Thursday, October 26, 2017

Fantastic Area Sessions 2017

Sorry about the lack of formatting; Blogger doesn't make pasting from Word easy:

Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Areas Sessions 2017
(full conference program at https://nepca.blog/2017-conference-schedule/)

Session I: Friday, October 27, 1:00-2:30pm

PANEL 1 – CC 803 – The Fantastic: Horrors Past and Present
CHAIR: Amie Doughty, SUNY Oneonta

 “Horrifying Mythical Obstacles: Masculine Anxieties and Alternate Gazes in Robert Eggers’s The Witch (2015),” Dustin Fisher, University of Cincinnati

Dustin Fisher received an M.A. in Literature from Wright State University in 2014 where he completed and presented his master’s thesis, “Doppelgangers and Dualistic Femininity in Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House.” In 2014 he also presented a paper at Newcastle University in Newcastle, UK, on Ian McEwan’s Atonement. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in contemporary Gothic fiction and film studies at the University of Cincinnati.

“Images of the Indigenous Monster in The Green Inferno (2013),” Erica Tortolani, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Erica Tortolani is currently enrolled at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in Communication with a concentration in Film Studies.  Her past research explored the intersection of film theory with rhetorical studies, looking specifically at how the cinematic medium can transmit messages regarding gender, sexuality, and the female body through visual and narrative elements.  These interests culminated into her Masters thesis, entitled "Dual Images of the ‘Monstrous Feminine’ in Three Horror Films," a project that received the 2015 Graduate Research Excellence award at the University of Rhode Island.  Erica has also presented at the 2015 Graduate Conference at the URI, the 2016 Northeastern Modern Language Association Conference, and earned her publication in the Fall 2013 issue of the undergraduate journal, Film Matters.  Her research interests include general film theory and criticism, silent cinema, comedy and theories of humor, horror films, German Expressionist film, and feminist film theory.

“The Decomposing Youths and the Revival of the Zombies in Contemporary Korea,” Ha Rim Park, Seoul National University

After receiving her Master of Literature in 2016, Harim Park is doing a Ph.D in Comparative Literature at Seoul National University. She has published an article titled “The Origin of Catastrophe and Melancholy: A Korean Cultural Study on Zombie Narrative in the 2000s” in the journal of Korea Comparative Literature as the result of her master degree. Her areas of research include 1990-2000s Korean literature, genre fiction, movie, webtoon, and modernization, democratization after the Korean War. Harim is currently studying on disaster, apocalypse, Sci-fi narratives and non-human representations in contemporary East asian cultures, specifically Korea, Taiwan and Japan. 

“The Bunhill Apocalypse: Robert Aickman’s ‘Larger than Oneself’ (1966) as a Post-Christian Metaphor,” Steffen Silvis, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Steffen Silvis is a playwright, theatre critic, actor and director, who is currently finishing his Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Theatre Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Among Silvis’ plays are Archetypes (1991; produced at The King’s Head, London), Liberty, Oregon (winner of the London International Playwrights Festival, 1993, produced by The Man-in-the-Moon Theatre, Chelsea, London, 1994, [nominated for best new work on the London Fringe]; The Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 1995, California State University, 2005,); The Kalama Orpheum (winner of the London International Playwrights Festival, 2001); Nothing, If Not Critical (co-winner of the London One-Act Festival, 2003, and produced in London and Portland, Oregon, 2004); and Phere[crates]: Scraps (produced in Madison, Wisconsin, 2013). Silvis was the theatre critic for Portland’s Willamette Week and The Prague Post in the Czech Republic. His writing has appeared in American Theatre Magazine, Time Out, Paperback Jukebox, and Black Lamb. Co-Founder of the Madison-based theatre company, In-House, Silvis has produced Manjula Padmanabhan’s Light’s Out, and directed the devised-environmental piece, Reunion. Silvis has also won an NEA/Annenberg Fellowship and an O’Neil Fellowship for his criticism.


Session II: Friday, October 27, 2:45-4:15pm

PANEL 8 – CC 803 – The Fantastic: Meeting Monsters
CHAIR: Michael A. Torregrossa, Independent Scholar

“‘Everything That Ought to Have Remained Hidden’: Sublimation and the Uncanny in Anya's Ghost (2011),” Shane Gomes, North Dakota State University

Shane is from Honolulu, Hawaii, and completed his BA at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, his MA at the University of Northern Colorado, and is currently pursuing his PhD in English at North Dakota State University. His primary research interests are graphic novels and pop/comic culture more broadly, especially minority representations therein.

“Murder, Reproduction, and Bad Women in Junji Ito’s Tomie,” Rahel Worku, University of Maryland

Rahel Worku was an undergrad English major at UMBC and is currently a Masters student at the University of Maryland studying Comparative Literature. Rahel is now in the second year of the program and once again teaching English 101. Rahel’s interests are in African American literature, speculative fiction, and comic books.

“A Trekkie’s Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse,” Cinzia DiGiulio, Merrimack College

Cinzia DiGiulio is an Associate Professor of Italian and Cultural Studies at Merrimack College in North Andover, Massachusetts.  Cinzia completed a Doctorate in Russian and English (languages and literatures) at the Catholic University of Milan, a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature and Classics at Purdue University, and then a Ph.D. in Romance Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Most Cinzia’sstudies and research interests revolve around late 19th-century narrative (British, Russian, and Italian) -- particularly popular narrative -- and its intersections with contemporary popular culture.

“Scientists Become Monsters: The Strain’s Dr. Goodweather,” Kristine Larsen, Central Connecticut State University

Dr. Kristine Larsen is Professor of Astronomy at Central Connecticut State University, where her teaching and research focus on the intersections between science and society. She is the co-editor of The Mythological Dimensions of Doctor Who and The Mythological Dimensions of Neil Gaiman.


Session III: Friday, October 27, 4:30-6:00pm

PANEL 15 – CC 803 – The Fantastic: Re-envisioning the Heroic in Fantastic Fiction
CHAIR: Shane Gomes, North Dakota State University

“Happy Endings: Frankenstein’s Creature as a Romantic Lead,” Maggie Damken, Independent Scholar

Maggie Damken is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied literature and creative writing. She has presented previously at the Northeast Regional Honors Conference and Beacon Conference. A previous essay on Frankenstein was accepted for presentation by the Science Fiction Research Association.

“Decentering Monsterhood: Blurred Histories, Genres and Narrative Identities in John M. Ford’s Fantasy The Last Hot Time (2000),” Angela Gustafsson Whyland, Southern New Hampshire University [WITHDRAWN]


“Guinevere, the Warrior Queen of Camelot?: The Altered Fate of Guinevere in Recent Comics,” Michael A. Torregrossa, Independent Scholar
 
Independent scholar Michael A. Torregrossa is a graduate of the Medieval Studies program at the University of Connecticut (Storrs). His research interests include adaptation, Arthuriana, comics and comic art, medievalism, monsters, and wizards. Michael has presented papers on these topics at regional, national, and international conferences, as well as in published works. In addition, he is currently Fantastic (Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror) Area Chair for the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association and organizes sessions, like this one, for their annual conference in the fall and maintains the area’s blogs.


Session IV: Saturday, October 28, 8:45-10:15am

PANEL 22 – CC 803 – The Fantastic: New Approaches to the Fantastic
CHAIR: Nova Seals, Salve Regina University

“The Princess Bride and Slavoj Žižek's Fantasy of the Real,” Heather Flyte, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania

Heather Flyte is a graduate student in English Literature at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania. She is working on her thesis investigating the dialogue of imperialism created during translation of non-western fairy tales in the Victorian era, with a specific focus on Japanese folk tales. In September 2014, she presented at the “Sensational Influences: Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Literary Legacy” in London and recently was awarded the Emma Richards-Bausch Award in Literary Criticism from Kutztown University for her writing on H.G. Wells. She is a non-traditional student who has previously worked in journalism and web development and plans to pursue doctoral work in English Literature.

“Madness and Mixed-Bloods: Racial Metaphors in Seanan McGuire’s October Daye Series,” Amie Doughty, SUNY Oneonta

Amie Doughty is an associate professor of English as SUNY Oneonta, where she teaches course in linguistics, composition, and literature, including children’s literature, folklore, fantasy, and science fiction. She is the author of Folktales Retold: A Critical Overview of Stories Updated for Children and “Throw the book away”: Reading versus Experience in Children’s Fantasy, and is the editor of Children’s and Young Adult Literature and Culture: A Mosaic of Criticism.

