HEED THE CALL: 2019 ICFA Flash Plays
It’s that time of year again, when the anticipation of spring…and ICFA…get our creative juices flowing.
As always, we encourage you to submit plays with the following parameters:
No more than TEN pages
No more than THREE characters
Include one of the following props:
A SKULL
A CROWN
A SPACE HELMET
…and include the following line of dialogue
“that’s the path to world domination”
Flash plays should be submitted via email to carriejcole@gmail.com by March 10th.
The Flash Play performances are Friday, March 15th at 9:45pm.
And if you’re interested in joining the Flash Players on stage, please let us know!
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ICFA 40 “Politics and Conflict”
When: March 13–17, 2019
Where: Marriott Orlando Airport Hotel, Orlando, Florida, USA
Guest Scholar: Mark Bould (University of the West of England)
Guest Author: G. Willow Wilson (Ms. Marvel, Alif the Unseen)
Conference hotel: Both the hotel and the overflow hotel are sold out at the conference rate. That said, because attendance is always in a bit of flux, do contact me if you need a room, and I’ll forward your request. The conference hotel room cost is the same regardless of how many people are in it. Room sharing is common, and we encourage it. If you have already booked, you are fine!
Volunteering: The Registration and AV areas always welcome volunteer help. In addition, volunteers help out the Book Room by setting books out before meals. You get 10 IAFA Bucks per hour for help. These may be used for merch and meal tickets (sold at the lower preregistration rate) at this year’s convention, or they may be held and put toward next year’s registration. IAFA Bucks may not be used in the Book Room. Sign up here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1q19mG_IL7ezdXmrzd-RCIF2ELla-9w3o-FpiLnskJow
Additional purchases: If you would like to preorder a meal ticket, including an extra ticket for the included Friday Guest Scholar luncheon (perhaps for a companion), or if you have decided to preorder highly collectible merchandise, please visit IAFA’s storefront: https://store4277080.ecwid.com/
Student Caucus: SCIAFA is offering a job materials review workshop; is recruiting mentors and mentees for its mentorship program; and is offering its paper publishing workshop (no need to sign up; show up with a paper in progress), conducted this year by Rachel Haywood Ferreira. More info here: https://www.fantastic-arts.org/2019/icfa-40-student-caucus-updates/
Duplicated email: I’ve had members reporting they are getting email blasts implying that they are not registered, when in fact they are. Inevitably it is the case that the member has more than one profile in the system, and the mass emails are going to the identity/email that is not registered for the conference. If puzzled, contact me. I would love to merge your contact info into a single identity.
See you in March!
Karen Hellekson, IAFA Registrar (iafareg AT gmail.com)
The Job materials workshop has extended their deadline until March 8. If you would still like Kathryn Hume and Mark Decker to look over and critique your job application materials, email Wendy Wood, at iafa.studentcaucus@fantastic-arts.org. In your email, please include:
1) Subject Line: SCIAFA Job Materials Workshop
2) Your name & email address
3) Whether you are applying to a research or a teaching school (predominantly)
4) Attach: your CV, cover letter, and teaching philosophy
Mentorship Program
There is still time to sign up for the mentorship program. We are especially in need of mentors, those who have attended the conference before and would like to help a new attendee. If you are interested in being mentored or in being a mentor, please email Kylie Korsnack at iafa.studentcaucus2@fantastic-arts.org. Please title your email SCIAFA Mentorship Program, and in your email, please answer the following questions:
1. What is your name?
2. What is your e-mail address?
3. What is your institutional affiliation?
4. What would you consider to be your main interests in the field of the fantastic?
5. When will you be arriving at the conference?
6. When will you be departing from the conference?
7. Are you currently planning to attend the conference reception on Wednesday evening?
(*Please inform us if your plans change and make every effort to follow through with whatever you commit.)
8. Which role are you signing up for, mentor or mentee
Paper Publishing Workshop
Each year, one of the main events sponsored by SCIAFA is a Graduate Student Writing Workshop. It is a chance for graduate students to share their written work with a professional in the field and receive invaluable feedback and advice as they work to improve their writing and shift from conference papers to publications. This year, we have the honor of having Rachel Haywood Ferreira host our workshop. You do not need to register ahead, simply bring a paper in progress to the conference in order to participate in the workshop.
