International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts

THE AMERICAN WEIRD:
ECOLOGIES & GEOGRAPHIES
(Call for Papers)

“The one test of the really weird is simply this—whether or not there be excited in the reader a profound sense of dread, and of contact with unknown spheres and powers.”
—H.P. Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature” (1927)

“This whole world’s wild at heart and weird on top.”
—David Lynch, Wild at Heart (1990)

For H.P. Lovecraft, the weird conveys “a subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes and entities on the known universe’s utmost rim.” Taking its cue from Lovecraft’s enduringly influential conceptualization, this conference examines and broadens the notion of weirdness towards an ecology and geography of the weird as a new field of theoretical and practical resonances. What we call THE AMERICAN WEIRD comprises not only an aesthetics evoked by literary practices or films from the genres of the gothic or horror, but also by other forms of cultural expression, such as music, sculpture, photography, and performance art. The conference theme also aims to address new theoretical perspectives on humanity’s relation to the world, perspectives that have recently been proposed by what might be called the “new demonologists” (e.g. Graham Harman, Eugene Thacker, and others).

Against the backdrop of new ontologies and epistemologies of the weird, the following questions will form the conceptual backbone of THE AMERICAN WEIRD: What are the ecologies and geographies of the weird today, and how are they conceived, perceived, and reworked? Which strands of contemporary critical theory and philosophy have engaged in a dialogue with the discourses of and on the weird, and what is specifically “American” in THE AMERICAN WEIRD? If weirdness is more than a mere index of parody and/or subversion, how might one conceive of a politics or an ethics of the weird?

These and related questions on THE AMERICAN WEIRD will be explored in a three-day conference at the University of Göttingen. Possible topics, which can come from different genres, historical periods, and/or media include, but are not restricted to:

– American literature from Charles Brockden Brown and Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories to the authors of “the new weird,” like Jeff VanderMeer, China Miéville, and Thomas Ligotti. What are the aspects and intricacies of the literary evolution of the weird in America? What is specifically American about this evolution? What has changed in weird literature since the publication of Lovecraft’s essay on “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” on both a poetic and political level?
– the sculptural work of artists such as Lydia Benglis, Louise Bourgeois, Charles Ray, and others. How does this type of artistic practice negotiate normativities and weirdness? How do the materials, size, and content matter of their art contribute to the way they subvert viewing habits and expectations?
– the music of THE AMERICAN WEIRD, from the musical instruments of Harry Partch, via artists like Tom Waits or Mike Patton, all the way to the tunes of Joanna Newsom and the “New Weird America” or “Freak Folk” movement, and the protagonists of so-called “outsider music” such as Daniel Johnston or Wesley Willis. What exactly is necessary to make music weird or “outsider”? Is it the actual music, the self-presentation of the artists, their perception (or lack thereof), their non-affiliation with the industry?
– the photography of Diane Arbus, Cindy Sherman, and others. What are the liminal spaces that open up between the camera’s alleged “reality effect” and evocations of weird America and its “freaks”? How does Sherman challenge notions like subjectivity and objectivity and what effects and affects are contained in her “vomit pictures”?
– the eco art, land art, or bio art of Robert Smithson, Joe Davis, and others. How do these practices expand the notion of what counts as art, where it begins and ends? What and where are the locales in which it takes place, grows, and decays? Does the participation of plants or bacteria in a dynamic artwork redistribute agencies in the process of creating art and constitute a truly hybrid mode of being beyond the nature-culture divide?
– the filmic visions of Tod Browning, David Lynch, David Cronenberg, and others, as well as recent TV-series that resonate with the aesthetics of the weird, such as True Detective, The Walking Dead, and Stranger Things. How to film the weird? Is there a moving image of American weirdness?
– the comics and graphic novels of Robert Crumb, Charles Burns, Daniel Clowes, and others. How to picture THE AMERICAN WEIRD in separate panels and what is specific about this kind of narrating weirdness?
– the different theoretical approaches which assess the cultural productions of THE AMERICAN WEIRD, from subcultural discourses to contemporary materialism, ecocriticism, and realism. What is the function of the weird as a concept vis-à-vis notions of the uncanny, the grotesque, the abject, and the carnivalesque? What are the milieus, theories, histories, and practices of THE AMERICAN WEIRD?

