International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts

Glitches and Ghosts – An Interdisciplinary Conference – 17th April

deadline for submissions: February 17, 2019full name / name of organization: Lancaster Universitycontact email: k.dodd@lancaster.ac.uk

Glitches are moments of disruption; they represent the exposure of technical process, moving away from the binaries of input and output to consider what comes in-between. The growing ubiquity of interconnected systems prompts a desire to understand such intangible networks around the user, an attempt to try and engage with these digital phenomena as alternate forms of ‘presence’ that cannot help but recourse to anthropocentric terms – virus, cloud, render ghost. The frequent ethereality of such language attempts to visualise, embody, and comprehend the profusion of technical systems that we share the atmosphere with, their very terming gesturing to their spectral protrusion into, ostensibly, ‘our’ reality. The eruption of pixels, voxels, and glitches haunts our peripheral vision, a deceptive representation of a far more intangible sphere.

‘Glitches and Ghosts’ seeks to diagnose and analyse contemporary cultural fascinations with the emergence of these digital artefacts, and how their spectral presence has come to define our current technological moment. This symposium aims to bring together researchers who are enticed by the prospect of re-conceptualising definitions of digital-based ontologies as a paradigm to engage with an era of technophobic anxieties and technophilic domination.

We are delighted to announce Dr. Will Slocombe as our keynote. Will’s research ranges between various aspects of twentieth and twenty-first century literature, focusing primarily on Science Fiction (particularly representations of Artificial Intelligence), Postmodernism, and metafictions of experimental literature. His upcoming book Emergent Patterns: Artificial Intelligence and the Structural Imagination is due out in 2019.

We welcome abstracts for 20 minute papers which engage with the confluence of glitches and ghosts within any medium or form. Suggested topics include:

• Digital art – glitch aesthetics, pixels, voxels, drone shadows, distortion etc. 
• Détournement and system subversion – e.g. hacker ‘heroes’ and neoliberal dissent.
• Technophobia – network alienation and technological anxieties. 
• Glitch and/or ghosts in music – synthwave, sampling, remixes, etc.
• Cloud spectrality, unseen network presences and how we visualise them. 
• Ghosts in the machine, electronic voice phenomenon, white noise etc. 
• Render ghosts, digital advertising and the disruption of imagined ontologies. 
• Doppelgangers, sample image databases and the ‘ownership’ of personal data. 
• Unshackled virtual consciousness, e.g. A.I. and the breaking of constraints.
• Disruption of the virtual – glitches, bugs, cheats and other subversions. 
• Digital spectres – eternal or lingering existence within the network. 
• Viral anxieties and data transmission; conceptualisations of network ‘presence’. 
• Secular digitalities, virtual ‘gods’ or spirits and ontological transcendence.
• Permanence and/or ephemerality of data, system collapse and user anxiety.
• Creative practice and the deployment of glitches and/or ghosts within media. 
• Remixed ontologies, disruption of identity boundaries and bricolage forms. 
• Omnipresent networks, ‘invasive’ devices (i.e. Alexa) and disconnection.
• Machine learning and emergent behaviour from algorithmic structures.

Please submit a 300 word abstract to glitchconference@gmail.com with a 50 word bio-note by 17th February 
#glitchesandghosts #glitchconference @GlitchGhosts

Call for Papers

An edited volume on

CONTEMPORARY INDIGENOUS POPULAR CULTURE ACROSS THE GLOBE

Editors: Svetlana Seibel and Kati Dlaske

Indigenous Popular Culture is currently one of the fastest-growing fields of contemporary cultural production in the United States and Canada, but also other regions across the globe. Indigenous artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, and entrepreneurs of all walks of life proliferate increasingly on the contemporary popular cultural landscape in all its various incarnations, from popular fiction to animation to the fashion world. Diverse Indigenous practitioners of the popular throughout the world not only intervene powerfully into the landscape of popular culture and representation—a cultural field which is notorious for its various appropriations and misrepresentations of Indigenous people and cultures—but also draw attention to the pressing social and political challenges which Indigenous communities are facing today. With its ever expanding scope, Indigenous popular culture harnesses the vibrant and mutable energies of popular culture, fan culture, and geek culture in order to not only indigenize the cultural field of the popular, but also to advance Indigenous cultural archives in a multiplicity of forms. Thus, Indigenous popular culture is not only a field of a dynamic creative expression, but often also in one way or another stands in dialogue with contemporary Indigenous activist groups and causes working towards the goal of decolonization and Indigenous resurgence.

The proposed volume seeks to bring together researchers and practitioners of Indigenous popular culture in order to illustrate the cultural vibrancy, complexity, and importance of this flourishing field. We therefore invite contributions from academics as well as artists, entrepreneurs, event organizers, cos players etc. Contributions may focus on any aspect of Indigenous popular culture in any of the geographic areas throughout the globe.