“Heredity And The Hero: The Role of Heredity in Shaping Popular Heroes and Why It Matters,” Cheryl Hunter, University of Massachusetts Lowell

Cheryl Hunter is an adjunct professor of English and the Humanities at UMASS Lowell and Southern New Hampshire University. She attended the University of New Hampshire where she received a Master of Arts degree in Liberal Studies with a concentration in Philosophy and Literature. She was a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at a week-long workshop on Henry David Thoreau. Her book, Myths and Archetypes in The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, looks at the roles of Philosophy and Mythology in modern literature and what important lessons about the human condition are conveyed to the audience through the hero and journey archetypes. She is a writer and artist, and she loves to travel.


Session V: Saturday, October 28, 10:30am-noon

PANEL 29 – CC 803 – The Fantastic: Re-Thinking the Monstrous
CHAIR: Heather Flyte, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania


“‘If You're So Hungry, Why Don’t You Get a Job?’: Patrick Bateman as Neoliberal Monster and Hero in American Psycho,” Caitlin Duffy, Stony Brook University

Caitlin Duffy is a doctoral student in the English Department at Stony Brook University. Her scholarly interests include horror films and 19th century American Gothic literature. Her work will be published in the 2017 issue of The Journal of Dracula Studies and in an upcoming volume on 1980’s horror films.

“Tackling the Femme: The Psycho-Biddy Genre,” James Patrick Carraghan, Kutztown University

James Patrick Carraghan is a graduate student, writing tutor, and research assistant at Kutztown University. He is currently writing a thesis on the intersection of Harlem Renaissance scholarship and Queer Theory. His work has been published in On the Road, Glimmer on the Bookshelf, and 5x5. He is currently a contributing writer at Terse Journal and Vada Magazine (UK).

“The Aesthetics of Abjection in Anna Dressed in Blood (2011),” Nova Seals, Salve Regina University

Nova Seals is a Ph.D. candidate in humanities at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island. Nova is also the Director of Library Services and Archives and teaches philosophy courses at St. George’s School, an independent preparatory school in Middletown, Rhode Island. Her academic interests are the intersection of philosophy and technology, as well as art and aesthetics. Nova is particularly interested in how groups use technology, especially social media, to transform knowledge.

“The Brides of Dracula Tell All: Dracula as Romantic Protagonist in Recent Neo-Victorian Fiction,” Terry Riley, Bloomsburg University

Terry Riley teaches in the English Department at Bloomsburg University.  He teaches 19th and 20th century British Literature; his research interests are in 19th century science and neo-Victorian fiction.


Session VI: Saturday, October 28, 1:30-3pm

PANEL 36 – CC 803 – The Fantastic: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: 199 Years Old and Still Going Strong
CHAIR: Kristine Larsen, Central Connecticut State University

“Frankenstein and the Real: A Psychoanalytic Look at Power and the Unconscious,” Emilie Lewis, Simmons College

Emilie Lewis is currently an M.A. candidate in Gender/Cultural Studies at Simmons College in Boston. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English-Creative Writing from Goucher College and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

“Coexistence of Gender Binaries: Bisexualism in Frankenstein,” Christopher Maye, California State University, Long Beach

Christopher Maye graduated from California State University, Long Beach with a Bachelor's in English Literature and a minor in music in 2015. His research interest includes Critical Theory, Gender Studies, Political, and Ethnic Literature, but he primarily focuses on literature within the 18th Century English and 20th Century American periods. While he is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in English at CSULB, he works as a substitute teacher in the Los Angeles Charter School system, and is one of the managing editors for CSULB’s graduate academic journal Watermark.

“Modern Prometheus Bound,” Dennin Ellis, Independent Scholar

Dennin Ellis grew up in upstate New York and was raised by a consortium of stubborn women, a trait they passed to him. He learned how to read from X-Men comics and how to talk (and sing) from Beatles records. Throughout his childhood he vacillated between his dual passions for music and writing before settling on the former, receiving his Bachelor’s in Music from the College of Saint Rose. He then immediately went back to vacillating, achieving his Master’s in English from the State University of Albany. His graduate thesis, Colossus, concerned the place of humanity and the individual in the face of technological encroachment, brought to life through the melding of historical fiction, journalism and the epistolary novel. More recent projects include a collection of speculative fiction and research papers on topics as diverse as Edgar Allan Poe and Pink Floyd. He currently lives with his girlfriend in Ulsan, Korea, where he teaches English.


Session VII: Saturday, October 28, 3:15-4:45pm

PANEL 43 – CC 803 – The Fantastic: New England Horrors
CHAIR: Amie Doughty, SUNY Oneonta

“Body Horror in Lovecraft Fiction and Film,” Shastri Akella, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Shastri Akella earned an MFA in Creative Writing before joining the Comparative Literature PhD in 2014. He lived all over India, Dublin, and San Francisco, before moving the valley. He previously worked for a street theater troupe and for Google. His fiction and essays have been published or is forthcoming in Guernica, Electric Literature, The Common, The Rumpus, and Hypothetical Review, among other places. He has taught at the university for 5 years and was one of two teaching associates to win the campus-wide Distinguished Teaching Award for the academic year 2015-2016. His dissertation topic is a comparison of the perception of children in horror films and the perception of refugees. His other interests include film and translation, and he is working to get certified in both areas.

“The Dead Past in New England Vernacular Poetry,” N. C. Christopher Couch, University of Massachusetts Amherst

N. C. Christopher Couch holds a Ph.D. in art history from Columbia University, and is the author of numerous books and articles on comic art, graphic novels, and Latin American art. His most recent book, Jerry Robinson: Ambassador of Comics (Abrams 2010), on the artist and humanitarian famed for his Expressionist Batman and creation of the Joker, was a Harvey Award finalist and was featured in a New York Times profile of Robinson. As senior editor at Kitchen Sink Press, he worked with Will Eisner, about whom he has published two co-authored volumes, including The Will Eisner Companion (2005, with Stephen Weiner). He has held fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study, Dumbarton Oaks of Harvard University, and the Newberry Library among others. He teaches at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Trinity College in Hartford, and in the Care Center Clemente Program, Holyoke, MA, and has curated exhibitions at the American Museum of Natural History and other art and science museums.

“Tilting at Vampires,” Katie Gagnon, Independent Scholar

Katie Gagnon has a Master of Arts in American Studies from Trinity College.

Sunday, October 1, 2017

Fantastic Area Sessions 2018

I am pleased to announce the schedule for the area's tenth-anniversary sessions. My thanks to the program chair, Marty Norden, for his help in organizing.

The complete conference schedule and registration information can be accessed at https://nepca.blog/2017-conference/.


Session I: Friday, October 27, 1:00-2:30pm

PANEL 1 – CC 803 – The Fantastic: Horrors Past and Present
CHAIR: Amie Doughty, SUNY Oneonta
“Horrifying Mythical Obstacles: Masculine Anxieties and Alternate Gazes in Robert Eggers’s The Witch (2015),” Dustin Fisher, University of Cincinnati
“Images of the Indigenous Monster in The Green Inferno (2013),” Erica Tortolani, University of Massachusetts Amherst
“The Decomposing Youths and the Revival of the Zombies in Contemporary Korea,” Ha Rim Park, Seoul National University
“The Bunhill Apocalypse: Robert Aickman’s ‘Larger than Oneself’ (1966) as a Post-Christian Metaphor,” Steffen Silvis, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Session II: Friday, October 27, 2:45-4:15pm

PANEL 8 – CC 803 – The Fantastic: Meeting Monsters
CHAIR: Michael A. Torregrossa, Independent Scholar
“‘Everything That Ought to Have Remained Hidden’: Sublimation and the Uncanny in Anya's Ghost (2011),” Shane Gomes, North Dakota State University
“Murder, Reproduction, and Bad Women in Junji Ito’s Tomie,” Rahel Worku, University of Maryland
“A Trekkie’s Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse,” Cinzia DiGiulio, Merrimack College
“Scientists Become Monsters: The Strain’s Dr. Goodweather,” Kristine Larsen, Central Connecticut State University

Session III: Friday, October 27, 4:30-6:00pm

PANEL 15 – CC 803 – The Fantastic: New Approaches to the Heroic in Fantastic Fiction
CHAIR: Shane Gomes, North Dakota State University
“Happy Endings: Frankenstein’s Creature as a Romantic Lead,” Maggie Damken, Independent Scholar
“Decentering Monsterhood: Blurred Histories, Genres and Narrative Identities in John M. Ford’s Fantasy The Last Hot Time (2000),” Angela Gustafsson Whyland, Southern New Hampshire University
“Guinevere, the Warrior Queen of Camelot?: The Altered Fate of Guinevere in Recent Comics,” Michael A. Torregrossa, Independent Scholar
 

