International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts

This two-day multidisciplinary conference which takes place in Trinity College Dublin 20-21 July 2012, will explore the role of green man and wild man motifs in twentieth and twenty-first century children’s culture. From Puck to Captain Planet, the green man motif may help to kindle ecological awareness and excite the environmental imagination. The green man offers education and guidance and a release from the pressures and responsibilities of the civic space. Yet the spaces the green man inhabits – forests and wildernesses – are also sites of wild abandon, savagery and panic where human characters become wild men and slip away from their civilised identities altogether. From Craighead George’s My Side of the Mountain, to Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, to Linda Newbery Lob, to Almond’s The Savage, to Siobhan Dowd and Patrick Ness’s A Monster Calls, the motif of the wild child and the wild man pervades twentieth and twenty-first century children’s culture. This conference will celebrate all aspects of the green man and the wild man in children’s culture. Keynote speakers include Roni Natov and Jim Kay.

Papers on literature, art, comics/graphic novels, video games, film and music are welcome. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Superheroes and Supervillains
• Green Women
• Hermits
• Puck/Pan/Pantheism
• Wildness and Savagery
• Ecopedagogy
• Independence
• Wild Holidays
• Exile
• Forest Dwellers
• Feral Children
• Flower Fairies and Forest Spirits
• Green Rhetoric
• Ecocritical responses to the Green man

Abstracts of 200 words for 20 minute papers should be sent to greenchildrenslit@gmail.com before 5pm on Friday March 30th 2012.

The Science Fiction Foundation (SFF) will be holding the sixth annual Masterclass in sf criticism in 2012.
Dates: June 22nd, 23rd, 24th 2012.
Location: Middlesex University, London (the Hendon Campus, nearest underground, Hendon).
Delegate costs will be £190 per person, excluding accommodation.
Accommodation: students are asked to find their own accommodation, but help is available from the administrator (farah.sf@gmail.com).

Applicants should write to Farah Mendlesohn at farah.sf@gmail.com. Applicants are asked to provide a CV and a writing sample; these will be assessed by an Applications Committee consisting of Farah Mendlesohn, Graham Sleight and Andy Sawyer. Completed applications must be received by 28th February 2012.

Monstrophy: The Academic Study of Monsters

”Monstrophy” is a term referring to the academic study of monsters as representational and conceptual categories, which has gained recent currency in several related fields of study (literary and cultural history, sociological theories of identity and difference, et al.), as well as in a number of recent books and articles about monsters as subjects of theoretical interpretation. Etymologically derived from Latin ”mōnstrum” (meaning prodigy, ominous sign, monstrous creature or person, abomination) and Greek ”sophia” (σοφία, wisdom), hybrid compounding of monstrophy is not uncommon in disciplinary names, e.g. [[sociology]], another Greek and Latin compound.) Monstrophy literally means “wisdom about monsters,” and in academic usage refers to the broader study of monsters in society and history.

Monsters have been widely catalogued in their historical and ethnographic contexts, and have been commonly included in cultural products such as epic, folktale, fiction, and film, but have only begun to be studied seriously as semiological markers indicating the seams of internal cultural tension. Interpreters commonly note the “monstrous” as occupying space at the borders of a society’s conceptual categories, such as those relating to sexual and behavioral transgression, or to inherent prejudice and internal conflict (for instance, in race, gender, politics, and religion). Monsters are rarely fully distinct from the “human,” but are often comprised of hybrid features of the human and non-human. This issue of Preternature invites contributions that explore how the category of “monster” is used to define and articulate what a certain group of people articulates to itself to be properly human.

Contributions are welcome from any discipline, time period, or geographic provenance, so long as the discussion highlights the cultural, literary, religious, or historical significance of the topic.

Contributions should be roughly 8,000 – 12,000 words (with the possibility of longer submissions in exceptional cases), including all documentation and critical apparatus. If accepted for publication, manuscripts will be required to adhere to the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition (style 1, employing endnotes).

Preternature also welcomes original editions or translations of texts related to the topic that have not otherwise been made available in recent editions or in English. Submissions are made online at: <www.preternature.org>.

Final Papers are due April 15, 2012.

Queries about submissions, queries concerning books to be reviewed, or requests to review individual titles may be made to the Editor: Kirsten C. Uszkalo: kirsten@uszkalo.com

Inquiries about book reviews should be sent to the Book Review Editor: Richard Raiswell: rraiswell@upei.ca.

