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Category Archives: JFA

Appointment of the Editorial Collective at the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts

After a lengthy selection and interview process, the Executive Board of the International Association of the Fantastic in the Arts is pleased to announce the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts’ new Editorial Collective: Mailyn Abreu Toribio, who will serve as Reviews Editor-in-Chief; Cat Ashton, who will be Project Editor-in-Chief; Novella Brooks de Vita, who will be Acquisitions Editor-in-Chief; and Jude Wright, who will serve as Managing Editor-in-Chief. They will be taking over the duties of previous Editor Brian Attebery, for whose sixteen years of leadership we express our deep gratitude. We look forward with excitement to this new era for the JFA, and know that the Collective will provide innovative paths for the study of the fantastic. Please join us in welcoming our new group of editors!

On behalf of the IAFA Board,

Pawel Frelik

IAFA President

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.

CFP: Special Issue of Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts: Expanding the Archive

We invite manuscript submissions about the speculative fiction archive for a special issue of JFA, anticipated in Fall 2020. You may have seen our previous call for papers for the ICFA panel that will take place on this same subject.

Special Issue of Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts: Expanding the Archive

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 in recent fantasy books and film, 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 curated materials and their surrounding context represent choices that speak to the curator’s values and priorities.

While projects such as the Eaton Journal of Archival Research in Science Fiction discuss the methods and content of speculative fiction archival research, in this special issue we are interested in the metacognitive work of questioning the archive. Kenneth Kidd’s 2011 article “The Child, the Scholar, and the Children’s Literature Archive” did some of this work in the context of children’s literature, considering the perceived childishness of collecting children’s books and how materials gain different cultural capital when archived and studied. Kidd writes, “By preserving children’s materials, and conferring upon them special (primarily historical but also affective) value, the archive asserts the research value of children’s literature within the broader culture of academic and university research” (9). A very similar thing could be said of science fiction and fantasy archives, where the mere act of archiving claims value for the genre and its objects, but also makes claims about the genre and its cultural capital.

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 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 submit all inquiries and essays of 5,000-9,000 words (20-30 pages) to Emily Midkiff (midki003@umn.edu) or Sara Austin (austins4@miamioh.edu) by Feb 1, 2020. Since the refereeing process is anonymous, the author’s name should not appear anywhere on the text file itself, including the notes. An abstract of 100-150 words should be included with each submission. Please ensure that all citations and the Works Cited entries are in current MLA style. For complete guidelines, please refer to the JFA Style Sheet for Articles (http://www.fantastic-arts.org/jfa/submissions/).

JFA Update

Look for JFA 28.3 (2017) to arrive in the mail very soon! The final issue of Volume 28 is a special issue on representations of the body in YA fiction, guest edited by Mathieu Donner. To read his introduction and for a preview of the contents, check out the current issue page.

Please also check out the JFA blog here: http://www.fantastic-arts.org/jfa/jfa-28-3/.

New JFA International Reviews Editor

Effective August 1, 2018, JFA has a new Reviews Editor for works written in a language other than English.

The journal and the board wish to express their thanks to Dale Knickerbocker for his service over the years. Dale will still be part of the journal as an Associate Editor.

Please contact David Dalton at David.Dalton@uncc.edu if you have a scholarly work written in a language other than English that would be of interest to JFA’s readers, or if you are interested in being added to his list of reviewers.

JFA and Mailing Addresses

Hi, IAFA members.

Now that JFA 28.3 is off to the printer, we’ll soon be preparing the mailing list for JFA Volume 29 (2018). If you joined or renewed your membership in the association between the end of the 2017 conference and the 2018 conference, you are subscribed to JFA Volume 29. (If you joined after this year’s conference, in April 2018 or later, your subscription will begin with JFA Volume 30).

We want to make sure your copy of the journal makes it to you and doesn’t get sent back to our office, so we’d really appreciate it if you’d take a moment to make certain that your information is correct in your member profile on the website. Please visit the membership page on IAFA.org, and log in using your user name and password. Once you’ve logged in, you can View your profile, and on the profile page, click on Edit profile to update your information, if necessary.

