CFP The Pedagogy of Harry Potter (7/10/2018)

Another interesting call; sorry for posting it so close to the deadline.

The Pedagogy of Harry Potter
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/05/15/the-pedagogy-of-harry-potter

deadline for submissions: July 10, 2018

full name / name of organization: Marcie Panutsos Rovan and Melissa Wehler

contact email: 2marcie@gmail.com



J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter is one of the most successful series of all time, and since its publication, has inspired scholars to analyze its engagement with gender, its relationship to mythology and fairy tales, and its literary and historical influences. Scholars have examined the impact that the books have had on popular culture, children’s literacy, and children’s literature. Collections have considered the series as a way of exploring politics, philosophy, religion, ethics, and psychology, among other fields. Yet, lost in all this scholarship has been a serious engagement with the way the series portrays education.

Before she was a renowned children’s author, J.K. Rowling was an educator. She taught English as a foreign language in Portugal, then trained as an educator in Edinburgh. She taught French part-time in Edinburgh while writing the Harry Potter series. Her educational background left an indelible mark on her books. Hogwarts, the central location of the series, is first and foremost, a boarding school. Most of the characters within the text are either students or professors. While scholars have looked at the series’ relationship to other boarding school stories or considered how the series can be used in the classroom, there has been no focused analysis of the educational theories and practices depicted within the walls of Hogwarts.

In assembling a collection of essays, we would like to see a variety of topics related to the various pedagogical approaches (both successful and unsuccessful) and educational concerns depicted in the Harry Potter series. While authors are invited to draw on the film adaptations, we ask that essays focus on the book series.

Possible subjects might include:

• Mentorship
• Discipline and punishment
• Responses to bullying
• Teaching without technology
• Active learning strategies
• Process-based learning
• Standardized testing & the O.W.L/N.E.W.T. exams
• Teaching styles displayed by various characters
• Student support
• Classroom management
• Ethics and inclusivity
• Assessment of student learning
• Issues related to first-generation/ muggle-born students

Brief author biographies and abstracts (of 300-500 words in length) should be submitted via email to: 2marcie@gmail.com and melissawehler@gmail.com by July 10, 2018. Essays must be in American English and spellings, fully cited in accordance with the current MLA style manual. The length of each contribution should be roughly 6,000 to 6,500 words. The deadline for final chapter submission is November 30, 2018. Peer review will be conducted after the collection is submitted, currently scheduled for March 2019. The collection is under contract with McFarland.

Editor Biographies

Marcie Rovan, Ph.D., serves as an Assistant Professor of English and Director of First-Year Writing at Central Penn College, Summerdale, PA. She has a Ph.D. in literature from Duquesne University with a specialization in Children’s Literature. Her publications include a journal article, “The ‘Broken Mirror’: Casualties of Nation-Building in Train to Pakistan,” in Impressions and a book chapter, "What to do with Supergirl?: Fairy Tales Tropes, Female Power, and Conflicted Feminist Discourse" in a forthcoming collection of essays on Supergirl to be published by McFarland.

Melissa Wehler, Ph.D. serves as the Dean of Humanities and Sciences, Central Penn College, Summerdale, PA. Her publications include book chapters in various edited collections, including “‘We are allies, my dear’: Defining British and American National Identity in Downton Abbey” in Exploring Downton Abbey (2018), “The Haunted Hero: The Performance of Trauma in Jessica Jones” in Jessica Jones, Scared Hero: Essays on Gender Trauma and Addiction in the Netflix Series (2018), “‘Be wise. Be brave. Be tricky’: Neil Gaiman’s Extraordinarily Ordinary Coraline,” in A Quest of Her Own (2014), among others. She has several forthcoming publications including, co-editing a collection of essays on the television show Supergirl where her article “The Super “It” Girl: A New Brand for a Classic Icon” will also appear.

CFP Indiana Jones and the Edited Collection of Critical Essays (9/1/2018)

A great idea for a collection:

Indiana Jones and the Edited Collection of Critical Essays
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/05/20/indiana-jones-and-the-edited-collection-of-critical-essays

deadline for submissions: September 1, 2018

full name / name of organization: Randy Laist / McFarland

contact email: rlaist@goodwin.edu


With his signature bullwhip and fedora, the familiar sounds of his orchestral anthem, and his eventful explorations into the arcana of world religions, Indiana Jones – archeologist, adventurer, and ophidiophobe – has become one of the most recognizable heroes of the silver screen. Since his debut in 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones has appeared in three sequels, and Steven Spielberg has recently announced that he will soon begin production on a fifth Indiana Jones film. Along the way, the character has spawned a raft of children’s novels, cartoon and live-action television series, and video and role-playing games. Despite the longevity and popularity of the Indiana Jones franchise, however, it has rarely been the focus of academic criticism, a fact which is surprising considering the critical attention enjoyed by other early George Lucas and Steven Spielberg films. As stories about archeology, the Indiana Jones tales reflect an array of ethical questions and representational issues regarding the nature of the past. As stories about an American man globe-trotting in the middle of the twentieth century, Indiana Jones’s adventures intersect with a wide range of cultural narratives about World War II, the late colonial era, and late-century nostalgia for perceived mid-century ideals. As stories about the sacred, Indiana Jones’s quests engage questions about the nature of the sublime, the representation of the otherworldly, and the role of narrative in constructing reality.

