International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts

GFF 2017: Realities and World Building
University of Vienna, September 20th-23rd 2017

The creation and experience of “new” worlds is a central appeal of the fantastic. From Middle Earth to variations of the Final Frontier, the fantastic provides a seemingly infinite number of fantastic “worlds” and world concepts. It develops and varies social and cultural systems, ideologies, biological and climatic conditions, cosmologies and different time periods. Its potential and self-conception between the possible and the impossible offer perspectives to nearly every field of research.

The plurality and concurrent existence of different, even contradictory concepts of reality is an established topos in cultural and social sciences. In a similar fashion, scientific narratives can simultaneously coexist with fantastic ones within the cultural network of meaning – without creating an existential antagonism between them. The reason for that is not that one of these narratives is true while the other is not, but – following Hayden White, who assumed that scientific and literary narratives have more in common than not – because both of them are fictional. If a fantastic narrative is internally consistent, it is in a Wittgensteinian sense as true as Newton’s laws. This poses an existential problem for the fantastic: if it applies to every consistent narrative, what is the defining difference between fantastic and other narratives?

In our everyday practice, however, we seem to easily distinguish the fantastic from other aspects of reality. How is that possible? How can fantastic worlds emerge within and besides other multiple world-conceptions? What are the functions of fantastic worlds in the construction of reality? In designating texts as fantastic, we explicitly assert their fictitious character. Which practices do we employ to facilitate this designation?

We call narratives fantastic that violate our common reality consensus, thus establishing their own counter-reality consensus – in other words, a different world. This is done in different ways, thereby defining fantastic genres: for example, science fiction uses key motives like objects and cultural practices (interstellar travels, wormhole-generators, etc.) for world-building that belong to a realm of conceivable future possibility. While the modern scientific reality consensus does not categorically preclude beaming, it does deny the very possibility of a demon summoning.

In order to serve as a foil to the real, the fantastic has to play an ambiguous role: key motives of its multiple worlds have to be recognizable as imaginary, but at the same time at least some of these elements have to be linked with common reality consensus. A typical strategy for achieving this ambiguity is the incorporation of cultural practices that remind us of established perceptions of history, most prominently perhaps the European Middle Ages. Thus, a perceptible distance between the narrative and the recipient’s common reality consensus gets established, while using parts of this very consensus to render the narrative comprehensible.

Wolfgang Iser considers the “fictive” to be an intentional act, and the “imaginary” the recipient’s conception of the fictionalization’s effects. World Building is part of every narrative, but as a result of variable cultural contexts, every narrative is involved in different modes of production and perception. The conference aims to emphasize and reflect these very acts of fictionalization used to build fantastic worlds – in different media, and on theoretical as well as methodological levels.

Accepted Keynotes:
Stefan Ekman (University of Gothenburg, Sweden)
Farah Mendlesohn (University of Stafford, UK)

Possible Topics:
· Intermedia (and media-specific) features and indicators of fantastic worlds in film, TV, literature, (digital) games, etc.
· How does the extradiegetic constitute fantastic worlds and vice versa? Social and cultural systems, ideologies, biological and climatic conditions, cosmologies, etc.
· World-building methods and practices: reflections on economic and technical resources; transparent world-building (Making-ofs, exhibitions, interviews, etc.)
· Construction plans: sourcebooks, world editors, Table-Tops, miniatures, dioramas, LARPs
· We are of course open to further suggestions. The conference will also feature an “Open Track” for presentations beyond the scope of this CFP.

The GFF awards two stipends to students to help finance traveling costs (250 Euro each). Please indicate if you would like to be considered.

CALL HAS BEEN EXTENDED TO February 28th 2017: please send short bio & abstracts (500 words max.) to thomas.walach@univie.ac.at

Please take a look at this CFP for the 2018 MLA convention and consider circulating it among colleagues. A shareable link to the CFP can be found here: https://seanguynes.com/2017/01/12/cfp-mla-2018/.

MLA 2018 CFP
4-7 January 2018
New York City, NY

Institutions, Markets, Speculations:
Creative Economies of Science Fiction

This panel builds on recent interest in literary institutions, as evidenced for example in Mark McGurl’s The Program Era (Harvard UP, 2009), and dovetails with older investments in the literary marketplace with which literary institutions are necessarily imbricated, to question the place of science fiction (SF) in literary history by looking at its relationship with literary institutions and markets.

This panel for the 2018 MLA convention asks how, in other words, literary institutions—publishers, magazines, book series, anthologies, awards, conventions, writing groups, bookstores, archives, academic and popular critical venues, and so on—impacted the development of SF and how the relationship between literary institutions and SF was mediated by the social, political, and economic forces of cultural production? This panel finally asks what is the shape of SF’s creative economies and what are its positions within the large formations of the literary and cultural marketplace?

