CFP Gender in Fantasy (8/31/2026 BFS Journal)

Gender in Fantasy

deadline for submissions:
August 31, 2026

full name / name of organization:
Dr Kevan Manwaring/The British Fantasy Society

contact email:
kmanwaring@aub.ac.uk

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2026/06/05/gender-in-fantasy

Fantasy has long explored lifeworlds and paradigms outside of societal norms. Orlando, Virginia Woolf’s gender-fluid protagonist, declares, ‘I'm sick to death of this particular self. I want another.’ World myths, legends, folk tales, and fairy tales are early promoters of gender-fluidity, populated by the likes of Inanna/Ishtar; Hermaphroditus, the offspring of Hermes and Aphrodite; androgynous Dionysus; Ardhanarishvara; Ometeotl; Guanyin; cross-dressing thunder and trickster gods; heartsick seafaring maidens disguised as sailors; and the mercurial ontologies of the Fae. In this issue we will explore how gender is portrayed and explored in Fantasy. Fantasy plays an important role in enlarging what is possible, and creating refugia for the marginalised and other modalities. In an increasingly intolerant, xenophobic, and close-minded world, where Far Right governments roll back hard-won freedoms and civil rights legislation, and undermine, mock or openly attack important principles of equality, diversity, and inclusivity, this function of Fantasy is never more vital, for as Orlando states, ‘He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life.’



The BFS Journal is seeking original, unpublished, human-authored articles of between 2000-8000 words (including bibliography). 

Possible approaches include:

• Non-binary identities and challenging binaries.
• Found families and marginalised identities in YA Fantasy
• The portrayal of matriarchies and patriarchies in Fantasy worlds.
• The rise of Romantasy and the female gaze.
• The performance of gender.
• Power and gender roles.
• Queer Fantasy and destabilisations of heteronormativity in Fantasy.
• The divine masculine and feminine in Fantasy.
• Masks, disguises, masquerades and carnivals.
• Friendships and relationships in Fantasy.
• Flirting, courting, and marriage in Fantasy.

Send the Abstract (200 words), including title, keywords, and a 100-word bio to the Editor (Dr Kevan Manwaring) by 31st August. The BFS Journal Winter issue will be published December 2026. Completed articles, if commissioned, will be due in by 30th September, when they will undergo peer-review. Send to: bfsjournal@britishfantasysociety.org



Last updated June 5, 2026

CFP 100 Years of Wonder (Special Issue of Foundation) (4/5/2026)

100 Years of Wonder

deadline for submissions:
April 5, 2026

full name / name of organization:
Science Fiction Foundation

contact email:
paulmarchrussell@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/08/18/100-years-of-wonder


2026 marks the centenary of Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories, the first anglophone magazine devoted to what Gernsback originally called ‘scientifiction’. To commemorate and critically explore what many regard as the birth of genre science fiction, the autumn 2026 issue of Foundation (no. 153) will present a series of articles that investigate and re-evaluate the history of the pulps.

Despite defining the genre for many lay readers outside of the sf community, pulp science fiction has long been a contentious subject. From Brian Aldiss (Billion Year Spree) to Jeff VanderMeer (The Big Book of Science Fiction), writers, editors and historians have tried to diminish the significance of pulp sf and the so-called ‘Golden Age’. By contrast, Gary Westfahl in The Mechanics of Wonder (1998) rebuked such attempts and asserted the importance of Gernsback and John W. Campbell to an understanding of what science fiction is. More recently, Jeannette Ng caused outrage by publicly denouncing Campbell’s racism. Alec Nevala-Lee’s revisionist history of Campbell and Astounding Science Fiction has contributed to this critical reassessment, whilst successive anthologies from Lisa Yaszek have emphasised the role of women in the early years of pulp sf.

This special issue seeks to further this critical engagement. What can we meaningfully say about the legacy of the pulps in the light of an increasingly more diverse science fiction field, let alone the gathering focus on Indigenous futurisms, non-print-based media, and non-anglophone literature? Can we talk about pulp traditions in other parts of the world, not necessarily influenced by the US model, which continue to influence local sf cultures? To what extent is fandom still indebted to the pioneering activities of the 1930s?