McFarland is interested in publishing a multiauthor volume about the Indiana Jones franchise. While the study will approach the subject from a wide range of perspectives, the book will be centered around the theme of the quest. Indiana Jones narratives are propelled by the pursuit of what Hitchcock called the MacGuffin and what Lacan called objet petit a, and they dramatize and comment upon the nature of loss, desire, and ambiguous retrieval, as well as upon the dynamics of acquisitiveness, appropriation, and possession. Indiana Jones’s reclamation of sacred objects illustrates cultural attitudes about how the past is remembered and preserved (or not), how historical truth is defined and organized, and how socio-political power becomes invested in physical artifacts. At the same time, Indiana Jones films are themselves historical artifacts, glowing with the same shimmering aura of signification that Spielberg’s camera imparts to Indy’s quarries. The theme of the quest, therefore, unites the analysis of individual Indiana Jones texts with the wider analysis of Indiana Jones as a cultural reference point.

Chapter topics may include, but are by no means limited to, such subjects as:

• Representations of: archeology, Nazism, the sacred, the past, colonialism, non-Western cultures, mid-century America, World War II, heroism, paternity, globalization, geography, etc.
• Indiana Jones and cinematic pastiche: the inheritance of Gunga Din (1929), King Solomon's Mines (1950), The Secret of the Incas (1954), film noir, etc.
• The relationship between the Indiana Jones films and Spielberg’s other films
• Indiana Jones and the “hard body” action hero of the 1980s
• The extended franchise: children’s novels, Choose Your Own Adventure books, role-playing games, video games, “The Young Indiana Jones,” etc.
• Representations of women: plucky sidekicks, damsels in distress, femmes fatales
• Fan culture, from the Gen-X nostalgia of Raiders! The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made (2015) to the hostile reception of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
• Narratology of the artifact: the MacGuffin, le petit object a, the Holy Grail, etc.
• Cultural appropriation and the controversial legacy of Hiram Bingham
• Indiana’s fear of snakes and the theme of threatening encounters with different animal species throughout the series

Please send 300-word abstracts to Randy Laist at rlaist@goodwin.edu by September 1, 2018, or feel free to contact me with queries at any time.

CFP Everything Old Is New Again: Adapting the Classics in Contemporary Young Adult Novels (9/1/2018)

A nicely written call on an important topic:

Everything Old Is New Again: Adapting the Classics in Contemporary Young Adult Novels
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/06/30/everything-old-is-new-again-adapting-the-classics-in-contemporary-young-adult-novels

deadline for submissions: September 1, 2018

full name / name of organization: Drs. Dana Lawrence and Amy L. Montz

contact email: almontz@usi.edu



CALL FOR PAPERS

Everything Old Is New Again:

Adapting the Classics in Contemporary Young Adult Novels

“An adaptation is not vampiric: it does not draw the life-blood from its source and leave it dying or dead, nor is it paler than the adapted work. It may, on the contrary, keep that prior work alive, giving it an afterlife it would never have had otherwise” (Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaptation, 2006).

Linda Hutcheon’s refusal to see adaptation as “vampiric” is particularly inspiring for those who do work on adaptations. The idea of an “afterlife” of texts, of seeing what comes before as an inspiration for what comes now is, by its very definition, keeping works “alive.” Adaptations for young adults, in particular, have the added benefit of engaging the young adult reader with both then and now, past and present. The hope is, of course, that the young adult reader will approach both text and context, both original and adaptation, to explore the importance of a theme, or a writer, or a novel, and see the historical, cultural, and literary connotations presented. Linda Hutcheon defines adaptation further by noting, "If we know that prior text, we always feel its presence shadowing the one we are experiencing directly. When we call a work an adaptation, we openly announce its overt relationship to another work or works.” Adaptation is about connection, connective tissues leading from one text to another, one author to another, one time to another. We see an adaptation and we must remember the original, engage with the original, and are encouraged to visit the original for the first time, or once again.