To draw further on McGurl for an example, panelists might ask whether the postwar expansion of creative writing programs and the growth of a cohort of professionally trained creative writers led to the interest in “literary” genre fiction, such as slipstream SF, and how in response the literary market has come to categorize such fiction as “literature” as opposed to “science fiction.” Alternatively, panelists might explore the role that awards like the Nebula and Hugo, or “Best of…” anthologies, played in crafting an SF canon.

Papers submitted for consideration to the panel should ultimately be interested in asking the framing question: What is the place of literary institutions and literary markets in the history of SF? Competitive papers will also demonstrate the ways in which studying SF (or popular genre fiction more generally) might be useful to expanding work on literary institutions and markets.

Science fiction should be broadly understood for the purpose of this panel as moving across media, language, nation, market, brow, etc.

To respond to the session CFP please follow the MLA’s guidelines, available here: https://apps.mla.org/callsforpapers.

The official CFP for “Institutions, Markets, Speculations: Creative Economies of Science Fiction” on the MLA website is available here: https://apps.mla.org/cfp_detail_10014.

Please send 200-300 words abstracts, as well as a brief professional bio, to Sean A. Guynes at guynesse@msu.edu.

Abstracts and bios are due by March 10, 2016. Do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.
All the best,
—
Sean A. Guynes
Editorial Assistant, The Journal of Popular Culture
Ph.D. Student, Department of English, Michigan State University
guynesse@msu.edu
www.seanguynes.com

Final Call for Contributors (2/1/17 Abstracts; 8/1/17 Essays)

Horror by the Book: Monstrous Manuscripts, Sacred Scrolls, and Illuminated Evil on Screen

Nothing, seemingly, could be more innocuous—less threatening—than a book, but those steeped in the world of horror films know better.  Dusty tomes can harbor the souls of the dead, steal the souls of the living, or call forth the undead to walk the Earth. Spell books, passed down through generations of witches and warlocks, give those who read from them the power to bend the fabric of reality itself.  The lost scriptures of ancient religions drive non-believers mad, and unleash powerful demons or long-banished elder gods onto an unsuspecting world. Even in stories told on screens in moving images, the book remains a cornerstone of horror.

This collection focuses on genre horror films in which books—manuscripts, diaries, scrolls, sacred texts, chronicles, books of spells, etc. — play an active, material role in the story. The volume will explore the ways in which these texts shape and drive the horror of their narratives, asking new, incisive questions about the ways in which books function as warnings, guides, portals, prisons, and manifestations of the monstrous, as well as the ways in which those texts further the idea of the book as a timeless container of horrors, mysteries, hidden histories, and knowledge beyond human comprehension.

We seek proposals for intelligent, accessible chapters–rigorous scholarship and innovative ideas expressed in clear, vigorous, jargon-free prose—that examine and critically analyze the book as it is portrayed in the horror genre across a range of films and eras.  Proposals for both topical essays and close readings of a single text are welcome. Proposals on films produced outside the US are very welcome. Previously unpublished work only, please.

Possible themes include, but are not limited to:

* Books of the Dead
* Books of spells as witches’ and warlocks’ tools
* Books as containers for evil entities
* Books as portals to other worlds
* Cursed or enchanted books
* Holy Books of “elder gods”
* Books that summon demons
* Characters entrapped in books
* Books of lost (or hidden) wisdom
* Bibles and anti-Bibles

Work on topics focused on authors or the writing process, rather than their texts (such as The Shining, 1408, or Sinister), or in which the horror is only tangentially related to the book or its contents (such as Misery) fall outside the scope of this project.

Please send your 500-word abstract to both co-editors, Cindy Miller (cynthia_miller@emerson.edu) and Bow Van Riper (abvanriper@gmail.com).

Publication Timetable:

Abstracts – Feb. 1, 2017
First Drafts – Aug. 1, 2017
Revisions – Nov. 15, 2017
Submission – Jan. 15, 2018

Acceptance will be contingent upon the contributors’ ability to meet these deadlines, and to deliver professional-quality work.  Contributors who, without prior arrangement, do not submit their initial draft by the deadline will, regrettably, be dropped from the project.

The call for papers for articles for the sections “Monograph” and “Miscellaneous” for the Vol. V n.º1 issue of Brumal. Revista de Investigación sobre lo Fantástico /Brumal. Research Journal on the Fantastic is now open.

Scholars who wish to contribute to either of these two sections should send us their articles by June 30, 2017, registering as authors on our web page. The Guidelines for Submissions may be found on the Submissions section of the web page.