Session IV: Saturday, October 28, 8:45-10:15am

PANEL 22 – CC 803 – The Fantastic: New Approaches to the Fantastic
CHAIR: Nova Seals, Salve Regina University
“The Princess Bride and Slavoj Žižek's Fantasy of the Real,” Heather Flyte, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania
“Madness and Mixed-Bloods: Racial Metaphors in Seanan McGuire’s October Daye Series,” Amie Doughty, SUNY Oneonta
“Heredity And The Hero: The Role of Heredity in Shaping Popular Heroes and Why It Matters,” Cheryl Hunter, University of Massachusetts Lowell

Session V: Saturday, October 28, 10:30am-noon

PANEL 29 – CC 803 – The Fantastic: Re-Thinking the Monstrous
CHAIR: Heather Flyte, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania
“‘If You're So Hungry, Why Don’t You Get a Job?’: Patrick Bateman as Neoliberal Monster and Hero in American Psycho,” Caitlin Duffy, Stony Brook University
“Tackling the Femme: The Psycho-Biddy Genre,” James Patrick Carraghan, Kutztown University
“The Aesthetics of Abjection in Anna Dressed in Blood (2011),” Nova Seals, Salve Regina University
“The Brides of Dracula Tell All: Dracula as Romantic Protagonist in Recent Neo-Victorian Fiction,” Terry Riley, Bloomsburg University

Session VI: Saturday, October 28, 1:30-3pm

PANEL 36 – CC 803 – The Fantastic: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: 199 Years Old and Still Going Strong
CHAIR: Kristine Larsen, Central Connecticut State University
“Frankenstein and the Real: A Psychoanalytic Look at Power and the Unconscious,” Emilie Lewis, Simmons College
“Coexistence of Gender Binaries: Bisexualism in Frankenstein,” Christopher Maye, California State University, Long Beach
“Modern Prometheus Bound,” Dennin Ellis, Independent Scholar

Session VII: Saturday, October 28, 3:15-4:45pm

PANEL 43 – CC 803 – The Fantastic: New England Horrors
CHAIR: Cheryl Hunter, University of Massachusetts Lowell
“Body Horror in Lovecraft Fiction and Film,” Shastri Akella, University of Massachusetts Amherst
“The Dead Past in New England Vernacular Poetry,” N. C. Christopher Couch, University of Massachusetts Amherst
“Tilting at Vampires,” Katie Gagnon, Independent Scholar

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

CFP Essays on Gone with the Wind (Spec Issue of The Southern Quarterly) (12/1/2017)

Of potential interest:

Call for papers: Gone with the Wind
Discussion published by Diane DeCesare Ross on Saturday, September 23, 2017
Reposted this from H-Announce. The byline reflects the original authorship.
https://networks.h-net.org/node/13784/discussions/296398/call-papers-gone-wind

Type: Call for Papers
Date: December 1, 2017


Call for papers: Gone with the Wind. Submission deadline: December 1, 2017.

The Southern Quarterly invites submissions for a special issue that explore this iconic film: responses to the film from reviewers and famous writers in non-English speaking countries; the film and World War II; the ways the film has been reinterpreted in other media; recasting gender/racial roles; etc. Submit manuscripts online at www.usm.edu/soq, where guidelines and the full call for papers can also be found. The Southern Quarterly is an internationally-known scholarly journal devoted to the interdisciplinary study of Southern arts and culture, including the Caribbean and Latin America.

Contact Email:
SouthernQuarterly@gmail.com
URL:
http://www.usm.edu/soq

Thursday, September 21, 2017

CFP Celebrating H.G. Wells: Teaching His Literature in the 21st Century (9/29/2017; NeMLA 4/12-15/2018)

Sorry to have missed this:

Celebrating H.G. Wells: Teaching His Literature in the 21st Century
https://www.navsa.org/2017/09/17/cfp-celebrating-h-g-wells-teaching-his-literature-in-the-21st-century-9292017-412-152018/

Roundtable at the 2018 Annual Northeast Modern Language Association Convention

Pittsburgh, PA
April 12-15, 2018

For 152 years, H.G. Wells has been part of our literary cannon in science fiction, criticism and utopian projections. Fiction writers have the latitude to focus on current issues of their time, often in the guise of fictional places and/or unusual characters. H.G. Wells did exactly that in his science fiction as well as his fiction stories. Wells’ vision of an “open conspiracy of intellectuals and willful people” to build Cosmopolis occurs regularly in most of his fiction, and appears prominently in his major prophetic writings before 1914: in Anticipations, in A Modern Utopia, and elsewhere (W. Warren Wagar 40-42). The focus of this roundtable is to discuss the techniques H.G. Wells utilized, to discuss the interface between Wells’ literature and film adaptations, to assess the possible implications as seen in his literature as well as in the film adaptations, and to share pedagogical skills employed to reveal the genius of Wells.

The NeMLA site to submit your proposal is: https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/16658.

Please include your name, position, e-mail address and the title of your proposed submission. If you are an independent scholar, please indicate that information. The deadline to submit an abstract is September 29, 2017.

CFP Serials, Cycles, Suspensions Conference (10/15/2017; INCS 3/1-4/2018)

Of potential interest:

"Serials, Cycles, Suspensions"
Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Conference
https://www.navsa.org/2017/09/17/cfp-serials-cycles-suspensions-10152017-31-42018/

Hotel Whitcomb, San Francisco, CA
March 1-4, 2018

Host Institution: San Francisco State University

The nineteenth century was shaped by serial forms of organization, production, and communication. By the nineteenth century the idea of the "series" had moved from the discipline of mathematics into the culture at large, as theories of temporal and spatial connection became dominant organizing principles for systems of knowledge developed in laboratories, libraries, and museums. Implied within seriality is both the continuity of cycles and the discontinuity of suspensions. INCS 2018 invites proposals for papers having to do with any aspect of nineteenth-century seriality, including, but not limited to:

SERIAL CULTURE (PRINT, LITERARY, VISUAL ARTS, THEATER, ENTERTAINMENTS): serial narrative, serial poetry, serial readers, periodicals, newspapers, magazines, the penny press, sequels, chapters, spino­ffs, adaptations, serial photography, moving pictures, panoramas, song cycles, operatic cycles, sonnet cycles, musical canon, fugues, story cycles, genres, Bildungsroman, science fiction, steampunk, vampires, mysteries, cartoons, animations, echoes, allusions, narrative suspense, middles, cli­ffhangers, narrative immersion and world-building, suspension of disbelief, serial rhetorical forms (prolepsis, procatalepsis, hypophora, paradox), repetitions, rhyming, meter, caesura, variations, reinventions

SERIAL TIME: calendars, clock faces, seasons, standardized time, empty homogeneous time, typological time, historical materialism, the dialectic, diurnal time, the working day, the liturgical year, academic terms, courts of assize, revolutions, resurrections, reincarnation, evolutionary cycles, suspended revolutions (1848), fashion cycles, interruptions, stutters, prophesy, psychological and social developments (childhood, adolescence, adulthood), life cycles, hormonal cycles, addictions, apocalypse, inheritance, trauma and repetition compulsion, recurring dreams, causality dilemmas

SERIAL INVENTIONS AND TECHNOLOGIES: suspension bridges, train tracks, serial numbers, circuit boards, the arithmometer, diff­erence and analytical engines, automata, escalators, fax machines, Braille, mechanization, manufactories, power looms, punch cards, evolution, dialectical materialism, circulatory systems, catalogues, optical illusions, stereoscopy and stereoscopes, phenakistoscopes, zoetropes, cameras, panoramic photography, the Cinématographe, the Kinetoscope, the Mutoscope, celluloid, bicycles, carousels, Ferris wheels, suspenders, crinolines, hot air balloons, panoptic structures, treadmills, piano rolls, gramophones, rotary presses, stereotypes

Please submit individual papers (250-word proposals) or panels (a single document including a 250-word panel description accompanied by 250-word abstracts and one-page participant CVs) to the SFSU submission portal at http://lca.sfsu.edu/conference/incs2018/proposal by October 15, 2017. You will be prompted to post a one-page CV with your name, affiliation, and email address (for panels this information should correspond to the organizer). Proposals that are interdisciplinary in method or panels that involve multiple disciplines are especially welcome. For questions please contact conference organizer Sara Hackenberg at shackenb@sfsu.edu. For more information, please visit the INCS website: http://incsscholars.org.