Academic articles should be 6000-8000 words in length. Contributions by practitioners of Indigenous popular culture can be of artistic/creative/analytical/(self)reflexive nature and allow for wider variation in scope, i.e. could be as short as one page (text, comic strip, image, etc.). Please send an abstract of 300-500 words for an academic article, a short description up to 500 words for other kinds of contribution, plus a short biography to indigenouspopculture@gmail.com by December 31, 2018. The completed first draft of the articles/contributions will be due on March 1, 2019. The academic papers will go through a peer review process, the volume will be published prospectively in 2021 with Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

Please click here for more information.

Reading Reality through Science Fiction

deadline for submissions:
June 1, 2019

full name / name of organization:
University Stefan cel Mare of Suceava, 13 University Street, 720229 Suceava, Romania

contact email:
onoriucolacel@litere.usv.ro

Reading Reality through Science Fiction

The academic journal Messages, Sages and Ages (http://www.msa.usv.ro/), based at the English Department, University of Suceava, Romania, invites contributions for an issue on “science fiction as reality-check”; the theme issue is guest edited by Roberto Paura (University of Perugia, Italy).

As speculative fiction, science fiction (SF) in literature and film has proved able to lay bare the contradictions of modernity’s techno-utopian projects far ahead of its time, prompting readers to reflect on the relationship between humankind and technological civilization. Over seventy years ago, in his robot stories Isaac Asimov anticipated today’s debate on the relationship between automation and technological unemployment. In the Cold War years, post-apocalyptic fiction played a decisive role in making exceedingly clear the dangers of nuclear war as well as in stimulating reflection on its likely long-term consequences. In the 1960s and 70s, the emphasis on the issues of overpopulation and the ecological bomb influenced the rise of the ecological movement. In the 80s, the cyberpunk scene foreshadowed the pervasive social impact of cyberspace on our lives, examining the emergence of large corporations based on the power of big data. Today, at the core of SF lie 1) climate change (i.e. ‘climate fiction’ – Kim Stanley Robinson), 2) the boundary between reality and simulation (i.e. Matrix and Westworld), 3) the pitfalls of the digital age (i.e. The Circle, Black Mirror), 4) the trade-off between opportunity and risk in the context of genetic engineering (i.e. Jeff VanderMeer, Annalee Newtiz or Paolo Bacigalupi) and 5) the rise of post-human species (i.e. Charles Stross, Greg Egan or Altered Carbon).

Therefore, in our effort to come to terms with SF’s popularity and broad reach, we ask: what do we learn from SF narratives? How can SF novels, movies and TV-series be used as a ‘reality-check’ for the whims and desires of western culture?

We invite submission on topics including, but not limited to:

– Anthropocene in contemporary SF

– SF and transhumanism

– Climate fiction

– Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction

– Technological existential risks in contemporary fiction

– Technological unemployment in SF

– SF and futures studies

– The images of science in contemporary SF

– SF and contemporary philosophy (i.e. hyperobjects)

– SF as postmodern literature

We welcome original papers in English and invite proposals (no more than 9,000 words) from senior as well as junior academics. The blinded manuscript, abstract (cca. 200 words) with 5 keywords and a brief curriculum vitae (cca. 300 words) should be in Word and PDF format. Each electronic copy must be sent by email attachment to: msa@usv.ro AND msa_usv@hotmail.com.

Deadline: June 1, 2019.

Fan Cultures and the Premodern World

History Faculty, University of Oxford, 5-6 July 2019

Following the success of the July 2018 colloquium, we are announcing a conference “Fan Cultures and the Premodern World” to be held at Oxford on 5 and 6 July 2019. We welcome proposals on various aspects of premodern (ancient, medieval, early modern) culture which can be better understood through the lens of the modern phenomena of fanfic, cosplay, celebrity studies, LARP, gaming etc. Questions discussed may include but are not limited to:

– Premodern authors as fanboys and fangirls

– Intersectionality and fandom

– The “dark side” of fandom – negative consequences of fannish devotion, including backlash to changes in canonical fan works

– Media as message(s) – the impact of media type on fandom and fan communities

– Game as a spiritual experience

– “Democratisation” of narrative

– Canon, fanon, sequels and adaptations

– Authorial self-inserts

– Theories of fanfiction and how they intersect or intervene in conversations around premodern texts, authorship and readership

– Scholars as fans

– Politics of co-opting another’s identity

– Readers as (re-)writers

– Cosplay as a part of ritual

Please send your proposals (of about 250 words) by 15 March to Juliana.dresvina@history.ox.ac.uk

For more information, please click here.

