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IAFA Florida Alliance Working Group Announcement

The Florida Alliance Working Group of the IAFA is pleased to announce the names of the speakers who will kick off our new initiative: Patrick Brock will be speaking at Florida Atlantic University and Karina A. Vado will be speaking at the University of Florida. Stay tuned for more exciting news from this group!

Support for Turkey and Syria

On behalf of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, the Executive Board and IAFA membership mourn the devastating loss of life, livelihoods, and homes in Turkey and Syria and issue this statement to encourage awareness and support.

Call for ICFA 44 Volunteers

ICFA runs on volunteers! If you’re looking for a way to contribute to the IAFA or help fund your ICFA 44 trip, please consider offering some time to help us run the conference. Volunteering is compensated at a rate of $10 per hour, which is  refunded to your card (against the cost of your registration) following the conference. You can volunteer for as little as 2 hours!

Fill out the volunteer form here to indicate your availability during the conference: https://forms.gle/YsrTTnchjUh5i5Lm9

Gratefully,

Emily Midkiff

Call for Interim Technology Officer

The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts is accepting applications for the position of Interim Chief Technology Officer.

 

The duties involved in the position include:

  • inputting the conference program into the Sched app and continuing to update it with errata
  • managing the IAFA and the Board listservs  
  • ongoing technical maintenance of the IAFA website (running on WildApricot) 
  • managing email forwarders for the Board and officers 
  • supporting, in a limited capacity, the VICFA team 

Except for populating Sched with the program, which requires a stretch of time before the conference, most duties are low-intensity outside the March conference window, which requires more sustained attention. 

Prospective candidates do not need to have specific experience in the duties listed above but must feel securely comfortable with digital technologies and be willing to learn (the learning curve for all duties is not particularly steep). 

The appointed candidate will be trained by the IAFA CTO and will begin their duties immediately upon appointment, most likely around February 25. The length of the appointment is not fully clear at this time but may extend until the end of the calendar year with a possibility of becoming (semi)permanent.

Those interested in applying must send a brief statement of interest in, and qualifications for, the position to the IAFA President, Pawel Frelik (p.frelik@uw.edu.pl), no later than February 20, 2023.

2023 IAFA Crawford Award and Shortlist Announced

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

2/7/2023

2023 IAFA Crawford Award and Shortlist Announced

 

The winner of the 2023 Crawford Award, presented annually by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts for a first book of fantasy published the prior year, is Simon Jimenez for his novel The Spear Cuts Through Water (Del Rey). Jimenez had previously published a well-received science fiction novel, The Vanished Birds (2020), but The Spear Cuts Through Water is his first fantasy book, making it eligible for the award.

The awards committee also named a shortlist including Maya Deane, Wrath Goddess Sing (William Morrow), Naseem Jamnia, The Bruising of Qilwa (Tachyon), Alex Jennings, The Ballad of Perilous Graves (Redhook), and Jacob Kerr, The Green Man of Eshwood Hall (Serpent’s Tail)

Participating in this year’s nomination and selection process were Cheryl Morgan, Karen Burnham, Niall Harrison, Liza Trombi, Candas Jane Dorsey, and Mimi Mondal. The award is administered by Gary K. Wolfe and will be presented at a banquet March 18, during the 44rd International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts in Orlando, Florida.

Also at the banquet, the IAFA Distinguished Scholarship Award will be presented to the conference’s guest scholar Isiah Lavender III.  The International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, or ICFA, is held annually in Orlando, Florida.  This year’s conference, March 15-18, on the theme of Afrofuturism, will feature Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki as Guest of Honor.

Call for Fantasy Literature Division Head

The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts is accepting applications for the position of Division Head of the Fantasy Literature (FL) Division. (Please see the division description below.)

Division Heads are appointed by the President on the recommendation of the First Vice President, who chairs the Council of Division Heads after formal discussion and a majority vote of the Board. The term is for three years. The incoming FL Division Head will begin full Division Head duties immediately following the conference in March of 2023. The Division Head term runs for three years.

The incoming FL Division Head will begin their term in March of 2023 and end the term in March of 2026.

Division Heads may have an opportunity to extend their term.

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

Those interested in applying must send a cover letter explaining their interest in, and qualifications for, the position, and a current CV, to the First Vice President, Valorie Ebert at iafa.1vp@fantastic-arts.org, no later than March 1, 2023.