Comments Off on 2019 IAFA Crawford Award and Shortlist Announced
2019 IAFA Crawford Award and Shortlist Announced
The winner of the 2018 Crawford Award, presented annually by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts for a first book of fantasy, is R.F Kuang for her novel The Poppy War (Harper Voyager).
The other finalists on this year’s Crawford shortlist are The Black God’s Drums, P. Djèlí Clark (Tor.com), Armed in Her Fashion, Kate Heartfield (ChiZine),
The Breath of the Sun, Rachel Fellman (Aqueduct), Half-Witch, John Schoffstall (Big Mouth House), and Trail of Lightning, Rebecca Roanhorse (Saga).
Participating in this year’s nomination and selection process were previous Crawford winner Candas Jane Dorsey and former IAFA president Farah Mendlesohn, as well as Cheryl Morgan, Niall Harrison, Karen Burnham, and Mimi Mondal. The award will be presented at a banquet March 16 during the 40th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts in Orlando, Florida.
Also at the banquet, the IAFA’s Distinguished Scholarship Award will be presented to the conference’s guest scholar, Mark Bould. The International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, or ICFA, is held annually in Orlando, Florida. This year’s conference, March 13-16, on the theme of “Politics and Conflict,” will feature G. Willow Wilson as Guest of Honor.
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CALL FOR APPLICANTS FOR CONFERENCE DIRECTOR
Appointed Position, Effective March 17, 2019
IAFA seeks applicants for the position of Conference Director of the ICFA. The Conference Director is an appointed, voting member of the IAFA Board of Directors. Qualified candidates ideally should have experience with all phases of conference planning, including site inspections for potential sites, negotiation with hotels, and managing the conference on site. In addition, the Conference Director must attend the June Board meeting as well as conduct a site visit ten days prior to the conference.
The specific duties of the Conference Director are as follows:
General Overview
Make all necessary arrangements for the holding of the IAFA annual conference, including, but not limited to hotel site inspection and selection with Board approval, negotiation of all contracts with hotels with Board approval; providing for the physical needs of the annual conference and the annual Board of Directors meeting.
Time Line and Outline of Duties
The Conference Chair position requires year-round work on IAFA matters, and a planning cycle that looks 3-5 years into the future to ensure that appropriate contracts are in place for upcoming conferences. The contract negotiation duties encompass providing for meeting rooms, guest rooms, meal functions, and the maintenance of concessions in support of our event from the hotel (currently these include a reception, suites, upgrades, and complementary room nights). The negotiated contract must be approved by the Board and be consistent with current IAFA operations.
The Conference Director is responsible for inspecting and securing all physical spaces needed for the conference and for the summer Board meeting; investigating alternative properties, as directed by the Board; planning the annual conference budget; planning the menus and prices for conference food functions; making hotel reservations for major guests; managing all ongoing relations with the hotel, including guest rooms; negotiating an overflow hotel as needed; and monitoring food and beverage commitments leading up to and at the conference, adjusting as needed. The Conference Director must attend the conference each year and be available to make adjustments in any of these matters and otherwise troubleshoot, as required. The Conference Director is responsible for reviewing the account with the hotel and making any required payments at the end of each conference.
How to Apply
Application should include a cover letter, a one-page statement of previous event planning experience with an emphasis on budgeting and managing relationships with hotels, and a letter of reference from someone familiar with the candidate’s work in these capacities.
Please send all materials to Sherryl Vint, IAFA President, at sherryl.vint@gmail.com.
Applications are due February 20, 2019. The Board will review applications and make a selection prior to the start of the 2019 conference. The new Conference Director will be announced at the conclusion of that conference, with duties to commence immediately for the 2020 conference cycle.
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ICFA 40 “Politics and Conflict”
When: March 13–17, 2019
Where: Marriott Orlando Airport Hotel, Orlando, Florida, USA
Guest Scholar: Mark Bould (University of the West of England)
Guest Author: G. Willow Wilson (Ms. Marvel, Alif the Unseen)
Cost: Regular registration ($135 for nonstudent registrants, $55 for students) closes on January 30. Note that the Friday Guest Scholar lunch is included with your registration fee. The other meals cost extra.
