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Position Announcement: Research Associate, Portsmouth City Council’s Arthur Conan Doyle Collection

The Centre for Studies in Literature at the University of Portsmouth seeks to appoint a Research Associate to work on Portsmouth City Council’s Arthur Conan Doyle Collection, as part of a project on ‘Celebrities, Fans and Muses’.

The post is full-time, for 8 months and the closing date for applications is 21 September 2015.  Further details can be found on the University’s vacancies page: https://port.engageats.co.uk/ViewVacancy.aspx?enc=mEgrBL4XQK0+ld8aNkwYmIj7gyGvInud/iCDXh3jsBBMcvO9mYJN5Q6Dj8JRS0MrIO4VeAVfHG2RklGtAL5y9SIf0JuIcQKnxFI1Rdzz0fQ9SWqbHtyc+qOYX6zI60qLxNlSX+yMagAvFzDAZK8hbg==

Best wishes

Charlotte

Dr Charlotte Boyce

University of Portsmouth

CfP: Gender and Fantasy

Gender and Fantasy

In her seminal Fantasy: A Literature of Subversion, critic Rosemary Jackson calls fantasy “a literature of desire”, one that “traces the unsaid and unseen of culture, that which has been silenced, made invisible, covered over and made ‘absent'”. This issue of gender forum concerns itself with the manifold ways in which the fantasy genre is used to renegotiate these unseen desires, seeking to examine if and how it has moved on from the genre-specific stereotypes of wise wizard, wicked witch, strong hero, and damsel in distress. We are looking for contributions that analyse the role of gender in

• high and low fantasy

• the different subgenres (urban fantasy, dark fantasy, etc.)

• the genre’s classic as well as contemporary texts

• fantasy films

• fantasy TV shows

• theatrical representations

• the adaptation process (novel to film or vice versa)

• …

Abstracts of 400 words plus a brief biography should be submitted by October 15th, 2015. The deadline for the completed papers is January 7th, 2016. (Publication date: Early 2016)

gender-forum@uni-koeln.de

CfP: PULP STUDIES AREA Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association (PCA/ACA)

National Conference

March 22–25, 2016

Seattle, WA

Deadline for Abstracts is November 1, 2015

Pulp magazines were a series of mostly English-language, predominantlyAmerican, magazines printed on rough pulpwood paper. They were often illustrated with highly stylized, full-page cover art and numerous line art illustrations of the fictional content. They were sold for modest sums, and were targeted at (sometimes specialized) readerships of popular literature, such as western and adventure, detective, fantastic (including the evolving genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror), romance, and sports fiction. The first pulp Argosy, began life as the children’s magazine The Golden Argosy, dated Dec 2, 1882 and the last of the “original” pulps was Ranch Romances and Adventures, Nov. 1971.

The Pulp Studies area exists to support the academic study of pulp writers, editors, readers, and culture. It seeks to invigorate research by bringing together scholars from diverse areas including romance, western, science fiction, fantasy, horror, adventure, detective, and more. Finally, the Pulp Studies area seeks to promote the preservation of the pulps through communication with libraries, museums, and collectors. With this in mind, we are calling for papers and panels that discuss the pulps and their legacy.

Possible authors and topics:

• Magazines: Amazing Stories, Weird Tales, Wonder Stories, Fight Stories, All-Story, Argosy, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Spicy Detective, Ranch Romances and Adventures, Oriental Stories/Magic Carpet Magazine, Love Story, Flying Aces, Black Mask, and Unknown, to name a few.

• Editors and Owners: Street and Smith (Argosy), Farnsworth Wright (Weird Tales), Hugo Gernsback (Amazing Stories), Mencken and Nathan (Black Mask), John Campbell (Astounding).

• Influential Writers: H.P. Lovecraft, A. E. Merritt, Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, C. L. Moore, Fritz Leiber, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Robert Bloch, Donald Wandrei, Clark Ashton Smith, and Henry Kuttner. Proposals about contemporary writers in the pulp tradition, such as Joe Lansdale and Michael Chabon are also encouraged. New Weird writers and others, such as China Mieville, whose work is influenced by the pulps, are also of interest.

• Influences on Pulp Writers: H. Rider Haggard, Arthur Conan Doyle, Sax Rohmer, and Jack London were all influences, along with literary and philosophical figures such as Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Friedrich Nietzsche, Edgar Allen Poe, and Herbert Spencer.

• Popular Characters: Conan of Cimmeria; Doc Savage; Solomon Kane; Buck Rogers; Northwest Smith; The Domino Lady; Jiril of Joiry; Zorro; Kull of Atlantis; El Borak; The Shadow; The Spider; Bran Mak Morn; Nick Carter; The Avenger; and Captain Future, among others. Also character types: the femme fatale, the he-man, the trickster, racism and villainy, etc.