We invite contributions of between 4000 and 8000 words, written in accordance with the journal’s style guide, no later than 5 April 2026. Topics may include (but are not limited to):

• The prehistory of pulp sf – Edgar Rice Burroughs and the Munsey magazines, etc.
• The roles of Gernsback and Campbell as editors and critics
• The importance of editors other than Gernsback and Campbell
• The visual look of the pulps
• The relationship between the pulps and their readers
• The legacy of First Fandom – zines, clubs, conventions, cosplay
• Women writers and readers and the pulps
• Black pulp science fictions
• The economics of pulp – copyright, distribution, royalties, agents
• Pulps versus the slicks
• Technocracy and the Great Depression
• Bio-engineered futures
• Pulp sub-genres: planetary romance, space opera, super-science, social science fiction
• Pulp sf cinema/comics – Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Just Imagine, etc.
• The ‘big three’ – Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, A.E. van Vogt
• The Futurians
• Pulp sf and World War Two
• US pulp sf and British scientific romance
• Pulps versus the digests: did pulp sf die?
• Pulp sf and Latin America
• Retrofuturism and the legacy of pulp sf

All submissions should be emailed to the current editor at paulmarchrussell@gmail.com


Last updated August 20, 2025

CFP The Green Fuse - Nature in Fantasy (2/28/2025; Spec Issue British Fantasy Society Journal)

 

The Green Fuse - Nature in Fantasy

deadline for submissions: 

February 28, 2025

full name / name of organization: 

Dr Kevan Manwaring/British Fantasy Society

contact email: 

kmanwaring@aub.ac.uk

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2024/11/14/the-green-fuse-nature-in-fantasy.

In this special issue we will look at environmental aspects of Fantasy. Since its very earliest manifestations, in taproot texts such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, Beowulf, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Fantasy has been entangled with the natural and supernatural world.

‘The force that through the green fuse drives the flower.’
Dylan Thomas

Modern classics of Fantasy such as The Lord of the Rings, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, The Book of Earthsea, Mythago Wood, The Broken Earth Trilogy, The Tide Child Trilogy, and others foreground the ‘natural world’ (even if that is in a Secondary World setting), and have environmental aspects that are intrinsic to the plot: the destruction of the forests of Isengard and the March of the Ents; the perpetual winter of Narnia; the shattered land of The Silence; the remnant of ancient woodland of Ryhope Wood; the toxic wastelands of Viriconium, etc. We shall delve into the rich biodiversity of the imagination and examine the symbiotic relationship between the natural world and the creation of Fantasy.

Subjects that could be explored include:
• Changing representations of nature in Fantasy.
• Fantasy and the Anthropocene.
• The super/natural mythscapes of childhood.
• Neo-animism, sentient nature, and the sense of the sacred in Fantasy.
• Indigenous perspectives of our relationship to the natural world as depicted in Fantasy.
• Anthropomorphic nature in Fantasy.
• The flora and fauna of Fantasy.
• The natural landscapes of Fantasy.
• Environmentalism in Fantasy.
• Fantasy sites (real world sites that have inspired Fantasy classics) and the production of Fantasy.
• The enchantment, disenchantment, and re-enchantment of nature through Fantasy.

Also invited are scholarly reviews of contemporary (or classic) Fantasy in novels, TV, film, graphic novels, computer games, etc. Original, human-produced artwork will also be considered.

Submissions should be clearly titled as follows: SURNAME_TITLE_BFSJOURNAL_CFP FEB 25

A 200-word abstract and 100-word author bio should be included. Work needs to be original, previously unpublished, and referenced using the Harvard author/date system. The editor retains the right to edit any submission, and contributors must be willing to address any editorial suggestions within good time. Publication is expected Summer 2025. Send to The Editor: bfsjournal@britishfantasysociety.org

For full submission guidelines please refer to checklist on BFS site.

Deadline for submissions: 28th February 2025

categories

childrens literature

ecocriticism and environmental studies

film and television

journals and collections of essays

popular culture

Last updated November 15, 2024

CFP Before, After and Beyond: Prequels and Sequels in Literature, Arts and Culture (1/31/2025)

 

Call for Papers: ‘Before, After and Beyond: Prequels and Sequels in Literature, Arts and Culture’

deadline for submissions: 

January 31, 2025

full name / name of organization: 

Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance

contact email: 

marta.minier@southwales.ac.uk

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2024/11/05/call-for-papers-%E2%80%98before-after-and-beyond-prequels-and-sequels-in-literature-arts-and. 

