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February 24, 2006
CfP: Deadline March 15 for MLA panel
Fantasy Fictions in the 21st Century
Although science fiction and fantasy are frequently paired in literary criticism, science fiction has often seemed to garner the bulk of both popular and critical attention -- from the overwhelming popularity of films like Terminator 2 and The Matrix to Fredric Jameson's recent theorization of the science fiction genre in Archaeologies of the Future. Moreover, while 1980s and 1990s sci-fi films and video games increasingly capitalized on the future-chic of cutting-edge technology -- usually signaled by heroines with avant-garde haircuts and PVC costumes -- fantasy seemed relegated to a terminally un-hip and de-eroticized land of role-playing games, medieval robes and magical animals. Yet the avid consumption of new and revitalized fantasy fictions in the past several years suggests a transformation of this dynamic, one that seemingly leaves behind the cyberpunk dystopias of the 1990s in favor of the studied archaism of Phillip Pullman, J.R. Tolkien, Susannah Clarke and many others.
For a proposed special session at the 2006 MLA convention, I welcome papers exploring the significance of this contemporary surge in the fantasy genre as it appears in both literature and film. Approaches of interest include but are not limited to the following:
* Neo-medievalism and other temporal/historical interventions of fantasy fictions
* Relationship between new/recently adapted work and fantasy genre theory
* Fantasy fictions and the posthuman
* The queerness of fantasy and slash fantasy
* The centrality of England and "English magic" in contemporary fantasy
* Fantasy and the role/position of children, children's lit and childishness
* The role of adaptation and the literature/film nexus
* Fantasy and/vs. technoscience
* The race politics of contemporary fantasy
* Nostalgia, gender and patriarchy in new/adapted fantasies
* Fantasy and the postsecular
* The conjunction of high-tech films and low-tech utopias
* Ecocriticism and fantasy
Please send a 1-page abstract and brief CV by March 15 to Jane Elliott (je509@york.ac.uk)
Jane Elliott
Department of English and Related Literature
University of York
Heslington, York UK YO10 5DD
Tel: (44) 1904 433366
Fax: (44) 1904 433372
je509@york.ac.uk
Posted by ChrissieMains at February 24, 2006 04:00 PM