The IAFA is cosponsoring a conference in 2021 with the University of Glasgow’s Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic. We have a one-question survey to assess interest in a conference in Glasgow, Scotland, in late June 2021. If you have already completed the survey, please do not fill it out again. However, if you have not had a chance to do so, please check the email account associated with your membership and use the link to complete the survey.
ICFA 41 “Climate Change and Anthropocene” will be held March 18–21, 2020, at the Orlando Airport Marriott Lakeside, Orlando, Florida. Guest scholar is Stacy Alaimo (UT-Arlington), and guest author is Jeff VanderMeer. Thank you to the 33 people who have already signed up to attend!
The call for papers closed on October 31, 2019. To register for the conference, go here: https://iaftfita.wildapricot.
For those who submitted papers or panels, the date that the division heads deliver their panels to the first vice president for inclusion in the 2020 program is around November 15–ish.
IAFA is cosponsoring a conference in 2021 with the University of Glasgow’s Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic. We have a one-question survey to assess interest in a conference in Glasgow in late June 2021. Please check the email account associated with your membership for the link.
The Visual and Performing Arts and Audiences (VPAA) division head has resigned. Second vice president David Higgins (a former division head) is fulfilling this role until a new division head can be appointed. The due date for those who wish to apply for this position is November 30, 2019. Info here: https://www.fantastic-arts.
Interested in governance? Minutes of Board meetings are available in the members-only section of our website: https://iaftfita.wildapricot.
Want to review IAFA’s conduct policy? It’s here: https://iaftfita.wildapricot.
More information forthcoming! I hope to see you in March 2020.
Karen Hellekson, IAFA Registrar (iafareg [at] gmail.com)
The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts is accepting applications for the position of Division Head of the Visual and Performing Arts and Audiences (VPAA) Division. (Please see 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 majority vote of the Board. The term is for three years. The VPAA Division Head will shadow the interim VPAA Division Head during the ICFA 41 conference in March of 2020 and will begin full Division Head duties immediately following the conference in March 2020.
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 30 November 2019.
Division description:
The Visual and Performing Arts and Audiences division welcomes critical scholarship and discussions on a transdisciplinary variety of visual media. Among these are comic books, comic strips and graphic novels; graphic arts, including photography, paintings, illustrations, design, and sculpture; architecture and the depiction of architecture in visual media; the performing arts, including music, choreography and (musical) theatre; (video) games and gaming culture; fandom studies in all media and communities; as well as transformative texts such as mashups and viral marketing and audience/reception studies concerning audiences for any medium or genre of the fantastic.
Reminder: Call for Nominations: IAFA Second Vice-President and Public Information Officer
Nominations are open until 30 October.
The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts announces a call for nominations for the elected Executive Board positions of Second Vice-President and Public Information Officer. Any IAFA member in good standing may run for these positions.
Those interested in running or in nominating someone for either position should send a nomination to both IAFA Immediate Past-President Sherryl Vint (sherryl.vint [at] gmail.com) and IAFA Registration and Membership Coordinator Karen Hellekson (iafareg [at] gmail.com) by 30 October 2019. The Election Committee will notify each nominee of her or his nomination and will provide each with the names of everyone else who has accepted nomination during that election cycle. Candidates declining nomination must notify the Election Committee immediately upon notification of their nomination.
Candidates eligible for the offices to which they have been nominated and willing to run for those offices will be asked to submit position statements by 20 November 2019. The Election Committee will distribute position statements and ballots to the membership on 10 December 2019, and ballots will be counted by the Election Committee after 10 January 2020. If no candidate receives a majority vote, a runoff election between the two candidates who have received the most votes will be conducted. The Election Committee will announce results of the election at the IAFA business meeting at ICFA 41 in March 2020, with additional announcements in appropriate IAFA venues thereafter.
For those elected, terms will begin immediately following the conclusion of ICFA 41 in March 2019 and will last for three years. Duties of each position are listed below. Please contact Sherryl Vint if you have any questions. We look forward to hearing from you!
Second Vice President
The Second Vice President oversees and develops the programming track of creative guests, maintaining a current email list, contacting writers to solicit proposals, organizing sessions, and consulting the First Vice President to schedule the creative track. The Second Vice President also collects biographies and photos of the invited attending writers for publication in the program book and passes this information on to the Program Book Coordinator. The Second Vice President is elected by majority vote of the IAFA members who participate in the election.
