Skip navigation

CfP: Essays on Space Horror in Film, 1950s – 2000s

full name / name of organization:
Michele Brittany, Editor / Independent Scholar
contact email:
spacehorrorfilms@gmail.com

Call for Papers
Essays on Space Horror in Film, 1950s – 2000s
Abstract Submission Deadline: August 25, 2015

In 1979, the word A L I E N was spelled out across the top of an ominous movie poster, conveying a sense of foreboding of something unknown. An eerie yellow light seeped out of the egg-shaped space pod with the tagline: In space no one hears you scream. Audiences were drawn along with the Nostromo crew as they explored the mysterious abandoned ship on LV-426 and encountered a new and hostile alien species. It was one of the first movies to successfully combine science fiction and horror in an interstellar setting, spawning several inferior imitations in the 1980s while also inspiring standout films that furthered the genre, such as Event Horizon (1997), Pitch Black (2000), Sunshine (2007), and Europa Report (2013). While it may have seemed like space horror was a new genre after the release of Ridley Scott’s film, the genre has a rich history that took hold of movie audience-goers almost thirty years prior with the space horror films that could best be classified as invasion films. With a plethora of films, much has been written about science fiction, horror or on individual films (mostly the Alien franchise), yet surprisingly, little analysis can be found on space horror as its own genre in cinema. Essays for this anthology will seek to deconstruct and analyze the genre via the films from 1950s through the present offerings with the goal of exploring and bridging the gap of critical analysis that currently exists between science fiction and the horror genres. The intended audience is expected to include individuals studying and/or curious to increase their understanding of science fiction, horror and of course, space horror.

There are several themes worth exploring when analyzing space horror, utilizing any number of theoretical framework of your choosing. Here is a brief list of ideas, which is by no means exhaustive:

• Claustrophobia, Outer Space fears (Pandorum, Dark Star, Europa Report, The Black Hole)
• The influence of slasher films (Alien, Event Horizon, Jason X, Sunshine, Leprechaun 4: In Space)
• Psychological (2001: A Space Odyssey, Solaris, Sunshine, Moon)
• Body Horror and/or transformation (Supernova, Event Horizon, Hellraiser: Bloodline, Slither)
• Final girl (Alien, Prometheus, Dead Space: Downfall)
• Paranormal/Occult (Event Horizon, Hellraiser: Bloodline, Dracula 3000, Ghosts of Mars)
• Cold War fears (most invasion films of the 1950s – 1970s)
• Doppelganger (Event Horizon, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Thing, Moon)
• Compare/Contrast maleficent vs. animal “aliens” (Xenomorphs in Alien franchise vs. alien species encountered in Pitch Black, Apollo 18, Europa Report for example)
• Alien abduction (Communion, Fire In The Sky, Extraterrestrial)
• Found footage (Europa Report, Apollo 18)
• Sacrifice of self and/or self-destruct sequence (Alien franchise, Event Horizon, Critters 4, The Last Days on Mars)
• Role of AI, robotics and/or the concept of “uncanny valley” (Alien franchise, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Prometheus, Dracula 3000)
• Bram Stoker and Space Vampires (Dracula 3000, Planet of the Vampires, Lifeforce)
• Exploring Literary roots such as H.P. Lovecraft, H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury, etc.

I am accepting up to two abstracts in order to assemble the most cohesive arrangement of essays that will provide a well-rounded exploration and representation of this little discussed genre. The deadlines are as follows:

• August 25, 2015: Abstract of 300-500 words, 1 page CV, preliminary draft bibliography
• September 1, 2015: Notification of acceptance/rejection (editor will send comprehensive style sheet)
• January 31, 2016: Essays due of 5,000-8,000 words in length (earlier submissions welcomed and encouraged)
• February 1 – April 20, 2016: Essays will be edited and returned to the author for review and revision. The final version of the essay, author’s release and a brief contributor’s bio is due to the editor by April 20, 2016
• June 1, 2016: Manuscript is received by the publisher

Accepted essays received on or before January 31st will continue through the editing process. The editor will utilize Microsoft Word’s tracking function to record all edits and return the edited version back to the author for final correction.