For this proposed collection, we are most interested in essays that explore relationships between texts and contexts, that see the connections between canonical and young adult literature. As adaptation simultaneously re-imagines and reinscribes a literary canon, the engagement with the canon is a key aspect of the adaptive qualities of the text. The author’s familiarity with the original work--or, for the purposes of this collection, the original author--lends new life to the canonical text. In “Seven Types of Intertextuality,” Robert S. Miola understands adaptations as “literary progeny that bear direct and immediate descent from originary texts and that exist in a very conscious counterpoise of tribute and criticism…If an author’s revision of his or her own work asserts his or her power and domination, then the reviser of another’s work enacts a rebellion and usurpation.” What remains unique about the adaptation is this tension between tribute and criticism, particularly when issues of race, gender, and other aspects of diversity are brought into play. Seeing the past through new eyes means we must examine the past in all its defects. It means engaging with our predecessors and the rights, and wrongs, of their literatures.


“Everything Old Is New Again: Adapting the Classics in Contemporary Young Adult Novels” will explore the “afterlife” of texts and contexts. These historical and literary phenomena will argue that adapting the classics is a way to engage young adult readers with their cultural past, and to see how that past can be rewritten in order to best present what can be changed, what benefits from change, and how they, too, can be agents of change. These adaptations empower young readers to make them more culturally, historically, and socially aware through the lens of literary diversity.

Topics may include:

• Authenticity
• Authorship and Authority
• Fan fiction
• Graphic Novel Adaptations
• Sequels and prequels
• Rewrites of canonical texts

Of particular interest are essays about texts that diversify race, sexuality, gender, and ability in adaptations.

Interested authors will need to submit a 500-word abstract and 150-200 word bio by September 1, 2018. Selected abstracts will be included in a book proposal to a peer-reviewed publisher. 6,000 to 8,000 word essays will due early in 2019. Please submit abstracts to both Dr. Amy L. Montz at almontz@usi.edu and Dr. Dana Lawrence at lawrende@mailbox.sc.edu. Questions can be addressed to both, as well.

CFP Histories of the Future: Proto-Science Fiction, 1800-1925 (re-opened) (8/15/2018)

An intriguing idea, BUT recent scholarship suggests proto science fiction is much older than 1800. I'm curious how the scope was defined.

Call for papers re-opened for collection of vintage science fiction
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/07/02/call-for-papers-re-opened-for-collection-of-vintage-science-fiction

deadline for submissions: August 15, 2018

full name / name of organization: Ivy Roberts / Virginia Commonwealth University

contact email: robertsi@vcu.edu



The CFP for Histories of the Future: Proto-Science Fiction, 1800-1925 (Mcfarland Press) has been re-opened! We are looking for short articles that introduce, contextualize, and / or put a critical lens up to science fiction written between 1800 and 1925 (Victorian era and the Machine age). Submit proposals by August 15. Please include your in your proposal a biography, and the title and author of the work that your essay will examine.

CFP Greco-Roman Myth in Literature and/or the Arts (9/30/2018; NeMLA 2019)

Greco-Roman Myth in Literature and/or the Arts
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/07/03/greco-roman-myth-in-literature-andor-the-arts

deadline for submissions: September 30, 2018

full name / name of organization: Ronnie Ancona

contact email: rancona@hunter.cuny.edu


The Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) has recently added Classics as a secondary area of inquiry under Comparative Literature. Please consider submitting an abstract for a panel on Greco-Roman Myth in Literature and/or the Arts, which I will be chairing, for the 50th anniversary convention to be held in Washington DC March 21-24, 2019.


Since Classics is a new secondary area of inquiry for NeMLA, this session attempts to cast its net quite broadly. The intention is to appeal to classicists or others dealing with Greco-Roman literature, history, archaeology, and culture and its later reception for abstracts that will have wide appeal to the NeMLA audience.

Myth is a central feature of Greco-Roman studies as well as its legacy. We look for papers addressing any aspect of Greco-Roman myth in its original contexts or in its later reworkings. Papers may be theoretical in nature, addressing various ways of defining and interpreting myth, or may focus on one or more specific instantiations of Greco-Roman myth. Papers addressing the permutations of a single myth over time are welcome, as are discussions of pedagogical issues involving the teaching of Greco-Roman myth, in general, or of a specific myth or type of myth.

All abstracts (and eventual papers) should have in mind the general NeMLA audience and should not be aimed solely at classicists. All papers should be presented in English.

The topic of Greco-Roman myth will allow for a panel that deals with Greco-Roman literature and culture as well as its reception. The aim of the panel will be to demonstrate the contribution of Classics to a living tradition.



For further general information, go to the following links:

https://www.buffalo.edu/nemla.html

https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/17374


For submissions (due September 30th), go to the first link above and click on “Submit Your Abstracts.” Then in the search box at the upper right corner, search by “Ancona” or the panel title.