Friday, September 8, 2017

CFP Alternate Earths (Themed Issue of Territory) (due date not provided)

Of possible interest; (with apologies to the organizers) it seems very vague to me:


CfP: Territory, Issue VII – Alternate Earths
https://www.fantastic-arts.org/2017/cfp-territory-issue-vii-alternate-earths/

Posted on September 5, 2017

Territory, Issue VII – Alternate Earths

Maps of the earth might be the most ubiquitous and recognizable type of map, but they also might be the most misleading and the most contested. There is the technical matter of projecting the planet, a three-dimensional object, onto the representational space of a two-dimensional plane, but at a more foundational level, we wonder: what is Earth?

Even the simplest answers aren’t so simple. The earth is round, but has been argued—often elaborately and compellingly—to be flat, hollow, expanding, eternal, illusory, embedded in platonic solids, resting on the back of a turtle that’s resting on the back of a larger turtle, and so on. The earth has seven continents and five oceans, but these are constantly shifting. The earth’s seven continents were once one, but this too is an argument, a narrative constructed from fossil records and glacial deposits. Many argue the earth is headed for destruction while others deny this claim. Many argue the earth is 4.5 billion years while others, less than 10,000.

Earth as planet, resource, globe, home, miracle, stage, habitat, mother, matter, worry, birthplace, and resting place. The earth is the ground beneath our feet, but it is anything but sure. There is always the possibility of an alternate earth, one that inverts, flattens, or otherwise undoes this sense of groundedness and centrality. The question is not whether alternate earths exist, but which you choose to inhabit.

Here are a few we find especially intriguing: Agartha & the hollow earth, Another Earth (2011), Antiterra, Atlantis, Aztlán, alternate histories, bhavacakra, The Books of Genesis & Revelations, brane cosmology, cli-fi, Cosmographia, creation myths, deep time, disaster films, The Drowned World, East of West, ecopoetics, ecumenopoles, eras & epochs, eschatons, the expanding earth, fictional universes, the flat earth & its societies, flood myths, geocentrism, The Global Village, heat death, heliocentrism, Hyperborea, hyperobjects, landfill, the last glacial maximum, Lemuria, ley lines, mappa mundi, Mother Earth / Gaia, Mu, the multiverse, Panthalassa, parallel universes, Pax Germanica, post-apocalyptic fiction, Saṃsāra, sea-level rise, The Southern Reach Trilogy, spirit worlds, supercontinents, T-O maps, terraforming, tidal islands, Waterworld (1995), the world tree, Yggdrasil, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union.

Issue VII will be published February 2018. To learn how to contribute, read our submissions guidelines.

Sunday, September 3, 2017

Frankenstein at PCA

The Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Area is organizing a session on the Frankenstein story in children's and young adult culture for the 2018 meeting of the Popular Culture Association. Details at https://frankensteinandthefantastic.blogspot.com/2017/09/cfp-frankenstein-story-in-childrens-and.html.

Monday, August 14, 2017

New Book--Gothic Landscapes: Changing Eras, Changing Cultures, Changing Anxieties

A new book from members of the area:

Gothic Landscapes: Changing Eras, Changing Cultures, Changing Anxieties
Editors: Yang, Sharon Rose, Healey, Kathleen (Eds.)
http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9783319331645

Hardcover $99.99
price for USA
ISBN 978-3-319-33164-5

eBook $79.99
price for USA (gross)
ISBN 978-3-319-33165-2
Digitally watermarked, DRM-free
Included format: PDF, EPUB
ebooks can be used on all reading devices


About this book:

  • Looks at the role of landscapes in Gothic Fiction - an under-examined area
  • Broad historical sweep, from 18th century to 20th century
  • Examines other media including film

This book is about the ways that Gothic literature has been transformed since the 18th century across cultures and across genres. In a series of essays written by scholars in the field, the book focuses on landscape in the Gothic and the ways landscape both reflects and reveals the dark elements of culture and humanity. It goes beyond traditional approaches to the Gothic by pushing the limits of the definition of the genre. From landscape painting to movies and video games, from memoir to fiction, and from works of different cultural origins and perspectives, this volume traverses the geography of the Gothic revealing the anxieties that still haunt humanity into the twenty-first century.



Table of contents (13 chapters)

Introduction: Haunted Landscapes and Fearful Spaces—Expanding Views on the Geography of the Gothic
Yang, Sharon Rose (et al.) / Pages 1-18

Dark Shadows in the Promised Land: Landscapes of Terror and the Visual Arts in Charles Brockden Brown’s Edgar Huntly
Healey, Kathleen / Pages 21-46

Haunting Landscapes in “Female Gothic” Thriller Films: From Alfred Hitchcock to Orson Welles
Biesen, Sheri Chinen / Pages 47-69

“Beauty Sleeping in the Lap of Horror”: Landscape Aesthetics and Gothic Pleasures, from The Castle of Otranto to Video Games
Davenport, Alice / Pages 71-103

What the Green Grass Hides: Denial and Deception in Suburban Detroit
Vayo, Amber B. / Pages 107-124

“Go Steady, Undine!”: The Horror of Ambition in Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country
Drizou, Myrto / Pages 125-145

The Convent as Coven: Gothic Implications of Women-Centered Illness and Healing Narratives in Toni Morrison’s Paradise
Waller-Peterson, Belinda M. / Pages 147-168

Haunting Memories: Gothic and Memoir
Moore, Erica / Pages 169-198

The Indian Gothic
Pai, Nalini / Pages 201-223

St. Bernard’s: Terrors of the Light in the Gothic Hospital
Rieger, Christy / Pages 225-238

Nature Selects the Horla: How the Concept of Natural Selection Influences Guy de Maupassant’s Horror Tale
Yang, Sharon Rose / Pages 239-269

Ruins of Empire: Refashioning the Gothic in J. G. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun (1984)
Watson, Alex / Pages 271-291

Gothic Landscapes in Mary Butts’s Ashe of Rings
Foy, Roslyn Reso / Pages 293-305



About the editors:

Sharon Rose Yang is Professor of English at Worcester State University, USA. She both teaches and writes on the Gothic and nineteenth-century literature. She has published in nineteenth-century literature and is the author of Goddesses, Mages, and Wise Women: The Female Pastoral Guide in Sixteenth-and Seventeenth-Century English Drama.

Kathleen Healey is Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Worcester State University, USA. Her research includes literature and the visual arts, Gothic Literature, and American Literature.

CFP Not Just Kidding Around: On Teaching Children’s Media (8/18/2017; SCMS 2018)

Of potential interest, but do note the impending deadline:

Not Just Kidding Around: On Teaching Children’s Media (SCMS 2018)
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2017/08/04/not-just-kidding-around-on-teaching-children%E2%80%99s-media-scms-2018

deadline for submissions: August 18, 2017

full name / name of organization: Andrew Scahill / University of Colorado Denver

contact email: adscahill@gmail.com


**CFP for the Society of Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) 2018 Conference in Toronto**

In an academic setting, weighty or dramatic “adult” films are generally met with intellectual curiosity by students, or at least an acknowledgement that they are “worthy” of consideration. Genre films like horror or action are met with more resistance, but generally students are willing to admit they have some sort of ideological investments. Films aimed at children, however, are often dismissed as just entertainment. Surely we may analyze Bicycle Thieves, but Home Alone? Yes to Goodfellas, no to Goonies.

The assumption is often that younger audience equates to a simpler text. In teaching children’s media, professors also must deal with the legacy of media effects research, which often leads to knee-jerk and oversimplified assumptions (“Disney princesses are bad!”) and the construction of a completely passive child spectator. Rarely, too, do we discuss how children’s media is designed with a bilateral address to both children and adults, often serving as a meditation on what it means to be a parent as much as what it means to be a child. As a “low” or unworthy genre, professors may also have to deal with an administration unable to see the value in teaching a course on kids’ films.

Pedagogy is a neglected subject in media studies, and this workshop promises a positive, collaborative, and supportive atmosphere. This will be a “best practices”-style workshop, and our facilitators will bring teaching materials to distribute among attendees, including model syllabi, assignment prompts, and discussion prompts. Each facilitator will be asked to prepare a short testimony about a challenge they experienced teaching children’s media, and what steps they took to overcome it. This comes at an important time for our 2018 conference, as the “Children’s and Youth Media and Culture” scholarly interest group is merely a year old, and this workshop would aid in our community-building and recruitment efforts.

