Skip navigation

Category Archives: IAFA

Brian Attebery wins World Fantasy Award

Dear IAFA Community:

It is with great pride and pleasure that the IAFA announces that our own Brian Attebery has won a World Fantasy Award in the category “Special Award – Non-Professional” for his 16 years at the helm of the JFA! On behalf of all of us, congratulations Brian, and thank you for all you’ve done.

Following are his acceptance comments given in absentia:

I’ve always thought that fans and academics are natural allies, but I never expected to have an academic journal considered for a World Fantasy Award. The nomination was in my name, but the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts is really a collective effort. Credit goes to the IAFA, which sponsors the Journal, to my editorial predecessors, and especially to the team of volunteer workers who have made the Journal into a meeting place for people who are deeply curious about the fantastic in all its forms—what John Clute calls Fantastika. That includes not only the people on the masthead—Associate Editors, Managing Editor Chrissie Mains, and my various Editorial Assistants over the years, but every contributor, everyone who has heard an interesting paper at a conference and suggested to its author that JFA might be a place to publish it, everyone who has served as a peer reviewer, and everyone whose advice I have sought over the last sixteen years. My thanks on their behalf for this recognition from another group who shares our passion.

Dale Knickerbocker
IAFA President

CFP: The 43rd International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Deadline Extended to 15 November

Update: The IAFA Executive Board has decided to extend the submission deadline for the March 2022 ICFA until 11:59 p.m. November 15, Eastern U.S. time.

The 43rd International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts

FANTASTIC COMMUNITIES

March 16-20, 2022

Orlando Marriott Lakeside Airport Hotel

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “community” as the sharing of something: a geographically or politically defined space, an activity (professional or not), a mentality (attitude or interest), an identity (voluntary or inherent), or a legal or economic interest (e.g., ownership, “a commonality of goods”). The fantastic may arguably be understood as a metaphorical collective space occupied by communities that self-identify  based on a shared interest in the creation, appreciate and/or study of the fantastic arts, activities that frequently have financial and sometimes legal dimensions.

The theme of the 2022 ICFA will be fantastic communities. The IAFA invites proposals for papers, paper sessions, panels and roundtables on the representation of communities in works belonging to the fantastic genres in any media, or on any aspect of one or more fantastic communities. Why do they exist, what do they do, what challenges and/or opportunities do they face, or how do they and their members interact internally or with other communities. This topic includes both the representation of communities in works belonging to the fantastic genres in all media and the various communities that exist within its creation, mediation, interpretation, valorization and consumption. Examples of such communities would be the creators of narrative, film, music, gaming and other arts; the enterprises that develop, fabricate, market and provide the product to consumers (publishing, film and television, music and video game production companies—both commercial and non-profit—, as well as translators and editors); the various groups constituting the category of consumers: readers, viewers, gamers, listeners and the others commonly known collectively as “fandom”. Commercial and not-for-profit scholarly presses, magazines and literary reviews, scholarly journals, editors, and scholars and critics also form part of the world of fantastic communities. Within each segment of this world, communities self-organize into collectives such as fan clubs, creative or scholarly organizations and trade groups, to cite but a few examples. These are many times organized around identities of nation, language, gender, race, ethnicity or even ideology. The activities of these communities are equally multitudinous and diverse: from producing works to evaluating, developing and delivering them to a public; sharing information, common interests and opinions; and judging or interpreting works in the fantastic.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