Fantasy Literature (FL) – The Fantasy Literature division welcomes critical scholarship on all aspects of fantasy literature (broadly defined to mean anything from genre fantasy to magic realism), including, but not restricted to, criticism on works by fantasy authors writing in English, interdisciplinary approaches to the genre, and scholarship on fantasy theory.

Reminder: Call for Nominations for 1st VP and PIO

There are still a few days left to nominate or self-nominate someone for two open IAFA board positions:

First Vice President

The IAFA requests nominations for individuals interested in becoming our First Vice President. Nominees must be members in good standing. Before nominating someone, please make sure they are a member and willing to stand for election. Self-nominations are welcome.

The First Vice President is a member of the Executive Board, elected by majority vote of the IAFA members who participate in the election, serves a three-year term unless otherwise stipulated, and may be re-elected.

The First Vice President coordinates the ICFA Program, overseeing the work of the Division Heads and scheduling paper sessions for the Annual Conference Program. The First Vice President also consults with the President and Second Vice President concerning appearances by special guests in panels, readings, and lectures, and with the Conference Director about physical arrangements such as AV equipment, room assignments, etc. The First Vice President substitutes for the President when necessary. The First Vice President also oversees the IAFA Graduate Student Award, including the following: advertising the award, organising the prize committee, and collecting and forwarding submissions to the committee for a blind reading process.

Nominations should be sent to Dale Knickerbocker, the IAFA Immediate Past President, at knickerbockerd@ecu.edu. Nominations will close on December 8, 2022.

Candidates will be contacted by the IAFA Immediate Past President and asked to submit their Candidate Statement by December 9, 2022. Voting begins in December and finishes in January. The person elected will take office at the end of the 2023 ICFA. Questions about the position should be directed to the current 1st VP, Valorie Ebert, at iafa.1vp@fantastic-arts.org.

Public Information Officer

The IAFA requests nominations for individuals interested in becoming our Public Information Officer (PIO). Nominees must be members in good standing. Before nominating someone, please make sure they are a member and willing to stand for election. Self-nominations are welcome.

The PIO is a member of the Executive Board, elected by majority vote of IAFA members who participate in the election, serves a three-year term unless otherwise stipulated, and may be re-elected.

The PIO edits and distributes promotional materials and forms publicity liaisons with other organizations, where appropriate. The PIO maintains and regularly updates the website and blog, creates and distributes information from the Board–such as Calls for Papers and election material–and contributes photos and promotional copy to the IAFA website. The PIO maintains and regularly updates social media feeds, responds to inquiries via social media, and monitors the IAFA’s public image on social media. The PIO takes Executive Board minutes, disseminates them, archives them, and makes them available for archival use. The PIO is the recorder of motions and amendments at official meetings. The PIO maintains the IAFA electronic archive.

Nominations should be sent to Dale Knickerbocker, the IAFA Immediate Past President, at knickerbockerd@ecu.edu. Nominations will close on December 8, 2022.

Candidates will be contacted by the IAFA Immediate Past President and asked to submit their Candidate Statement by December 9, 2022. Voting begins in December and finishes in January. The person elected will take office at the end of the 2023 ICFA. Questions about the position should be directed to the current PIO, Skye Cervone, at iafa.pio@fantastic-arts.org.

IAFA Executive Board

CFP: Disruptive Imaginations, Joint Annual Conference of SFRA and GfF, TU Dresden, Germany, August 15-19, 2023

  • December 1, 2022 – 1:00 pm
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Disruptive Imaginations 

Joint Annual Conference of SFRA and GfF

TU Dresden, Germany, August 15-19, 2023

 

This conference will merge the annual meetings of the Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA) and the German Association for Research in the Fantastic (GfF). With some overlap in membership and a shared interest and mission, we believe that a joint conference offers great potential for dynamic exchange, constructive discussions, and new insights and perspectives. This expanded focus on SFF allows for a consideration of a wide range of genres and forms that include science fiction, fantasy, horror, and the weird. For more information on the respective associations, please see below. We are excited to welcome you all to Dresden in August 2023!

 

Science fiction and the fantastic (SFF) have the power to disrupt entrenched narratives and worldmaking practices. Whether in the form of hard science fiction, utopian speculation, high fantasy or supernatural horror, SFF is fundamentally anchored in imaginations of disruption—a tear in the fabric of reality, an estrangement of the senses, a break with the known world, or a transgression of boundaries. The conference theme “Disruptive Imaginations” invites participants to engage with disruption as a variegated paradigm of the SFF imagination. As a mode of disturbance or interruption, a disruption implies that habitual patterns of perceiving, inhabiting, and ordering the world are unsettled, giving way to uncertainty and the unknown. It can occur at scales that range from the micrological to the cosmic. At the precarious threshold between chaos and order, a disruption carries the potential for transformative system change and can produce a shift in hegemonic articulations of ‘the im/possible.’