NeMLA membership is not required to submit abstracts but it is required to present at the convention.

CFP Literature/Film Association Annual Conference (7/15/2018; New Orleans, 11/29-12/02/2018))

Literature/Film Association Annual Conference (New Orleans, 7/15, 11/29-12/2)
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/05/28/literaturefilm-association-annual-conference-new-orleans-715-1129-122

deadline for submissions: July 15, 2018

full name / name of organization: Literature/Film Association

contact email: litfilm2018@gmail.com


Literature/Film Association Annual Conference

SPACE, PLACE & ADAPTATION
November 29-December 1, 2018
New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

Keynote: Christopher Schaberg, Dorothy Harrell Brown Distinguished Professor of English, Loyola University New Orleans

Holding our annual conference in New Orleans raises questions of space, place, and adaptation in the study of literature, film, and media. The city has long served as a point of contact and conflict between various cultures and their traditions, and its unique identity demonstrates the enduring influence of those populations today. While we welcome papers on any aspect of film and media studies, we are especially interested in presentations that address one or more of the following concerns (or similar topics):

• the poetics of space and place
• the politics of space and place
• adapting literary spaces and places in media
• teaching space, place, and media
• exhibition spaces
• the rural, regional, national, or transnational in media
• cosmopolitanism
• space, place, and identity
• media institutions, such as archives, film libraries, and film festivals
• location shooting and recreating place in media
• mobility, migration, and exile
• space, place, and genre
• sets as sites of inquiry
• production design
• media infrastructures
• architecture and media
• geographical approaches to media
• space, place, and performance
• Louisiana as a media capital

We also have significant interest in general studies of American and international cinema, film and technology, television, and new media, and other cultural or political issues connected to the moving image. In addition to academic papers, presentation proposals about pedagogy or from creative writers, artists, and filmmakers are also welcome.

Christopher Schaberg, our keynote speaker this year, is Dorothy Harrell Brown Distinguished Professor of English at Loyola University New Orleans, where he teaches courses in contemporary literature, cultural studies, and environmental theory. He has written four monographs: The Textual Life of Airports: Reading the Culture of Flight (2012), The End of Airports (2015), Airportness: The Nature of Flight (2017), and The Work of Literature in an Age of Post-Truth. He has also co-edited two collections: Deconstructing Brad Pitt (2014, with Robert Bennett) and Airplane Reading (2016, with Mark Yakich). With Ian Bogost, he co-edits the Object Lessons series, exploring the hidden lives of ordinary things.

Please submit your proposal via this Google Doc by July 15, 2018. If you have any questions or concerns, contact Pete Kunze at litfilm2018@gmail.com. Accepted presenters will be notified by August 15.


The conference hotel rate of $179/night is available at the Four Points Sheraton French Quarter until November 1, 2018. Limited travel grant support is planned to be available for select graduate students, non-tenure-track faculty, and/or independent scholars and artists. Details for an added application process for such support will be shared following proposal acceptances in August.

The conference registration fee is $200 ($150 for students and retirees) before October 1, 2018 and $225 ($175 for students and retirees) thereafter. All conference attendees must also be current members of the Literature/Film Association. Annual dues are $20. To register for the conference and pay dues following acceptance of your proposal, visit the Literature/Film Association website at http://litfilm.org/conference and use our PayPal feature.

Presenters will be invited to submit their work to the Literature/Film Quarterly for potential publication. For details on the journal’s submission requirements, visit www.salisbury.edu/lfq.

CFP Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture, 1900 to present for Fall 2018 (10/01/2018)

Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture, 1900 to present
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/05/30/americana-the-journal-of-american-popular-culture-1900-to-present

deadline for submissions: October 1, 2018

full name / name of organization: Americana

contact email: editor@americanpopularculture.com



Americana at americanpopularculture.com invites submissions in Media Studies, Cultural Studies, American Studies, and American history -- especially as it pertains to Americana popular culture, 1900 to present

DEADLINE: 1 October 2018 for the Fall 2018 edition of Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture, 1900 to present -- published late December 2018

We welcome a variety of critical approaches on subject matter such as film, television, streaming shows, YouTube shows/channels, sports, bestsellers, venues, fashion, emerging popular culture trends, pop culture and technology, music, politics, style, and other related pop culture topics.

All work is peer reviewed by our Advisory Board readers: http://www.americanpopularculture.com/journal/advisory_board.htm

Please do keep your name off the submission itself as we use the double blind peer review process.

We encourage you to read past issues as well as the current issue if you would like to get a sense of the kind of work we have published: http://www.americanpopularculture.com/journal/index.htm

Guidelines for submission are here: http://www.americanpopularculture.com/journal/call_for_papers.htm

Email submissions to editor@americanpopularculture.com

Thank you. We look forward to reading your research and writing.

