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February 27, 2006
What to See at the Conference: SF Division
SF Area Session Introduction
This year’s conference promises to be another exciting and thought-provoking exploration of the fantastic in its many genre and media forms. Part of the fun and challenge of the conference will be trying to choose among many papers being given simultaneously. This brief introduction to SF area programming is aimed to help you in this difficult task.
The theme of this year’s conference is Drawn by the Fantastic, focused on visual media and visual images within all media. The SF area has two paper sessions focused on this theme.
Session 47: Image and Graphic Texts in Wells, Dick and Miller with presentations by Shawn Smolen-Morton, Kelley Meyer, and Graham J. Murphy will explore the relationship between sf texts and illustrations
Session 60: Ideologies of Technology and Science in Graphic SF features papers by Richard Landom and Rob Latham on sf conventions translated into graphic novels and on the visual aspects of New Wave sf.
For those interested in the question of what it means to do sf scholarship we have two paper sessions focused on such questions.
Session 10: Metalanguages and Metanarratives in Science Fiction will consider sf fiction through theories of language and representation ranging from postmodernism to metalinguistics in papers given by John Fast, Ethan Sproat and James Arthur Anderson.
Session 42: SF Scholarship: Crossing Academic and Marketing Genre provides presenters Neil Easterbrook, Jean Lorrah, and C.W. Sullivan with a chance to ask us to consider the methods of sf scholarship and the role of market forces in what we do.
The international aspect of our organisation is strongly represented in two of this year’s sf panels that consider the influence of national and literary cultures on sf texts.
Session 8: Cultural Influences on SF Narratives and Graphics features papers by Lisa Yaszek, Rebecca Rowe, and Edward James that consider, respectively, 1950s US culture, Japanese manga, and the British Commonwealth.
Session 64: Futurity and Free Will in Butler and Gibson focuses on the work of William Gibson and Octavia Butler, two canonical sf authors, in papers given by Jennifer Orme, Stacie Hanes, and Bill Senior.
Finally, the SF area has a number of panels that focus in a variety of ways on theories of alterity and the representation of otherness in sf.
Session 7: Marked Bodies and Identities in Science Fiction engages with subject theory in discussions of queer subjectivity, tattooed bodies, and biometric technology by presenters Robert von der Osten, Patricia Melzer, and Kim Surkan.
Session 18: Constructions, Inversion and Conventions of ‘Race’ in Science Fiction with presentations by Krista Kasdorf, Rachel Swirsky, and Sharon Louise Degraw looks at various images of racial otherness in sf.
Session 34: Art, Mythology and Ethics in Le Guin and Tepper considers the representation of gender and species otherness in these authors in papers presented by William Burling, Madeline Malan, and Joan Gordon.
Session 49: Science Fiction’s Theorising of Alterity and Performativity considers the full range of otherness from animals to aliens to technobodies in papers presented by Sherryl Vint, Grace Dillon, and Veronica Hollinger.
Session 89: Body and Machine with presentations by Liz Hoiem, Elizabeth Barnes and Amy Hale further considers the boundaries of humanity with papers on automata, Philip K. Dick, and transhumanism.
In addition to hearing from our exciting list of presenters, there are also opportunities for audience participation and interaction sessions within the SF area.
Session 56: SF Roundtable is an opportunity to consider the importance of visual and material technology for sf representations through a group discussion Chapter 8, “Synthesis: The 1939 New York World’s Fair,” from David Nye’s The American Technological Sublime lead by Robin Anne Reid, Len Hatfield, and Sherryl Vint. Download the article from the site and join us for a lively discussion.
Session74 : Panel: The Secret History of Science Fiction: Remediation and the Visual in SF opens with ideas from panellists Mark Bould, Joe Sutliff Sanders, Shelley Rodrigo and Sherryl Vint on the importance of visual media and the representation of media in sf, and then opens for a wider discussion with the audience about these issues.
Sherryl Vint, Incoming SF Division Head
Posted by ChrissieMains at 12:37 AM | Comments (0)
SF Theory Roundtable
SF Theory Roundtable
Science Fiction Theory Roundtable March 2006
The American Technological Sublime.