The final manuscript will be delivered to the publisher June 1, 2016. Contributors will receive a complimentary book copy when published, which is anticipated for late 2016.

Please direct all correspondence to:
Michele Brittany, Editor
Email: SpaceHorrorFilms@gmail.com
Blog: http://spacehorrorfilms.blogspot.com
Website: www.spacehorrorfilms.com

Michele Brittany is an independent popular culture scholar residing in Southern California and is the editor of James Bond and Popular Culture: Essays on the Influence of the Fictional Superspy (2014, McFarland & Company). She is the James Bond, Espionage and Eurospy Area Chair for the Southwest Popular/American Culture Association’s annual conference. She is a West Coast Correspondent for Bleeding Cool and writes daily on all things spy related at her blog, Spy-Fi & Superspies. She annually presents at the SWPACA and has presented at Wondercon Anaheim as part of the Comic Arts Conference series. She is also an academic member of the Horror Writer’s Association in Los Angeles.

[CfP] On the Footsteps of Dwarves: Different Readings of a Mythical Figure in Popular Culture

  • July 3, 2015 – 11:41 am
  • Posted in CFP
  • Comments Off on [CfP] On the Footsteps of Dwarves: Different Readings of a Mythical Figure in Popular Culture

full name / name of organization:

Dr. Feryal Cubukcu / Dr. Sabine Planka
contact email:
cubukcu.feryal@gmail.com / planka@phil.uni-siegen.de

Today more than ever fairy tales permeate pop culture, literature, music, fine arts, opera, ballet and cinema. Speaking of the history of stories and especially fairy-tales, we may say that the Pot of Soup, the Cauldron of Story, has always been boiling for centuries. Dwarves have always been a recurring image and a character from the fairy tales to the novels.
Mythology itself presents dwarves not only as treasurekeepers and remarkable workers, but calling them gnome, kobold, bogey, brownie or leprechaun. Zealous, sharp and small in statue they are often shown as counterparts to the inane giant. The possible dualistic arrangement between their helpfulness and their daemonic look has been both adapted by numerous authors and used as a figure to hide several messages as well as sociopolitical estimations: During the Enlightenment era, rationalism shaped assumptions about the necessary requirements such as a short and simple form and didactic moralizing message with the help of dwarves whereas during the Romantic era, nationalism accounts for fairy tales’ association with the cultural heritage and patriarchal institutionalization. Other masculine hegemonic practices can be held responsible for the canonized corpus’s predomination by male authors (the Grimms, Andersen, Perrault, even Disney, the latter showing the image of dwarf as a kind of treasurekeeper and -seeker) and the recognizable representational patterns sustaining gender inequality and themes of female submissiveness. When it comes to the twentieth century, we find the traces of Tolkienian functions of dwarf stories which accentuate, reinvigorate and revitalize the elements of escape, fantasy, recovery and consolation in the minds of the contemporary readers. Inspired and aspired by the zest and prevalence of the dwarves, we attempt to publish a collection of essays where it is possible to apply different critical theories and/or transnational interpretations to dwarves that range from mythology over current fiction and fantasy to art and film.
Chapters may explore different media (literature, movies, art, video games, comics, visual arts, television, etc.) and address topics on dwarves. If you are interested in proposing a chapter, please email an abstract of 500 words and a short CV to both Dr. Feryal Cubukcu (cubukcu.feryal@gmail.com) and Dr. Sabine Planka (planka@phil.uni-siegen.de).
Your abstract should outline your hypothesis and briefly sketch the theoretical framework(s) within which your chapter will be situated. All submissions will be acknowledged. If you do not receive a confirmation of receipt within 48 hours, you may assume that your email was lost in the depths of cyberspace. In that case, please re-submit. Please note that we will not include previously published essays in the collection.