CFP Interwar Mysteries: The Golden Age and Beyond (Spec Issue of Clues: A Journal of Detection) (10/12/2018)

Interwar Mysteries: The Golden Age and Beyond (theme issue of Clues: A Journal of Detection)
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/06/07/interwar-mysteries-the-golden-age-and-beyond-theme-issue-of-clues-a-journal-of

deadline for submissions: October 12, 2018

full name / name of organization: Elizabeth Foxwell / Clues: A Journal of Detection

contact email: clues@elizabethfoxwell.com

Interwar Mysteries: The Golden Age and Beyond (theme issue of Clues: A Journal of Detection)
Guest editor: Victoria Stewart (University of Leicester)


“These things never happened before the War.”
—Mr. Wetheridge, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1928), by Dorothy L. Sayers

Although the period between the World Wars is known as the Golden Age of traditional mystery fiction, other new forms such as the hard-boiled subgenre, true crime, and noir also emerged, often reflecting a grimmer reality. This theme issue of Clues will feature articles that examine this important crossroads in mystery, detective, and crime fiction.
Potential topics of interest include the following:

• Country house and village mysteries
• Twists to the traditional cozy
• True crime and mystery
• Serials, short stories, and anthologies
• Debates, controversies, and causes célèbres
• Hard-boiled mystery in the pulps
• Presence/effects of World War I in mysteries of the period
• Theater and film adaptations that reflect new approaches

Submissions should include a 50-word abstract and 4–5 keywords, and be between 15 to 20 double-spaced, typed pages (approximately 3,300 to 6,000 words) in Times or Times Roman font with minimal formatting. Manuscripts should follow the MLA Handbook (8th ed., 2016), including parenthetical citations in text and an alphabetized Works Cited list.


Submit manuscripts to:
Janice M. Allan, Clues executive editor, University of Salford, email: J.M.Allan at salford.ac.uk


Address questions to:
Elizabeth Foxwell, Clues managing editor, email: clues at elizabethfoxwell.com


Connect with Clues on Facebook, or visit the Clues Web site at
https://sites.google.com/site/cluesjournal
 

CFP International Journal of James Bond Studies (11/30/2018)

An interesting call from a new open-access journal:

International Journal of James Bond Studies 2(1)
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/06/08/international-journal-of-james-bond-studies-21

deadline for submissions: November 30, 2018

full name / name of organization: International Journal of James Bond Studies

contact email: ian.kinane@roehampton.ac.uk



The International Journal of James Bond Studies is now accepting submissions for Volume 2.


The International Journal of James Bond Studies is an academic peer-reviewed journal dedicated to publishing interdisciplinary scholarship on all aspects of Ian Fleming’s James Bond franchise. The journal aims to develop contemporary critical readings of Ian Fleming’s James Bond across literary, filmic, and cultural history, and offers broader criticism of the popular appeal of Fleming’s creation and its relation to the spy genre. The journal will appeal to scholars, academics, and cultural critics whose work focuses on Ian Fleming and James Bond, as well as to fans of the James Bond franchise who wish to supplement their knowledge in this area.


Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• the James Bond novels (both original and continuation);
• the James Bond films;
• the music of James Bond;
• James Bond computer games;
• television, radio, and comic adaptations;
• James Bond parodies and/or spin-offs;
• James Bond merchandise;
• the cultural impact of James Bond;
• James Bond and spy fiction;
• other academic works on James Bond

Articles of 6,000-8,000 words and reviews of 2,000 words will be considered.


For full details on the style guide and journal conventions, please see our submissions page: http://jamesbondstudies.roehampton.ac.uk/about/submissions/



You can also connect with the International Journal of James Bond Studies on Facebook (@JamesBondStudies) and Twitter (@IJJBS).

CFP LIES, Inc. lies and “alternative facts” in Science Fiction (expired)

Just missed the deadline on this:

Journal Messengers from the Stars: On Science Fiction and Fantasy


deadline for submissions: July 2, 2018

full name / name of organization: School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon

contact email: mfts.journal@gmail.com



CFP

Journal Messengers from the Stars: On Science Fiction and Fantasy No. 4, 2019

Edited by: Danièle André & Christopher Becker

Co-edited by: Angélica Varandas & José Duarte

Messengers from the Stars is an international, peer-reviewed journal, offering academic articles, reviews, and providing an outlet for a wide range of creative work inspired by science fiction and fantasy. The 2019 issue will be dedicated to the theme