Call for Papers: ‘Before, After and Beyond: Prequels and Sequels in Literature, Arts and Culture’

A Special Issue of Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance

View the full call here>>

https://www.intellectbooks.com/journal-of-adaptation-in-film-performance#call-for-papers

Edited by Annamária Fábián and Márta Minier

Proposals for scholarly articles, practitioners’ perspective essays and practitioner interviews are warmly invited for the upcoming special issue of the Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance. This thematic issue will address adapting and recreating various forms of text into various modes of media through enhancing or challenging the concept of temporal and spatial continuity, i.e. through prequels and sequels.

Adaptation theory has historically tended to exclude prequels and sequels from its scope; they were treated as marginal or at least separate from ‘regular’ adaptations  mainly because, as Linda Hutcheon (2006) pinpoints, building on Marjorie Garber (2003), “[t]here is a difference between never wanting a story to end […] and wanting to retell the same story over and over in different ways”. Yet, it has become apparent that prequels and sequels are here to stay, and they indeed seem to have a unique potential in retelling and reinterpreting stories as well as repositioning them in a new temporal and/or spatial framework. Whether it is the recontextualization of canonical/classical cultural content in (re)defined temporalities or the ever-renewing waves of complex storyverses through multiple, never-ending blockbuster series and spinoffs on various streaming platforms, digging for those new beginnings and not wanting a story to end seem to impress with unprecedented popularity and a potential to provide yet more layers to telling the same stories over and over again.

We welcome abstracts of cca 300 words accompanied by a biographical note and resonating with one or more of the following:

• the story as continuum

• various works begun and continued in multimedial forms

• the challenges of beginning and ending narratives

• the theory of preceding and following 

• temporal and spatial repositioning/reframing of various narratives

• classics reframed

• perspectives on transmedia universes; storyverses

• backstories and spinoffs

• typologies and theories of prequels and sequels

• prequels, sequels and hypertextuality

• history and storylines challenged and disrupted

• prequels and sequels and/as anachronisms

• convergence cultures as platform of prequels and sequels

• prequels and sequels in the context of paratextuality

Authors are encouraged to submit their latest research findings (traditional research articles, practitioners’ perspectives contributions and interview-articles) aligned with the topics listed above – the list is to serve as a guideline and food for thought only. We welcome topics embracing other ideas connected to prequels and sequels in any media and in any artform in the most general sense.

Important Dates:

Deadline for submitting abstracts: 31 January 2025

Notification of acceptance: 15 February 2025

Deadline for submitting papers: 2 June 2025

Double-blind peer-reviewing process over summer 2025

Abstracts should be sent to both the editors:

fabian.annamaria@btk.elte.hu and marta.minier@southwales.ac.uk

In the subject line, please write “prequel_sequel_special_issue_Name_Title”

If you have any questions regarding the issue, please don’t hesitate to contact the editors.

categories

fan studies and fandom

film and television

journals and collections of essays

popular culture

Last updated November 8, 2024

CFP The Fantasy Worlds of George MacDonald (Special Issue British Fantasy Society Journal) (8/31/2024)

The Fantasy Worlds of George MacDonald

deadline for submissions:
August 31, 2024

full name / name of organization:
Dr Kevan Manwaring/British Fantasy Society

contact email:
kmanwaring@aub.ac.uk

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2024/04/23/the-fantasy-worlds-of-george-macdonald

British Fantasy Society Journal – Call for Submissions for Winter Issue 2024

Deadline: 31st August 2024

The Fantasy Worlds of George MacDonald

The Scottish writer George MacDonald (1824-1905) was a hugely prolific author of fiction, poetry, essays, and sermons. His works include the influential Fantasy novels, Phantastes: a Faerie Romance (1858), and Lilith (1895), as well as the much-loved children’s classics, At the Back of the North Wind (1871), The Princess and the Goblin (1872), and The Princess and Curdie (1883). Admired by contemporaries such as John Ruskin and Lewis Carroll, MacDonald inspired later generations of Fantasy, in particular, CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. In December 2024 we celebrate the 200th anniversary of his birth. This special issue will explore the Fantasy writing of Macdonald, thematic connections with other writers, and his legacy.

The editor is inviting non-fiction contributions exploring MacDonald’s oeuvre, primarily his works of Fantasy. As well as critical re-examinations of the titles listed above, contributions could explore the following or similar areas:

· Christian Mysticism in Fantasy.

· Death and afterlife – eschatological and posthumous Fantasy.

· The use of Fairy Tales in the works of George MacDonald.