ACCSFF ‘19
Call for Papers

The 2019 Academic Conference on Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy will be held Friday and Saturday, June 7-8, 2019, in Toronto, Ontario, at the Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy, one of the most important collections of fantastic literature in the world.

We invite proposals for papers in any area of Canadian science fiction and fantasy, including:

-studies of individual works and authors;
-comparative studies;
-studies that place works in their literary and/or
cultural contexts.

Papers may be about Canadian works in any medium: literature, film, graphic novels and comic books, and so on. For studies of the audio-visual media, preference will be given to discussions of works produced in Canada or involving substantial Canadian creative contributions.

Papers should be no more than 20 minutes long, and geared toward a general as well as an academic audience. Please submit proposals (max. 2 pages), preferably by email, to:

Dr. Allan Weiss
Department of English
York University
4700 Keele St.
Toronto, ON M3H 3N4
aweiss@yorku.ca

Deadline: February 1, 2019

Glasgow International Fantasy Conversations

Mapping the Mythosphere

23rd-24th May 2019

In her novel The Game (2007) Diana Wynne Jones speaks of the ‘Mythosphere’, an expanding system of inter-related narratives ‘made up of all the stories, theories and beliefs, legends, myths and hopes, that are generated here on Earth […] constantly growing and moving as people invent new tales to tell or find new things to believe’. Fantasy as a mode or genre can be said both to draw on this organic system and to show an intense awareness of the links between its many roots and branches. Whether we approach the Fantastic through the study of written literature, the visual arts, games, journalism, internet culture or film and television theory, a close study of its workings enables us to better understand the dominant strands of Jones’s Mythosphere and to explore its rapidly widening outer limits. Sometimes refusing to endorse the subjective values and cultural commitments that sustain contemporary ideologies, sometimes imaginatively confirming them with its own misguided rebellions, the Mythosphere is an expanding web of intertextual narratives which we are all both producers and products of. Over the course of the 23rd and 24th of May 2019, Glasgow International Fantasy Conversations (GIFCon) seeks to celebrate all aspects of critical and creative work that help to map-out this intricate network of intersecting narratives.

Constantly disrupting genres and disintegrating the designations of canonicity, Fantasy delights in breaking down borders and defying expectations, a fact supported by numerous contemporary scholarly studies. For instance, Celtic mythology emerges transformed from the pages of twenty-first century children’s literature in the work of the University of Glasgow’s own Dimitra Fimi, while Darryl Jones points out that the Fantastic ‘slasher’ film’s obsession with violence and gore can be found in both classical sculpture and Christian artworks from as early as the twelfth century. As such writers have shown, Fantasy draws connections through history, geography and the full range of representational media, upsetting and questioning everything as it does so by exploring and reinventing every corner of our psyches, philosophies and societies. Driven by the desire to imagine the impossible, spurred on by radical shifts in politics, economics, technology and available means of communication, Fantasy has become the language of our time, the aptest means of tracing, altering and extending the contours of the myths and stories we live by.

GIFCon 2019 is a two-day symposium that seeks to examine and honour the relationships between the different strands of Fantasy and the individual Fantastic works that make up the Mythosphere, be they books, films, games or comics. We welcome proposals for papers relating to this theme from researchers and practitioners working in the field of Fantasy and the Fantastic across all media, whether within the academy or beyond it. We are particularly interested in submissions from postgraduate and early career researchers.

It is worth noting that GIFCon uses a broad definition of Fantasy, so if you are unsure whether your topic would be of interest to Fantasy scholars and academics, please do submit your abstract and we can help decide this. We will also offer workshops in creative writing for those interested in exploring the creative process.

We ask for 300-word abstracts for 20-minute papers, as well as creative presentations that go beyond the traditional academic paper. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

The concept of ‘the mythosphere’ itself, its history or critical analysis
Intersections, connections, or relationships between Fantasy authors and/or Fantastic texts
Challenges to boundaries, whether of genre, canonicity, or narrative medium
Authors’ self-reflective theorising of Fantasy and the Fantastic
Fear of or hostility to Fantasy and the Fantastic
Mythology, folktales & legends, both traditional and in their more modern forms of expression such as games or comics
Fantasy narratives in games and the implementation of virtual worlds
Modern myths, urban legends etc.
Literary/artistic lineages
Translations, adaptations and adaptation theory (particularly adaptations from one media form to another)
Fantasy and the Internet (such as Creepypasta or the Slenderman mythos)
Speculation about what lies beyond the Mythosphere’s cultural, psychological or cognitive boundaries (i.e. the Unknown)
Geographies and politics of the Fantastic (such as in Discworld, Narnia or Middle Earth)
Fantasy literature/art as subversive (or, indeed, as restrictive)

Submission deadline is Monday, 14th of January 2019, at 23:00!

Click here for more information.