LIES, Inc. lies and “alternative facts” in Science Fiction

For our 2019 Messengers from the Stars issue we will focus on how lies and “alternative facts”—as coined by Kellyanne Conway—can be both the basis for some to overthrow governments or remain in power, and for others a way to protect a society that would be torn by war or disaster if truth was to come out. Thus, the interest rests in seeing how lies and alternative facts are used to deprive people of their power to decide for themselves for good or bad—the question of lifting the burden of moral condemnation on cannibalism is central to Richard Fleisher’s Soylent Green (1973) and leads us to wonder whether or not falsification can ever be justified. In our societies, in which lies in some forms or others are part and parcel of our daily lives, the question of truth and facts is to be questioned and we can wonder to what extent they could jeopardize our contemporary so-called democracies. We will study the tools used by fabricators and falsifiers in order to twist reality and minimize the truth (propaganda, political manipulation, storytelling and information warfare) as well as the effect an unmitigated resort to lies has on social structures. Papers will cover all formats.



Possible topics:

• Communities and lies (ex: Philip K. Dick’s Clans of the Alphane Moon, 1964);
• Falsification as institution/tearing the veil of illusion (ex: The Illuminatus! Trilogy; John Carpenter’s They Live, 1988);
• The limits of truth. Lies as second-best choice or ‪stopgap solution (ex: Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen, 1986; Utopia, Channel 4, 2013);
• Propaganda vs Anti-Propaganda (ex: BrainDead, CBS, 2015);
• Truth as a revolutionary act (ex: George Orwell);
• Rewriting history (ex: John Wyndham’s Plan for Chaos published posthumously in 2009);
• The role of conspiracy theorists (ex: Chris Carter’s X-Files);
• Information warfare and New Wars (ex: William Gibson’s Neuromancer, 1984);
• Lies and mise en abyme (ex: narratives within narratives);
• The morality of lies vs the immorality of truth.The text as falsification: real books and fictional authors (ex: Kilgore Trout as imagined by Kurt Vonnegut) / fictional books and real authors (ex: J. L. Borges and the use of mock quotations);
• Other.

Submissions, between 4000 and 6000 words in English, must be sent to mfts.journal@gmail.com by July 2, 2018. The authors will be notified by the end of July.


In addition, you can propose a book or film review. We welcome book and film reviews on current science fiction and fantasy research and PhD dissertations. Reviews should be between 500 to 1,000 words. Longer reviews, e.g. dealing with more than one book, should be agreed upon with the Editorial Board.


All submissions must follow the journal’s guidelines available at: http://messengersfromthestars.letras.ulisboa.pt/journal/submission-guidelines/. 

CFP Neo-Dickens for a New Audience: Reading, Watching, and Teaching Dickens in the 21st Century (9/30/208; NeMLA 2019)

"Neo-Dickens for a New Audience: Reading, Watching, and Teaching Dickens in the 21st Century" (Dickens Society Sponsored Panel)
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/06/15/neo-dickens-for-a-new-audience-reading-watching-and-teaching-dickens-in-the-21st

deadline for submissions: September 30, 2018

full name / name of organization: Northeast Modern Language Association

contact email: matobin@psu.edu



"Neo-Dickens for a New Audience: Reading, Watching, and Teaching Dickens in the 21st Century" (Dickens Society Sponsored Panel)

Deadline for submissions: September 30, 2018
Name of organization: Northeast Modern Language Association
Contact email: matobin@psu.edu

Call for proposals for the Dickens Society sponsored panel at the Northeast Modern Language Society convention to be held in Washington, DC March 21-24, 2019


"Neo-Dickens for a New Audience: Reading, Watching, and Teaching Dickens in the 21st Century" (Dickens Society Sponsored Panel)

Chair: Mary Ann Tobin, PhD, The Pennsylvania State University

As Jessica Cox defines it, Neo-Victorianism involves "creative works that in some way engage with Victorian literature and culture, and scholarly works that seek to explore the shifting relationship with the Victorian period . . . often through a critical investigation of Neo-Victorian creative works." Charles Dickens's characters, settings, and Boz himself have been re-imagined, appearing in Neo-Vic novels, television shows, films, and videogames, like Lynn Shepherd's "The Solitary House," BBC One's "Dickensian," Ridley Scott's "The Man Who Invented Christmas," and Ubisoft's "Assassin's Creed: Syndicate." This panel will consider what Neo-Dickensian works like these tell us about our current "relationship with the Victorian period" and suggest ways to make productive use of them in the classroom.

The submission deadline is September 30, 2018. All abstracts must be submitted through the NeMLA CFP web site at https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/. Search for panel #17234, "Neo-Dickens for a New Audience: Reading, Watching, and Teaching Dickens in the 21st Century." General guidelines for abstracts can be found at https://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention/callforpapers/submit.html. View the conference web site at https://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention.html. Send questions regarding the panel to matobin@psu.edu.