· Representations of the supernatural feminine.

· Celticity and ecolectical Fantasy.

· Macdonald and his connection to the writings of Arthur Machen, Charles Williams, and Fiona MacLeod.

· Adaptations and creative conversations with his work and life.

· Creative criticism and rebellious research about George MacDonald.

Also invited are scholarly reviews of contemporary (or classic) Fantasy in novels, TV, film, graphic novels, computer games, etc.

Submissions should be clearly titled as follows: SURNAME_TITLE_BFSJOURNAL_CFP DEC 24 A 200-word abstract and 100-word author bio should be included. Work needs to original, previously unpublished, and referenced using the Harvard author/date system. The editor retains the right to edit any submission, and contributors must be willing to address any editorial suggestions within good time. Publication is expected late 2024.

Deadline for submissions: 31st August 2024 Send to: kmanwaring@aub.ac.uk

For full submission guidelines please refer to checklist on BFS site (updated soon).

https://britishfantasysociety.org/




Last updated April 25, 2024

CFP Science Fiction of the 1870s (Spec Issue of Foundation) (10/07/2024)

Science Fiction of the 1870s

deadline for submissions: October 7, 2024

full name / name of organization: Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction

contact email: paulmarchrussell@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2024/03/01/science-fiction-of-the-1870s

To mark the 150th issue of Foundation in spring 2025, we would like to include contributions on the topic of sf from 150 years ago, published during the 1870s. Darko Suvin once proposed 1 May 1871 as the starting-point for sf – the day that Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s The Coming Race was published, George Chesney’s The Battle of Dorking began serialisation, and Samuel Butler submitted Erewhon to his publisher. Jules Verne, however, was already in full swing and he would soon be joined by such contemporaries as Camille Flammarion. Where else can we trace the roots of science fiction in the 1870s? How can we reassess the writers we know and who are the writers we need to rediscover?

We welcome articles on any aspect of science fiction published between 1870 and 1880. Articles should be 5000-8000 words long and written in accordance with the style guide available on the website (www.sf-foundation.org/journal). Topics may include but are not limited to the following:

• Ideas of utopia
• Humans and machine technology
• The impact of evolution and the biological sciences
• Sf and the invasion novel
• Sf and astronomy
• Satire and allegory
• Science and pseudo-science
• Space travel and other worlds
• Exploration and voyages of discovery
• Race and empire
• Gender and sexuality
• Arnold, Huxley and the ‘two cultures’ debate
• Sf and the non-anglophone world

The deadline for articles is 7 October 2024. Please email your submission to Dr Paul March-Russell at paulmarchrussell@gmail.com with a short (50-word) bionote


Last updated March 6, 2024

CFP Geographies of the Fantastic and the Quotidian (Spec Issue of Pacific Coast Philology) (06/05/2024)

Call for Submissions to “Geographies of the Fantastic and the Quotidian”: Special Issue of Pacific Coast Philology

For this special issue, we seek essays that engage the theme of “Geographies of the Fantastic and the Quotidian.” Particularly fascinating might be explorations of the extraordinary, the exemplary, the “out of this world” sorts of places, real and figurative: the spaces of the fantastic and the bizarre. Anything pertaining to the surreal city of Los Angeles would be encouraged. The lived and experienced environments of the banal might spark equally fertile archaeologies of the everyday. Paper proposals of particular interest include explorations of all varieties of heterotopologies; explorations of fictional domains; Borgesian labyrinths; road narratives; enclaves of digital introspection or connection; theme parks; elision, caesura, and other grammatological openings; migration/border crossings; psychedelic “trips” of all sorts; native practices of tending the land; mirrors and projections; choreography and dance; exteriority/interiority; the politics or rhetorics of dispossession; theatrical staging; embodiment and disembodiment; panopticism; the family and/or spaces of domesticity; museums and archives; homelessness and houselessness; communities and cliques; as well as both paroxysmal places and quiet passages.



Please contact Special Issue Editor Jeremiah B.C. Axelrod at pamla@axelrod.info if you have questions.