To express interest, please contact Andrew Scahill (University of Colorado Denver) at adscahill@gmail.com by August 18 and explain how you would be able to contribute to this workshop.


keywords: pedagogy workshop children media animation film cinema kids academia

Last updated August 7, 2017 

Sunday, August 6, 2017

CFP Women in Genres of the Fantastic and Transmedia Entertainment (9/1/2017)

Women in Genres of the Fantastic and Transmedia Entertainment
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2017/07/29/women-in-genres-of-the-fantastic-and-transmedia-entertainment

deadline for submissions:
September 1, 2017


full name / name of organization:
Amanda Howell/Griffith University


contact email:
a.howell@griffith.edu.au




Call for Papers: Women in Genres of the Fantastic and Transmedia Entertainment

The particular concern of this edited collection is to discover how transmedia world-building in genres of the fantastic might open spaces of possibility, especially for women—a group historically under-represented as media producers, also often overlooked or devalued as audience-members and consumers. To this end, we seek proposals for book chapters utilising a range of methodological approaches to investigate female characters in transmedia universes belonging to genres of the fantastic, also to address the various creative contributions of women who produce and consume fantastic fictions in a converged/cross-platform/transmedia environment.

Please submit your 250 word abstract for consideration by 1 September 2017 to Amanda Howell a.howell@griffith.edu.au, along with a brief bio. The editors will contact you concerning the status of your proposal no later than 31 October 2017. Completed chapters of no more than 6,000 words should consist substantially of new material and original research; draft chapters will be submitted to an editorial and peer review process in 2018, the timetable for which to be advised. This collection is not yet under contract. Its development is funded, in part, by a collaboration grant from Griffith University (Queensland, Australia) and Southern Denmark University (Odense). Editors: Stephanie Green (GU), Amanda Howell (GU), and Rikke Schubart (SDU).

Background

Women figure in somewhat ambiguous and problematic ways in today’s entertainment media environment, being at once highly visible yet often also numerically under-represented both on screen and in production sectors, especially in the context of big budget Hollywood film and globally-dominant US television. Nevertheless, since the turn of this millennium, genres of the fantastic – including horror, fantasy, the fairy tale, sci-fi, and the superhero franchise –are noteworthy for their focus on and redevelopment of female heroes. Characters like Jessica Jones, Ms Marvel (Kamala Khan), Wonder Woman and Super Girl from universes of Marvel and DC comics are particularly interesting examples of the shifting shape of female heroism, their story-worlds spreading across film, television, comics and games. Premium cable/post-broadcast/non-network television series such as The Walking Dead (AMC 2010–), Game of Thrones (HBO 2011–), The 100, (CW 2014–), Penny Dreadful (Showtime 2014-16), and Stranger Things (Netflix 2016–) also use their fantastic and speculative premises to innovate new forms of female heroism as part of their appeal to multiple niche audiences. While, in children’s media, efforts to engage a previously underrepresented girl audience include offerings such as Mattel's television/online media franchise/ doll line Monster High (2010-present) which remakes and regenders classic Universal and other traditional monsters for 7-12 year olds. High budget Hollywood film remains dominated by male directors, but Wonder Woman (Patty Jenkins 2017) has become the highest grossing film directed by a woman. Female showrunners, directors, and scriptwriters are increasingly visible and important to recent developments in television, while a number of high-profile films and television series are based on books written by women. Female audiences have responded in turn by creating vibrant communities around fantastic entertainments, numerous fan and paratextual productions further expanding imaginary worlds, while breaking down boundaries between producers and consumers.

Aims

The editors of this collection are interested in investigating how a converged and rapidly-changing media environment might offer new sites and means and opportunities for women to tell stories. And what opportunities might be offered especially by genres of the fantastic, which have in common ‘as-if’ imagining, a cognitive meta-thinking unique to humans, said to generate ‘self-awareness and self-reflexivity’ (Bould 2002: 81), leading to ‘transformation and reflection’ (Feldt 2012: 1). A central aim of this collection is to explore the hypothesis that the fantastic, because it lends itself to imaginative acts and creativity, may as a consequence open spaces of possibility for female producers and audiences. Similarly, we wish to explore what possibilities might become available within the transmedia environment where, at the same time that multi-national media conglomerates may dominate, multiple points of entry are possible into the imagined universes of the fantastic, with as a consequence multiple opportunities to create and consume its fictions.

Specific topics of interest for this collection include but are not limited to
  • women’s representations and roles within a contemporary fantastic transmedia environment (film, television, computer and board games, comics and novelisations, internet-based and other fan activities), with a special focus on how these might challenge gender stereotypes and/or re-author familiar gender scripts, including the renegotiation of gender in relation to race, class, sexual preference;
  • the opportunities or particular challenges transmedia fictions in genres of the fantastic might offer female producers (directors, producers, designers, writers) of media content;
  • the significance of fantasy genres in transmedia entertainment—and a converged media environment more generally—especially for the sometimes ignored and historically de-valued female audience;
  • the power dynamics of transmedia entertainment, as exemplified by the fantasy genre, including conflict and congruency between old and new media, big and small scale productions, global and local productions;
  • the way transmedia fictions might work with, play with, adapt, recruit, or transform fantasy texts and tropes of the past to remake narrative possibilities in the present;
  • those different modes of authorship and audience engagement produced by transmedia entertainment, those new or altered relationships between authors and producers, readers and audiences for narrative entertainments, especially in genres of the fantastic.

Last updated August 4, 2017

CFP Blade Runner International Session (9/21/2017; ACLA 2018)

CFP: ACLA 2018 Seminar, "Blade Runner International"
Announcement published by Antonio Cordoba on Friday, July 21, 2017
https://networks.h-net.org/node/73374/announcements/187751/cfp-acla-2018-seminar-blade-runner-international

Type: Call for Papers
Location: United States


CFP: Seminar "Blade Runner International." Annual convention of the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), Los Angeles, March 29-April 1, 2018.

https://www.acla.org/annual-meeting

Thirty-five years ago, Ridley Scott’s film Blade Runner (1982) brought Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968) to the big screen and in the process introduced a groundbreaking visual language for science fiction film in its creation of a dystopian future Los Angeles. As ACLA prepares to convene in Los Angeles, just one year shy of the setting of Scott’s film, this seminar is interested in exploring Blade Runner’s influence on cultural production around the globe.
  • To what extent has the film’s “retro-fitted” aesthetic shaped the visual language of the international iterations of science fiction sub-genres such as cyberpunk and steampunk? 
  • How has its representation of human and robot relations intervened in subsequent explorations of – and scholarship about – the post-human? 
  • What connections might we draw between Blade Runner’s portrayal of the future and more recent representations of dystopian futures and/or urban spaces? 
  • How have re-workings of some of Blade Runner’s tropes in literature and film from Latin America, Asia, Africa, and non-Anglophone Europe in turn reshaped our current understanding of the original film? 
We welcome papers from diverse historical, ethno-national, and social contexts that examine and/or engage with a range of media (film, literature, animé, video-games, etc.).

We invite you to contact us or to submit an abstract to the ACLA website by September 21.
Contact Info:


Emily Maguire (Northwestern University), e-maguire@northwestern.edu, and Antonio Cordoba (Manhattan College), antoniocordoba@gmail.com.
Contact Email:
antoniocordoba@gmail.com
URL:
https://www.acla.org/blade-runner-international

Wednesday, June 28, 2017

CFP 100 Years of Winnie the Pooh (8/31/2017)

This sounds like a great idea:

Call for Chapters: Posthuman Pooh: Edward Bear after 100 Years
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2017/06/20/call-for-chapters-posthuman-pooh-edward-bear-after-100-years

deadline for submissions: August 31, 2017
full name / name of organization: Jennifer Harrison, East Stroudsburg University, USA
contact email: jharriso11@esu.edu

I am currently seeking chapter submissions for an edited volume celebrating the centenary in 2026 of A. A. Milne’s The World of Pooh.  As classics from the “golden age” of children’s literature, Milne’s Pooh stories have received considerable attention from critics and fans over the years; however, less critical attention has been devoted to the continuing relevance of the Pooh phenomenon in contemporary children’s culture.  As recent critics have discussed, the Pooh stories are complex and multifaceted, written in many different modes and employing a vast array of different narrative styles and techniques; they have also undergone transformation and adaptation into a plethora of related cultural artefacts.