Monographic issue “The Fantastic and the Urban” (José Duarte and Ana Daniela Coelho, Coords.)
Deadline: June 30, 2017

There is a special connection between the Fantastic and the Urban, particularly in a subgenre like the Urban Fantastic, which describes works that are mainly set in the urban space. These matters have become increasingly popular since the late 90’s with well-known works as, for instance, Neverwhere (Neil Gaiman, 1996) or Buffy, the Vampire Slayer (Joss Whedon, 1997). Exploring themes like the coexistence between the real and imagined worlds or the inscription of myths, magic or the supernatural in real cities, these works subvert the codes of reality with increasing complexity, presenting alternatives and visions that question identities and representations, and also reflect upon the cultural and social values of the nations they personify.

The objective of this monographic issue is to offer, in a series of essays, a broader but still specialized view on the urban and the fantastic, as well as the possible and the impossible, by focusing on different artistic expressions (literature, cinema, television series, comics/manga, among others), to analyze in depth the urban fantastic produced around the world. The monograph will consider works that not only explore the Urban Fantastic subgenre, but also those focusing on specific relationships between the urban experience and the fantastic, the real and the imagined, the futuristic and the historical settings, and other genres/works related to this topic.

Brumal will only consider works of a fantastic nature as defined by the journal, hereby only accepting papers on other non-mimetic genres such as the marvellous or science fiction if and when they are related to fantastic narrative.

Some areas of research include, but are not limited to:
• Urban Fantastic and the City;
• Cities: between reality and Fantasy;
• Place, Space and Liminality;
• Underground Tales/Real and Fantastic Urban Creatures;
• Adaptations (different perspectives: television, cinema, visual arts, comics, etc.);
• Past and Present Representations of the Urban Space;
• Videogames;
• Adult/Teen Fiction;
• Utopias/Dystopias;
• Possible and Impossible Urban Worlds.

Miscellaneous Section
This Miscellaneous section is open all year to receive any type of article on any of the diverse artistic manifestations of the fantastic (narrative, theater, film, comics, painting, photography, video games), whether theoretical, critical, historical or comparative in nature, concerning the fantastic in any language or from any country, from the nineteenth century to the present.

CfP: SFRA 2017 Unknown Pasts/ Unseen Futures

University of California, Riverside

28 June to 1 July 2017

We invite submissions to the 2017 SFRA Conference, held at the Marriott Hotel in downtown Riverside.

Our conference theme is Unknown Pasts/ Unseen Futures and our keynote speaker is Nnedi Okorafor.

Please see our CfP for more information: SFRA CFP 2017.

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

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

This anthology will explore the figure of the pirate from multidisciplinary perspectives. This volume seeks previously-unpublished essays that explore the heterogeneous representations of both historical figures and fictional characters. We are particularly interested in interdisciplinary approaches to the subject. There are indeed several themes worth exploring when analyzing the historical and fictional representation of pirates, utilizing any number of theoretical frameworks of your choosing. Contributions may include (but are not limited to) the following topics:

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

The anthology will be organized into thematic sections around these topics and others that emerge from submissions. We are open to works that focus on other topics as well and authors interested in pursuing other related lines of inquiry. Feel free to contact the editor with any questions you may have about the project and please share this announcement with colleagues whose work aligns with the focus of this volume.

Submit a 300-500 word abstract of your proposed chapter contribution, a brief CV and complete contact information to Dr. Antonio Sanna (isonisanna@hotmail.com) by 1 March 2016. Full chapters of 4000-6000 words would be due by June/July 2017. Note: all full chapters submitted will be included subject to review.

Tolkien Conference at University of Vermont

deadline for submissions:
February 1, 2017

full name / name of organization:
14th Annual Tolkien at UVM Conference

contact email:
cvaccaro@uvm.edu

14th Annual Tolkien at UVM Conference

Saturday April 8th, 8;30am-5:30pm, Campus

Theme: Romances in Middle-earth

Organizers of the Tolkien at UVM Conference are now accepting abstracts for the 2017 conference until the February 1st deadline.

We welcome papers on every topic but will give priority to those addressing the theme. Tolkien wrote that he had the romances of William Morris in mind when writing The Lord of the Rings. We also know he was ispired by the Arthurian romances of England, Wales, and France. Tolkien’s own interlacing narrative style is very much derived from this medieval genre (while also anticipating the Post-modern). Additionally, Tolkien wrote of numerous romances of great intensity and poignncy within his narrative framework. Papers might consider these within the context of miscegenation, gender fluidity, or the homo-erotic, or they might explore other areas of interest.

Please submit abstracts by the February 1st deadline to Christopher Vaccaro at cvaccaro@uvm.edu