For more on the journal, please consult <www.preternature.org>.

Science Fiction Across Media: Alternative Histories, Alien Futures
Umeå University, Sweden
April 23-24, 2012

Science fiction is becoming a mainstream and increasingly popular genre in fiction and film, as demonstrated by recent novels by Kazuo Ishiguro, Michel Houellebecq, Junot Diaz and William Gibson as well as the global success of James Cameron’s Avatar. Yet science fiction is more than simple entertainment. This workshop considers science fiction as multi-medial explorations of alternative histories and alternative futures and invites scholars across the humanities to present their ongoing work on science fiction either in the form of full-length 20-minute papers, or as shorter papers on work in progress or mini-presentations on crucial concepts or ideas (8 minutes).

We are particularly interested in papers that explore science fiction in and across its varied media — novels, short stories, films, animation, comic books, computer games — and/or that focus on some aspect of the complex representation of natural and technological ecologies in the genre:

– alternative social and environmental histories
– new approaches to the representation of crisis and disaster
– alien ecologies and their relation to terrestrial crises
– alternative visions of humans’/nonhumans’ relationship to place
– wild, rural and urban environments of the future or on other planets
– contrast or convergence of organic, mechanical and virtual environments
– mapping and the (technological) representation of territories and geographies
– futurist forms of energy, transportation, food provision and resource extraction
– synthetic forms of nature, including synthetically generated or modified bodies
– environmental utopias and dystopias
– new directions in the representation of gender, race and species in science fiction
– ecological scarcity and abundance
– physical and systemic violence in relationships within and between species
– thematic, stylistic and media changes in science fiction as a genre
– changing audiences of science fiction

The workshop will take place in HUMlab, Umeå University’s digital humanities laboratory, and will emphasize informal, yet critical discussion of papers and presentations.

The workshop is arranged by Finn Arne Jørgensen (Umeå University) and Ursula K. Heise (Stanford University) on behalf of Umeå Studies in Science, Technology, and Environment (USSTE), the Nordic Environmental History Network (NEHN), and the Nordic Network for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies (NIES).

Please submit a 200-word abstract and a 1-page CV to scifi@nehn-nordic.org by Saturday, March 10. Indicate whether you wish to present a full-length 20-minute paper, a shorter paper on work in progress, or a mini-presentation on crucial concepts or ideas (8 minutes).

We will cover accommodation and meals for all participants, and will seek to provide travel fellowships for participants from the Nordic countries.

For more information, please contact:
Finn Arne Jørgensen
Associate Senior Lecturer, History of Technology and Environment
Department of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies
Umeå University
901 87 Umeå
finn.jorgensen@idehist.umu.se

Science Fiction Studies announces the fourth annual R.D. Mullen Fellowship supporting research in the J. Lloyd Eaton Collection of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Utopian Literature at the University of California, Riverside. Awards of up to $1500 are available to fund research in the archive during the 2012-13 academic year. Students in good standing in graduate degree-granting programs are eligible to apply. We welcome applications from international students.

The Mullen Fellowship, named in honor of SFS’s founding editor, promotes archival work in the Eaton’s extensive holdings, which include over 100,000 hardcover and paperback books, over 250,000 fanzines, full runs of all major pulp and digest magazines, and the manuscripts of prominent sf writers such as Gregory Benford, David Brin, and Anne McCaffrey. Other noteworthy parts of the Collection are: 500 shooting scripts of science fiction films; 3500 volumes of proto-sf “boy’s books” of the Tom Swift variety; works of sf in numerous foreign languages, including Chinese, Czech, French, German, Hebrew, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, and Spanish; a large collection of taped fan conventions and taped interviews with American, British, and French writers; reference materials on topics such as applied science, magic, witchcraft, UFOs, and Star Trek; an extensive collection of anime and manga; and the largest holdings of critical materials on science fiction and fantasy in the United States. Further information about the Eaton Collection can be found online at: <http://eaton.ucr.edu/>.

Applications should include a cover letter explaining the candidate’s academic experience and preparation, a CV, a 2-3 page proposal outlining a specific and well-developed agenda for research in the Eaton archive, a prospective budget detailing expenses, and two letters of recommendation from individuals familiar with the candidate’s academic work.