  • Analyses of how “communities” are represented in fantastic works. Why are they represented a certain way, in a certain place, at a certain time?
  • Relations of power in representation of community in fantastic works: race, gender, class, ethnicity, nationality; mechanisms of exclusion, exploitation, appropriation, etc.
  • Relations of power are at play within or between fantastic communities. What challenges and opportunities do communities face in achieving greater social justice within its ranks or without? Examples of topics of interest would be challenges or best practices regarding acceptance/rejection of works or scholarship (gatekeeping), reviews, awards; the job market, salaries, promotions and positions in leadership, and equity in funding opportunities.
  • How new media technologies and platforms (podcasts, blogs, fan sites, informational web sites) has been used by and shaped by fantastic communities. Have they changed the nature of the fantastic itself, how it is conceived, perceived or defined and if so, how?
  • Economic factors and fantastic communities: the effects of globalized neoliberalism.
  • Politics, ideologies and fantastic communities. How have they changed the nature and functioning of a fantastic community or communities?
  • Fantastic communities and the nation state: to what extent is national identity still relevant in our ever-more globalized world? Is there an “international canon”? Can one be created?
  • Fantastic communities and languages: What is the relationship between language and the creation, development, and delivery of fantastic arts? Is a global fandom possible and, if so, how can it be created? How does the creative community go about marketing to other cultures? What are the roles of the production/publishing companies, editors and translators in this process, what challenges and opportunities do they face?
  • COVID-19 and fantastic communities: How has the pandemic affected and changes the nature of fantastic communities and how they operate? What are the challenges and opportunities created by it? What might the future hold?

We also welcome proposals for individual papers and for academic sessions and panels on any aspect of the fantastic in any media.  We encourage work from institutionally affiliated scholars, independent scholars, international scholars who work on the fantastic in languages other than English, and students.

The conference will feature Guest of Honor Nisi Shawl and Guest Scholar Farah Mendlesohn. We encourage proposals that engage the work of these two distinguished guests.

The submissions portal is open (https://www.fantastic-arts.org/icfa-submissions/) and the deadline is 11/15/2021. Further instructions regarding submissions will be available at this link, including instructions regarding how to prepare submissions, IAFA’s Division Structure and Division Head contact information where questions may be sent.

GUEST OF HONOR: Nisi Shawl

Multiple award-winning author and editor Nisi Shawl is best known for fiction dealing with gender, race, and colonialism, including the 2016 Nebula Award finalist Everfair, an alternate and more optimistic history of Africa’s Congo region.  They’re the co-author of Writing the Other: A Practical Approach, a standard text teaching techniques for inclusive representation in fiction, and a co-founder of the Carl Brandon Society, an inclusivity-focused nonprofit.  They’re also a critic and essayist, with work appearing in Ms. Magazine, the Washington Post, Uncanny Magazine, and other periodicals, and as the introduction to a volume of the Library of America.  They have spoken at Duke University, Spelman College, Sarah Lawrence College, University of Hawaii Manoa, and many other institutions, both in person and online.

Shawl has edited and co-edited several anthologies, including Strange Matings: Science Fiction, Feminism, African American Voices, and Octavia E. Butler; Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany; and New Suns: Speculative Fiction by People of Color.  Their short story collection Filter House is a co-winner of the Otherwise Award, formerly the James Tiptree, Jr. Award.  Additional awards include the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award, the World Fantasy Award, two Locus Awards, and an inaugural 2020 FIYAH Magazine Ignyte Award.  They have served for over two decades on the board of the Clarion West Writers Workshop.  Both Shawl and their cat, Minnie, like to watch birds–but for very different reasons.

GUEST SCHOLAR: Farah Mendlesohn

Farah Mendlesohn won a Hugo with Edward James in 2005 for The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature. She is also the author of Diana Wynne Jones: The Fantastic Tradition and Children’s Literature, Rhetorics of Fantasy, with Edward James, A Short History of Fantasy, The Inter-galactic Playground: A Critical Study of Children’s and Teens’ Science Fiction, with Michael M. Levy (President of IAFA from 2004 to 2007) Children’s Fantasy Literature: An Introduction, which won the World Fantasy Award and the Mythopeic Award in 2017. In 2019 year she published, The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein, and and her book, Creating Memory: Historical Fiction and the English Civil Wars was published in 2020. She was President of IAFA from 2007 to 2010.

*Join us in Orlando in 2022.  We will add your intellectual and creative distinctiveness to our own.  Resistance is futile.*

March ICFA Update

Dear Members of the Fantastic Community:

ICFA in March:

After a highly successful live symposium in October, the Executive Board of the IAFA has decided that, if conditions remain essentially the same (hopefully they will improve) we intend to go forward with ICFA at the Marriott Orl​ando Airport Lakeside planned from March 16-20, 2022. There have been no reports of COVID 19 symptoms or positive tests from the symposium attendees. The return of international travel is a hopeful sign that we are past the worst of the pandemic. Of course, should conditions worsen to the point where travel is once again restricted, we would likely change to a virtual format in March. In any event, we will also hold a virtual conference in October 2022 as previously announced. Details will be available for this event early in 2022. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Room reservations:

Because of upheavals at the Marriott due to the pandemic, some patterns are shifted this year, and we are not yet ready to make hotel room information available. We will provide information on how to reserve guest rooms as soon as we can, and rest assured there will be enough.