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of The World of Pooh, therefore, this volume will explore Pooh in light of cutting-edge children’s literature and culture theory, with a particular focus on the stories as addressing the fundamentally modern posthuman concern with interrogations of the boundaries between the human and the non-human, the material and the immaterial.

Submissions of an interdisciplinary nature are particularly welcome, as are submissions which examine the relationship between the texts and modern adaptations and artefacts.  Some potential areas of exploration might include:
  • The blurring of human-animal-toy boundaries
  • Explorations of space and place within the stories
  • Adaptations for film and TV
  • The marketing of the Pooh franchise
  • Explorations of time within the stories
  • Material culture and artefacts within the stories
  • Bodies and identity within the stories
  • Postcolonial and ecocritical readings
However, this list is nowhere near exhaustive and I am happy to consider any submission which focuses on the Pooh stories and their role in modern children’s culture.

I hope to include chapters by authors from a variety of disciplines and viewpoints, reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of current studies in children’s literature and culture, as well as the diverse relevance of the Pooh stories in modern children’s culture.  Please submit a 500-word chapter abstract and a biography of no more than 250 words by August 31, 2017,  to:

jharriso11@esu.edu

You can also see a digital version of the CFP at: http://quantum.esu.edu/faculty/jharrison/2017/06/20/call-chapters-posthuman-pooh-edward-bear-100-years/.

All proposed abstracts will be given full consideration, and submission implies a commitment to publish in this volume if your work is selected for inclusion.  If selected, completed chapters will be due by December 30, 2017.

All questions regarding this volume should be directed to:

jharriso11@esu.edu

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

Last updated June 22, 2017

CFP Session on Portal Fantasy (9/30/17; NeMLA 2018)

Portal Fantasy at NeMLA 2018
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2017/06/05/portal-fantasy-at-nemla-2018

deadline for submissions: September 30, 2017
full name / name of organization: Political Implications of Portal Fantasy at NeMLA 2018
contact email: lauere@sunysuffolk.edu

Portal Fantasies offer a unique way to comment on the current political situation, in their capacity as invented worlds with a permeable link to our own. The portal can act as a funhouse mirror, reflecting our own world back to us in grotesque and illuminating ways, or it can offer stark contrasts to our own world which often take the form of escapist, superior alternatives. This session, a direct thematic response to the NeMLA 2018 conference theme of "Global Spaces, Local Landscapes and Imagined Worlds," invites papers that explore how authors have used the portal fantasy to comment on the politics of our world in various ways. Examinations of portal fantasies in novels, graphic works and on screens are all welcome. NeMLA 2018 will be in Pittsburgh, April 12-15. Learn more about NeMLA here: http://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention.html

Submit abstract of 300 words by September 30 here: http://www.cfplist.com//nemla/Home/S/16664

--
Emily Lauer, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of English
Suffolk County Community College
Islip Arts 2K, Ammerman Campus
533 College Road
Selden, NY 11784

lauere@sunysuffolk.edu

Last updated June 6, 2017


CFP Spaces of Hope and Desperation in Science Fiction (9/30/17; NeMLA 2018)

From H-Film:

Spaces of Hope and Desperation in Science Fiction- NEMLA 2018
April 12-15, 2018 Pittsburgh, PA

If we reflect on Vivian Sobchak’s premise of science fiction’s role of reconciling humans with the unknown along with cyborg spaces of Haraway, we can easily perceive that today one of speculative/science fiction’s roles is imagining what is happening and what may happen to help us come to terms with a dreaded present and unstable future. Amidst the very real and imminent threats of environmental disasters, rise of nationalism and racism and an expanding precarity, it should not be a surprise to see the fast increase in the sales of Orwell’s 1984, re-makes of Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell or appearance of SF works where strangers, aliens, and others are rethought and replaced in our topological frameworks.

Amidst all the wars, deaths, fears, and tremblings, it may be useful to remember Susan Sontag’s now classic essay “Imagination of the Disaster” where speculative or science fiction and especially dystopian fiction operates in a space between “unremitting banality and inconceivable terror." In this liminal space, SF intervenes in two ways: By giving us a language, a discourse, a perspective to think the unthinkable including our own end and our possible resistance. With the same gesture, it also provides us with the means of expressing some of the effects of such terror and precarity to those who may not be open to the same affects, creating a space of communication.

In short, science fiction both imagines a dystopian, lost, dark space signaling what may happen while, with the very same gesture, pinpointing ways to create possibility of other perceptions, other spaces of hope. This double imagination is exactly what Octavia Butler does when she thinks of a merge with Oankali and rebuilding of Earth, Jeff VanderMeer imagines with Area X trilogy and other ways to relate to the nature or what Kabaneri of Iron Fortress presents with a terrain filled with viral humans.

This panel aims to consider speculative/science fiction’s spatial imagination vis-à-vis hope and despair. Topics may include the kinds of dystopian spaces SF proposes, space and its spatial representation, gendered spaces within the SF genre, environment and its future imagined by SF, and the representation of the instability or hope. All forms of SF literature, including short stories, novels, films, anime, manga, and TV shows are welcome.

Please submit an abstract of 300- 500 words along with your brief bio to NEMLA submission website  by September 30, 2017  : https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/16944

Friday, May 5, 2017

Mythlore 130 Now Available

Sorry for not having posted in a while.

Here is a quick update on the latest number of Mythlore. It can be ordered direct from the Mythopoeic Society at http://www.mythsoc.org/mythlore/mythlore-130.htm.

Contents are as follows:


Mythlore 130, Volume 35, Issue 2 (Spring/Summer 2017)

Editorial
— Janet Brennan Croft

“Time to Prepare a Face”: Mythology Comes of Age
— Andrew Lazo

To Grow Together, or To Grow Apart: The Long Sorrow of the Ents and Marriage in The Lord of the Rings.
— Nicole duPlessis

“Enough about Whores”: Sexual Characterization in A Song of Ice and Fire.
— Joseph Young

“It Had Been His Virtue, and Therefore Also the Cause of His Fall”: Seduction as a Mythopoeic Accounting for Evil in Tolkien’s Work.
— Maria Alberto

The Name of the Ring: or, There and Back Again.
— Janet Brennan Croft

Tolkien’s Allusive Backstory: Immortality and Belief in the Fantasy Frame.
— Wayne A. Chandler and Carrol L. Fry

Utopia in Deep Heaven: Thomas More and C.S. Lewis’s Cosmic Trilogy
.— Benjamin C. Parker

From the Ineluctable Wave to the Realization of Imagined Wonder: Tolkien’s Transformation of Psychic Pain into Art.
— John Rosegrant

A Common Language of Desire: The Magicians, Narnia, and Contemporary Fantasy.
— Kelly Kramer


Reviews

  • Fisher, Jason: A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages. J.R.R. Tolkien. Ed. Dimitra Fimi and Andrew Higgins.
  • Fitzsimmons, Philip: The ‘Great War’ of Owen Barfield and C.S. Lewis: Philosophical Writings 1927-1930. Edited by Norbert Feinendegen and Arend Smilde Joy and Poetic Imagination: Understanding C.S. Lewis’s “Great War” with Owen Barfield and its Significance for Lewis’s Conversion and Writings. Stephen Thorson.
  • Larsen, Kristine: The Hero’s Quest and the Cycles of Nature: An Ecological Interpretation of World Mythology. Rachel S. McCoppin.
  • Brown, Nancy Marie: Elf Queens and Holy Friars: Fairy Beliefs and the Medieval Church. Richard Firth Green.
  • Cochran, James M.: Outlaw Heroes as Liminal Figures of Film and Television. Rebecca A. Umland.
  • Martin, Tiffany Brooke: C.S. Lewis at Poets’ Corner. Edited by Michael Ward and Peter S. Williams.
  • Foster, Mike: A Well of Wonder: Essays on C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Inklings. Clyde S. Kilby.
  • Croft, Janet Brennan: Fastitocalon: Studies in Fantasticism Ancient to Modern. Vol. 6, nos. 1 and 2, 2016. Hither Shore: Interdisciplinary Journal on Modern Fantasy Literature. Vol. 12, 2015.

Sunday, February 12, 2017

MAPACA 2017

MAPACA has recently released preliminary information for its upcoming 2017 meeting to be held from 8-11 November 2017 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Further details and links to submissions to area chairs can be found online at https://mapaca.net/conference.