Late registration closes on February 22. After that you must sign up on site.
Hotel update: The conference hotel is SOLD OUT. Thank you to all who support the conference by choosing to stay at the Marriott! However, we have negotiated a block of rooms at the conference rate of $140/night at the nearby Sheraton. The rate is good March 13 to 17. The last day to book is February 13.
Comments Off on CFP: Open Topic Comics Panel at American Literature Association 2019, Boston, MA, May 23-26, 2019
Open Topic Comics Panel at American Literature Association 2019
deadline for submissions:
January 28, 2019
full name / name of organization:
Comics and Graphic Narratives Circle at the American Literature Association
contact email:
aberinger@montevallo.edu
Comics & Graphic Narrative Circle
American Literature Association
30th Annual Conference
May 23-26, 2019
Westin Copley Place
10 Huntington Avenue Boston, MA 02116
Call for Papers:
The Comics & Graphic Narrative Circle welcomes abstracts for an open topic panelat the 2019 ALA conference in Boston. We especially encourage proposals that highlight new directions and trends in the study of American comics, graphic novels, webcomics and other forms of graphic narrative. Established and emerging scholars are invited to apply.
Please email an abstract (of no more than 350 words) and a brief biographical note to Alex Beringer (aberinger@montevallo.edu)no later than Jan 28th.
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Conference on Narrative Games
deadline for submissions:
February 22, 2019
full name / name of organization:
Stefan Hall / High Point University
contact email:
shall@highpoint.edu
Conference on Narrative Games
Keynote Speaker: Rachel Noel Williams (Narrative Designer at Obsidian Entertainment, Lead Narrative Designer at Telltale Games, and Narrative Writer at Riot Games)
Over the history of game design, a fundamental consideration for creators is the inclusion of narrative. Some might consider the introduction of narrative in game design as radical as the introduction of sound into film. Not all games require, or even benefit from, a narrative. For those games that involve narrative – from merely situating a player to deeply involving the player in the creation of a narrative experience – this inclusion can influence the games in a multitude of ways. Through the interrelation of interactivity principles, game mechanics, and narrative elements, games can tell stories in a way no other medium can. The success of recent games such as Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead, Guerrilla Games’ Horizon Zero Dawn, and Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us delivered narratively immersive experiences for their players. Long-running franchises from Zork to King’s Quest to The Legend of Zelda have narratives that not only span multiple games but also other media such as novels, comic books, and televisual productions.
To celebrate all the ways that games incorporate, create, and advance narrative, the Game & Interactive Media Design Program at High Point University (High Point, NC) is hosting a conference on narrative games. Soliciting a wide variety of perspectives on all types of narrative games – not just video games but tabletop games, board games, card games, wargaming, and more – this conference aims to both interrogate and celebrate the interplay of games and narrative.
Topics may include, but are not limited to:
Balancing player agency within a narrative-driven game
Franchise reboots and the impact on narrative history (such as Gears of War IV (2016) or God of War (2018))
Player Reception
Players’ interpretation co-construction of interactive narratives
Physical and cognitive aspects of narrative interactivity
Game worlds and cultures
Game narratives in larger society
Casual games, interactive text-based narratives, exploration and walking simulators, and other narrative-driven games outside of mainstream deployment/reception
Story-telling through environment and asset design
Transmedia storytelling, particularly engagement with game narrative across multiple media platforms (e.g. The Walking Dead as part of a large franchise)
Intersectional discussions of representation of characters and cultures
Encouraging values through narrative design
Abstracts should range from 250-500 words and include a sample bibliography.
Abstracts should be directed to any of the four members of the conference committee:
Dr. Stefan Hall – shall@highpoint.edu
Dr. Kris Bell – kbell@highpoint.edu
Dr. Kelly Tran – ktran@highpoint.edu
Mr. Brian Heagney – bheagney@highpoint.edu
Please indicate “Narrative Game Conference 2019” in the email header.