Sincerely.
Dale

Dale Knickerbocker
President, International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA.org)

Final call for submissions: 2022 Jamie Bishop Memorial Award

Final Call for Submissions: 2022 Jamie Bishop Memorial Award

The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts announces its 16th 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 (or the equivalent for nonalphabetic languages), 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. The submitted essay DOES NOT have to be translated into English.

· 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 25, 2021. Essays may be submitted prior to the deadline.

The winner of this year’s Bishop Award will be announced at the 43rd International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, March 16–20, 2022.

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

New IAFA Treasurer

On behalf of the IAFA Executive Board, I am pleased to announce that Dr. Sean Nixon has been appointed Treasurer of the IAFA effective 10/1/2021.

Sean replaces long-time Treasurer Dr. William “Bill” Clemente. The Board would like to extend its sincere thanks to Bill for his fifteen years of service in the position. Bill’s presence will be missed by us all, but we wish him happiness in his new role as Nebraska Master Naturalist.

Sean received his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he is currently a Research Associate. He is a long-time member of the IAFA whose contribution as On-Site Technical Officer since 2009 has perhaps not been noticed by many precisely because he has done it so well. He has been in charge of purchasing and overseeing all on-site technology for the conference, working with guest speakers and the hotel staff to organize large lectures, trouble shooting technical issues, and supervising a group of volunteers helping with the set up and tear down of conference AV. His efforts have been greatly appreciated, and the Board looks forward to working with him in this new capacity. Welcome, Sean!

Dale Knickerbocker, IAFA President

Call for Nominations: IAFA President

The term of IAFA President Dale Knickerbocker comes to an end after the March 2022 conference. The Board would like to thank Dale for his extraordinary service under difficult circumstances and for his vision and leadership in guiding IAFA through the challenges of the pandemic, and for contributing to the work of ensuring that the IAFA is an inclusive and welcoming organization.

We also call for nominations for the next IAFA President. According to the Bylaws Section VII.ii (https://iaftfita.wildapricot.org/Constitution-and-Bylaws) nominations for elections open on September 30 of the relevant year and close on October 30.

Additionally, to serve as president, “To be eligible for the office of President, a member must have served either as a Division Head or as a member of the Executive Board.” (see Bylaws Section IV)

Please send any nominations, including self-nominations, to IAFA Immediate Past President Sherryl Vint (sherryl.vint@gmail.com).

Once the nomination period closes, Sherryl will contact all nominees to confirm their willingness to serve and will request position statements from the candidates to be circulated to the membership. Statements will be circulated by November 20, 2021 and the election will take place by election means between December 10, 2021 and January 20, 2022. You must be a current member of IAFA to vote in this election.

Portal Date Change for ICFA 43

The submission portal for ICFA 43: Fantastic Communities will be opening on October 4th, rather than August 31st as was stated on the original CFP. This is to reduce confusion with our upcoming special symposium. The updated CFP can be found below.

Best,

Emily Midkiff

IAFA Registrar

The 43rd International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts

FANTASTIC COMMUNITIES

March 16-20, 2022

Orlando Marriott Lakeside Airport Hotel 

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “community” as the sharing of something: a geographically or politically defined space, an activity (professional or not), a mentality (attitude or interest), an identity (voluntary or inherent), or a legal or economic interest (e.g., ownership, “a commonality of goods”). The fantastic may arguably be understood as a metaphorical collective space occupied by communities that self-identify  based on a shared interest in the creation, appreciate and/or study of the fantastic arts, activities that frequently have financial and sometimes legal dimensions.