Panelists will be notified of acceptance or rejection by October 15, 2018. NeMLA membership is not required to submit abstracts. However, if your abstract is accepted to a session and you agree to present at the convention, you will be required to pay for membership and convention registration.

CFP Speculative Souths (1/1/2019)

An intriguing idea for a collection:

Speculative Souths
https://www.theasa.net/jobs-opportunities/cfps/speculative-souths

Deadline: Tuesday, January 1, 2019

Review Begins: Tuesday, January 1, 2019



Speculative Souths

Ed. Amy Clukey, Erich Nunn, & Jon Smith

Edited Collection CFP


In the early years of science fiction, space frequently figured as the American West writ large—the final frontier. In the genre’s darker, grittier reboot era, however, it often looks more like the final plantation, from Blade Runner’s updated slavecatchers to the transnationally and transtemporally exploited Appalachians of William Gibson’s The Peripheral to Atlanta architect John Portman’s abstracted plantation-house columns looming over the Hunger Games films. And even as some white writers, in the twilight of American empire, set their dystopian survivalist fantasies in the region (The Road, The Walking Dead), self-consciously “southern” varieties of Afrofuturism and speculative blackness, ranging from OutKast to novels such as Kiese Laymon’s Long Division and Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing, represent it as a site of vibrant black futurity contesting and sometimes transcending both the nation’s plantation past and its carceral present. Meanwhile, cli-fi and ecofiction set in the South, from Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior to Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, is on the rise as the region’s coasts begin to sink.


This collection seeks to make sense of these and other“southern turns” in speculative fiction, broadly defined across multiple media and subgenres, and of earlier southern turns that, because they didn’t fit with dominant models, earlier scholarship may have missed or misread. What happens when speculative fiction goes from western to southern, for example, and/or when our understanding of “the South” shifts its gaze from past to future? How does the speculative allow writers to conceive of the South in ways that transcend the black/white binary that has long shaped how the region is imagined?


Send abstracts by January 1st, 2019 to Amy.Clukey@gmail.com. Final papers of 4000-5000 words will be due by January 1st, 2020.



Possible topics might include

• Southern Afrofuturisms in literature and music from Sun Ra to Outkast and beyond
• Speculative Souths in comic and graphic narratives: Swamp Thing, Black Panther, Bitch Planet, Kindred
• Nineteenth-century literature and speculative Souths: Edgar Allan Poe and lesser known southern innovators/imitators of the genre
• Southern iconographies that serve as sci-fi prop, backdrop, mood enhancers: architect John Portman
• Southern retro-futurism, futurity, and future’s futures
• Transnational, transtemporal, weird, queer, fantastic, or dystopian speculative Appalachias: The Hunger Games, The Peripheral
• The South and the (Old and/or New) Weird (e.g., Southern Reach)
• The presence or weird absence of “the South” in theorizations of science fiction, such as the work of Darko Suvin or North Carolinian Fredric Jameson
• Octavia Butler and the South, beyond Kindred
• Speculative fictions (e.g., Laymon’s Long Division) as counter-politics
• Alt-histories: Henry Turtledove’s white nationalist rehashes of the Civil War, more recent treatments like Omar El Akkad’s American War
• Cli-fi of or in the South
• Speculative poetry of or in the South
• Voodoo/hoodoo fantasy
• Time-traveling revisions of southern temporalities from Kiese Laymon’s Long Division to Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series
• Native southern speculative reclamations of space and time
• Even more Undead Souths
• Speculative southern modernisms
• NASA’s ties to Southern cultures or locales (Huntsville, Houston, Cape Canaveral)
• Southerners in space (e.g., Edgar Rice Burroughs’s A Princess of Mars)
• The construct of U.S./Global/Planetary “Souths” on Mars, Venus, and beyond (such as the appearance of the Jim Crow South in golden age SF like Ray Bradbury and Robert Heinlein’s work, or the icy southern polar settlements of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy, the agricultural terrains of The Expanse)
• Treatments of plantation agriculture, slavery, and incarceration in space
• Speculative southern camp in 60s and 70s sci-fi television

CFP The Oxford Handbook of Children's Film (7/31/2018)

Of potential interest:

Call for Proposals - The Oxford Handbook of Children's Film
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2018/07/02/call-for-proposals-the-oxford-handbook-of-childrens-film

deadline for submissions: July 31, 2018

full name / name of organization: Noel Brown (Liverpool Hope University)

contact email: brownn@hope.ac.uk



Calls for Proposals: The Oxford Handbook of Children’s Film

Edited by Noel Brown (Liverpool Hope University, UK)

Deadlines

• Abstracts (300–400 words): 31 July 2018
• First Drafts (8,000 to 10,000 words): 31 May 2019

I am seeking proposals for chapters for possible inclusion in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Children’s Film, under contract with Oxford University Press. Oxford Handbooks are intended to offer authoritative and up-to-date surveys of original research in a particular subject area, with essays giving critical examinations of the progress and direction of debates, as well as a foundation for future research.

