TRANSNATIONAL SCIENCE FICTION FILM AND MEDIA

Like the Western, noir, and musical, the science fiction film occupies a well-defined niche of cinema and media studies, complete with its own catalogue of specialized theory and criticism (Calvin 2014). Science fiction is also a category of film that has come to embody an era and its conditions. As Jim Kitses observed in the introduction to The Western Reader (1998), “an era of radical capitalism with its relentless global commodification, downsized status of the individual, and increasingly technological, mediated world of experience, has solidly positioned science fiction and neo-noir as the post-modern genres of choice, with their hybrid, the formidable “tech-noir” (Terminator, Blade Runner, Alien), logically the post-modern genre par excellence” (16).

Perhaps on account of this positioning of science fiction film and especially its noir correlate, the study of science fiction film (see for example Cornea 2007; Kuhn 1990, 1999; Sobchack 1997; Telotte 1995, 2001) has rivaled the study of its prose form and has dominated studies of what Paweł Frelik (2016) recently called the “ocularies of science fiction,” that is, the genre’s visual megatext. While scholars and critics alike have turned their attention to issues such as literal and metaphorical space (Kuhn 1999), the problems of technology (Telotte 1995), the politics of alternative futures (Booker 2006), and even race (Nama 2008) in monograph-length works, research on science fiction films focuses overwhelmingly on American, and to a lesser extent European, films—their histories, contexts, audiences, and politics.

Meeting the wider turn in cinema and media studies head on, a handful of essays and a new collection (Feeley and Wells 2015) have begun to conceive of science fiction film as a transnational genre, a global or world phenomenon. Challenging the idea that science fiction is a decidedly Western or even a particularly American film genre, this panel seeks papers that ask what the study of science fiction film and related (audio)visual media can add to the increasingly complex and interrelated discussions of transnational film production, circulation, and reception; of transnational film as a category; and of competing categories (e.g. “world,” “global”) for understanding film and (audio)visual media as they move across national, cultural, and linguistic boundaries.

In other words, what does it mean to think of science fiction film transnationally? Is there such a thing as (the) transitional science fiction film? What are its histories, forms, politics, audiences, etc.? Although emphasizing film as the medium of study and conceiving of science fiction in broad terms as a visual megatext—a set of generically interrelated and recognizable visual tropes (see Broderick 1995 for an early discussion of megatext as frame for science fiction narratives)—the panel also hopes to encourage the exploration of media beyond film, to consider, for example, science fiction television, comics, and video games in conversation with discourses on film, science fiction, and the transnational, world, or global.

Papers might consider, but are certainly not limited to, the following guiding topics:

• Transnational SF and global crises/catastrophes, especially environmental and geopolitical
• Adaptations of texts across national, cultural, linguistic, and medium boundaries, especially with consideration of shifting political, aesthetic, and generic concerns
  • e.g. Snowpiercer (2013), from Jacques Lob’s French Le Transperceniegegraphic novel to Bong Joon-ho’s English-language, global-cast South Korean dystopian film, in which the only survivors are a black boy and a Korean woman.
• Transnational science fiction films and audiences, and the circulation of science fiction film out of, into, and outside the U.S. and Europe
• Transnational blockbusters and global audiences
  • e.g. Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens as global phenomenon/text
• Transnational (or world or global) SF film production and distribution (e.g. art/indie vs. blockbuster)
• The (in)stability of “science fiction” as a genre across national, cultural, linguistic, and medium boundaries
• Popular subgenres of transnational science fiction media
• Troubling the terms “world,” “global,” and “transnational” as they relate to “science fiction” (itself slippery) film and other media
• Transnational science fiction beyond film: television, comics, video games
  • e.g. the “kaiju” and “mecha” genres of Japanese manga as transnationally and transmedially circulated subgenres of SF; the manga boom in 1990s America and the subsequent, related anime boom on U.S. television; massive popularity, aesthetics, and generic concerns of SF games

Proposals should include a 250-300 word abstract and a brief bio. Please send all materials to Sean A. Guynes at guynesse@msu.edu by August 10, 2016.  Decisions will be made by August 15 and the panel proposal will be submitted by August 31.

If you are interested in being a respondent, please notify Sean A. Guynes and include a brief bio and a CV (keep in mind the new SCMS policy that now limits members to one role at the conference).