Essay proposals should include the following, and should be emailed to Jeremiah B.C. Axelrod at pamla@axelrod.info by June 5, 2024: cover page with author’s name, affiliation, and a brief biography, plus the title of the essay; also a 4,000 to 7,000 word separate document with a brief abstract, a list of four to seven keywords, and the proposed paper, following the guidelines of the MLA Style Manual, 9th edition. Important: Please include Geographies of the Fantastic and Quotidian Special Issue Proposal in your email subject line to ensure prompt processing

CFP Futuristic Epistemology and Scientific Dimensions: Neo-perspectives in Science Fiction (Spec Issue) (2/5/2023)

Futuristic Epistemology and Scientific Dimensions: Neo-perspectives in Science Fiction”

deadline for submissions:
February 5, 2023

full name / name of organization:
The Golden Line: A Magazine of English Literature

contact email:
guested.goldenline@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/01/10/futuristic-epistemology-and-scientific-dimensions-neo-perspectives-in-science-fiction

Call for Papers: Volume 5, Number 1, 2023

Themed Issue on

“Futuristic Epistemology and Scientific Dimensions: Neo-perspectives in Science Fiction”

To be edited by

Niladri Mahapatra & Akasdip Dey

PG Department of English, Bhatter College, Dantan



The Golden Line, a peer-reviewed magazine, is inviting scholarly papers on “Neo-perspectives in Science Fiction”. Science fiction, as a prose narrative form, allows social explorations and experimentations. Adding science to fiction is making it more interesting as science affirms that fiction can also negotiate with truth. So, the discourse of SF creates an interdisciplinary space for many new themes to be focused on and discussed in this issue.

The issue intends to focus on the following thematic areas; however, they are suggestive and not restrictive:

Suggested Topics:

• Truth and SF
• Postmodernism and SF
• Postcolonialism and SF
• Posthumanism and SF
• Aestheticism and SF
• Psychoanalysis and SF
• New Romanticism and SF
• Popular Culture and SF
• Punk Culture and SF
• Ecology, Climate Change and SF
• Politics and SF
• Translation Studies and SF
• Science and SF
• Religion and SF
• Utopia and Dystopia
• Alternate Reality
• Parallel Universe, Multiverse and Time Travel
• Aliens in SF
• Animals in SF
• Space and SF
• Gender and SF
• Robotics
• Science Fiction Film
• Science Fiction Comics
• Science Fiction Magazine

Important Dates:

Submission of abstract: January 15, 2023

Notification of acceptance: January 17, 2023

Submission of full paper: February 05, 2023

[N. B. It is not obligatory to send the abstract within that day, author can also send the full paper (without sending the abstract) within 5th February.]

Author’s Guidelines:

Kindly submit the abstract of your paper in about 100-150 words (Times New Roman, 12) with 4-5 Keywords.

After the selection of your abstract, you are asked to submit your full-length article/ paper.

Articles should be written in an MS Word file following the 8th edition of MLA style.

Word Limits for the full paper: 2500-5000 words.

Authors’ bio-note of around 100 words should be added at the end of the paper.

Submission:

Submit your paper at guested.goldenline@gmail.com [add a CC to the Chief Editor, Mir Ahammad Ali at mir.goldenline@gmail.com]

Further Details:

Visit Our Magazine site: http://goldenline.bhattercollege.ac.in




Last updated January 11, 2023

CFP Specificity of Fantasy (Spec Issue of Literature) (8/31/2022)

Special Issue "The Specificity of Fantasy"

source: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/literature/special_issues/fantasy

Special Issue Editors
Special Issue Information
Keywords
Published Papers

A special issue of Literature (ISSN 2410-9789).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 August 2022.

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Geoff M. Boucher E-Mail Website SciProfiles
Guest Editor


Faculty of Arts and Education, School of Communication and Creative Arts, Deakin University, Geelong, VIC 3216, Australia
Interests: Frankfurt school critical theory; psychoanalysis; postmarxism; fantasy literature; anti-authoritarianism

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

It is now a decade since Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn noted, in The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature, that, by contrast with science fiction, “the study of fantasy has only just moved on from attempting to define the form”. Since then, against the background of an emergent scholarly consensus on fantasy as the “literature of the impossible,” new research has explored marvellous settings, gothic monsters, children’s fantasy, invented myth, race in fantasy, high adventure and epic fantasy, and fantastic modernism. At the same time, we have seen an explosion of fantasy subgenres, innovative fantasy works celebrated internationally, cultural controversies and the politicization of awards, and a scholarly boom around writers such as JK Rowling, George RR Martin, and Phillip Pullman. In light of all of this, and of the constantly increasing popularity of fantasy literature, together with the global impact of the work of figures such as NK Jemisin, Brandon Sanderson, and Nnedi Okorafor, it is high time to sum up where it is that we think the study of fantasy has moved on to, and where it should go to next.