In recent years, the study of films for children has emerged as a vibrant and diverse field of critical enquiry. This volume in the Oxford Handbook series will reflect both the plurality of the format and the methodological diversity evident in current and recent scholarship, and serve as an authoritative introduction to children’s film. It will address themes, issues and topics from across the international history of children’s cinema from the early twentieth century to the present, aiming to reveal larger patterns, continuities and changes in the form, and reflect the ways in which children’s film content and reception have been shaped by major socio-historical events.

The Handbook will be interdisciplinary in scope and I am open to contributions from across a range of theoretical or methodological approaches, including film studies, children’s literary and cultural studies, children’s education, cultural history, and animation studies. Although I envisage that many of the chapters will focus on feature-length fiction films, I am receptive to proposals that seek to examine shorts and non-fiction films.

Possible topics might include (but are not limited to):

• The genre and form of children’s film
• Historical changes and continuities
• Early traditions of children’s cinema
• The relationship between children’s cinema and the state
• Children’s propaganda films
• Children’s film and national identity
• Children’s film programming
• The boundaries of children’s cinema
• Performance and stardom
• Racial/sexual politics
• Fandom and/or paratexts
• Children’s film and transmedia
• Family audiences
• Adaptation
• The reception of children’s film among young people
• Adults’ relationships with children’s film

Please send abstracts of 300–400 words, and a biography of 50–80 words, to Noel Brown at brownn@hope.ac.uk by 31 July 2018. Please give the subject header as ‘Oxford Handbook proposal’. Notifications of acceptance will be sent no later than 31 August 2018. Chapters of 8,000 to 10,000 words will be due by 31 May 2019.

CFP Politics and Conflicts - ICFA 2019 (10/31/2018; Florida 3/13-17/2019)

CFP: “Politics and Conflicts,” the 40th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts
https://www.fantastic-arts.org/2018/cfp-politics-and-conflicts-the-40th-international-conference-on-the-fantastic-in-the-arts/
On July 2, 2018

CFP: “Politics and Conflicts,” the 40th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts

Please join us for ICFA 40, March 13-17, 2019, when our theme will be “Politics and Conflicts.”

We welcome papers on the work of: Guest Scholar Mark Bould (Reader, University of the West of England; winner of the SFRA Pilgrim Award; author of several books on sf including Science Fiction: The Routledge Film Guidebook) and Guest Author G. Willow Wilson (winner of a PEN Center award; writer of the Hugo-Award-winning series Ms. Marvel, author of Alif the Unseen).

Speculative texts have a tremendous power to help us envision how the world might be otherwise and to see the historical contingencies that have given us the world as we find it. Fantastic genres allow us to imagine other paths that history might have taken and to explore the power dynamics of conflicts among competing factions, from the local scale of family and gender arrangements to the global scale of transnational trade and migration. Such texts can often articulate critiques that would have been silenced by censorship of realist genres in times and places of government, religious, or other oppression. We invite papers that understand the concept of politics very broadly, from international relations and structures of governance, through to the politics of everyday life. If at times the genres of the fantastic can be complicit in naturalizing and perpetuating dominant power structures and the politics they endorse, more often they provide a rich set of tools for telling such stories from marginalized perspectives, visions that cannot be captured by a realism that is structured by default ideological assumptions. We also welcome proposals for individual papers, academic sessions, creative presentations, and panels on any aspect of the fantastic in any media. We will gather in 2019 to question, celebrate, argue over, and deduce speculative fiction’s contributions to thinking through the politics and conflicts of our past and its capacity to guide us toward more inclusive futures.

The deadline for proposals is October 31, 2018. We encourage work from institutionally affiliated scholars, independent scholars, international scholars who work in languages other than English, graduate students. Artists are encouraged to submit proposals for our Creative Track, which features sessions on writing, art, music, and poetry, as well as panel discussions on topics of interest for creative professionals.

For more information on the IAFA and its conference, the ICFA, see https://www.fantastic-arts.org/. The Submissions Portal opens on September 1st. To submit a proposal, go to https://www.fantastic-arts.org/icfa-submissions/.

To contact the Division Heads for help with submissions, go to https://www.fantastic-arts.org/about/governance/division-heads/.

For information on the Creative Track, go to https://www.fantastic-arts.org/annual-conference/creative-track/.