessions.
PCA/ACA 2018 NATIONAL CONFERENCE
J.W. MARRIOTT INDIANAPOLIS DOWNTOWN, INDIANAPOLIS, IN
MARCH 28-31, 2018
http://pcaaca.org/national-conference/
SUBMISSIONS: SEPTEMBER 28, 2017
These sessions will be co-sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Studies and the Tolkien Studies areas:
Bruce E. Drushel, Ph.D.
Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Studies
Department of Media, Journalism, & Film
Miami University
Oxford OH 45056
drushebe@miamioh.edu
Robin Anne Reid, Ph.D.
Tolkien Studies
Department of Literature and Languages
A&M University-Commerce
Commerce, TX 75429
Robin.Reid@tamuc.edu
We wish to organize at least one paper session and one roundtable session for the conference.
PCA allows presenters to participate in one paper session as well as in one roundtable.
Submit a title and 100-word abstract with a working bibliography, a mailing address, institutional affiliation, and e-mail address to both area chairs by September 28, 2017. Please indicate clearly whether your proposal is for the paper session, or for the roundtable. If you wish to participate in both, you must submit two different proposals.
Presentations may focus on any aspect of textual production, audience reception, or textual coding that challenge established categories of gender and sexuality including but not limited to:
• Gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans* or queer readings of Tolkien’s or Jackson’s texts:;
• Readings that focus on non-normative but not clearly marked expressions of gender and sexuality in Tolkien’s or Jackson’s texts;
• Transformative or derivative works that queer Tolkien’s or Jackson’s texts;
• Intersectional queer readings of Tolkien’s or Jackson’s texts;
• Queer Theories/Theorists and Tolkien studies (including historical and biographical aspects as well as fiction and scholarship).
Plans for a Queer Tolkien Studies anthology (co-edited by Robin Anne Reid, Christopher Vaccaro, and Stephen Yandell) will be discussed at the PCA sessions.
The Department of Language & Literature at Signum University is currently seeking preceptors to join the faculty team in our Imaginative Literature concentration.
Please visit the university’s website for more information: https://signumuniversity.org/news/wanted-fantasyscience-fictionpop-culture-preceptor/
Investigating Identities in Young Adult (YA) Narratives: Symposium on the 13/12/2017 at The University of Northampton UK
deadline for submissions:
October 8, 2017
full name / name of organization:
The University of Northampton UK
contact email:
anthony.stepniak2@northampton.ac.uk
Investigating Identities in Young Adult (YA) Narratives
Symposium on the 13/12/2017 at The University of Northampton UK
From JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series to Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, Young Adult (YA) narratives have grown exponentially over the past twenty years. Adopting a range of genres and platforms including the Bildungsroman and the coming of age teen drama, YA narratives represent a significant cultural means to explore the formation of identity in all its varied aspects. This one day symposium at the University of Northampton will investigate the representation of identity constructions in relation to narrative form in YA narratives both past and present.
Suggested topics may include, but are no means limited to:
– Representations of racial/ethnic identity in YA narratives
– Representations of gender and/or sexual identity in YA narratives
– The representation of identity in YA narratives in relation to the notion of class
– Interrogations of YA narrative’s treatment of LGBTQIA+ identities
– The effect of trauma on identity in YA narratives
– YA narratives and the notion of the outsider or other
– The relationship between genre and the notion of identity in YA narratives
– The representation of non-binary identities in YA narratives
– The transition from childhood to adulthood in classic (children’s) literature
– The representation of disability in relation to the notion of identity in YA narratives
– The use and function of supernatural identities in YA narratives
Being an interdisciplinary symposium focused on narrative, papers from across the subject areas of literature, screen studies, history, popular culture and education studies are invited. The symposium welcomes papers on both YA literature and screen adaptations, and from scholars working on earlier periods as well as contemporary culture.
The symposium invites papers from academics, early career researchers and postgraduate research students alike.
Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be sent to both sonya.andermahr@northampton.ac.uk and anthony.stepniak2@northampton.ac.uk by the 8th October 2017.