Dates/deadlines:
October 15, 2015: abstract deadline
October 30, 2015: notification of acceptance/rejection (Please note: Acceptance of your abstract does not automatically guarantee your chapter’s inclusion in the collection.)
February 29, 2016: first drafts due

Emotional Journeys: Itinerant Theatres, Audiences, and Adaptation in the Long Nineteenth Century 

  • May 22, 2015 – 6:23 pm
  • Posted in CFP
  • Comments Off on Emotional Journeys: Itinerant Theatres, Audiences, and Adaptation in the Long Nineteenth Century 

Itinerant Theatres Workshop • German Historical Institute London • 18-19 November 2015

In the nineteenth century, theatre was one of the most popular and important means of entertainment. Although only major cities could sustain more than one playhouse, theatrical touring companies brought successful plays to smaller towns and sometimes even performed in the countryside. Most of these troupes stayed within their country of origin, but some ventured further afield and performed before audiences of other cultural backgrounds. For instance, British touring companies travelled throughout the entire British Empire, while Parsee itinerant theatres performed before diverse audiences all over India and as far away as Southeast Asia.

This raises some interesting questions, not least for the history of emotions. Popular theatre entertained by addressing the emotions of its audiences: comedies appealed to humour, melodramas to fear and compassion. Emotions being culturally constructed, what happened when a play was performed in a different cultural context? How were humour, melodrama, and other genres translated? And what were the local (perhaps vernacular) idioms that mediated the feelings that genres are (in theory) supposed to make legible to an audience? How did touring companies adapt their repertoires? And if they did not, what kinds of cultural work were they doing by expecting audiences to comprehend their plots, idioms, and, of course, genres?

The workshop wants to address these questions by looking specifically at touring companies that crossed cultural borders, like, for example, European companies in Asia and South America, Parsee companies in India and Asian companies in Europe. It asks how these troupes were set up, which audiences they catered to and how these audiences perceived the performances.

We welcome proposals for twenty-minute presentations. Please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words, along with a short CV, by 30 June 2015 to both Kedar Kulkarni (Max Planck Institute for Human Development) at kulkarni@mpib-berlin.mpg.de and Tobias Becker (German Historical Institute) at becker@ghil.ac.uk. Accommodation during the conference will be covered. Up to 200€ for airfare will be reimbursed to those traveling within Europe; 800€ for those traveling from elsewhere.

Venue

German Historical Institute

17 Bloomsbury Square

London WC1A 2NJ

Tobias Becker
German Historical Institute, London
becker@ghil.ac.uk

Kedar A. Kulkarni
Max Planck Institute for Human Development
Center for the History of Emotions
kulkarni@mpib-berlin.mpg.de

Speculative Fiction – SAMLA – Deadline Extended

Speculative fiction covers a broad range of narrative styles and genres. The cohesive element that pulls works together is that there is some “unrealistic” element, whether it’s magical, supernatural, or even a futuristic, technological development: works that fall into the category stray from conventional realism in some way. For this reason, speculative fiction can be quite broad, including everything from fantasy and magical realism to horror and science fiction—from Gabriel García Márquez to H.P. Lovecraft to William Gibson. This panel aims to explore those unrealistic elements and all their varied implications about society, politics, economics, and more. Please submit a 250-300 word abstract, a brief bio, and any A/V needs by May 29, 2015 to Lisa Wenger Bro, Middle Georgia State College, atlisa.bro@mga.edu.

Those accepted must be members of SAMLA in order to present.

SAMLA will be held at the Sheraton Imperial Hotel and Convention Center in Durham, NC this year from November 13-15

CfP: The Fantastic in a Transmedia Era: New Theories, Texts, Contexts

November Tuesday 24 and Wednesday 25, 2015

International two-day conference at the University of Southern Denmark, SDU

The fantastic is today’s most popular and significant genre in entertainment media. Among its developments are George R.R. Martin’s fantasy book series A Song of Ice and Fire and its HBO adapted series Game of Thrones; the Hunger Games film series based on Suzanne Collins’ books; The Walking Dead in comics and television; the new Disney princesses in Brave and Frozen; the rebooted superheroes emerging in games, comics, and film series; religious-themed stories in blockbuster cinema; among games are LOL and WOW. The fantastic has reached new audiences and achieved mainstream status.