We invite scholars of American studies and related fields such as cultural studies, film and media studies, comparative literature, art history, and philosophy to submit a short abstract (approx. 300 words) and a short bio-statement by August 15, 2017 to the conference organizers Julius Greve (julius.greve@uni-oldenburg.de) and Florian Zappe (florian.zappe@phil.uni-goettingen.de). The conference will take place from April 12-14, 2018 at the University of Göttingen and is organized by the North American Section of the English Department in cooperation with the Institute for English and American Studies of the University of Oldenburg.

Imagining the History of the Future: Unsettling Scientific Stories
27-29th March, 2018 | University of York, UK

The future just isn’t what it used to be… not least because people keep changing it. Recent years have seen a significant growth of academic and public interest in the role of the sciences in creating and sustaining both imagined and enacted futures. Technological innovations and emergent theoretical paradigms gel and jolt against abiding ecological, social, medical or economic concerns: researchers, novelists, cartoonists, civil servants, business leaders and politicians assess and estimate the costs of planning for or mitigating likely consequences. The trouble is that thinking about the future is a matter of perspective: where you decide to stand constrains what you can see

With confirmed plenary speakers Professor Sherryl Vint (University of California, Riverside, USA) and Professor Charlotte Sleigh (University of Kent, UK) this three-day conference will bring together scholars, practitioners, and activists to explore ways in which different visions of the future and its history can be brought into productive dialogue.

Focused on the long technological 20th Century (roughly, 1887-2007) and looking particularly at the intersections between fictional/narrative constructions of the future, expert knowledge, and institutional policy development, the themes of the conference will include but are not limited to:

The relationship between lay and expert futures, especially futures produced by communities marginalised in public dialogue by ethnicity, gender, sexuality, species or political orientation

How have different forms of fiction (novels, films, games, comics) created different visions of what’s to come? How have their audiences responded to and shaped them?

The role of counterfactuals/alternate histories, as well as factional accounts and popular science: how have different forms of writing positioned the future?

What’s the relationship between past and present scenario planning in government or commerce? How have they fed into wider cultural conceptions of impending developments?

Disciplinary influences: how have different academic disciplines – sciences, humanities, arts, social sciences – fed into developing futures? Has this changed over time?

The role of futures past: how can we recover them, and what do they tell us about futures present? What are the forgotten or marginalised sites of future-making

How have different themes – time, the apocalypse, the individual, among others – changed over the last century of future-thinking?

We invite proposals based broadly on these themes. Individual papers should take the form of 20 minute presentations, but we would also be delighted to consider three or four paper panel submissions on a related topic, workshops or round-table discussions.

Proposals for individual papers should include an abstract of no more than 250 words, together with a short author biography (100 words). Panel proposals should also include a short (150 words) commentary on the overall theme. Please email proposals to unsettling-science@york.ac.uk (as email attachments in Word format) by FRIDAY 15th SEPTEMBER. Authors will be notified of decisions by Friday 27th October. Prospective organisers of other formats should contact the steering committee by email as soon as possible to discuss possibilities.

Please direct all enquires to unsettling-science@york.ac.uk.

This is an Arts and Humanities Research Council funded event, run by the Unsettling Scientific Stories project based at the Universities of York, Aberystwyth and Newcastle.

Please click here for more information.