The deadline for submission is April 6, 2012. Applications will be reviewed by a committee of sf scholars, and successful applicants will be notified in early May. Electronic submission (as RTF or PDF files) of applications to is preferred. Applications should be sent to: Professor Rob Latham at <rob.latham@ucr.edu>.

MAGGIE GEE CONFERENCE
University of St Andrews and University of Lincoln
(Venue: University of St Andrews, 30-31 August, 2012)
Contact email: gee@gylphi.co.uk

This two-day international conference aims to bring together scholars for the first academic conference dedicated to Maggie Gee’s writing. Gee is one of Britain’s most prolific and critically-acclaimed novelists: the author of 12 novels, as well as collections of short stories, edited anthologies of contemporary writing and, most recently, an autobiography My Animal Life (Telegram Books, 2010).

Since she was selected for Granta’s first list of Best of Young British Novelists in 1983 (in company with Salman Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro, Martin Amis, Pat Barker, Julian Barnes, Ian McEwan and Rose Tremain), Gee has worked in publishing, academic research (gaining a PhD in the twentieth-century novel from Wolverhampton Polytechnic in 1980) and was the first female Chair of the Royal Society of Literature. She is currently working as one of the Society’s Vice Presidents, as well as acting as Visiting Professor of Writing at Sheffield Hallam University. In addition to her publishing and academic responsibilities, Gee is also highly critically acclaimed: her eighth novel, The White Family (2002), was shortlisted in 2002 for the Orange ! Prize for Fiction as well as the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2004.

Ceaselessly inventive and astonishing, Gee’s writing is distinguished by ambitious scope and aesthetic innovation, tackling political themes and writing across a broad range of subjects and genres. Intertwining intimate domestic dramas with grand-scale, seismic shifts in cosmic balance, several of Gee’s novels imagine global disaster, apocalyptic futures and environmental catastrophes. Meanwhile, Gee is also concerned with exploring issues of racism, prejudice, cultural difference and class inequalities. Her body of work confronts political attitudes in contemporary Britain through satire, comedy, family saga, thriller and romance.

The organisers welcome papers on any topic related to Maggie Gee’s writing. Topics might include, but are not limited to, Maggie Gee’s writing and:

• genre, science fiction, thriller, autobiographical fiction, romance, family saga, political satire
• war, terrorism, violence and political activism
• (post-)apocalypse and ecocatastrophe
• inter-generational conflict, familial relationships
• utopian and dystopian thinking
• the urban and the rural
• racism, migration and multicultural Britain
• the role, and representation, of women
• the environment and new ecocritical directions
• class, social mobility, poverty and social inequality
• modernism and its inheritances
• death, suicide and posthumous narrative voices
• the representation of time and imagining the future
• nuclear weaponry
• society, nature and the cosmos
• cosmopolitanism, Africa, Japan
• contemporary women’s writing and publishing
• translation, the British publishing industry

The conference welcomes papers from any discipline, a variety of theoretical perspectives, and those which engage with media beyond that of the written text. Submissions are welcome from both research students and academics. Please send a title and 300 word abstract for a 20 minute paper along with your name, affiliation and 100 word professional biography to gee@glyphi.co.uk by 29th February 2012.

Conference website: http://www.gylphi.co.uk/criticalessays/index.php
Conference blog: http://maggiegeeconference.blogspot.com/2011_12_01_archive.html
Conference Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/#!/events/154402491290124/

The conference is organised by Dr Sarah Dillon, Lecturer in Contemporary Fiction, School of English, University of St Andrews and Dr Caroline Edwards, Lecturer in English, Department of English, University of Lincoln. For more information on the research and professional activities of Dr Dillon and Dr Edwards, see their homepages:

• http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/english/people/academicstaff/dillon/
• http://lincoln.ac.uk/humanities/staff/3004.asp

For more information regarding the St Andrews School of English and its activities, as well as the Department of English at the University of Surrey, see the homepages:

• http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/english/
• http://lincoln.ac.uk/humanities/english/default.htm

The conference is sponsored by Gylphi Arts and Humanities Publisher. Selected papers from the conference proceedings will be published asMaggie Gee: Critical Essays, with a foreword by Gee, as part of Gylphi’s Contemporary Writers: Critical Essays series (Series Editor: Dr Sarah Dillon). For more information regarding the Series see: http://www.gylphi.co.uk/criticalessays/index.php