Fantastic genres include fantasy, science fiction, horror, and the fairy tale, and today’s transmedia storytelling generates new versions, hybrid forms, and new audience engagements. Multiple media platforms and participatory audiences call for new theorizations of the fantastic as it expands, transforms, and migrates across media, be they grand cinemas or intimate cell phones. This raises questions about medium specificity: what does the fantastic look and feel like in different media and how do stories – affectively and aesthetically – behave when changing form? What significant developments demand our attention, from mash-up narratives to TV genre hybrids? How do audiences engage with the fantastic across media? How does the increase of female authors and female characters influence the fantastic? And, finally, the relation between imagination and the fantastic calls for re-conceptualization: Is the fantastic conservative or subversive, or can its appeal be explained by other factors?

You can go to the conference site here and read more about keynotes and speakers:

http://sdu.dk/en/Om_SDU/Institutter_centre/Ikv/Konferencer/Konferencer+2015/The+Fantastic

For questions contact: thefantastic@sdu.dk

CfP: Chapters on Terry Pratchett

Call for Chapters FROM GIANT TURTLES TO SMALL GODS LITERARY, PHILOSOPHICAL AND MEDIA THEORY APPROACHES TO TERRY PRATCHETT

Terry Pratchett’s death earlier this year brought into sharp relief three things: The depth of his fans’ devotion, the high esteem in which he was held by fellow authors, and the lack of scholarly attention paid to his work so far. This academic oversight is not only surprising in the light of Pratchett’s success – with total sales of over 70 million and translations into 37 languages, he was one of Britain’s bestselling novelists – but, more importantly, due to the richness of his work. A truly postmodern author, Pratchett rejuvenated the fantasy genre with his highly distinctive and influential narrative style, technical and scientific wit, stylistic and narrative creativity, as well as social, political and philosophical commentary. The aim of this collection is to give a broad overview both of the multidimensionality of Pratchett’s work and of the insightful scholarship surrounding it and to provide a solid launching point for future engagement with his work.

From scholars working within or across the disciplines of literature, media theory, sociology and related fields, we invite proposals for chapters that address

  • Pratchett’s narrative style (e.g. parody, pastiche, intertextuality, irony, humour, genre subversion, dialogue, satire, imagery)
  • Content analysis (in terms of e.g. philosophy, technology, death, science, religion, social commentary, moralism, education, gender, race)
  • Biographical aspects of Pratchett’s life and work (e.g. his disability, social activism, reader‐ writer‐approach)
  • Mediality of Pratchett’s work (e.g. franchise, multimediality, use of social media)
  • Terry Pratchett fandom (e.g. gaming, conventions, internet affiliation and impact).

    Interested authors should send a 300‐word abstract, 100‐word biography, and a sample of a previously published chapter or article to Marion Rana (marirana@uni‐mainz.de) by August 1, 2015. Please feel free to contact Marion with any questions regarding this call.

Call for Applicants: Head of the Science Fiction and International Fantastic Divisions

The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts is accepting applications for two positions: Head of the Science Fiction and International Fantastic Divisions. Those interested in applying must send a cover letter explaining their interest in and qualifications for the position, and a current CV, to the First Vice-President, Dale Knickerbocker (knickerbockerd@ecu.edu), no later than 15 May 2015. Division Heads are appointed by the President, on the recommendation of the First Vice-President, who chairs the Council of Division Heads, after formal discussion and majority vote of the Board. The three-year term will begin immediately following the 37th ICFA, so the people selected will be able to observe the outgoing Head the year before beginning their duties.

Each Division Head organizes and supervises all conference activity within a subdivision of fantastic scholarship. Division Heads work under the guidance of the First Vice-President. Division Heads are responsible for recruiting session proposals and papers and are responsible for formatting these to the requirements of the First Vice-President. Division Heads are responsible for forwarding all information to the First Vice-President in a timely fashion. Division Heads have the responsibility to check the draft program for accuracy and AV needs. Division Heads are expected to liaise with other Division Heads and the First Vice-President. The First Vice-President is the final arbiter of the program under the aegis of the Executive Board. At the conference the Division Heads oversee sessions in their respective Divisions and collect suggestions for future topics, special guests, etc.