The aim of this Special Issue of Literature is to map this “where to?” by surveying the new diversity, mapping theoretical developments, and inviting provocative proposals for new research. We are especially interested in thinking about what is specific to fantasy, that is, how the literature of the impossible facilitates particular kinds of literary intervention or catalyzes particular sorts of imaginative response. The literature of the impossible, it must be supposed, meets some human need, makes some cultural contribution, performs some social role, or has some political implication that is specific to the form or particular to its characteristic themes and motifs. But what is it? And what do individual writers or particular works illuminate about how fantasy matters to the wider culture?

This Special Issue of Literature invites contributions around these questions, which may address the contemporary space of reflection on fantasy through theoretical arguments, general surveys, close readings of particular works, or innovative approaches to popular fiction. Responses might, but do not have to, zero in on themes such as:

• How does fantasy fit within the wider field of speculative fiction, and does it do anything that other kinds of speculation cannot do?
• What might be the formal features or substantive themes that determine the political orientation, social implications, or cultural role of a fantasy work?
• What is known about magical systems or monstrous ontologies in fantasy literature, and how might this affect the implications of fantasy?
• Are there particular genres of fantasy, or rhetorical modes, that are more likely than others to intervene culturally?
• How do innovative kinds of crossover fantasy disturb established literary boundaries and make new sorts of intervention possible?
• Is it possible to connect the politics of the reception of fantasy, especially in controversial contexts, to any formal or substantive features of fantasy?
• Do fantasy works express cultural conjectures, “what if” scenarios, and how do these relate to social reality or the natural world?
• Is there any such thing as emancipatory fantasy, or authoritarian fantasy?

Please send proposals to Dr. Geoff M. Boucher at boucher@deakin.edu.au by 31 May 2022; completed essays are due 31 August 2022.

Dr. Geoff M. Boucher
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Literature is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

fantasy literature
speculative fiction
popular fiction
fantasy genres
literature of the impossible
the imaginary
literary conjectures
utopian fiction

Published Papers

This special issue is now open for submission.

CFP Science Fiction from the Margins (Spec Issue of Panic at the Discourse; 5/1/2022)

Science Fiction from the Margins

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/04/04/science-fiction-from-the-margins

deadline for submissions:
May 1, 2022

full name / name of organization:
Panic at the Discourse: An Interdisciplinary Journal

contact email:
panicatthediscourse@gmail.com



We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.

- Ursula LeGuin, 2014

Science fiction includes a myriad of thematics from futurism, technology, transhumanism, apocalypse, other-worldliness, interspeciality, alterity and to history. As a result, its’ texts and images bear more of a ‘family resemblance’ than a generic codification. However, at the core of science fiction is an imagining of the world as other than it is­—whether that be by space travel, super-powers, or magic. This special issue of Panic at the Discourse, “Science Fiction From the Margins,” seeks to think and imagine the world otherwise with care and focus to marginalized understandings, ontologies, and epistemologies.

The guest editors invite submissions on topics including, but not limited to:

• Science fiction as minority pedagogy and methodology
• Troubling the history of science fiction as a genre/mode of film, literature, politics, etc.
• Instrumentalization of science fiction as theory and politics
• Engaging science fiction as ‘cult’ or ‘low’ art in film, television, literature, comics, art, and other mediums, thinking about how they challenge the boundaries of their respective media
• Imagining alternative histories and/or futures of racial formations
• Exploring real life science fictional phenomena (cloning, speculations about alien life, advanced forms of AI) and the anxieties produced by these phenomena
• Examining how dystopian fiction has engaged/failed to engage with forms of political domination
• Connections between form and minority politics including but not limited to dispossession, exile, displacement, and racialization

We welcome submissions from a range of disciplines including, but not limited to: Philosophy, Literary Studies, Film and Media Studies, Women and Gender Studies, Critical Disability Studies, Black Studies, Cultural Studies, and Indigenous Studies. All submissions should be written for an interdisciplinary audience.

Additionally, we accept a wide range of submissions from poetry, visual art, creative writing, reviews, and traditional scholarship. Traditional articles must be between 4000-6000 words and reviews a maximum of 750 words.