Public Information Officer
The Public Information Officer edits and distributes promotional materials and forms publicity liaisons with other organizations where appropriate. The Public Information Officer maintains and regularly updates the website and blog, creates and distributes information from the Board such as the Call for Papers and election material, and contributes photos and promotional copy to the IAFA website. The Public Information Officer maintains and regularly updates the social media feeds, responds to inquiries via the social media feeds, and monitors the IAFA’s public image on social media. The Public Information Officer takes Executive Board minutes, disseminates them, archives them, and makes them available for archival use. The Public Information Officer is the recorder of motions and amendments at official meetings. The Public Information Officer maintains the IAFA electronic archive. The Public Information Officer is elected by majority vote of the IAFA members who participate in the election.
CFP for Panel ICFA 2020 on Expanding the Archive (plus a special issue of JFA)
In 2019, the fanfiction site Archive of Our Own (AO3) won a Hugo award. This repository of nearly 5 million original works, representing over 30 thousand fandoms, stands out in the world of Science Fiction and Fantasy awards not only because of the sheer number of authors it represents, but also because it is the first Hugo win for unpublished fanfiction and many of the authors are young women. This victory draws attention to what is “archived” and, by extension, what is valued. AO3’s Hugo win is not the year’s only example of the expanding canon of Speculative Fiction. The documentary film Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror, produced by Tananarive Due, directed by Xavier Burgin, and based on Dr. Robin R. Means Coleman’s book Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present (2011), begins with the assertion that “black history is black horror” and tracks how the genre can engage with questions of race and power. Similarly, Dr. Ebony Thomas’s The Dark Fantastic considers Black female characters Bonnie Bennett (CW’s The Vampire Diaries), Rue (The Hunger Games), Gwen (Merlin), and Angelina Johnson (Harry Potter), and explores how these characters mirror racist violence in the real world. Each of these examples makes a case for expanding the idea of the canon (and what we value enough to archive) to include different types of characters and voices.
In terms of physical archives, a recent open letter on the Reading While White blog called out the lack of context and white-washing of the University of Minnesota’s Children’s Literature Research Collection’s exhibit and corresponding book The ABC of It: Why Children’s Books Matter, demonstrating that even professional archives are not neutral—especially once their materials are extracted and exhibited for public consumption. In the wake of this controversy, curators of archives, whether in libraries, classrooms, or their own scholarly work, must address how the materials presented and their surrounding context represent choices that speak to the curator’s values and priorities.
When archives hold the power to exclude and include, to value and affirm both people and genre, then how do we as scholars decide what belongs and how do we think through the consequences of those choices for ourselves, our students, and our field? We encourage submissions that answer these questions and otherwise critically examine the speculative fiction archive, broadly defined.
Submissions may consider but are not limited to the following topics in relation to archives:
Accessibility
Materialism
The worth/value estimation of collecting
Teaching courses in the archives
Archival pedagogy- constructing the archives for our courses/ asking students to construct their own archives
Controversies and canon
Digital collections
Internet as archive
Fan spaces
Race and representation
Award winners as archive
Please send a 300-500 word abstract and preliminary bibliography to Emily Midkiff (midki003@umn.edu) or Sara Austin (austins4@miamioh.edu) by Oct 11, 2019. Abstracts will also be considered for a special issue of the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts (for which we will be issuing another CFP in November if you can’t make ICFA!)
Dear ICFA Community:
As you may know, ICFA has a creative track (in addition to our academic divisions) where authors, artists, and editors can participate in conference programming. Most of the creative track features invited authors giving readings of their fiction. Additionally, other ICFA participants can also propose other forms of creative programming.
For example, If you are NOT an invited author, and you’d like to share your creative writing (fiction or poetry), you can apply to participate in a Words and Worlds session — these are sessions where academics and/or early-career authors can share their writing at the conference. To apply to read your work at a Words and Worlds session, please contact Gina Wisker (G.Wisker [at] brighton.ac.uk) who organizes these sessions.
Alternatively, the creative track is also open to proposals for other kinds of artistic presentations (musical compositions, visual arts and/or photography, theatrical performances, etc) and for non-academic panel sessions related to the fantastic in the arts (panel proposals on a wide range of topics are very welcome!)