Please check that your postal address is correct.

While you’re checking out your profile, please also consider updating your areas of interest. You can list subgenres, theoretical approaches, or specific works and authors. Sometimes we need to add to our pool of peer reviewers for articles submitted to JFA, and the information you list in Interests can help us find a good match.

Thanks so much,

Chrissie

You can also view this message on the JFA blog: http://www.fantastic-arts.org/jfa/jfa-subscriptions-updating-mailing-addresses/.

Call for Applications, Managing Editor, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts

Call for Applications

Managing Editor, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts

Duties:

To work with the Editor and the editorial team on the production and distribution of the Journal, including maintaining lists of subscribers; working with the printer or publisher; preparing budgets and keeping financial records; maintaining contact with content providers such as JSTOR and ProQuest and indexers such as the MLA Bibliography; researching technology and trends in academic publishing; creating and updating documentation relating to policies and processes; and overseeing quality control. Experience in an academic publishing environment and familiarity with MS Office and Adobe products, including InDesign, are essential.

Applications should be sent to Brian Attebery, editor, attebria@isu.edu, by September 1, 2018

CfP: JFA Special Issue “After/Lives: What’s Next for Humanity?”

“After/Lives: What’s Next for Humanity?”
Special issue of Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts

Guest Editors:
Sarah Juliet Lauro, PhD. Co-editor of Better Off Dead: The Evolution of the Zombie as Post-Human.
UC Davis: <slauro@ucdavis.edu>
Kyle Bishop, PhD. Author of American Zombie Gothic.
Southern Utah University: <bishopk@suu.edu>

The recent flurry of critical attention paid to the zombie and other forms of living dead, such as the vampire (back again to haunt the cultural imagination of a new generation) or the ghost (gliding along a spectrum from spiritual to secularized in the era of the cybergothic), illustrates how our monsters personify the question “What comes next for me?” Additionally, post-apocalyptic fantasies and necroscapes dramatizing the end of human civilization pose the query continually recurring in our collective nightmares: “What is next for humanity?” Recent trends in humanities scholarship move beyond the human to a broader perspective of what constitutes being by looking to the animal, the machine, or the environment, while interest in posthuman figures like the cyborg and the android has not waned.

The special issue will investigate ways of imagining what comes after human life ends—for example, liminal beings that defy this boundary line; narratives about worldwide crisis (doomsday prophesies and environmental catastrophes alike); or simply a deceased person’s Facebook page left “live” as a perpetual, virtual shrine. Such imaginings are, variously, philosophical thought experiments, records of our contemporary moment, warnings about the limitations of our current understanding of “humanity” and “being,” as well as admonitions forecasting an end to the anthropocene era if our values do not change. In our contemporary moment, fantasies about the end of life offer new possibilities for imagining “what comes next” for the human, humanism, and even the humanities.

Call for Papers: “After/Lives: What’s Next for Humanity?”
Journal for the Fantastic in the Arts, the journal of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, invites contributions for a special issue on “After/Lives: What’s Next for Humanity?” Looking at various portrayals of what comes “after” death, the works investigated in this issue will raise the broader question of how such representations reflect our contemporary moment and suggest what will come next for humanity. We welcome essays from all disciplines of the humanities that investigate late 20th and 21st century works of film, literature, the visual and performing arts, and new media. Articles between 5,000-9,000 words might address, but are by no means limited to, the following:

  • Representations of monsters/figures of living death, such as zombies, vampires, revenants, ghosts, cyborgs, etc.
  • Metaphoric representations of death
  • Representations of death in video games and new media, or discussions of death and technology
  • Post-apocalyptic spaces, disaster zones, or dystopias that represent a changed relationship between the living and the dead
  • Representations of cannibalism in the zombie/vampire and the ethics of meat eating
  • Narratives about the afterlife, including virtual afterlives in cyberspace
  • Lifestyle and performance of death: Goths, raves, LARPing, and zombie walks (i.e., “playing” dead or undead).