Conference presentations should be 20 minutes in length. Please note any AV needs in your abstract submission.
Deadline for submissions: Friday, February 22nd
Acceptance notifications: Friday, March 1st
Conference: Friday-Sunday, April 12-14th
Registration fee: $40 for faculty, $20 for students (payable on site)
The Game & Interactive Media Design program is housed within the Nido R. Qubein School of Communication at High Point University (HPU). The program was named a Top 50 Game Design program in 2017 by the Princeton Review. HPU is located in High Point, NC, which is part of the Piedmont Triad including Greensboro and Winston-Salem. High Point is a short ride from the Piedmont Triad International airport (GSO) in Greensboro, the city is directly serviced by Amtrak, and is easily accessible from I-40 by car. The program also benefits from its close proximity to the Research Triangle which houses major development studios including Epic Games, Red Storm Entertainment, and Insomniac East.
Comments Off on CFP: Gothic Feminism 3: Technology, Women and Gothic-Horror On-Screen
Gothic Feminism 3: Technology, Women and Gothic-Horror On-Screen
deadline for submissions: February 15, 2019
full name / name of organization: Dr Tamar Jeffers McDonald, University of Kent
contact email: t.jeffers-mcdonald@kent.ac.uk
Gothic Feminism presents:
Technology, Women, and Gothic-Horror On-Screen
2 – 3 May 2019
University of Kent
Keynote speaker: Dr Lisa Purse (University of Reading)
CALL FOR PAPERS
Gothic and technology appear, on the surface, to evoke contradictory connotations. As David Punter and Glennis Byron highlight, the Gothic came to be a term associated with the “ornate and convoluted”, “excess and exaggeration, the product of the wild and the uncivilized, a world that constantly tended to overflow cultural boundaries” (Punter and Byron, 2004, 7). Technology, on the other hand, is a term often linked to science, innovation and progressive invention. If the Industrial Revolution is emblematic of what one imagines a technological revolution to be, then technology becomes synonymous with the associations defining 18th Century culture, described by Terry Castle as “the period as an age of reason and enlightenment – the aggressively rationalist imperatives of the epoch” (Castle, 1995, 8).
Yet technology and the Gothic have been linked and have interacted since the latter’s beginnings in fiction. From the earliest reception of the original novels that give our Gothic films their name, fans and critics alike referred to the “machinery” of the narratives, implying that that the mechanisms that made them go were audible. Clara Reeve, who wrote The Old English Baron – itself is a tad creaky – commented on The Castle of Otranto that “the machinery is so violent, that it destroys the effect it is intended to excite” (Reeve, 2008, 3). And Horace Walpole, himself, made reference to the story’s “engine” (Walpole, 2014, 6). The Gothic can thus be conceptualised as metaphorically mechanical, a link explored within a different context by Jack Halberstam who writes that “Gothic fiction is a technology of subjectivity … designed to produce fear and desire within the reader” (Halberstam, 1995, 2).
Technology and the Gothic have also intersected in more literal terms, as with the horror created by the intersection of the two in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). On the one hand, the novel stands as a canonical Gothic text, and Ellen Moers argues that the story can be defined as the Female Gothic, a term commonly associated with the women-in-peril narratives which later saw the influence of Gothic literature translated onto the cinema screen in Hollywood during the 1940s. On the other hand, the tale of an unnatural and scientific birth is credited with establishing the generic tropes of science fiction, a mode of storytelling which is indebted to technology and acknowledges “contemporary scientific knowledge and the scientific method”, as Barry Keith Grant suggests. He also continues: “Science fiction, quite unlike fantasy and horror, works to entertain alternative possibilities” (Grant, 2004, 17). However, Fred Botting notes that the combining of science fiction and Gothic – two “generic monsters” – reveals a “a long and interwoven association” whereby both genres “give form to a sense of otherness, a strangeness that is difficult to locate” (Botting, 2008, 131).