Disasters, Apocalypses, and Catastrophes: PCA/ACA 2018 3/28-3/31 Indianapolis
deadline for submissions:
October 1, 2017
full name / name of organization:
Pop Culture/American Culture Association
contact email:
disasterculture@yahoo.com
PCA/ACA 2018 Indianapolis, IN
Disasters, Apocalypses, and Catastrophes (Ficociello and Bell)
The PCA/ACA annual conference is March 28 through March 31 in Indianapolis, Indiana
Key Dates:
Jul 1 Database Opens for Submissions
Oct 1 Registration Opens
Oct 1 Deadline for Paper Proposals
Oct 15 All Sessions Entered into the Database by Area Chairs
Nov 15 Early Bird Registration Rate Ends
Dec 1 Preliminary Program Available
Dec 15 “Drop Dead” Date: Participants Not Registered Removed from Program
Jan 1, 2018 Final Program to the Publisher
All Proposals & Abstracts Must Be Submitted Through The PCA Database: http://pcaaca.org/national-conference/
Please submit a proposal to only one area at a time. Exceptions and rules
CALL FOR PAPERS
Disasters, Apocalypses, and Catastrophes
In a hyper-mediated global culture, disaster events reach us with great speed and digital detail, and we begin forming, interpreting, and historicizing catastrophes simultaneously with people worldwide. Are we inside the era of disasters or are we merely inundated by mediated accounts of events categorized as catastrophic? How do these mediated accounts affect policy, poverty, and the public? Of particular interest is the question of what role do academics play in disaster culture and policy?
Disasters, Apocalypses, and Catastrophes offers a forum for these questions and critical approaches surrounding the culture of disasters, catastrophes, accidents, and apocalypses in global art, literature, media, film, and popular culture. Disasters, Apocalypses, and Catastrophes will address broader disciplinary topics and innovative intersections of humanities, musicology, social science, literature, film, visual art, psychology, game studies, material culture, media studies, ecology, and information technology.
General Topics
Eco Criticism, Eco Culture
Trump Administration and Climate Policy
Global Warming, Climate Change
Deniers of climate change
Disaster capitalism
War Ecology
Slow Violence
Hyperobjects
Native Cultures and Eco-policies
TV and Film: The Walking Dead, The Leftovers, Falling Skies, The Dome, etc.
Zombie and Apocalyptic imaginaries
Social Media and disasters
Doomsday preppers
History and disasters
Eco/Culture Events
Disasters in popular culture
Time and temporalities of disasters
Representations and narration of disaster
Disasters and personal narratives
Disaster aesthetics
Cultures of risk and uncertainty
Disaster metaphors, concepts and symbolic forms
Ethics and politics of disasters
Natural disasters in climate rhetoric
Disaster literature and art
Notions of national identity through disaster representation
Portraying suffering in news, digital culture, literature, and TV
Affective responses to disaster in local, national, and global contexts
Celebrity humanitarianism and disaster engagement
Distinctions between man-made and natural disaster
Public, private, and nonprofit responses to disaster
The ideological and financial interests of global capitalism in the recovery process
Epidemics, pandemics, and disease
All Proposals & Abstracts Must Be Submitted Through The PCA Database: http://pcaaca.org/national-conference/
Please submit a proposal to only one area at a time. Exceptions and rules
Questions may be addressed to either:
Robert Ficociello
Holy Family University
Philadelphia, PA
disasterculture@yahoo.com
Robert Bell
Loyola University
New Orleans, LA
504.865.3094
disasterculture@yahoo.com
The New Urban Gothic Edited Collection Call for Chapters
deadline for submissions:
August 30, 2017
full name / name of organization:
Holly-Gale Millette, Southampton University, Ruth Heholt, Falmouth University
contact email:
h.millette@soton.ac.uk
Urban Gothic is a subgenre of Gothic fiction, Gothic crime fiction, and television whose narratives spring from discourse on industrial and post-industrial urban society. Often dystopic, it was pioneered in the mid-19th century in Britain and the United States and developed in serialisations such as R. L. Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886); into novels such as Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). Much has been written on 19th century Anglo-centred Urban Gothic fiction and vampiristic, monstrous Urban Gothic, but less has been written on the 21st century reimagining and re-serialisation of the Urban Gothic in mechanised, altered, disabled, and dystopic states of being. Nor has writing on the Urban Gothic departed from the canonical London location or considered the Urban Gothic as the prime progenitor of the genre of Crime Fiction. The intention, therefore, is for The New Urban Gothic to explore the resurgence in serialised and grotesque narratives of degeneration, ecological and economic ruin, dystopia, mechanised future inequality, and crime narrative as evidenced in literature and new forms of media in an international context. Submissions are welcomed that address the historic specificities of urban difference and Gothic traditions, as well as inter-disciplinary studies and contemporary texts that link urban crime fiction and the Gothic.
Please send a 300-500 word abstract including keywords, along with 50-100 words of biodata to the editors h.millette@soton.ac.uk and ruth.heholt@falmouth.ac.uk by 30 August, 2017.
Deadline for final chapters of no more than 7,500 words (including notes and references): 1 May 2018.
Topics may include (but are not bound by):
Industrialization, Mechanisation and future dystopia in the Urban Gothic
New serializations of the Urban Gothic (Dickens – Netflix, etc.)
Outsiders (Gender, Race, or the Orient) in the New Urban Gothic
Identity and Belonging in the New Urban Gothic
Dark Tourism and the New Urban Gothic
Political Aesthetics (Grotesque) of the New Urban Gothic
LGBTQi and the New Urban Gothic
Disability and Mental Health in the New Urban Gothic
Sci-Fi and the New Urban Gothic in Space.