The theme of the 2022 ICFA will be fantastic communities. The IAFA invites proposals for papers, paper sessions, panels and roundtables on the representation of communities in works belonging to the fantastic genres in any media, or on any aspect of one or more fantastic communities. Why do they exist, what do they do, what challenges and/or opportunities do they face, or how do they and their members interact internally or with other communities. This topic includes both the representation of communities in works belonging to the fantastic genres in all media and the various communities that exist within its creation, mediation, interpretation, valorization and consumption. Examples of such communities would be the creators of narrative, film, music, gaming and other arts; the enterprises that develop, fabricate, market and provide the product to consumers (publishing, film and television, music and video game production companies—both commercial and non-profit—, as well as translators and editors); the various groups constituting the category of consumers: readers, viewers, gamers, listeners and the others commonly known collectively as “fandom”. Commercial and not-for-profit scholarly presses, magazines and literary reviews, scholarly journals, editors, and scholars and critics also form part of the world of fantastic communities. Within each segment of this world, communities self-organize into collectives such as fan clubs, creative or scholarly organizations and trade groups, to cite but a few examples. These are many times organized around identities of nation, language, gender, race, ethnicity or even ideology. The activities of these communities are equally multitudinous and diverse: from producing works to evaluating, developing and delivering them to a public; sharing information, common interests and opinions; and judging or interpreting works in the fantastic.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

  • Analyses of how “communities” are represented in fantastic works. Why are they represented a certain way, in a certain place, at a certain time?
  • Relations of power in representation of community in fantastic works: race, gender, class, ethnicity, nationality; mechanisms of exclusion, exploitation, appropriation, etc.
  • Relations of power are at play within or between fantastic communities. What challenges and opportunities do communities face in achieving greater social justice within its ranks or without? Examples of topics of interest would be challenges or best practices regarding acceptance/rejection of works or scholarship (gatekeeping), reviews, awards; the job market, salaries, promotions and positions in leadership, and equity in funding opportunities.
  • How new media technologies and platforms (podcasts, blogs, fan sites, informational web sites) has been used by and shaped by fantastic communities. Have they changed the nature of the fantastic itself, how it is conceived, perceived or defined and if so, how?
  • Economic factors and fantastic communities: the effects of globalized neoliberalism.
  • Politics, ideologies and fantastic communities. How have they changed the nature and functioning of a fantastic community or communities?
  • Fantastic communities and the nation state: to what extent is national identity still relevant in our ever-more globalized world? Is there an “international canon”? Can one be created?
  • Fantastic communities and languages: What is the relationship between language and the creation, development, and delivery of fantastic arts? Is a global fandom possible and, if so, how can it be created? How does the creative community go about marketing to other cultures? What are the roles of the production/publishing companies, editors and translators in this process, what challenges and opportunities do they face?
  • COVID-19 and fantastic communities: How has the pandemic affected and changes the nature of fantastic communities and how they operate? What are the challenges and opportunities created by it? What might the future hold?

We also welcome proposals for individual papers and for academic sessions and panels on any aspect of the fantastic in any media.  We encourage work from institutionally affiliated scholars, independent scholars, international scholars who work on the fantastic in languages other than English, and students.

The conference will feature Guest of Honor Nisi Shawl and Guest Scholar Farah Mendlesohn. We encourage proposals that engage the work of these two distinguished guests.

The submissions portal will open on 10/4/2021 (https://www.fantastic-arts.org/icfa-submissions/) and the deadline is 10/31/2021. Further instructions regarding submissions will be available at this link, including instructions regarding how to prepare submissions, IAFA’s Division Structure and Division Head contact information where questions may be sent. More information forthcoming.

GUEST OF HONOR: Nisi Shawl

Multiple award-winning author and editor Nisi Shawl is best known for fiction dealing with gender, race, and colonialism, including the 2016 Nebula Award finalist Everfair, an alternate and more optimistic history of Africa’s Congo region.  They’re the co-author of Writing the Other: A Practical Approach, a standard text teaching techniques for inclusive representation in fiction, and a co-founder of the Carl Brandon Society, an inclusivity-focused nonprofit.  They’re also a critic and essayist, with work appearing in Ms. Magazine, the Washington Post, Uncanny Magazine, and other periodicals, and as the introduction to a volume of the Library of America.  They have spoken at Duke University, Spelman College, Sarah Lawrence College, University of Hawaii Manoa, and many other institutions, both in person and online.