To mark the 200th anniversary, in 2018, of Mary Shelley’s novel, we invite articles for a special issue, examining the impact of Shelley’s creation on the development of sf. Following Brian Aldiss’ critical intervention in Billion Year Spree (1973), this is a relationship that has often been explored, so we would like to encourage contributions that investigate the afterlives of Shelley’s novel within the sf genre in new and innovative ways. Topics may include (but are not confined to) the following areas:

Critical and historiographical reassessments of the relationship between Frankenstein and sf
Re-workings/rewritings of the Frankenstein myth within contemporary sf
Performing Frankenstein on screen, stage and in music
The Frankenstein legend and contemporary portrayals of scientists
The Frankenstein myth and the popular communication of science
Adapting the Frankenstein story to new media – graphic novels, videogames, etc.
New and contemporary theoretical approaches to the Frankenstein myth
Mary Shelley and her creation in contemporary women’s sf

Articles should be approximately 6000 words long and written in accordance with the style sheet available at the SF Foundation website. The deadline for entries is Monday, 29th January 2018. Entries should be submitted to journaleditor@sf-foundation.org.

Please click here for more information.

Call for Papers: Special Issue of the European Journal of American Culture: American Horror Story

Guest Editors:
Harriet Earle, Sheffield Hallam University, UK
Jessica Clark, University of Suffolk, UK

This call for papers seeks submissions that engage with the television series American Horror Story (produced by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk) as part of a Special Issue for the European Journal of American Culture. Over six seasons (so far), American Horror Story has received massive popular and academic interest for its bold and often apposite reworkings of a wide range of cultural tropes and folk stories, set against uniquely American backgrounds and played out through a distinct cast of characters.

Papers should be between 6000-8000 words and the deadline for final submission is 31st January 2018.

Papers should be submitted to the Special Guest Editors Harriet Earle and Jessica Clark via AHSspecialissue@gmail.com.

Submissions to this journal could include, but are not limited to, critical interrogations of:
– Horror, supernatural and the gothic
– Fame and celebrity culture
– The development of American popular culture (i.e. television)
– Intersectionality, imagery and representation: femininity, masculinity, sexuality, disability, ethnicity, class, age, etc.
– Colonisation and Colonialism
– Immigration and the Melting Pot
– Madness and mad politics
– Emotion and affect
– Violence and/or sexual violence
– Queer bodies, identities and selves
– American Institutions and Institutionalisation
– Sex, sexual bodies and sexual pleasure/desire
– The American family
– Producing television: production, editing, soundtrack and aesthetics.
– Audience reception, review and fan production

The list is by no means exhaustive and we are happy to consider any piece which works with some/all of the current six series of American Horror Story or those which cross series boundaries with a strong thematic focus at their centre.

Please consult the European Journal of American Culture website (HERE) for more information about the journal and its formatting guidelines. This special issue follows the ethos of the European Journal of American Culture as a whole: we aim to reflect the interdisciplinary and international nature of contemporary studies of American Culture.

All authors are welcome to submit abstracts: from PhD candidates and early career researchers, to established academics. We look forward to receiving abstracts for consideration.

The series is due to be published in June 2018.

Publication schedule:
Submission of abstracts: 10th September 2017
Notification of abstract acceptance: 24th September 2017
Submission of full posts: 31st January 2018
Publication date: June 2018

Technofeminism: (Re)Generations and Intersectional Futures
Special issues of Computers and Composition and Computers and Composition Online

Deadline for proposals is July 1

Some of the most pivotal technofeminist work appeared in print in the mid-to-late-1990s, addressing gender/ed politics, design, and uses of technology, sexist behavior and feminist interventions online, women’s cyberspaces, and issues of power and representation. In the 20 years since this work emerged in computers and composition, have we kept the promises of those early works? How have we extended its values and visions? What technofeminist work remains to be done? How have changes in digital environments (e.g., the emergence of social media tools) shifted the context of technofeminist work?

We invite authors to submit a proposal for either a print manuscript to appear in a special issue of Computers and Composition or a webtext to appear in a special issue of Computers and Composition Online. Proposals might address issues including but not limited to:

● the state of technofeminism(s) and cyberfeminism(s) in rhetoric and composition today
● feminist principles that shape contemporary computers and writing culture, research, and practice
● intersectional feminisms and computers and writing theory, methodology, practice, and pedagogy
● issues of mentoring and intergenerational technofeminism
● approaches to feminist composing practices and pedagogies in/around/and online spaces
● intersections of feminism and queer, critical race, decolonial, and disability theories—and/or other cultural and social justice theories—in computers and writing
● explorations of post(techno)feminism/postrace/posthumanity
● discussions of feminism(s) and activism in digital spaces
● technofeminist responses to public policy
● revisits to early technofeminist concerns and tactics for contemporary import (e.g., is gendered technology still a thing? How is trolling and flaming an old and new concern? How is access an old and new concern? What feminist interventions are still effective? What else can we do?)