 

Fredric Jameson famously invokes disruption as the fundamental discursive strategy of political utopia, which only “by forcing us to think the break itself” enables the imagination of worlds otherwise. What would it mean to think disruption “as restructuration and the unexpected blasting open of habits, as that lateral side-door which suddenly opens onto a new world of transformed human beings.”[1] Disruption has been championed as a strategy of intervention across the political spectrum and impels a careful examination of questions of agency and power (relations). Who or what has the power to disrupt and whose experiences of disruption are acknowledged while others remain suppressed or invisible? In the face of a lingering pandemic, looming threats of nuclear warfare, global heating, environmental racism, and extractive capitalism, how can imagination offer a counterforce to the disruption of lifeworlds?

 

“Disruptive Imaginations” seeks to confront SFF narratives of innovation, progress, and other-worlding with the faultlines of their own construction. Envisioned in part as a critical response to neoliberal models of disruptive innovation, “Disruptive Imaginations” invites scholarship and creative work that interrogates methods of both local and larger systemic change that does not fetishize newness, and that anchors in the critical world-making capacities of literature and the arts. As a literary and artistic mode, SFF ceaselessly rehearses alternatives and dishabituations of the status quo while also creating spaces that expose and resist the disruptive forces of white supremacy, settler-colonialism, heteropatriarchy, and ableism. Beyond the promises of a technological fix or a naive return to equilibrium, how might SFF help foster an understanding of complex and messy worlds in crisis? What are the limits of disruption as a useful story to think worlds with, and what collateral damage does it entail? What kinds of different paradigms (speculative and otherwise) may be needed to disrupt disruption?

 

We invite papers on all forms and genres of science fiction and the fantastic in relation to the paradigm of disruption, including but not limited to literature, music, film, games, design, and art. Presentations may be held either in English or German. We strive for a diversity of voices and perspectives from any and all disciplines and career stages. While papers on any subject in SFF are welcome, we especially encourage topics that resonate with the overall conference theme and that engage disruptive imaginations along axes that include but are not limited to

 

SFF imagination under conditions of disruption

e.g., energy crisis; toxicity; climate disruption; war; colonialism; dis/ability and ableism; trauma; white supremacy; …

 

SFF imagination against disruption

e.g., resilience; worldmaking; utopia; decolonization and restitution; cultural healing; kinship; critical and co-futurisms (African and Afro-futurisms, Indigenous Futurisms, Queer and Trans Futurisms, Crip Futurisms, LatinX Futurisms,…); …

 

SFF imagination in need of disruption

e.g., SFF and systems of oppression; the energy unsconious of SFF; transhumanism and eugenics; SFF tropes/histories/conventions of white supremacy, colonialism, heteropatriarchy, and technological solutionism; …

 

SFF imagination as a force of disruption

e.g., SFF in/as activism; emancipatory forms of SFF publishing (e.g., Destroy! Series); the cultural/bodily/social/political/aesthetic/ecological impact of SFF; SFF as medium of political subversion and agitation; alt-right utilization of SFF rhetoric; …

 

SFF imagination of disruption

e.g., ruptures of space and time; geoengineering; gene editing; hacking; revolution; border crossings, unsettling of hierarchies, chimeras and hybrids, creative technologies and alternative communication media; …

 

It is possible to submit proposals for individual presentations and preformed panels in English or German. Non-traditional formats (roundtable, artistic research, participatory formats, etc.) are welcome. For individual presentation, we ask for an abstract of 300 words and a short bio (150 words). For preformed panels we require a proposal (single file) that includes a 300 word summary of the panel topic, abstracts of 200 words for each contribution, and bio notes (150 words) for all participants. Please send all submissions to disruptive.imaginations@tu-dresden.de by March 1, 2023. Options for limited hybrid participation will be available. More information will be supplied soon on our conference website www.disruptiveimaginations.com.

 

Both organizations give out a limited number of travel grants to help students, PhD candidates and non-tenured participants with their expenses: SFRA members are eligible to apply for travel grants of up to 500$; the GfF offers four travel grants of 250€ each, membership not required. Please indicate your interest upon submitting your abstract.