CfP: Monsters of Film, Fiction, and Fable — Edited Collection

Monsters of Film, Fiction, and Fable: The Cultural Links between the Human and Inhuman

This proposed collection will explore the cultural implications of and the societal fears and desires associated with the literal monsters of fiction, television, and movies. Long tied to ideas of the Other, the inhuman have represented societal fears for centuries. While this depiction of inhuman as Other still persists today, postmodern times also saw a radical shift in the portrayals and long-held associations. The postmodern monster is by no means soft and cuddly; nevertheless, its depiction has evolved. Veering from the traditional, “us vs. them” dynamic, many contemporary works illustrate what posthuman theorists refer to as the “them” in “us” correlation. These new monsters, often found in urban fantasy, eradicate the stark separation between human and inhuman as audiences search for the similarities between themselves and their much beloved monster characters. The shifted portrayal also means that these select, postmodern monsters no longer highlight cultural fears, but rather cultural hopes, dreams, desires, and even humanity’s own inhumanity. This does not mean that the pure monsters of horror are eradicated in contemporary renderings. Instead, they too have evolved over the course of the 20th and 21st century, highlighting everything from socioeconomic anxieties to issues related to humanity and human nature.

Given the many and varied implications of the inhuman in media and their long and diverse history, this volume will examine the cultural connotations of the monstrous, focusing specifically on the monsters of modernism and postmodernism.

In particular, we are looking to fill in certain gaps, and welcome articles related to the following monsters:

– Ghosts
– Leviathons/behemoths—anything from Mothra to Dragons
– Science Fiction related monsters such as artificial intelligence and cyborgs

The proposal for this collection is in progress, and will be submitted once selections are made.

Please email the following to Lisa Wenger Bro (lisa.bro@mga.edu) by Thursday, April 30:
– a 300-350 word abstract
– a brief biography
– the estimated length of the full article
– the number of illustrations, if any, you will use (note, it will be up to individual authors to secure rights to images)

Full articles will be due by June 30. All accepted articles will be peer-reviewed.

CFP: 2015 Midwest Modern Language Association Conference – Arts and Sciences

Columbus, Ohio November 12-15, 2015

Intersections of Art and Science in the Long Nineteenth Century

 

We welcome papers that explore the intersection of “art” and “science” in the long nineteenth century. From Keats’s enigmatic intonation “beauty is truth, truth beauty,” to Ruskin’s declaration that “high art differs from low art in possessing an excess of beauty in addition to its truth, not in possessing excess of beauty inconsistent with truth,” to the aestheticism of the fin de siècle, the nineteenth century witnessed a fraught renegotiation of the relationships between knowledge, art, and science. If the opposition between C.P. Snow’s “two cultures” is one legacy of the nineteenth century, we aim to take seriously the “and” of “arts and sciences,” highlighting the consonances and mutualities as well as the disjunctions that characterized the period.

 

We are interested in artistic representations, practices, and engagements with the empirical sciences, and in the epistemological shifts that constructed the “artistic” and the “empirical.” Examples are countless. Coleridge collaborated with his physician-superintendent James Gillman on The Theory of Life. John Constable’s cloud studies are renowned for their meteorological rigor. George Eliot represented medical doctors as modern heroes in a sociologically-inflected novelistic form. Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote letters to Nature magazine. Erasmus Darwin’s poem The Botanic Garden makes significant contributions to Linnaean taxonomy, while Byron’s doctor John Polidori founded the vampire genre. Indeed, scientific practice depends upon forms of representation, and artistic practice necessarily involves knowledge-work.