Thursday, February 9, 2017

CFP Star Wars, Special Issue of Journal of Religion and Popular Culture (3/31/2017)

Call for Papers Journal of Religion and Popular Culture special issue "STAR WARS"

Event: 03/31/2017
Abstract: 03/31/2017
https://www.cfplist.com/CFP.aspx?CID=9649

Organization: University of Toronto Press

With an extensive and still growing body of work, including two cinematographic trilogies, a third trilogy in process, several animated television series, and numerous books and novels, Star Wars is probably one of the richest universes in science fiction, and generates a strong and constant interest from a vivid fan community. Religions play a major role in this setting, particularly with the preponderant importance of the Force in the Star Wars universe. However, given the size of the Star Wars galaxy and the number of sentient species that inhabit it, religion in Star Wars cannot be reduced to the Force.


The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture invites submissions exploring the religious dimensions of the Star Wars universe, including the religious and mystic symbols that have been extensively used in developing the varied elements of the Star Wars franchise. Papers exploring the religious dimensions and implications of the animated series’, the third trilogy, the Star Wars legends material, fans, conventions, theme parks, and other Star Wars material are particularly welcome.
This special issue will provide an up-to-date reflection on the topic of religion and Star wars, and will investigate some of the most recent avatars of the Star Wars saga through the lens of religion.


Interested authors, and book reviewers should contact guest editor, Matthieu Guitton at matthieu.guitton@fmed.ulaval.ca



Contact Email: agreenwood@utpress.utoronto.ca
Website: http://www.bit.ly/JRPCOnline


CFP 2017: A Clarke Odyssey: A Conference Marking the Centenary of Sir Arthur C. Clarke (7/30/2017)

2017: A Clarke Odyssey: A Conference Marking the Centenary of Sir Arthur C. Clarke
https://www.cfplist.com/CFP.aspx?CID=9934

Event: 12/09/2017
Abstract: 07/30/2017

Location: Canterbury Christ Church University
Organization: Canterbury Christ Church University



Keynote Speakers: Stephen Baxter
Dr Sarah Dillon (University of Cambridge)

Sir Arthur C. Clarke is one of the most important British sf writers of the twentieth century – novelist, short-story writer, scriptwriter, science populariser, fan, presenter of documentaries on the paranormal, proposer of the uses of the geosynchronous orbit and philanthropist.

We want to celebrate his life, work and influence on science fiction, science and beyond.

We are looking for twenty-minute papers on topics such as:
  • any of Clarke’s publications
  • influences on Clarke
  • Clarke’s influence on others
  • the Second World War
  • Sri Lanka/Ceylon
  • the Cold War
  • adaptations to film, television, radio and comic books – 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, Rendezvous with Rama, Trapped in Space, etc.
  • collaborations
  • A.I. and computers
  • alien encounters and first contact
  • astronomy, space and space travel
  • Big Dumb Objects
  • the destiny of life and mind in the universe
  • the far future
  • futurology
  • politics
  • religion, the transcendent and the paranormal
  • science and scientists
  • world government
  • Young Adult fiction
  • the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction, the Sir Arthur Clarke Award for achievements in space and the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation awards

Please submit four-hundred-word abstracts and a hundred-word biography to AndrewMButler42@gmail.com and P.A.March-Russell@kent.ac.uk by 30 July 2017.

The conference will be co-organised by Dr Andrew M. Butler (Canterbury Christ Church University) and Dr Paul March-Russell (University of Kent). Further details will be available from https://2017aclarkeodyssey.wordpress.com/



Contact Email: andrewmbutler42@gmail.com
Website: https://2017aclarkeodyssey.wordpress.com/

CFP Imagining Alternatives (6/1/2017)

Imagining Alternatives
https://www.cfplist.com/CFP.aspx?CID=10038

Event: 06/01/2017
Abstract: 06/01/2017

Organization: Resilience: A Journal for the Environmental Humanities


CFP for a Special Issue of Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities

“Imagining Alternatives”

From Afrofuturism to dystopian, apocalyptic fiction to alternate history to ecofeminism and cli-fi, authors of speculative fictions have been interrogating alternative worlds in literature, film, television, comic books, and video games. These visions give us access to alien planets as well as alternative perspectives on our own pasts, presents, and possible futures. They reflect our hopes and fears; they offer new narratives of race, class, gender, sexuality, and nationality; they suggest the magic and the horror embedded in our own realities.

This special issue of Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities invites authors to interrogate imagined alternatives to existing systems of knowledge and distributions of power. We are interested in submissions engaging with a wide variety of subjects, genres, mediums, time periods, and national origins: from cyberpunk to steampunk, and from Gothic fiction to fan fiction. We also want to encourage authors to imagine alternative formats for their own work. In addition to traditional essays, we will also consider roundtables, interviews, photo essays, web comics, YouTube videos, Flash animations, web-based games, and other creative works.

To be considered for inclusion in the special issue, submit your work via the Resilience website (http://www.resiliencejournal.org/publishing-in-resilience/submission-form/) by June 1, 2017 for publication in the fall of 2017. Be certain to indicate in the abstract that you are submitting a piece for the “Imagining Alternatives” special issue.

Please direct any questions about the special issue to Megan Condis via email at megancondis.gmail.com or on Twitter @MeganCondis.


Contact Email: megancondis@gmail.com

CFP Mythmoot IV (2/28/17)

Mythmoot IV
https://www.cfplist.com/CFP.aspx?CID=10124

Event: 06/01/2017 - 06/04/2017
Abstract: 02/28/2017

Location: Leesburg, VA
Organization: Signum University


Call for Papers

Mythgard Institute from Signum University is turning Mythmoot IV into an experience of a secondary world for academics, friends, and fans. Mythmoot will be held from June 1st to 4th, 2017, at the National Conference Center in Leesburg, VA. This year’s theme is…

Invoking Wonder

Accepting Paper, Panel, Workshop, and Creative Presentation (storytelling, music, visual arts, etc.) Proposals related to:

  • Imaginative Literature — Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction from Mary Shelley and H.P Lovecraft to Ursula Le Guin and Neil Gaiman.
  • Tolkien and Inklings Studies — Research on the works and lives of the Inklings as they interact with each other, their modern context, and classic and imaginative literature.
  • Germanic Philology — Explore relationships between language and literature in the past, present, and future.
  • Anything Else — Academic research or creative presentations that traverse literature in its wondrous variety.

~ Paper proposals should be approximately 100 words.
Presentations will be under 20 minutes long.

~ Panel proposals must be submitted in one inclusive email, with approximately 100 words describing each paper.
Panels will be presented in 1-hour sessions.

~ Workshop proposals should be approximately 200 words.
Workshops will be allotted 1 hour in total.

~ Creative Presentation proposals should provide a short description (fewer than 200 words) of the presentation.
Creative Presentations should be no longer than 30 minutes.

Proposal Submission

Proposals are accepted through 28 February 2017. Send proposals to events@mythgard.org with a subject line of “Paper Proposal,” “Panel Proposal,” “Workshop Proposal,” or “Creative Presentation Proposal.” Include a brief bio and A/V requirements.

Please Note!

Submission of any proposal is considered agreement by the presenter to attend Mythmoot and deliver the presentation if it is accepted. Presentations of any form will not be delivered in absentia.
Visit http://mythgard.org/events/mythmoot-iv/ for more details!

What is Mythmoot?

Mythmoot combines academic conference, literary creative meet-up, and fan convention all into one. It develops studies in fields not considered primary in literary scholarship such as science fiction, fantasy, horror, gothic, folklore, children’s literature, etc., in a way that academics and enthusiasts will appreciate.


Contact Email: events@mythgard.org
Website: http://mythgard.org/events/mythmoot-iv/
 

CFP The Journal of Games and Gaming (4/30/17)

The Journal of Games and Gaming (JGG)
https://www.cfplist.com/CFP.aspx?CID=10145
Event: 12/31/2017 - 12/31/2017
Abstract: 04/30/2017

Location: United Kingdom
Organization: The Museum of Games and Gaming


The Museum of Games and Gaming is putting together a body of work for publication in its first journal and is pleased to be launching this as an open call for papers. This is a great opportunity to get your work published as there is no publication fee, your paper will be peer reviewed and you will be assigned an editor.

The first edition of the journal is looking for Original Research, Book Reviews and Short Articles in any area covered by our current Research Themes (please see the list on our website).

If you have an idea for a paper or a work in progress please contact us as soon as possible at info@museumofgaming.org.uk with your proposal including an abstract.