Our conference aims to explore this relationship between technology and the Gothic by focussing upon its intersection as depicted on screen within visual media, with a specific focus on how such concerns impact on gender representations and, in particular, women. This connection may be explored figuratively: the “machinery” identified in Gothic fiction can also be extended to the filmic Gothics which centre upon the Gothic heroine. The Hollywood 1940s Gothics possess noticeably excessive convolutions of plot, as with Sleep, My Love (1948), and one could argue this trend has continued in contemporary returns to the Old Dark House and horror with films like Crimson Peak(2015). Technology may also be physically present within these Gothic-horror films. If the “machinery is so violent” in Crimson Peak’s narrative, then this is additionally foregrounded within the diegesis: Thomas Sharpe’s engine for extracting the red clay from the ground stands as both a metaphor for the genre’s mechanical plot – drawing on familiar tropes which unearth deadly secrets – as well as functioning as a visual spectacle around which the climax of the film shall take place.
Actual mechanical or technological inventions which impact upon the story may be wide-ranging: the railway, cars, telephones, recording devices, electric light and gaslight are just some examples of technologies integrated into the narratives of Gothic films, often with the intention of contributing to the imperilment and oppression of the central heroine. Technology can also do this by evoking the uncanny, itself a phenomenon which forms “the background and indeed the modus operandi of much Gothic fiction” (Punter and Byron, 2004, 286). Tom Gunning demonstrates this when he recounts several versions in early cinema of a woman-in-jeopardy story, Heard Over the Phone, which could almost be Gothic in that the woman is in her own home and menaced there by a male assailant. Drawing on Freud’s musings upon the ambivalent nature of technology, Gunning highlights the ambiguous – and uncanny – position of the telephone: it is a device which brings the absent near through sound, but actually this serves only to underline the actual distances involved. Gothic-type narratives, gender, and technology merge in these early films to reveal “the darker aspects of the dream world of instant communication and the annihilation of space and time” (Gunning, 1991, 188).
More recent Gothic and Gothic-horror films may update these technologies to include computers, the Internet and mobile phones. Technology also includes film and the moving image itself: this conference will explore how filmic technologies mediate and emphasise the connection between technology, the Gothic, and gender, including through the use of visual effects. Film is a particularly apt medium through which to contemplate these ideas as cinema’s ontology embodies both technology’s scientific roots and the Gothic’s appeal to excess and the supernatural. As Murray Leeder notes: “With its ability to record and replay reality and its presentation of images that resemble the world but as intangible half-presences, cinema has been described as a haunted or ghostly medium from early on” (Leeder, 2015, 3).
These ideas may also be explored by expanding upon the original notion of Moer’s Female Gothic: if the literary Female Gothic is defined by female writers working in this mode, then this conference would also like to explore how female filmmakers have made use of Gothic-horror conventions. It is significant to note that the most iconic examples of Gothic films focusing on stories about the victimisation of women, particularly in the 1940s, were directed by men. By thinking about the technology behind the screen, this event will also consider what influence women filmmakers have had upon this tradition, including within present day, and what further reflections may be offered between this relationship of the Gothic to gender and technology.
With this third annual Gothic Feminism conference, we invite scholars to respond to the theme of technology in the woman-in-jeopardy strand of the Gothic and Gothic-horror film or television.
Topics can include but are not limited to:
– the tension between Gothic and technology as the supernatural, fantastic and paranoia versus the rational, reason and logic. How do these elements intersect with the representation of gender in film and television?
– the traditions of the Gothic heroine on-screen and her interaction with technology. Does technology help the female character or is it another agent of terror used against her?
– the technology behind the screen. How have female filmmakers used the genres of Gothic-horror to express themselves?
– the technology of the screen. How has the technology of cinema, including visual effects, been used, and how do these aspects interact with the representation of the central female protagonist/s?
Please submit proposals of 500 words, along with a short biographical note (250 words) to gothicfeminism2016@gmail.com by Friday 15th February 2019.
We welcome 20-minute conference papers as well as submissions for creative work or practice-as-research including, but not limited to, short films and video essays.
Conference organisers: Frances A. Kamm and Tamar Jeffers McDonald
This conference is the third annual event from the Gothic Feminism project, working with the Melodrama Research Group in the Centre of Film and Media Research at the University of Kent. Gothic Feminism explores the representation of the Gothic heroine on-screen in her various incarnations.