In accordance with the journal’s policy, all contributions will be peer reviewed by the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts (JFA) and subject to their acceptance. JFA uses the MLA style as defined in the latest edition of Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (New York: The Modern Language Association). For more details, please see and the “Submission Guidelines” section: <http://www.fantastic-arts.org/jfa/submissions/>.
Please submit a 500-word abstract as a Word file via email to both guest editors by 1 September 2012, including a description of what stage of development the piece is in: i.e., already in progress, in development, in draft form, etc. Please declare at this time whether you can commit to an end of 2012 (December 31) deadline for a full-length manuscript.

CFP JFA-Performance Issue

Just a reminder since the deadline August 1st:

“Performing the Fantastic” — special issue of the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts
Jen Gunnels, Drama Critic/ New York Review of Science Fiction Isabella van Elferen, Musicologist/ Utrecht University

The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts (JFA) is inviting contributions for a special issue on “Performing the Fantastic.” Performance in this context encompasses any of the performing arts, broadly defined, such as theatre, music, dance, magic, and/or ritual. Articles between 5,000–9,000 words might address, but are by no means limited to, the following:

  • Critical analyses of fantastic influenced production designs of traditional forms of performance (theatre, dance, opera)
  • Critical analyses of adaptations of fantastic narratives for the stage (from eighteenth-century Gothic melodrama to Wagnerian opera to musical fantasy)
  • Performance analyses of staged productions (theatre, music, dance) utilizing fantastic subjects or motifs
  • Fantastic use of performative conventions in non-staged (e.g., literary or interactive) narratives
  • Utilization of the fantastic in musical subcultures and their aesthetics (including Goth, metal, neofolk)
  • Fantastic influences on avant-garde and postmodern performance
  • Fantastic performance as social and/or cultural commentary
  • Evocations of the fantastic in magic, ritual, and liturgical performance

In accordance with the journal’s policy, all contributions will be peer-reviewed by JFA and subject to their acceptance. JFA uses MLA style as defined in the latest edition of MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (New York: The Modern Language Association). For more details, please see the journal’s “Submission Guidelines” section online at http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/iafa/jfa/submission.html, or e-mail jfaeditor@gmail.com to request a copy of JFA’s style sheet. Please e-mail your contributions and/or any queries to the guest editors Jen Gunnels (jengunnels@gmail.com) and Isabella van Elferen (i.a.m.vanelferen@uu.nl) by 1 August 2012.

Call for Papers – special issue of the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts

“Performing the Fantastic” — special issue of the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts
Jen Gunnels, Drama Critic/ New York Review of Science Fiction Isabella van Elferen, Musicologist/ Utrecht University

The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts (JFA) is inviting contributions for a special issue on “Performing the Fantastic.” Performance in this context encompasses any of the performing arts, broadly defined, such as theatre, music, dance, magic, and/or ritual. Articles between 5,000–9,000 words might address, but are by no means limited to, the following:

  • Critical analyses of fantastic influenced production designs of traditional forms of performance (theatre, dance, opera)
  • Critical analyses of adaptations of fantastic narratives for the stage (from eighteenth-century Gothic melodrama to Wagnerian opera to musical fantasy)
  • Performance analyses of staged productions (theatre, music, dance) utilizing fantastic subjects or motifs
  • Fantastic use of performative conventions in non-staged (e.g., literary or interactive) narratives
  • Utilization of the fantastic in musical subcultures and their aesthetics (including Goth, metal, neofolk)
  • Fantastic influences on avant-garde and postmodern performance
  • Fantastic performance as social and/or cultural commentary
  • Evocations of the fantastic in magic, ritual, and liturgical performance

In accordance with the journal’s policy, all contributions will be peer-reviewed by JFA and subject to their acceptance. JFA uses MLA style as defined in the latest edition of MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (New York: The Modern Language Association). For more details, please see the journal’s “Submission Guidelines” section online at http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/iafa/jfa/submission.html, or e-mail jfaeditor@gmail.com to request a copy of JFA’s style sheet. Please e-mail your contributions and/or any queries to the guest editors Jen Gunnels (jengunnels@gmail.com) and Isabella van Elferen (i.a.m.vanelferen@uu.nl) by 1 August 2012.