Shawl has edited and co-edited several anthologies, including Strange Matings: Science Fiction, Feminism, African American Voices, and Octavia E. Butler; Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany; and New Suns: Speculative Fiction by People of Color.  Their short story collection Filter House is a co-winner of the Otherwise Award, formerly the James Tiptree, Jr. Award.  Additional awards include the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award, the World Fantasy Award, two Locus Awards, and an inaugural 2020 FIYAH Magazine Ignyte Award.  They have served for over two decades on the board of the Clarion West Writers Workshop.  Both Shawl and their cat, Minnie, like to watch birds–but for very different reasons.

GUEST SCHOLAR: Farah Mendlesohn

Farah Mendlesohn won a Hugo with Edward James in 2005 for The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature. She is also the author of Diana Wynne Jones: The Fantastic Tradition and Children’s Literature, Rhetorics of Fantasy, with Edward James, A Short History of Fantasy, The Inter-galactic Playground: A Critical Study of Children’s and Teens’ Science Fiction, with Michael M. Levy (President of IAFA from 2004 to 2007) Children’s Fantasy Literature: An Introduction, which won the World Fantasy Award and the Mythopeic Award in 2017. In 2019 year she published, The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein, and and her book, Creating Memory: Historical Fiction and the English Civil Wars was published in 2020. She was President of IAFA from 2007 to 2010.

*Join us in Orlando in 2022.  We will add your intellectual and creative distinctiveness to our own.  Resistance is futile.*

Call for Applications–JFA Editorial Collective

The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts (JFA) requests applications from individuals interested in becoming part of a diverse Editorial Collective who will serve as editors-in-chief for the journal. Published since 1988, JFA is an interdisciplinary journal that publishes analyses of fantastic works in any medium; it is published three times a year. It welcomes submissions that address texts published in multiple languages and is open to work from a wide range of methodologies across the humanities and the social sciences. JFA is the official publication of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA). For more information about the journal, please see https://www.fantastic-arts.org/jfa/.

The Editorial Collective will be responsible for ensuring the overall intellectual quality of the journal and for setting priorities for special issues and similar initiatives. They will oversee the peer review process assisted by a volunteer Submissions Editor appointed by the President with approval of the IAFA Board and the selection of material for publication that provides new, original, and important contributions to the field. They will also be assisted by a volunteer Managing Editor also appointed by the President with approval of the IAFA Board, who will assist with record keeping, subscription management, distribution, other clerical tasks, and typesetting for production. The Editorial Collective will furthermore be assisted by an advisory editorial board whose membership they will curate, and by the IAFA Board, to whom they will report. The Editorial Collective may write editorials and introductions, solicit manuscripts, and set the direction for special issues (for which they may assign guest editors). The Editorial Collective may also appoint Associate Editors to assist with the day-to-day operations of the journal. The Editorial Collective is responsible for ensuring that JFA follows ethical policies for scholarly review and publishing, and that content for the journal is ready for publication on the required schedule.

The IAFA Board will provide mentorship for the Editorial Collective as may be desired and will work with the Managing Editor to secure a printer for the journal; the Editorial Collective will advise the Board regarding the journal’s transition to an on-line format. IAFA will fund the costs of printing and distributing the journal. Subscription to the journal is a benefit of IAFA membership.

There is no compensation for this position, which is a volunteer scholarly position. Appointments to the Editorial Collective will be for a five-year term, with an opportunity to renew one’s appointment for subsequent terms without mandated limit. The established Editorial Collective will have the opportunity to provide input on renewals of appointments moving forward.

Those interested in applying for this position should send the following to Dale Knickerbocker, IAFA President (KNICKERBOCKERD@ecu.edu):

A current CV; previous editorial experience is desirable but not required
• A statement of interest in the position outlining the candidate’s priorities for JFA’s future
• A statement of contributions to diversity within the scholarly community

Candidates should also arrange for one letter of recommendation addressing the candidates’ scholarly knowledge and potential, ability to work collaboratively and in a timely manner, the quality of their writing and their commitment to diversity within the scholarly community. Further recommendations may be requested from finalists. Letters should be sent to the e-mail listed above.