• Artists: Popular artists including Margaret Brundage (Weird Tales), Frank R. Paul (Amazing Stories), Virgil Finlay (Weird Tales), and Edd Cartier (The Shadow, Astounding).

• Periods: The dime novels; Argosy and the ancestral pulps; Weird Tales, Amazing Stories, and the heyday of the pulps; the decline of the pulps in the 50s and 60s; pulps in the age of the Internet.

• Theme and Styles: Masculinity, femininity, and sexuality in the pulps; the savage as hero, the woman as hero, the trickster as hero, colonialism in the pulps, racism and “yellow peril,” Modernism in the pulps, etc.

• Film and Television: Possible topics could include film interpretations such as Conan the Barbarian, pulp-inspired television such as Amazing Stories, and new work based in the “pulp aesthetic” such as Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

• Comics: Comic book incarnations of pulp magazines and series; “new weird” reinventions of the pulps such as the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and The Watchmen; comic adaptations of old pulp series such as The Shadow, The Spider, Doc Savage and others.

• Cyberculture: Cyberpulps such as Beneath Ceaseless Skies and pulp-influenced games such as the Age of Conan MMORPG or the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game.

These are but suggestions for potential panels and presentations. Proposals on other topics are welcome. For general information on the Pulp Studies area, please visit our website:

http://pulpstudies.weebly.com/

How to Submit Proposals: Proposals must be submitted through the official PCA conference website:

http://ncp.pcaaca.org/

Please send all inquiries to:

Justin Everett, PhD

Director of Writing Programs

University of the Sciences in Philadelphia

600 S. 43rd St.

Philadelphia, PA 19104

j.everet@usp.edu

Jeffrey H. Shanks, RPA

Southeast Archeological Center

2035 E. Paul Dirac Drive

Johnson Building, Suite 120

Tallahassee, FL 32310

jeffrey_shanks@nps.gov

Brian Aldiss: pioneer of British sci-fi

Brian Aldiss: pioneer of British sci-fi

By Jake Kerridge

Brian Aldiss, one of the pioneers of British science fiction, has written or edited more than 100 books. He has met Dylan Thomas, John Masefield and T S Eliot, been a drinking buddy of Kingsley Amis (“Kingsley would land one in a lot of trouble, I have to say”), and shared a Jacuzzi with Doris Lessing. He spent years enduring the caprices of Stanley Kubrick as they worked on a screenplay of Aldiss’s story “Super-Toys Last All Summer Long”, a project that eventually became Steven Spielberg’s A.I. – “a lousy film,” he says.

CfP: Haunted Europe: Continental Connections in English-Language Gothic

Writing, Film and New Media
9 – 10 June 2016.
Leiden University, The Netherlands

Keynote speakers:
Professor Robert Miles (University of Victoria)
Professor Roger Luckhurst (Birkbeck – University of London)
Professor Tanya Krzywinska (Falmouth University)
Lesley Megahey (director of the BBC film Schalken, the Painter)

The Leiden Research Institute for the Arts in Society (LUCAS) invites
proposals for papers that address continental connections in
English-Language Gothic Writing, Film and New Media. The aim of the
conference is to explore the representation and function of
continental European cultures, peoples and nations in English-Language
Gothic culture from the 1790s to the present. While the first wave of
British and Irish Gothic fictions developed and solidified the idea of
continental Europe as a fitting setting for Gothic Romance, little
sustained research has been done so far on the ways in which the
function and representation of the continent in English-language
Gothic culture has developed and changed since the seminal first-wave
fictions, and to what extent these developments and changes have had
an impact on the formation of British and Irish but also Australian
and American national, cultural and individual identities, for
instance. The ongoing debate in British politics and society
concerning the possibility of an EU referendum in 2017 seems to
warrant a scholarly investigation concerning the reputation and
representation of continental European culture in Gothic fiction. Such
political realities underscore the topicality and relevance of the
conference theme, and suggest that now is the right time to explore
how, why and to what extent Gothic representations of continental
Europe have played a part in the long, complex an often difficult
(love/hate) relationship between Britain, Ireland and the European
mainland, as well as the still often noted “special relationship”
between Britain and the USA. Paper topics can include, but are not
limited to:

Continental Europe as a socio-political ‘other’
Continental magic v. Anglo-American Enlightenment
Continental rationalism v. British and/or American Sensibility
The revolutionary continent in English-Language Gothic texts
The bohemian continent and the British artist
Haunting the continent: Gothic Tourism
Continental landscapes and the Gothic labyrinth
Language barriers in Gothic story-telling
Visualisations of and interactions with the Continent in British and
American “New-Media” texts

Please send a 200-word abstract, including a working title and brief
CV to m.newton@hum.leidenuniv.nl
Deadline for submission of abstracts: 1 November 2015.
Notification of participation: 21 December 2015.