Gaming and the New Urban Gothic (X-Box, PS 3, Wii, PC, etc.)
Graphic Novels and the New Urban Gothic (Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Frank Miller, etc.)
Regional New Urban Gothic (Sheffield, New Orleans, Ontario, etc.)
Dockside New Urban Gothic (Limehouse, Hong Kong, Gdansk, Liverpool, Vancouver, etc.)
Japanese New Urban Gothic (or Korean, Chinese, Indian, Canadian etc)
Folklore and Popular Culture
deadline for submissions:
October 1, 2017
full name / name of organization:
Popular Culture Association
contact email:
kathryn.edney@regiscollege.edu
POPULAR CULTURE ASSOCIATION & AMERICAN CULTURE ASSOCIATION 2018 JOINT NATIONAL CONFERENCE
Indianapolis, IN
March 28-March 31, 2018
For information on the PCA/ACA, please go to http://www.pcaaca.org
For conference information, please go to http://www.pcaaca.org/national-conference/
DEADLINE: OCTOBER 1, 2017
We are considering proposals for sessions organized around a theme, special panels, and/or individual papers concerning folklore and popular culture. Sessions are scheduled in 1½ hour slots, typically with four papers or speakers per standard session. Presentations should not exceed 15 minutes. As always, proposals addressing any topic concerning folklore studies are welcome; the list below is merely suggestive:
Folklore in Popular Culture/Folklore as Popular Culture
Influence of folklore on other forms of culture (literature, film, music, etc.)
Folklore and Religion
The difference between oral and literary sources of tradition
Women in Folklore
Folklore and children
Uses of folklore
Folklore and the Digital Age
Folklore and Epic
Illustrators/Illustration of folklore
Folklore and memory/memory studies
Symbolism in folklore
The relationship between folklore and literary history
Folklore and music
If there are any questions, please contact the Area Chair:
Dr. Kathryn Edney
Interim Dean, School of Arts and Sciences
Regis College
235 Wellesley Street, Weston MA 02493
kathryn.edney@regiscollege.edu
Please note that ALL submissions must be made through the conference submission site: http://ncp.pcaaca.org . For individual papers, please submit a title, 100-word abstract, and your contact information. For themed paper sessions, each presenter must enter her/his own presentation; the session chair should contact Dr. Edney to ensure the papers are curated as a panel.
Beyond Afrofuturism
Extrapolation guest editors Lisa Yaszek and Isiah Lavender III seek original essays by scholars and artists who are interested in the question of what might co-exist with—or lie beyond—Afrofuturism. Ever since Mark Dery introduced the term in 1993, “Afrofuturism” has been one of the primary ways artists, scholars, and fans alike have discussed contemporary speculative fiction by people of the African diaspora. But as students of genre history know well, every two to three decades there is a sea change as the science fiction community redefines the thematic and stylistic concerns of “good” science fiction, and, in doing so, paves the way for new modes of speculative storytelling. As the term “Afrofuturism” nears its quarter-century of use, it is natural to ask: is Afrofuturism a “colored wave” within science fiction history, much like the New Wave or cyberpunk, or might its multigenre status provide some kind of energy that transcends (and transforms) science fiction history as we know it? What is Afrofuturism today, and is it the only—or the best—way to describe black speculative cultural practices across the globe? What might co-exist with—or lie beyond—Afrofuturism? Topics to explore might include, but are not limited to:
Afro-pessimism vs. Afrofuturism
Whites and Afrofuturism
Afrofuturism 2.0 and beyond
Replacing Afrofuturism; or, the death of Afrofuturism
Afrodiasporic versus African speculative art
Black speculative cultural practices across the globe
Inner city future projections as alternate scientific and social spaces
The promises and perils of trans-identities and/or spaces (national, racial, historical, temporal, cultural, social, physical, sexual, and/or psychological)
Disability studies and racial futures
Black futures in aural media (jazz, electronica, hip hop, and opera)
Black futures in visual media (TV, film, comics, painting, photography, sculpture, and digital art)
Afrofuturism’s impact on other ethnic futurisms like Indigenous Futurism and LatinX Futurism etc.
The editors invite submissions that respond to the focus of the issue and also welcome general inquiries about a particular topic’s suitability. Please submit 250 word abstracts, a working bibliography, and a brief CV electronically as MS Word attachments to Isiah Lavender III at isiahl@lsu.edu and to Lisa Yaszek at lisa.yaszek@lmc.gatech.edu by January 31, 2018.
Accepted articles should be between 5000 and 8500 words in length, including “Works Cited,” and prepared in MLA style, and forwarded as MS Word attachments.