Reimagining the Future – Utopian Perspectives

deadline for submissions:
January 31, 2017

full name / name of organization:
ANTAE

contact email:
antaejournal@gmail.com

Call for Papers

Reimagining the Future: Utopian Perspectives

The postgraduate journal antae is pleased to announce a special issue around the idea of alternative futures, in particular ones that can be described as “utopian”. This issue shall be published in conjunction with the Institute of Utopian Studies—for the time being, a utopian institution seeking to provide a platform for debate on ideas of radical social change and alternative concepts of living together, which aims to facilitate debate about departures from hegemonic ‘realism’: alternative futures, alternative spaces.

As such, artists, scholars, writers and activists are here encouraged to submit contributions engaging with utopia as a concept for socio-political change: utopian approaches to current political issues, visions of new public spheres, and imaginative projections of different realities. This shall not only be limited to participants of the ‘Away Day’ (happening on November, 2016, at the University of Malta), but also to any other postgraduate students or established academics interested in the multifaceted idea of utopia/s.

The notion of ‘utopian perspectives’ emphasises that constructions of utopian states, since More’s Utopia, have provided ideal models through which one can scrutinise existing socio-political realities. In this sense, utopia is not an absolute aim, but a platform for debate, for exploring alternatives. Utopian perspectives offer different viewpoints with regards to current social realities: (i) they help to sharpen a critical view of the present status quo and its hegemonic discourses; and (ii) they serve to highlight seeds of alternative existing options, spaces and practices, utopian potentials in the present. These two perspectives can also be linked; for example, when basic principles of democracy are interpreted as unfulfilled utopian ideas in present societies (ii), which highlights existing inequalities and exclusions (i).

In light of the above, the editors of antae welcome submissions on or around re-imagined utopias. All issues are open-access and employ a three-tier peer-review process. The authorial guidelines can be viewed here, and the deadline for submissions to antaejournal@gmail.com is the 31st of January, 2017. Submissions should be in the form of finalised papers of around 5,000 to 7,000 words. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

– Utopian Communities
– Utopian Perspectives on Socio-Political and Environmental Issues
– Utopian Political Publics
– Utopia Without Borders – Beyond the Nation State
– Urban Utopias
– Futures Studies
– Technological Utopias, Science Fiction
– Radical Education, Radical Emancipation – towards a Utopian Revolution
– Freedom and Utopia – Freedom as a (Collective) Praxis?
– Utopia as an Imposition or a Liberation?
– Utopia and Work, Utopia and Idleness
– After Capitalism
– Utopian Cultures
– Utopia and (Public) Happiness
– Gender, Sexuality and Love in Utopian Perspectives
– Utopian Bodies, Subjects, Individuals Creating and Living (in) Utopia
– Utopia and the Good Life?
– Beyond Reality

For more information about the journal, or to view previous issues, visit us at www.antaejournal.com; for further information about the Institute of Utopian Studies, visit our social media page here. In case of queries, please do not hesitate to email us on antaejournal@gmail.com.

Call for Proposals

Bridging the Solitudes:
Essays on Canadian Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror

Ed. Amy J. Ransom (Central Michigan University)
&
Dominick Grace (Brescia University)

This call is to solicit chapter proposals for an edited volume of scholarly essays on Canadian science-fiction, fantasy, and horror. A book proposal, including accepted abstracts, will be submitted to the Palgrave/Macmillan series on Studies in Global Science Fiction (series editors Anindita Banerjee, Rachel Haywood Ferreira, and Mark Bould).

Submit chapter proposals by January 1, 2017
Ø 500 Word abstract
Ø Working bibliography
Ø Brief author bio
Ø e-mail to: ranso1aj@cmich.edu AND dgrace2@uwo.ca

Completed chapters for accepted manuscripts due by September 1, 2017

Project description
Canadian science-fiction, fantasy, and horror literatures imagine the nation—indeed, the world–as other, different than it is in the here and now. One of the recurring dissatisfactions about Canada concerns two central metaphors that have been used to define the Canadian nation: the lack of communication between French- and English-Canadians as constructing The Two Solitudes described in Hugh MacLennan’s 1945 novel, and the problem of envisioning a multicultural Canada as a mosaic. The nation’s genre literatures in French and English have engaged with these issues from their very beginnings in the nineteenth-century through the present day. Indeed, when Judith Merril decided to edit a volume of Canadian speculative fiction (published in English but including French-Canadian writers), she founded the Tesseracts series of anthologies, whose title references not only the four-dimensional image of a cube, but which also includes the Greek tessera, an individual tile in a mosaic.