Applications are due 9/27/2021. After an initial review of the candidates, the IAFA Board will conduct online interviews with the candidates.

This search will be kept open until a diverse group is formed.

Call for Applications, IAFA Treasurer

Call for Applications

IAFA Treasurer, applications (cover letter and CV/resumé) to President Dale Knickerbocker (iafa.president@fantastic-arts.org) by 9/10/2021. Term to begin 11/1/2021.

Eligibility: To be eligible to be appointed to the office of Treasurer, one must be a member in good standing of the IAFA.
Appointment procedure, term length: The Treasurer is an appointed member of the IAFA Executive Board. Appointments are made by the President, after formal discussion and majority vote of the other elected officers. Appointed members are not subject to term limits, but appointments will be reviewed annually, with the exception of the JFA Editor and the Crawford Award Director, who each serve five-year, renewable terms.

Responsibilities: The Treasurer maintains a bank account for the Association, prepares the annual budget, and handles accounts for all monies received or disbursed by the organization. The Treasurer also represents the Association in filing returns with the IRS and in other legal matters. The Treasurer’s Annual Report is presented at the Annual Business Meeting of the ICFA and becomes basic data for future budgets; thus, the Treasurer works closely with the President. The Treasurer is appointed by the President, after formal discussion and majority vote of the other elected officers. Candidates for the position of Treasurer must demonstrate appropriate money management skills and fiscal knowledge in order to be confirmed, some experience with bookkeeping / accounting and non-profit tax regulations desirable. Inquiries to Treasurer Bill Clemente (iafa.treasurer@fantastic-arts.org).

CFP: The 43rd International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, Fantastic Communities

Update: The IAFA Executive Board has decided to extend the submission deadline for the March 2022 ICFA until 11:59 p.m. November 15, Eastern U.S. time.

The 43rd International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts

FANTASTIC COMMUNITIES

March 16-20, 2022

Orlando Marriott Lakeside Airport Hotel

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “community” as the sharing of something: a geographically or politically defined space, an activity (professional or not), a mentality (attitude or interest), an identity (voluntary or inherent), or a legal or economic interest (e.g., ownership, “a commonality of goods”). The fantastic may arguably be understood as a metaphorical collective space occupied by communities that self-identify  based on a shared interest in the creation, appreciate and/or study of the fantastic arts, activities that frequently have financial and sometimes legal dimensions.

The theme of the 2022 ICFA will be fantastic communities. The IAFA invites proposals for papers, paper sessions, panels and roundtables on the representation of communities in works belonging to the fantastic genres in any media, or on any aspect of one or more fantastic communities. Why do they exist, what do they do, what challenges and/or opportunities do they face, or how do they and their members interact internally or with other communities. This topic includes both the representation of communities in works belonging to the fantastic genres in all media and the various communities that exist within its creation, mediation, interpretation, valorization and consumption. Examples of such communities would be the creators of narrative, film, music, gaming and other arts; the enterprises that develop, fabricate, market and provide the product to consumers (publishing, film and television, music and video game production companies—both commercial and non-profit—, as well as translators and editors); the various groups constituting the category of consumers: readers, viewers, gamers, listeners and the others commonly known collectively as “fandom”. Commercial and not-for-profit scholarly presses, magazines and literary reviews, scholarly journals, editors, and scholars and critics also form part of the world of fantastic communities. Within each segment of this world, communities self-organize into collectives such as fan clubs, creative or scholarly organizations and trade groups, to cite but a few examples. These are many times organized around identities of nation, language, gender, race, ethnicity or even ideology. The activities of these communities are equally multitudinous and diverse: from producing works to evaluating, developing and delivering them to a public; sharing information, common interests and opinions; and judging or interpreting works in the fantastic.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