 

Organizing team:

 

Julia Gatermann

Moritz Ingwersen

(North American Literature and Critical Future Studies, TU Dresden)

 

 

The Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung (GfF, the German association for research in the fantastic), was founded 2010 with the mission to promote academic research of the fantastic in art, literature and culture in German-speaking countries and to contribute to a deepening of scholarly and cultural knowledge in these fields (https://fantastikforschung.de). To that end, the GfF publishes the peer reviewed open-access journal “Zeitschrift für Fantastikforschung” (https://zff.openlibhums.org/) and convenes for an annual conference at varying locations in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.

 

The Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA), founded in 1970, is the oldest professional association dedicated to the scholarly inquiry of Science Fiction and the Fantastic in literature, film, and the arts (https://sfra.org). The SFRA’s open access journal SFRA Review is published four times a year (https://sfrareview.org/) and the SFRA meets annually for a conference at varying international locations.

[1] Fredric Jameson. Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. Verso, 2005. 232.

Call for Nominations: IAFA 1st Vice President and Public Information Officer

First Vice President

The IAFA requests nominations for individuals interested in becoming our First Vice President. Nominees must be members in good standing. Before nominating someone, please make sure they are a member and willing to stand for election. Self-nominations are welcome.

The First Vice President is a member of the Executive Board, elected by majority vote of the IAFA members who participate in the election, serves a three-year term unless otherwise stipulated, and may be re-elected.

The First Vice President coordinates the ICFA Program, overseeing the work of the Division Heads and scheduling paper sessions for the Annual Conference Program. The First Vice President also consults with the President and Second Vice President concerning appearances by special guests in panels, readings, and lectures, and with the Conference Director about physical arrangements such as AV equipment, room assignments, etc. The First Vice President substitutes for the President when necessary. The First Vice President also oversees the IAFA Graduate Student Award, including the following: advertising the award, organising the prize committee, and collecting and forwarding submissions to the committee for a blind reading process.

Nominations open on  October 25, 2022 and close on November 25, 2022. Nominated candidates will be asked to submit their Candidate Statement to IAFA Immediate Past President Dale Knickerbocker at knickerbockerd@ecu.edu by 25 November 2022. Voting begins in December and finishes in January. The person elected will take office at the end of the 2023 ICFA. Questions about the position should be directed to Valorie Ebert at iafa.1vp@fantastic-arts.org.

 

Public Information Officer

The IAFA requests nominations for individuals interested in becoming our Public Information Officer (PIO). Nominees must be members in good standing. Before nominating someone, please make sure they are a member and willing to stand for election. Self-nominations are welcome.

The PIO is a member of the Executive Board, elected by majority vote of IAFA members who participate in the election, serves a three-year term unless otherwise stipulated, and may be re-elected.

The PIO edits and distributes promotional materials and forms publicity liaisons with other organizations, where appropriate. The PIO maintains and regularly updates the website and blog, creates and distributes information from the Board–such as Calls for Papers and election material–and contributes photos and promotional copy to the IAFA website. The PIO maintains and regularly updates social media feeds, responds to inquiries via social media, and monitors the IAFA’s public image on social media. The PIO takes Executive Board minutes, disseminates them, archives them, and makes them available for archival use. The PIO is the recorder of motions and amendments at official meetings. The PIO maintains the IAFA electronic archive.

Nominations open on October 25, 2022 and close on November 25, 2022. Candidates will be contacted  by the IAFA Immediate Past President and asked to submit their Candidate Statement to knickerbockerd@ecu.edu by November 25, 2022. Voting begins in December and finishes in January. The person elected will take office at the end of the 2023 ICFA. Questions about the position should be directed to Skye Cervone at iafa.pio@fantastic-arts.org.

Announcing the New Director of Creative Programming

Dear IAFA Members:

I’m very pleased to share that Dr. Samantha Baugus will now be serving the IAFA as our new volunteer Director of Creative Programming.

The Director of Creative Programming (a new role) assists the Second Vice President with building programming items for the creative track. The job’s primary duties involve corresponding with invited creatives to help build discussion panels for the conference. The person in this role also helps build and manage the invited creative RSVP system, creates draft author reading sessions, and recruits/assigns hosts for creative track sessions. In recognition of the work involved, the volunteer who serves in this role receives complimentary ICFA registration and special event tickets.

The IAFA posted a call for volunteers for this role back in June, but we did not receive any applications for the position. Dr. Baugus, who previously served as the Student Caucus Representative on the Executive Board, subsequently volunteered to serve as Director of Creative Programming. Please join me in welcoming Samantha to this important new role! =)

Best,

David Higgins
IAFA Second Vice President