David Nye
MIT Press
1996
Chapter 8: “Synthesis: The 1939 New York World’s Fair” pages 199-224, notes p.
Nye’s book is an exploration of what he calls the technological sublime in American culture. Nye argues that in American culture technology rather than nature took over the role of provoking that sense of awe and wonder that we associate with the sublime and of producing a sort of social cohesion through this shared quasi-religious experience. The book is an exploration of how technology came to play this role in American culture and is organized around the shifting sublime from geometrical, through electrical, to technological sites. Nye argues in his preface that his work is not a history form an engineering point of view but instead “it is concerned with the social context of technology, with how new objects are interpreted and integrated into the fabric of social life” (xv). After providing background about theories of the sublime and the particular American inflection of this concept, Nye develops his argument through chapters on a number of things that have been sites of the sublime in the American experience: the railroad, bridges and skyscrapers, the factory, electrical lighting and signs, cityscapes and lit skylines, the Apollo missions, the nuclear bomb, and the statue of liberty. Nye notes that while the European model of the sublime involved a sense of awe that involved a sense of human weakness or insignificance in the face of the power and grandeur of nature, along with the compensatory empowerment that came with recognizing that the human mind was able to grasp something larger than itself. In contrast the technological sublime “does not endorse human limitations; rather, it manifests a split between those who understand and control machines and those who do not” (60).
The chapter we will be considering, Chapter 8, focuses on the 1939 New York World’s Fair as a location in which all previous varieties of the sublime – geometrical, electrical and technological – came together to create an experience of the imagined future for a depression-bound American public. As Nye notes, previous World’s Fairs had also focused around technological marvels of the sublime, but the 1939 World’s Fair is unique in combining its displays of such marvels with a narrative about a fantasized future in which science, technology, and major corporations could transform the world, solving the economic crisis and ushering in a technological utopia. This chapter focuses on the way the 1939 World’s Fair worked to create visual models of this future and interpolate the visitor into them. This article, about a material, visual, and phenomenological future one might visit, raises interesting questions about the role of sf images and experiences in our vision of the future, and about the role of corporate/technological innovation in the sf imagination.
Possible issues to discuss include (but are not limited to) questions about whether or not Nye’s arguments about the sublime are similar to the ‘sense of wonder’ often attributed to the proper experience of reading sf. Are technological objects to sf literature what nature was to the Romantic poets? Is there anything particularly ‘American’ about this sublime relationship to technology that helps us to understand differences between American and UK science fiction? Historically, the sublime has been an experience that has been gendered male (women experience emotion instead, or so the theory goes). Is there something about the way technology itself has also been gendered that helps us to understand the marginalized role of women in a lot of sf? Does this focus on technology itself as the site of the sublime have a connection to a tendency in sf to eschew the material and focus on the abstract and transcendent? Nye notes a tendency to erase the labour of human workman and engineers in consuming the spectacle of the technological object itself, separated from the conditions of its production. Is there a similar implication in commodity fetishism in our sense of wonder in sf? The sublime is largely a religious experience. Is there a connection between the sublime and the recent interest in religion in some sf and scholarship on technology and culture? Much golden age sf valorize the role of the scientist or engineer to solve all social problems. Is there a connection between this and the role of the technological sublime in valuing those who can control the power of awe-inspiring machines? The theory of the sublime is rooted in a sense of the sublime experience being a visceral or phenomenological one, often with the visual sense predominating. Does thinking about the visual qualities of the technological sublime help us see new things about sf scholarship and texts? The 1939 World’s Fair was organized around an experience of escape from mundane reality into a better world to be made by technology. How much does this sense of escapism dominate in the sf tradition or how much are such representation critiqued by more sophisticated sf?
Sherryl Vint, Incoming SF Division Head
Posted by ChrissieMains at 12:32 AM | Comments (0)
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 04:00 PM | Comments (0)
What to See at the Conference - Horror
There is a wealth of papers representing the Horror Division this year. Among them is a session on the writing of Michael Arnzen with Mike (wearing his scholarly hat) presenting a paper on his own work.
For Lovecraft fans, there are two papers on the horror mythologist, one looking at Lovecraft’s reinvention of the horror genre (his shift of horror from the often predictable Judeo-Christian cosmos to the inherent terrifying universe of science) and a second examining Lovecraft’s influence on Thomas Ligotti.