  • Analyses of how “communities” are represented in fantastic works. Why are they represented a certain way, in a certain place, at a certain time?
  • Relations of power in representation of community in fantastic works: race, gender, class, ethnicity, nationality; mechanisms of exclusion, exploitation, appropriation, etc.
  • Relations of power are at play within or between fantastic communities. What challenges and opportunities do communities face in achieving greater social justice within its ranks or without? Examples of topics of interest would be challenges or best practices regarding acceptance/rejection of works or scholarship (gatekeeping), reviews, awards; the job market, salaries, promotions and positions in leadership, and equity in funding opportunities.
  • How new media technologies and platforms (podcasts, blogs, fan sites, informational web sites) has been used by and shaped by fantastic communities. Have they changed the nature of the fantastic itself, how it is conceived, perceived or defined and if so, how?
  • Economic factors and fantastic communities: the effects of globalized neoliberalism.
  • Politics, ideologies and fantastic communities. How have they changed the nature and functioning of a fantastic community or communities?
  • Fantastic communities and the nation state: to what extent is national identity still relevant in our ever-more globalized world? Is there an “international canon”? Can one be created?
  • Fantastic communities and languages: What is the relationship between language and the creation, development, and delivery of fantastic arts? Is a global fandom possible and, if so, how can it be created? How does the creative community go about marketing to other cultures? What are the roles of the production/publishing companies, editors and translators in this process, what challenges and opportunities do they face?
  • COVID-19 and fantastic communities: How has the pandemic affected and changes the nature of fantastic communities and how they operate? What are the challenges and opportunities created by it? What might the future hold?

We also welcome proposals for individual papers and for academic sessions and panels on any aspect of the fantastic in any media.  We encourage work from institutionally affiliated scholars, independent scholars, international scholars who work on the fantastic in languages other than English, and students.

The conference will feature Guest of Honor Nisi Shawl and Guest Scholar Farah Mendlesohn. We encourage proposals that engage the work of these two distinguished guests.

The submissions portal will open on 10/4/2021 (https://www.fantastic-arts.org/icfa-submissions/) and the deadline is 10/31/2021. Further instructions regarding submissions will be available at this link, including instructions regarding how to prepare submissions, IAFA’s Division Structure and Division Head contact information where questions may be sent. More information forthcoming.

GUEST OF HONOR: Nisi Shawl

Multiple award-winning author and editor Nisi Shawl is best known for fiction dealing with gender, race, and colonialism, including the 2016 Nebula Award finalist Everfair, an alternate and more optimistic history of Africa’s Congo region.  They’re the co-author of Writing the Other: A Practical Approach, a standard text teaching techniques for inclusive representation in fiction, and a co-founder of the Carl Brandon Society, an inclusivity-focused nonprofit.  They’re also a critic and essayist, with work appearing in Ms. Magazine, the Washington Post, Uncanny Magazine, and other periodicals, and as the introduction to a volume of the Library of America.  They have spoken at Duke University, Spelman College, Sarah Lawrence College, University of Hawaii Manoa, and many other institutions, both in person and online.

Shawl has edited and co-edited several anthologies, including Strange Matings: Science Fiction, Feminism, African American Voices, and Octavia E. Butler; Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany; and New Suns: Speculative Fiction by People of Color.  Their short story collection Filter House is a co-winner of the Otherwise Award, formerly the James Tiptree, Jr. Award.  Additional awards include the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award, the World Fantasy Award, two Locus Awards, and an inaugural 2020 FIYAH Magazine Ignyte Award.  They have served for over two decades on the board of the Clarion West Writers Workshop.  Both Shawl and their cat, Minnie, like to watch birds–but for very different reasons.

GUEST SCHOLAR: Farah Mendlesohn

Farah Mendlesohn won a Hugo with Edward James in 2005 for The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature. She is also the author of Diana Wynne Jones: The Fantastic Tradition and Children’s Literature, Rhetorics of Fantasy, with Edward James, A Short History of Fantasy, The Inter-galactic Playground: A Critical Study of Children’s and Teens’ Science Fiction, with Michael M. Levy (President of IAFA from 2004 to 2007) Children’s Fantasy Literature: An Introduction, which won the World Fantasy Award and the Mythopeic Award in 2017. In 2019 year she published, The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein, and and her book, Creating Memory: Historical Fiction and the English Civil Wars was published in 2020. She was President of IAFA from 2007 to 2010.

*Join us in Orlando in 2022.  We will add your intellectual and creative distinctiveness to our own.  Resistance is futile.*