Since the publication of that foundational text, Canadian speculative fiction in both French and English has expanded exponentially. From its controversial relationship with the nation’s best-known author (in any genre), Margaret Atwood, to outspoken proponents like Robert J. Sawyer, to fierce defenders of the French presence in Canada like Élisabeth Vonarburg, to the rise of Québec’s equivalent of Stephen King, Patrick Senécal, in its maturity Canadian speculative fiction spans the entire gamut of genres and subgenres, literary styles, and so on. Although divisions certainly exist, writers and scholars of Canadian speculative fiction have frequently worked to bridge the two solitudes in their works and activities, publishing translations, attending each other’s cons, and so on. This task has become increasingly complex as the genre has also expanded its definitions and evolved to embrace more fully the national policy of multiculturalism and the global realities of cultural exchange. Thus, the success of writers like Nalo Hopkinson, Hiromi Goto, Larisa Lai, Stanley Péan, and others hailing from a wide array of cultural communities who practice forms of genre writing that may sometimes appear alien themselves to old guard readers have challenged and expanded the idea of the fantastic, making the term “speculative” fiction more appropriate than ever. Furthermore, a growing number of First Nations writers, filmmakers, graphic artists, and game designers like Eden Robinson, Tomson Highway, and Jeff Barnaby have put Indigenous Futurisms on the generic map.

The editors seek proposals for chapters on an array of topics linked to the production of sf, fantasy, and horror in an array of media by Canadian writers, filmmakers, and artists. Although essays must be in English, we are actively seeking contributions that address the work of French-language, First Nations, and diasporic writers. Ideally, chapters will somehow address the metaphor of the bridge, connecting with the utopian desire to reach out to the other or conversely, the dystopian burning of such bridges, understanding that Thomas More’s original utopia was “perfect” because isolated from corrupting influences, and, of course, in the end, was far from perfect. Chapters may address the work of a single author or engage a problem found in the work of several writers; single-text studies will need to be particularly rigorous or open out onto wider applications in order to be considered.

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:
Ø Themes related to the volume concept, such as:
Ø Bridge as metaphor/motif in Can SF & F
Ø Trans/Canada: the queering of Canadian SF
Ø Border crossings, in texts/by authors (US-born writers who have become Canadian)
Ø Regionalisms beyond Quebec/TROC divide
Ø Significant authors, such as:
Ø Margaret Atwood (proposals must address the volume’s aims directly)
Ø Robert J. Sawyer; Robert Charles Wilson; Peter Watts
Ø William Gibson (particularly the Bridge trilogy; proposals must address the “Canadian”)
Ø Candas Jane Dorsey; Nalo Hopkinson; Eden Robinson
Ø Élisabeth Vonarburg; Esther Rochon; Sylvie Bérard
Ø Jean-Louis Trudel ; Yves Meynard ; Joël Champetier
Ø Patrick Senécal ; Éric Gauthier ; Stanley Péan
Ø Genres or theory specific to Canada, including:
Ø Genre hybridity/ mash-up
Ø What is Canadian speculative fiction?
Ø Transmedia texts
Ø Canadian comics and the fantastic

Call for papers for a conference at Queen’s University Belfast:

Damsels in Redress: Women in Contemporary Fairy-Tale Reimaginings

Dates: Friday 7th April and Saturday 8th April 2017

Keynote Speakers: Professor Diane Purkiss (University of Oxford); Dr Amy Davis (University of Hull)

With the ever-growing profusion of fairy-tale reimaginings across literature, film, television, theatre, and other artistic forms, a continuing concern among critics today is the portrayal of women. How do these reimaginings represent women’s roles? To what extent do they redress portrayals that have been considered problematic from a feminist standpoint in traditional tales? To what extent do they perpetuate those portrayals? What constitutes a feminist reimagining? How have the fairy-tale heroine, the witch, the (step)mother, the (step)sister, and the fairy godmother evolved since the dawn of second-wave feminism?

This conference aims to foster interdisciplinary scholarship by bringing together a range of ideas about the representation of women in contemporary reimaginings of traditional fairy tales, such as those from the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault. We welcome proposals that explore this representation from a variety of perspectives and fields of study, including but not limited to literature, film, television, theatre, gender, feminist, and queer studies. We also welcome creative exploration on the theme of the fairy tale and how this theme can be interpreted with regard to women.