Contact Email: info@museumofgaming.org.uk
Website: http://www.museumofgaming.org.uk/research.cfm



CFP Pirates: Lifting the Jolly Roger in History and Popular Culture Collection (3/1/17)

Collection on pirates
https://www.cfplist.com/CFP.aspx?CID=10380

Event: 03/01/2017
Abstract: 03/01/2017

Location: N/a
Organization: American Press


Pirates: Lifting the Jolly Roger in History and Popular Culture
Edited by Antonio Sanna

Since the times of their brutal aggressions to vessels journeying over the seven seas, pirates have firmly captured the imagination of writers, directors and producers all over the world and have elicited an incredible impact over contemporary culture. Pirates have been studied and represented by Daniel Defoe, Walter Scott, Jules Verne and Robert Louis Stevenson, but they have also appeared in the works of William Shakespeare, Ann Radcliffe and Lord Byron. Although their fictional representation is very different from the reality of the (either duller or more atrocious) actions that they actually committed, these eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writers have modelled and defined the figure of the maritime outlaws that is still firmly impressed in our minds: expert mariners, bold hunters for treasures who were often obsessed with revenge, vulgar and ruthless predators roaming the coasts and the deep seas of the five continents. Cinema has equally invested in such a figure, from Albert Parker's The Black Pirate (1926), Michael Curtiz's The Black Hawk (1940) and Disney's Treasure Island (1950) to the successful saga Pirates of the Caribbean (2003-2017) – whose most recent instalment will be in cinemas in 2017 – and Shinji Aramaki's Space Pirate Captain Harlock (2013). Nevertheless, the figure of the pirate has not been confined to these media and has freely roamed through theatre, the visual arts, manga, anime, video games and park rides, thus demonstrating its centrality in contemporary popular culture.
This anthology will explore the figure of the pirate from multidisciplinary perspectives. This volume seeks previously-unpublished essays that explore the heterogeneous representations of both historical figures and fictional characters. We are particularly interested in interdisciplinary approaches to the subject. There are indeed several themes worth exploring when analyzing the historical and fictional representation of pirates, utilizing any number of theoretical frameworks of your choosing.

Contributions may include (but are not limited to) the following topics:

  • Historical pirates (in the seven seas)
  • Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literary pirates
  • Twentieth-century and contemporary representations of pirates in literature
  • Manga and anime
  • Pirates in the visual arts and on the stage
  • The Pirates of the Caribbean saga
  • Video games
  • Pirates and philosophy
  • Pirates and sea creatures (including monsters and mermaids)
  • Humour, Black Humour and the Macabre
  • Gender and queer readings
  • Ecocriticism
  • Alienation and misperception, conformity/nonconformity
  • Disfigurement, deformity and (dis)ability
  • Death and the afterlife
  • Adaptations, Remakes and Appropriations
  • Music in films on pirates
  • Fan practice and fan communities

The anthology will be organized into thematic sections around these topics and others that emerge from submissions. We are open to works that focus on other topics as well and authors interested in pursuing other related lines of inquiry. Feel free to contact the editor with any questions you may have about the project and please share this announcement with colleagues whose work aligns with the focus of this volume.
Submit a 300-500 word abstract of your proposed chapter contribution, a brief CV and complete contact information to Dr. Antonio Sanna (isonisanna@hotmail.com) by 1 March 2016. Full chapters of 4000-6000 words would be due by June/July 2017. Note: all full chapters submitted will be included subject to review.


Contact Email: isonisanna@hotmail.com



CFP Theorising the Popular Conference - Liverpool Hope University, 21-22 June 2017 (3/17/17)

Theorising the Popular Conference - Liverpool Hope University, 21-22 June 2017
https://www.cfplist.com/CFP.aspx?CID=10573
Event: 06/21/2017 - 06/22/2017
Abstract: 03/17/2017

Location: Liverpool, UK
Organization: Liverpool Hope University


Theorising the Popular Conference 2017

Liverpool Hope University, June 21st-22nd 2017

The Popular Culture Research Group at Liverpool Hope University is delighted to announce its seventh annual international conference, ‘Theorising the Popular’. Building on the success of previous years, the 2017 conference aims to highlight the intellectual originality, depth and breadth of ‘popular’ disciplines, as well as their academic relationship with and within ‘traditional’ subjects. One of its chief goals will be to generate debate that challenges academic hierarchies and cuts across disciplinary barriers.

The conference invites submissions from a broad range of disciplines, and is particularly interested in new ways of researching ‘popular’ forms of communication and culture. In addition to papers from established and early career academics, we encourage proposals from postgraduate taught and research students.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:


• Film and Television
• Media and Communications
• Politics and Populism
• Literature (Fiction and Non-Fiction)
• Music
• Drama and Performance
• Fan Cultures
• Sport
• Celebrity
• Social Media
• Gender: Feminism/Femininities/Masculinities/Queering/Sexualities/Representations of the Body
• Language/Linguistics



The conference will be held at Liverpool Hope’s main campus, Hope Park. Situated in a pleasant suburb of Liverpool, just four miles from the city centre, Hope Park offers superb facilities in beautiful surroundings.

Papers should be 20 minutes in length. Please send abstracts of 300 words to Dr Jacqui Miller and Dr Joshua Gulam (ttpconference@hope.ac.uk) by March 17th 2017. The abstract should include your name, email address, affiliation, as well as the title of your paper.

Successful abstracts will be notified by April 3rd 2017.

Conference fees: £100 for both days, including lunch and all refreshments (£80 for students and unwaged).


Contact Email: ttpconference@hope.ac.uk

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

CFP Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Area (6/1/17; NEPCA Amherst, MA 10/27-28/17)

SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS
TENTH-ANNIVERSARY SESSIONS OF THE
FANTASTIC (FANTASY, HORROR, AND SCIENCE FICTION) AREA

Visit us at NEPCA Fantastic: https://nepcafantastic.blogspot.com

2017 Conference of The Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association (NEPCA)
University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, Massachusetts
27 and 28 October 2017
Proposals by 1 June 2017

Michael A. Torregrossa
Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Area Chair
cfp.NEPCAFantastic@gmail.com

Formed in 2008, the Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Area celebrates its tenth anniversary in 2017, and we seek proposals from scholars of all levels for papers that explore any aspect of the intermedia traditions of the fantastic (including, but not limited to, elements of fairy tale, fantasy, gothic, horror, legend, mythology, and science fiction) and how creative artists have altered our preconceptions of these subtraditions by producing innovative works in diverse countries, media, and time periods and for audiences at all levels. Details on previous offerings can be found on our website at https://nepcafantastic.blogspot.com.


Special topics:

  • Given the proximity of the conference to Halloween, we are always interested in proposals related to monsters and the monstrous. 

  • Furthermore, in anticipation of the two hundredth anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in 2018, we are especially hoping for proposals that address aspects of the Frankenstein tradition and the fantastic. Be on the lookout for a separate call for our 2017 Frankenstein-themed sessions on "Frankenstein: Friend or Foe?". 


Please see our website NEPCA Fantastic (https://nepcafantastic.blogspot.com) for further details and ideas. Presentations will be limited to 15-20 minutes in length (depending on final panel size).

If you are interested in proposing a paper, please address inquiries and send your biography and paper abstract (each of 250 words) to the Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Area Chair at cfp.nepcafantastic@gmail.com, noting “NEPCA Fantastic Proposal 2017” in your subject line. Do also submit your information into NEPCA’s official Paper Proposal Form accessible from https://nepca.blog/2017-conference/. Be sure to select "Fantastic" as your designated area.

Please submit inquiries and/or proposals for complete panels directly to the Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Area Chair at cfp.nepcafantastic@gmail.com.


The Northeast Popular/American Culture Association (a.k.a. NEPCA) was founded in 1974 as a professional organization for scholars living in New England and New York. It is a community of scholars interested in advancing research and promoting interest in the disciplines of popular and/or American culture. NEPCA’s membership consists of university and college faculty members, emeriti faculty, secondary school teachers, museum specialists, graduate students, independent scholars, and interested members of the general public. NEPCA is an independently funded affiliate of the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association. Membership is open to all interested parties, regardless of profession, rank, or residency. NEPCA holds an annual conference that invites scholars from around the globe to participate. In an effort to keep costs low, it meets on college campuses throughout the region.

Membership in NEPCA is required for participation and annual dues are included in conference registration fees. Further details are available at https://nepca.blog/membership-information/.

Friday, January 6, 2017

Frankenstein and the Fantastic Site

The Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Area is pleased to announce the launch of its new outreach effort, Frankenstein and the Fantastic. The new blog can be accessed at http://frankensteinandthefantastic.blogspot.com/.


Michael Torregrossa
Area Chair