All submissions will undergo a review process by the publication editorial team. Works selected for publication will receive editorial queries for revision. Publication will be contingent on satisfactorily resolving all queries. Included images must be high resolution and have accessible descriptions. It is the author’s responsibility to obtain image permissions. Use Chicago style endnotes for any citations. Please include a brief author bio of no more than 50 words. Authors retain all rights to their work. Email the publication if you have a work you are unsure about.

Send all submissions to panicatthediscourse@gmail.com with the subject line “Submission: Article Title” by May 1st, 2022.





Last updated April 7, 2022

CFP ARISTEIA: The Journal of Myth, Literature, and Culture (Spec. Issue on Myth, Deep Time, Extinction, Survival) (5/15/2022)

ARISTEIA: The Journal of Myth, Literature, and Culture

Special Issue on Myth, Deep Time, Extinction, Survival

deadline for submissions: May 15, 2022

full name / name of organization: 

Michael T. Williamson / Indiana University of Pennsylvania

contact email: mtwill@iup.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2021/09/23/aristeia-the-journal-of-myth-literature-and-culture-special-issue-on-myth-deep-time

Call for Papers for ARISTEIA: The Journal of Myth, Literature, and Culture

Myth, Deep Time, Extinction, Survival

ARISTEIA: The Journal of Myth, Literature, and Culture returns after a twenty-year hiatus. This peer-reviewed print journal is now published under the auspices of the Dessy-Roffman Myth Collaborative at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. For our first issue, we invite scholarly essays of 5,000-7,000 words, poems of any length (including epic poems), and short stories of no more than 4,000 words. This issue’s theme encourages contributors to explore the relationship between Myth, “Deep Time” (geological time, metaphysical time, cosmological time, etc.), Extinction, and Survival. Please send preliminary abstracts of 500 words by December 10, 2021 or completed essays, poems or stories to Dr. Michael Williamson (mtwill@iup.edu) and Allen Shull (mrhcc@iup.edu) by May 15, 2022.

Myth can give us hope, existential strength, and the courage to face adversity. It can bring people and communities together. Weaving together (aspirational and/or inspiring) tales from our various mythological traditions, we can sustain ourselves in times of plenty and in times of scarcity. Myth attests to disasters as well as creations, and it beckons us, often uncertainly, towards forms of transcendence and plenitude that challenge our conceptions of what it means to be human.  Recent studies on geology, literature, and culture, for instance, reinforce the role that mythological thinking plays in shaping our expectations regarding catastrophe and continuity. David Sepkoski’s recent examination of how geological thinking affects culture, Catastrophic Thinking, for example, explores “the recognition that extinction is a ubiquitous, even commonplace phenomenon represents a profound shift in scientific and cultural awareness of the tenuousness of life and the balance of nature that has taken place over the past two hundred years” (17). Embracing and enriching diversity may seem to be a solution, but “but we also struggle with what diversity is and what it means” (16). As one of the most primary cultural artifacts of the human imagination, myth activates ideas about time, extinction, and diversity. How do we regard the death of plants and animals in catastrophic climate change, and how do we react to extinctions in the past, even the deep past? How do we deal with social extinctions, whether language death, erosion of the middle class and social mobility, or loss of traditional cultures and folkways? Do we mourn losses or celebrate amalgamations?  Our editorial board encourages scholarly research and creative writing that engages with these questions.

Subjects to Consider:

• Literary and cultural conception of extinction of species, family, language
• Literary and cultural conception of diversity in species and in cultures
• Literary and cultural conception of feuds, aristocratic extinction, or changing ways of life
• The literary and cultural conception of future extinctions and diversifications
• Literary genres and artistic branches as sites for extinction and diversification
• Language preservation, evolution, convergence, death, preservation, revival, reconstruction, and artificial construction
• Literary and cultural conception of catastrophe: loss, rescue, abandonment, and exile
• Literary and cultural conception of cross-temporal connections: immortality, time travel, preservation, rediscovery

Scholarly essays on all periods of literary and cultural history are welcome, but this issue especially welcomes works related to Mythology and Science Fiction, Mysticism, and literature and cultural objects from historical times of stress such as the plagues, revolutions, and natural disasters. Poems and short stories should address the theme of this cfp in a clear way.

Please direct inquiries to Dr. Michael T. Williamson (mtwill@iup.edu) and Allen Shull (mrhcc@iup.edu) For more information on the Dessy-Roffman Myth Collaborative visit https://www.iup.edu/news-item.aspx?id=294439&blogid=6121

Last updated September 24, 2021