Topics might include but are not limited to:
● Feminist revision
● Subversive female characters
● The witch figure
● Women in Disney adaptations
● Physical depictions of women
● Mother/daughter relationships
● Sexuality and gender
● LGBTQI relations
● Marriage and Prince Charming
● Voice and agency

Please submit a title and an abstract of no more than 250 words, and a bionote of up to 50 words, to damselsinredress2017@gmail.com by 1st November 2016.

The Facebook event can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/events/949101051853840/.

Call For Papers

The Mythgard Institute at Signum University is pleased to announce the third annual Mythgard Midatlantic Speculative Fiction Symposium (known affectionately as MidMoot III) on September 24-25, 2016 at the University of Maryland at College Park. Additional details about the symposium will be announced in the summer, including special guests. We are accepting proposals now for short presentations intended to foster discussion. Presentation topics are welcome in the following areas:

• Speculative Fiction
• History of Science Fiction and Fantasy
• Critical Approaches to Science Fiction and Fantasy
• The Inklings
• Contemporary Speculative Fiction Authors
• The Interplay between Speculative Fiction and Other Literary Genres
• The Future of Speculative Fiction

To propose a paper, please submit a 100 to 200-word abstract that includes your name, email address, and academic affiliation (if any), along with the title of your presentation. Individual presentations should be around 15 minutes long, leaving an additional 15 minutes for discussion. so please plan accordingly. Abstracts should be sent to midmoot@mythgard.org by July 31, 2016. Acceptances will be sent by August 15. We look forward to hearing from you and hope you can enjoy the symposium with us!

Symposium Schedule

(TBD)

http://mythgard.org/events/mythgard-midatlantic-speculative-fiction-symposium/

Speaker Bios

Verlyn Flieger is an author, editor, and professor emerita in the Department of English at the University of Maryland at College Park. She teaches courses in comparative mythology, medieval literature and the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. Flieger holds an M.A. (1972) and Ph.D. (1977) from The Catholic University of America, and has been associated with the University of Maryland since 1976. In 2012, Flieger began teaching Arthurian studies at Signum University. Her best-known books are Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien’s World (1983; revised edition, 2002); A Question of Time: J. R. R. Tolkien’s Road to Faerie, which won the 1998 Mythopoeic Award for Inklings studies; Interrupted Music: The Making of Tolkien’s Mythology (2005) and Green Suns and Faërie (2012), a collection of her published essays on Tolkien. She has edited a critical edition of Tolkien’s short work Smith of Wootton Major, and is co-editor with Douglas A. Anderson of the critical edition of On Fairy-Stories, Tolkien’s seminal essay on myth and fantasy. She is also editor of Tolkien’s early short story, The Story of Kullervo, to be published August 27 by HarperCollins. She won the Mythopoeic Award for Inklings Studies a second time in 2002 for Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth, which she co-edited with Carl F. Hostetter. Flieger has also published young adult fantasy novels, including Pig Tale andThe Inn at Corbies’ Caww, as well as short stories. With Michael D. C. Drout and David Bratman, she is co-editor ofTolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review.”

Corey Olsen is the President of Signum University and the Mythgard Institute. On his teaching website, The Tolkien Professor, Professor Olsen brings his scholarship on Tolkien to the public, seeking to engage a wide and diverse audience in serious intellectual and literary conversation. His website features a series of detailed lectures on The Hobbit, and recordings of the weekly meetings of the Silmarillion Seminar, which has been working its way through the Silmarillion chapter by chapter, as well as more informal Q&A sessions with listeners. His book, Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, was published by Houghton Mifflin in September 2012. Corey Olsen obtained his B.A in English and Astrophysics from Williams College in 1996, going on to Columbia University where he obtained his M.A. in 1997, M.Phil in 2000, and his Ph.D in medieval literature in 2003. Upon graduation from Columbia University, Olsen obtained teaching positions at Temple University, Columbia University, Nyack College and Washington College. His undergraduate and graduate teaching subjects included J.R.R. Tolkien, Arthurian literature, Chaucer, and Sir Thomas Malory.

Del Sol Review Call for Speculative Short Fiction

Submissions accepted year-round.

Del Sol Review is currently looking for quality speculative short fiction inall its forms (sci-fi, fantasy, steampunk, slipstream, etc) for publication. Submissions must be formatted in a standard manner and from 500 to 6000 words in length. We also accept excerpts from novels-in-progress up to 6000 words. We’re looking for sharp narrative, strong hooks, and unpredictable storyline progression—and a great first line! Submission guidelines at http://delsolreview.webdelsol.com/sff.htm.