 

Paper topics might include:

—The intersection of art and science in historical and biological museums and collections

—The cooperation of artists and scientists in investigating the supernatural, from the Ghost Club to occultism

—The formal and aesthetic dimensions of scientific practice, representation, and dissemination

—Literature and the emergence of the human sciences via the rise of realism

—Curricular and disciplinary shifts at Oxbridge and the Dissenting Academies, the incursion of the German University model, and how these phenomena led to the separation of art and science

—The cultural politics of specialization and the lingering figure of the generalist “man of letters”

—Developments in book production, publishing, selling, purchasing, and collecting; the transformation from eighteenth-century “bibliomania” to nineteenth-century bibliography

 

Alternatively, take a philological or genealogical approach:

—How does this period reify “arts” and “sciences” into distinct disciplines and epistemologies? How did literature become narrowly associated with belles-lettres? Chart the transition from “natural philosophy” to science as we now conceive of it.

 

We also welcome proposals that reflect upon nineteenth-century arts and sciences by way of contemporary disciplinary questions:

—How do quantitative and/or digital methods help us understand the productions of the nineteenth century—and the relationship between art and science they embody—anew?

 

250-word abstracts are due by April 5th, and should include name, institutional affiliation, email address, and paper title.

Send to Andrew Welch at awelch2@luc.edu

CfP: Tales Beyond Borders

The registration deadline for the Tales Beyond Borders conference and workshop, all of which focus on the intercultural role of fantasy literature and speculative fiction, is now approaching (20th March 2015). Tales Beyond Borders is a two-day international conference (24th-25th April) and a postgraduate/early career researcher workshop (23rd April), organized by the ‘Reading the Fantastic’ Graduate Research Group at the University of Leeds. We have four keynote speakers: Dr Nicola Bown (Birkbeck, University of London) and Dr Alaric Hall (University of Leeds), whose research deals with Victorian fantasy and medieval fantasy respectively, will represent the academic aspect of working with the fantastic; science-fiction and fantasy writer (and multiple Arthur C. Clarke award nominee) Justina Robson and Peter Stevenson, a professional illustrator,  musician, storyteller from Aberystwyth Arts Centre and Kingston Art College, will provide a complementary perspective on working in the creative field of the fantastic.

 

We’re excited to be welcoming 36 panel speakers,  from nine different countries,  to the two main conference days (Friday 24th – Saturday 25th April, 2015) of Tales Beyond Borders. Panel speakers will be discussing a wide variety of topics and issues, including the use of modern techniques of digital illustration and animation to bring Malaysian and Thai folktales to new audiences, the balance of political and scientific investigations of fantasy, issues around Queer and ‘strange’ physicalities in speculative fiction, and difficulties of translation, reception, and interpretation in contemporary sci fi and dystopic fiction.

 

Our one-day workshop (open to both conference attendees and non-attendees) will explore the use of fantasy as a point of career engagement and public impact, aiming to provide practical skills as well as increase knowledge of current projects. Participants will pursue in-depth investigations with different speakers in three separate sessions focusing on fantasy and community engagement, fantasy and digital engagement, and fantasy and pedagogical engagement. Workshop sessions will involve presentations of current projects, discussion of strategies, and training in problem-solving using focused small-group work and feedback from speakers including Dr Laura Anderson (University of Leeds), who will focus on ‘Curious Encounters: Organising Public Engagement Activities Across Disciplines’;  Cath Heinemeyer (York St John University and York Theatre Royal), who will present on ‘Telling Tales with Teenagers: Stories from the Front Line’; Heather Robbins (the Sussex Centre for Folklore, Fairy Tales and Fantasy, University of Chichester), who will talk about ‘Folklore, Fairy Tales, Fantasy and Facebook’, Dr. Sarah Copeland (University of Bradford), who will discuss ‘Community Digital Storytelling: Engendering Activism through Narrative’, Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes (Manchester Metropolitan University and the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies), who will address ‘Gothic Pedagogies: Challenges, Strategies and Design of Modern and Contemporary Gothic Units’ and Peter Stevenson (Storyteller and Illustrator), who will explore the complexities of ‘Teaching Visual and Performative Storytelling’.

 

More information about these initiatives, including schedule, speaker and registration/payment information, can be found on our site:www.readingthefantastic.wordpress.com.