One of the most interesting papers (one that I am personally looking forward to) dissects Mark Denielewsi’s House of Leaves, the fascinating novel that circulated widely in manuscript before its actual publication. House of Leaves manipulates the often overworked theme of the haunted house into a truly terrifying examination of interior space.
In addition, there will be papers on Hawthorne, Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, Chuck Palahniuk’s Phastasmagoria, Wrath James White’s short story, “Resurrection Day,” “Boobs” by ICFA writer Suzy McKee Charnas, two papers on Stephen King, and for Proust lovers, a paper that follows up on last year’s examination of psychoanalytical terror in the works of the French writer.
There are also two papers with a philosophical bent, one on the actual phenomenon of horror and a second on Eastern philosophy and western occult.
Lord Ruthven Assembly members are active (as always), presenting several papers on Dracula (of course), including a paper session on the visual in the grand-daddy of all vampire novels (with LRA’s guest scholar, Elizabeth Miller, presenting). In addition, LRA will tender a panel on the always popular “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” and separate papers on I am Legend, Interview with a Vampire, and Vampire Hunter D.
LRA’s David Van Becker will offer a paper on his life work, the Gothic, and there will be one very unusual paper examining Canada’s unique Prince Edward Island in relation to Anne of Green Gables and Dracula.
Finally, although Chelsea Quinn Yarbro will not be at the conference this year (she will be in Italy for a promotional tour), there will be several readings by varied horror authors.
Stephanie Moss
Head, Horror Division
Posted by ChrissieMains at 03:05 PM | Comments (0)
What to See at the Conference: CYA Division
Because the visual dimension of media in children's literature is such an important avenue for acculturation and marketing, our division features some especially intriguing work on the overlap between visual art and prose.
Papers include those on how race, film, digital technology, subversion, and imperialism are caught up with the visual dimension of literature for children.
Our panel discussion (Saturday at 10:30) asks what uses art has for children politically; in other words, how does art teach children to see the world, how does it help situate them in a consumer economy, and how does it engage them in a symbolic landscape marked by conceptions of prejudice and innocence? As the centerpiece of the division, the panel is a good place to ask the fundamental theoretical questions that are implicit in the rest of the division, where papers explore classic children's literature as well as Harry Potter and comics for kids.
Joe Sutliff Sanders, Division Head (CYA)
Posted by ChrissieMains at 01:07 PM | Comments (0)
February 20, 2006
PCVA Roundtable Reading
And the second Roundtable reading is now online. Point your browser to this site and use the same username (icfa-27) and password (2006) as for the SF Reading.
Posted by ChrissieMains at 05:41 PM | Comments (0)
T-shirts
The order has gone in for the conference T-shirts, and I'd just like to say that a T-shirt will be a must have this year. Our Guest of Honor Charles Vess has designed a lovely image that will grace the program cover as well, and the T-shirt color is a striking deep red that sets off the image beautifully. Because of the extra work involved in creating the shirts they will cost a little more than usual, but they'll be so worth it.
Our esteemed President Mike Levy plans to buy some for his family, and is somewhat sad that the shirts don't come in a size small enough for the family cat. That's how incredibly gorgeous the shirts will be.
For those of you new to the conference, T-shirts are available for sale in the bookroom.
Posted by ChrissieMains at 01:25 PM | Comments (0)
Roundtable Readings Online
If you've checked out the conference program available on the website, you'll have seen that we have two roundtable discussions this year, one for the Science Fiction division and one for Popular Culture and the Visual Arts.
As in past years, we're making the articles that are the focus of the roundtables available on the website for the convenience of members who might not have easy access to the print versions. This way, members who want to participate in the roundtable discussions will be able to read the articles before the conference.
Because of copyright concerns, the articles are password protected.
The Nye essay, for the SF Roundtable, is available at the site. The username is "icfa-27" and the password "2006". The article is in pdf format, so you'll need the freeware Adobe Acrobat Reader, and it is a fairly large file at 25mb, so if you're on dial-up it might take a little time to download.
We hope to have the PCVA Roundtable Reading up soon.
Posted by ChrissieMains at 01:16 PM | Comments (0)