Victorian Popular Fiction in the 21st Century

Victorian Popular Fiction in the 21st Century (Roundtable at NeMLA, Hartford, CT, USA March 17-20, 2016)

An ever increasing interest in Victorian popular fiction prompts us to ask why have we in Victorian Studies become so invested in the popular in recent years? How have certain theoretical fields such as gender studies, material culture/thing theory, post-colonial theory, etc. contributed to this rapid increase in interest? What does the popular do for us as scholars that the “canon” does not, or can we still think in terms of canonical and non-canonical texts in Victorian Studies? Is it still possible to think of a standard Victorian canon in a post-Google age when so many previously unavailable texts are now available at the tips of our fingers? How is the inclusion of the popular in the classroom changing Victorian Studies for our students? 

Topics might include:

  • Sensation fiction (Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Mrs. Henry (Ellen) Wood, Rhoda Broughton, Charles Reade)
  • Adventure fiction (Frederick Marryat, M. P. Shiel, R. M. Ballantyne, Bessie Marchant)
  • Speculative fiction (Edward Bulwer-Lytton)
  • Spiritualism, Mesmerism, or the Occult (Margaret Oliphant, Florence Marryat, Helena P. Blavatsky, Andrew Lang, Richard Marsh, Marie Corelli)
  • Drama and melodrama (George Meredith, Fanny Kemble, Caroline Norton, George Du Maurier, Fanny Stevenson, Lloyd Osborne, Dion Boucicault, Gilbert and Sullivan)
  • Satire and parody
  • Mystery and Detective fiction (E. W. Hornung, Charles Warren Adams, George W.M. Reynolds)
  • New Woman fiction (Amy Levy, Ouida, George Gissing, Mona Caird, Charlotte Mew, Sarah Grand, Olive Schreiner)
  • Sentimental or religious texts (Catherine Gore, members of the Booth Family, George MacDonald, Charlotte Yonge)

This roundtable welcomes submissions that address these questions and many more from scholars whose work examines the spectrum of Victorian popular fiction. Please submit a 250-word abstract and a one-page CV. Submit abstracts online by September 30th at https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/15788.

CfP: ICFA 37 – Wonder Tales

Please join us for ICFA 37, March 16-20, 2016, when our theme will be Wonder Tales.

Folklorists often use this term to refer to the stories commonly known as “fairy tales” due to the genre’s emphasis on the marvelous and its invocation of wonder, but what is wonder and where can it be found? Many events, characters, or objects generate a response of wonder—transformations and resurrections—but wonder also may be generated in technological advances and from the “sense of wonder” in science fiction. Papers might explore wonder tales and their modern incarnations, readers’ responses of wonder to fantastic texts, uses of wonder within fantastic texts, how wonder is invoked across media and genres, and the relationship between wondering (marveling) and wondering (questioning).

We welcome papers on the work of our guests: Guest of Honor Terri Windling, Guest of Honor Holly Black, and Guest Scholar Cristina Bacchilega. We also welcome proposals for individual papers and for academic sessions and panels on any aspect of the fantastic in any media.

The deadline for proposals is October 31, 2015. We encourage work from institutionally affiliated scholars, independent scholars, international scholars who work in languages other than English, and graduate students.

Join us in Orlando in 2016.  We will add your intellectual and creative distinctiveness to our own.  Resistance is futile.

For more information on the IAFA and its conference, the ICFA, see http://www.fantastic-arts.org/.

To submit a proposal, go to http://www.fantastic-arts.org/icfa-submissions/

Download the CfP for ICFA 37 from Dropbox

How to propose a paper

CfP: Jamie Bishop Memorial Award

The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts Announces its 10th annual Jamie Bishop Memorial Award for a critical essay on the fantastic written in a language other than English. The IAFA defines the fantastic to include science fiction, folklore, and related genres in literature, drama, film, art and graphic design, and related disciplines. For more information on the award and on past winners, please see http://www.fantastic-arts.org/awards/jamie-bishop-memorial-award/  (please note the updated submission criteria, below).

 

Submission criteria:

·       Essays should be of high scholarly quality, as if for publication in an academic journal.

·       We consider essays from 3,000-10,000 words in length (including notes and bibliography).

·       Essays may be unpublished scholarship submitted by the author, or already published work nominated either by the author or another scholar (in which case the author’s permission should be obtained before submission).

·       Essays must have been written and (when applicable) published in the original language within the last three years prior to submission.

·       An abstract in English must accompany all submissions; an English translation of the title of the essay should also be included.

·       Only one essay per person may be submitted each year.