SPECIAL ISSUES TIMELINE
Timeline: Proposals due July 1, 2017; notification of acceptance on August 1, 2017; manuscript and webtext drafts due December 15, 2017

Proposal submission: Inquiries and questions are welcome; otherwise, please send your submissions to Jacqueline Rhodes (Michigan State University, jrhodes@msu.edu), Angela Haas (Illinois State University, ahaas@ilstu.edu), and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss (Michigan State University, devossda@msu.edu)

Anthropocene Responsibility

deadline for submissions:
July 31, 2017

full name / name of organization:
Chase Pielak, Ph.D. / Auburn University

contact email:
chasesdg@hotmail.com

Anthropocene Responsibility

We are seeking proposals of 500 words by July 31, 2017 for essays to be included in an edited collection on the possibilities of responsibility in the anthropocene era.

Does responsibility end in an apocalypse or does subjectivity somehow change as a result of it? We believe that the possibility ends in some form of shared subjectivity that dethrones anthropocentrism (following the arguments made by animal studies critics in the last decade, e.g. Matthew Calarco and Janelle Schwartz). Drawing from literary and film depictions of apocalypse, this book will imagine new approaches to responsibility in the Anthropocene in light of the possibilities or potentialities of apocalypse. These readings may well engage climate change, politics, culture broadly conceived, etc., however, we hope that they will be grounded in relevant texts and films.

From Mary Shelley’s The Last Man onward through The Walking Dead (and perhaps before or after) there runs an anthropocentricism-busting thread. The problematic of catastrophic apocalypse is that it invalidates, at its end, the possibility of responsibility—of responding—because it reduces the possible set of external beings to whom we might respond. When human animals cease to call out demanding recognition (or misrecognition), there seems to be no need to respond. The question is a serious one because Derrida and others would argue that responsibility is key for subjectivity, for perhaps even personhood (as in The Gift of Death and The Animal that Therefore I Am). Responsibility governs how we relate to other creatures, both of the human variety and other species, and perhaps even to things, as recent proponents of thing-theory might suggest. Or perhaps it is simply anthropocentrism that is posthumous.

The premise of the Anthropocene is that humans have become aware of the possibility that we will destroy our species. Through climate change, or Kellis-Amberlee virus, or (pick a poison here) we will cease to be as a species. This possibility, this imagined perhaps, becomes rather an extancy having been conceived, a birth before the fact, infecting the possibility of subjectivity. In effect, like Keats, we are already living a posthumous existence.

Some questions to consider might be:

How might we reimagine subjectivity in light of the Anthropocene possibilities of apocalypse, which seem to reduce the possibility of grounding subjectivity in radical responsibility?

How can we choose to live in the apocalypse and toward what end? The possibility of ethics, even apocalyptic ethics, seems to be invalidated.

Without responsibility how do we relate, and to what?

How might we respond to the last man case? (And does the presence of only one other human, real or imagined, change the case study?) Surely it must, as the possibility of responsibility moves from internal to external.

If we imagine the end of subjectivity, has it already ended? I.e. if a human can be imagined as irresponsible, as no longer a subject, might they in fact already be irresponsible?

For more information, please contact Chase Pielak (chasesdg@hotmail.com) or Deborah Christie (dchristi@odu.edu).