To apply for programming in the creative track, you can use the portal submission system:
Just be sure to choose ” Offer a creative presentation or panel discussion for the creative track” under the “Your Proposal” section. The IAFA Second Vice President organizes the creative track, so your proposals will come directly to me. To avoid confusion, please be sure NOT to send creative track proposals to the academic divisions!
Please feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions about ICFA’s creative track.
best,
David Higgins
IAFA Second Vice President
iafa.2vp [at] fantastic-arts.org
Final Call for Submissions: 2020 Jamie Bishop Memorial Award
The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts announces its 14th annual Jamie Bishop Memorial Award for a critical essay on the fantastic originally written in a language other than English.
The IAFA defines the fantastic to include science fiction, folklore, and related genres in literature, drama, film, art and graphic design, and related disciplines. For more information regarding the Bishop Award and a list of past winners, see https://iaftfita.wildapricot.org/Bishop-award-winners-list.
Submission criteria:
• Essays should be of high scholarly quality, as if for publication in an academic journal.
• We consider essays from 3,000–10,000 words in length (including notes and bibliography).
• Essays may be unpublished scholarship submitted by the author, or already published work nominated either by the author or another scholar (in which case the author’s permission should be obtained before submission).
• Essays must have been written and (when applicable) published in the original language within the last three years prior to submission.
• An abstract in English and an English translation of the essay’s title must accompany all submissions.
• Only one essay per designated author(s) may be submitted each year.
• Submissions must be made electronically in .pdf or Microsoft Word format (.doc, .docx), to the email address noted below.
Deadline for receipt of submissions: October 15, 2019. Essays may be submitted prior to the deadline.
The winner of this year’s Bishop Award will be announced at the 41st International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, to be held in Orlando, Florida (USA) March 18–21, 2020.
Prize: $250 US and one year’s free membership in the IAFA. Winning essays may be posted on the IAFA website in the original language and/or considered for publication in the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts (http://www.fantastic-arts.org/jfa/) should they be translated into English.
Please direct all inquiries and submissions to:
Terry Harpold
iafa.bishopaward@fantastic-arts.org
Call for Nominations: IAFA Second Vice-President and Public Information Officer
Nominations are open from 30 September to 30 October.
The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts announces a call for nominations for the elected Executive Board positions of Second Vice-President and Public Information Officer. Any IAFA member in good standing may run for these positions.
Those interested in running or in nominating someone for either position should send a nomination to both IAFA Immediate Past-President Sherryl Vint (sherryl.vint [at] gmail.com) and IAFA Registration and Membership Coordinator Karen Hellekson (iafareg [at] gmail.com) by 30 October 2019. The Election Committee will notify each nominee of her or his nomination and will provide each with the names of everyone else who has accepted nomination during that election cycle. Candidates declining nomination must notify the Election Committee immediately upon notification of their nomination.
Candidates eligible for the offices to which they have been nominated and willing to run for those offices will be asked to submit position statements by 20 November 2019. The Election Committee will distribute position statements and ballots to the membership on 10 December 2019, and ballots will be counted by the Election Committee after 10 January 2020. If no candidate receives a majority vote, a runoff election between the two candidates who have received the most votes will be conducted. The Election Committee will announce results of the election at the IAFA business meeting at ICFA 41 in March 2020, with additional announcements in appropriate IAFA venues thereafter.
For those elected, terms will begin immediately following the conclusion of ICFA 41 in March 2019 and will last for three years. Duties of each position are listed below. Please contact Sherryl Vint if you have any questions. We look forward to hearing from you!
Second Vice President
The Second Vice President oversees and develops the programming track of creative guests, maintaining a current email list, contacting writers to solicit proposals, organizing sessions, and consulting the First Vice President to schedule the creative track. The Second Vice President also collects biographies and photos of the invited attending writers for publication in the program book and passes this information on to the Program Book Coordinator. The Second Vice President is elected by majority vote of the IAFA members who participate in the election.
Public Information Officer
The Public Information Officer edits and distributes promotional materials and forms publicity liaisons with other organizations where appropriate. The Public Information Officer maintains and regularly updates the website and blog, creates and distributes information from the Board such as the Call for Papers and election material, and contributes photos and promotional copy to the IAFA website. The Public Information Officer maintains and regularly updates the social media feeds, responds to inquiries via the social media feeds, and monitors the IAFA’s public image on social media. The Public Information Officer takes Executive Board minutes, disseminates them, archives them, and makes them available for archival use. The Public Information Officer is the recorder of motions and amendments at official meetings. The Public Information Officer maintains the IAFA electronic archive. The Public Information Officer is elected by majority vote of the IAFA members who participate in the election.