·       Submissions must be made electronically in Word format.

 

Deadline for submissions: September 1st

 

Prize: $250 U.S. and one year’s free membership in the IAFA to be awarded at the annual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts held each March. Winning essays may be posted on the IAFA website in the original language and/or considered for publication in the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts (http://www.fantastic-arts.org/jfa/) should they be translated into English.

 

Please direct all inquiries and submissions to:

Amy J. Ransom

Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures & Cultures

305 Pearce Hall

Central Michigan University

Mt. Pleasant, MI 48859  USA

ranso1aj@cmich.edu

CfP: Scientific Utopias in Soviet Union: Fiction, science and power (1917-1991)

Deadline: 30 November 2015
Open to: anyone with a keen interest in the human and social sciences
Venue: 23-24 September 2016, Paris, France

Description

The call for papers for the conference  “Scientific Utopias in Soviet Union: Fiction, science and power (1917-1991)” has been opened. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, history of science has made significant progress. One topic however was disregarded: scientific utopia, fascinating and intriguing, because situated on the border between literature and science. Scientific utopia, as social utopia, offers an imaginary model for a new type of society and wishes to facilitate its realization. This conference aims to understand how fiction, thanks to its heuristic function, managed to participate in the transformation of scientific activity and reconfigure science and power relation.

First of all, participants will focus on the relation between fiction and science, in order to explore how literature and film have taken over and readapted some of the concepts based on scientific discoveries and, conversely, how science used the imagery proposed by fiction to sustain its discourse, challenge its findings or launch the brand new experiments. This double movement is clearly mediated by power. This is why the conference will be attentive to the social command and the mechanisms of censorship at work. Through this relation between fiction, science and power the idea of progress and its meaning during this period will be also explored.

This conference addresses all the disciplines in the humanities and social sciences (history, sociology, philosophy, literature studies, etc.). Every field of Soviet science, the best known as well as the most marginal, are to be examined. All works of fiction can be analyzed, as long as they fall within literature or cinema. The working languages of the conference are French, English and Russian.

Eligibility

The conference is opened to anyone with a keen interest in the human and social sciences with particular focus on scientific utopias in Soviet Union. Following topics are eligible for papers:

  • Scientific concepts and discoveries in fiction

    • variety of imagery proposed by scientific utopias;
    • discoveries and innovations at the heart of this imagery;
    • meanings given to the idea of progress;
    • fears and concerns expressed by scientific utopias.
  • Scientific utopias and science:

    • the role of fiction in scientific thinking and controversies;
    • the role of fiction in the reconfiguration of relations between scientific disciplines;
    • scientific ethics with regard to scientific utopias;
    • the use of scientific utopias in order to obtain recognition of a project by authorities or a scientific institution.
  • Scientific utopias tested by the society:
    • spreading of scientific utopias and its audience;
    • scientific utopias and popularization of knowledge and techniques;
    • scientific utopias and power, the role of censorship.

Costs

The costs for accommodation, meals and travel for successful candidates are covered by organizers.

How to apply?

The deadline for applications is 30 November 2015. If you are interested in presenting a paper at this conference, please send a 300 word-long abstract and a short bio to the following e-mail address: sovietscienceandfiction@gmail.com.

For more information please contact sovietscienceandfiction@gmail.com.

Read more:http://www.mladiinfo.eu/2015/06/11/cfp-scientific-utopias-in-soviet-union-fiction-science-and-power-1917-1991/#ixzz3fXljAOau

CfP [UPDATE] Octavia E. Butler: Celebrating Letters, Life, and Legacy – February 26-28, 2016 – Spelman College

  • July 3, 2015 – 11:44 am
  • Posted in CFP
  • Comments Off on CfP [UPDATE] Octavia E. Butler: Celebrating Letters, Life, and Legacy – February 26-28, 2016 – Spelman College

full name / name of organization:
Octavia E. Butler Society
contact email:
oebliterarysociety@gmail.com

February 24, 2016 will mark the tenth anniversary of the passing of Octavia E. Butler. To commemorate her contributions to the world of letters, the Octavia E. Butler Society solicits papers for a special conference to be hosted by Spelman College February 26-28, 2016. The Society welcomes proposals of 250 words focused on any aspect of Butler’s life, work, and influence. Because a major goal of the Society is to encourage the teaching of her works in the academy and beyond, we also invite submissions addressing approaches to teaching Butler in any pedagogical environment. Panel proposals are also encouraged. This inaugural conference is especially geared toward conversation and collaboration so submissions that move beyond the traditional conference paper are welcome.

Please submit proposals to oebliterarysociety@gmail.com by Monday, September 21.

For more info. on the society, visit: https://oebsociety.wordpress.com/