Call for Chapters: Philip K. Dick, Here and Now

Deadline for submissions: July 31, 2017

Full name: David Sandner, California State University, Fullerton

Contact email: dsandner@fullerton.edu

In Spring, 2016, California State University, Fullerton hosted a singular Philip K. Dick Conference, bringing scholars from around the world to the place where he left his manuscripts and papers. We currently seek chapter submissions to join the strong core work from the conference in an edited volume that reinvents the study of major American author Philip K. Dick now that he is considered to be a major 20th-century American author. Where previous scholarly collections set out to explain why we should read Dick, our collection interrogates why we must and do—why he has become a touchstone for our culture today.

Philip K. Dick, Here and Now reinitializes and extends the study of a major American sf author whose reputation has undergone a profound transformation since his death. At Dick’s death, exactly one work was in print—Bladerunner, the movie tie-in, with its original title in small letters underneath. Now? Everything is in print. The Library of America collects Dick’s novels and more, even the hard to find, once-unpublishable Exegesis, so important to Dick, that has received scant critical attention. We live in a phildickian present.

Our collection divides into two sections: Rebuilding PKD concentrates on new studies of Dick’s literary works from a wide variety of recent critical perspectives; Building an Icon reassesses Dick’s legacy from the vantage point of his extraordinary rise in reputation. We seek essays for either section, but are particularly interested in proposals for the first section grounded in new perspectives on Dick’s work through such critical lenses as trauma studies, ecocriticism, monster studies, cultural studies or, of course, theoretically grounded science fiction studies; or interrogating his representations of gender, race, or class; or reassessments of material culture or spatiality in Dick’s work. This list is by no means exhaustive or meant to be prescriptive and we are happy to consider any proposal which places new critical approaches to Dick’s work at its center.

We hope to include chapters by authors from a variety of disciplines and viewpoints, reflecting the contemporary study of Philip K. Dick and science fiction. Please submit a 500-word chapter abstract and a biography of no more than 250 words by July 31st to:

dsandner@fullerton.edu

All proposed abstracts will be given full consideration, and submission implies a commitment to publish in this volume if your work is selected for inclusion. If selected, complete chapters will be due by November 30th.

All questions regarding this volume should be directed to: dsandner@fullerton.edu

Our editorial team includes editor David Sandner and associate editors Jaime Govier and Christine Granillo. We look forward to receiving an exciting array of abstracts and to working with selected authors on this important project, aiming to offer imaginative ways of re-conceptualizing Philip K. Dick Studies across a variety of critical approaches.

Indie Games in the Digital Age (Anthology)

deadline for submissions:
July 1, 2017

full name / name of organization:
MJ Clarke CSULA, Cynthia Wang CSULA

contact email:
digitalindiegamesbook@gmail.com

The digital realm has reconfigured the ways in which production and consumption of games happen. Consider some prominent examples:

In May 2011, self-taught game developer Andrew Spinks released his own world-building game after only five months of production. The game, Terraria, now available on all major computing and gaming platforms, has sold over 20.5 million units, but is still only available through Spinks’s own publishing firm, Re-Logic.

In June 2013, student video game developer Toby Fox pitched his own project, Undertale, on the financing platform Kickstarter using the free-to-use production tool, gamemaker. After raising over $50,000 for his game, Fox’s Undertale sold over 2 million units before being named 2015 Game of the Year by several video game trade journals, including IGN.

In August 2012, the disillusioned pen-and-paper game developer Monte Cook left his job at the publisher of industry leader, Dungeons & Dragons, and pitched his own roleplaying system, Numenera, directly to fans in a Kickstarter campaign that earned over $500K. Subsequently, the game has become a brand-franchise spawning a series of spin-offs, novels and video games.

In November 2010, a group of high school friends from Chicago presented a version of their game, Cards Against Humanity, as a Kickstarter campaign. After surpassing its modest funding goal, the game sold over 500K units in the next three years and enabled its creators to generate a number of politically minded publicity stunts in the wake of Trump presidency.

In February 2016, two stay-at-home moms and escape room aficionados launched their Kickstarter campaign for a home-based, single-use escape room board game called Escape Room in a Box. They hit their goal of $19,000 within 14 hours, and were ultimately funded for over $130,000, necessitating shifting their game manufacturing plans from inviting friends to make the games by hand to looking at options for mass manufacturing. The two creators are working on a new game, and have created their own puzzle and games consulting company, The Wild Optimists.