The IAFA is committed to finding ways to make attendance of the ICFA feasible for as many financially disadvantaged members of our community as possible, and to doing so in a fair and even-handed way.
Toward this end, we are replacing the current subvention system and increasing the amount the organization dedicates to this purpose to $3,000 USD annually. The funds will be distributed in the following way:
o 2 international invited artists: US$500 each
o 2 scholars: one international US$700, one from the US at US$300*
o 2 students: one international US$700, one from the US at US$300*
We also urge members who are able to contribute to this fund to do so at https://iaftfita.wildapricot.org/Donate. These donations will be added to the following year’s assistance fund toward additional awards.
*Some additional consideration, in the form of an additional complimentary room night, will be presented to U.S. recipients whose distance from the continental United States results in significantly higher travel expenses.
Please note: In order to assist IAFA in funding these grants, IAFA requires that recipients stay at the conference hotel. The hotel compensates IAFA based on room usage, and in turn, this compensation helps us fund these grants. We are contractually obligated to meet minimum guest room requirements, and IAFA loses money when attendees stay elsewhere.
Recipients will be decided by blind draw, and will receive a check in the appropriate amount at the end of the conference.
Eligibility: All invited artists and scholars not receiving institutional assistance are eligible to apply. All students are eligible to apply.
How to apply: Attendees requesting assistance should self-identify at this link by Dec. 15, 2019:
https://iaftfita.wildapricot.org/page-1820560.
ICFA 41 “Climate Change and the Anthropocene”
When: March 18–21, 2020
Where: Marriott Orlando Airport Hotel, Orlando, Florida, USA
Guest Scholar: Stacy Alaimo, UT-Arlington
Guest Author: Jeff VanderMeer
Call for papers: https://iaftfita.wildapricot.org/resources/Documents/ICFA%2041%20CFP.pdf
Proposal deadline: October 31, 2019
Membership and registration: https://iaftfita.wildapricot.org/event-3331007
Price summary:
https://www.fantastic-arts.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/ICFA-41-price-summary.pdf
Info about IAFA membership in terms of the conference: https://iaftfita.wildapricot.org/Conference
Website update: We’re updating the website and migrating content. Things may look a little different, and your bookmarks might not work anymore.
Interested in governance? Read the Board minutes (must be logged in to view): https://iaftfita.wildapricot.org/MembersOnly
Venue update: Thank you to everyone who responded to our surveys regarding ICFA’s venue. The conference will stay at the Orlando Airport Marriott Lakeside, Orlando, Florida, through 2024. Read IAFA president Dale Knickerbocker’s July 2019 announcement about this (and note down future convention dates): https://www.fantastic-arts.org/2019/future-icfa-venues/
Membership term change: We have edited everyone’s membership to expire at the end of the calendar year rather than date of initial signup. Example: If your term previously ended March 2, 2019, renewal is now due on January 1, 2020. We expect mass confusion to reign during the years of transition, so don’t hesitate to reach out if you are perplexed. Meanwhile, if you prefer to pay your membership at the same time you sign up for the conference, for ease of reimbursement, go ahead and do that; the term will extend a year.
PayPal update: We are no longer using PayPal for financial transactions, in favor of the system provided by our membership management software.
Invited creatives: David Higgins will send around the registration code to “yes” RSVPs on Halloween, October 31, 2019.
Financial support: Stay tuned for an announcement from IAFA president Dale Knickerbocker regarding an exciting new support lottery.
Problems logging in? What if the system fails to recognize your name/email combination? I beg you! Don’t create a new profile. STOP and email me. I can update your info, including changing your email address.
Do you have a credit? (The system will say “Overpayment” in the bottom right corner.) Sign up as usual, which will generate an invoice. Then STOP. Do not pay. Instead, email me and tell me to apply your credit to the invoice. I will then contact you with your outstanding balance, if any.
Looking forward to seeing you in Orlando!
Karen Hellekson, IAFA Registrar (iafareg AT gmail.com)