In all these cases, creators have leveraged the ease and availability of networking through online platforms and, as a result, have forged paths to both creative and financial success previously unavailable. Traditional mass media and game publishing models have operated with high barriers to entry and high production costs, reinforcing capitalist power structures, wherein the richest, most privileged, most connected and the most culturally, socially and artistically normative have had the best chance to have their creative works made and exposed to a wide audience. And because mainstream board game companies like Mattel and Hasbro, as well as traditional video game companies such as Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony have presided over an oligarchical system, independent game makers historically have had limited chances to get their work in front of an audience without directly working with one of these gatekeepers.

Investigating the products and practices of indie game makers presents scholars with an opportunity to reconsider the debate over user-generated content and digital labor more broadly. How much does the dissolution of mainstream gaming’s production chokeholds on financing, marketing, distribution and production empower indie game makers to rethink cultural, economic and political models? Conversely, how are indie game makers potentially exploited by new media platforms that siphon off their biopolitical labor, reinforcing and re-interpellating them into traditional models of capitalism and power?

We are interested in contributions that both expand and problematize this binary by closely examining independent games and their makers as components of a distinct and emerging culture of production that often does imagine complexity in the economic, social and cultural decisions of its makers.

We seek contributions from scholars in media and video games studies, communications studies, anthropology and sociology, and any other associated disciplines who are interesting in developing grounded case studies of indie game makers; theoretical models of indie game work and / or style; historical examinations of developments within indie games; and critical analyses of particular indie game makers, formats or significant indie games titles. More specifically, we are interested in how indie games intersect with a wide array of concepts including (but not limited to):

Production, distribution, and labor

Collaborative circles, microcultures, and social movements

Financing, crowdfunding, and multiple market approaches

Game aesthetics and mechanics

Serious games, critical games, and critical gameplay

Social justice, community/coalition building, advocacy

Entrepreneurial & innovation theory

Informal media and “grey” markets

Digital affordances

Artisanal and craft movements

Social media and networks

Historical perspectives

Folk culture and practices

Mainstream incorporation/co-optation of indie games

Comparative studies of indie games across platforms and media

Video game streamers, broadcasters, and let’s plays

Please submit a 500-word abstract to digitalindiegamesbook@gmail.com by July 1, 2017. If you have any questions, please feel free to email MJ Clarke at mclarke2@calstatela.edu and/or Cynthia Wang at cwang68@calstatela.edu.

Drawing the Past: Comics and the Historical Imagination

Edited by Michael Goodrum (Canterbury Christ Church), David Hall (Old Dominion University), and Philip Smith (University of the Bahamas)

In a short comic, available during the 2014 Free Comic Book Day event, the dimension-hopping villain Morlan killed the Jacobean Spider-Man on the stage of the Globe Theatre in a reimagined version of Shakespeare’s England. The release of the comic was bookended by the publication of volume one and two of John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell’s epic multi-volume non-fiction comic March, which seeks to document the key events of the Civil Rights Movement. The two comics are radically different in terms of style, genre, and purpose, but both engage in the process of (re)creating and (re)imagining history.

This multi-authored volume seeks to examine the many ways in which history has been explored and (re)presented through comics. It spans non-fiction, historical fiction, and speculative comics. It asks, for example, how V for Vendetta has changed our understanding of Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot, how readers are meant to think about the Constitutional Convention when its participants are put in conversation with Batman, how Hip Hop Family Tree portrays historical personages, and how comics such as Maus or Persepolis manage the fraught relationship between memory and image?

Abstracts due by July 15 2017, first drafts, each 5,000 words, due December 2017. Please send submissions and queries to drawingthepasteditorial@gmail.com.

The editors’ previous work includes Superheroes and American Self Image (Ashgate 2015). Reading Art Spiegelman (Routledge 2015), and the forthcoming Gender and the Superhero Narrative (University Press of Mississippi).