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July 21, 2006
Ann B. Sullivan Children's Literature Student Conference Fund
Members of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts may be aware of the recent unexpected death of Ann Sullivan, wife of past President C. W. Sullivan and herself a frequent visitor to the Conference. IAFA members may want to express their affection for Chip and Ann and their concern for his loss through a donation.
A memorial fund, the Ann B. Sullivan Children's Literature Student Conference Fund, has been set up to assist students in the Hollins Children's Literature Program in travel to conferences. The fund "is designed to aid the students [Ann] loved and mentored and advance the art of storytelling, at which she was so gifted." Many students in the program at Hollins, where both Chip and Ann have taught, are regulars at the ICFA.
The Sullivan Fund will require a $10,000 endowment before awards can be made to students, which Hollins hopes to raise by June 30, 2007. Gifts and/or pledges to the fund may be made to Alumni/ae and Donor Relations, Hollins University, P.O. Box 9629, Roanoke, VA 24020-1629. Pledges may be made for a five-year period. Additional information about the fund may be obtained by writing the director of the Children's Literature Program, Amanda Cockrell, e-mail acockrell AT hollins.edu.
Posted by ChrissieMains at 12:10 PM | Comments (0)
July 19, 2006
CfP: Women and SF & Fantasy
From Dragonflight to Lost:
Women and Science Fiction & Fantasy
Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal welcomes the submission of essays for an upcoming special issue focused on the topic of Women and Science Fiction & Fantasy. From pioneering female SF/Fantasy authors such as Anne McCaffrey and Ursula K. Le Guin to female characters on hit television shows such as Lost and Battlestar Galactica, women and women's roles are intricately tied to Science Fiction and Fantasy.
This issue will explore some of the intersections between Women and Science Fiction and Fantasy. Topics could include but are not limited to:
* Female characters on The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, Lost
* Analyses of work by female SF/fantasy authors
* Explorations of feminism and women's rights in SF/Fantasy
Women's Studies publishes 8 issues a year, providing a forum for the presentation of scholarship and criticism about women in the fields of literature, history, art, sociology, law, political science, economics, anthropology and the sciences. It also publishes poetry, film and book reviews.
We encourage men and women from all disciplines to submit articles based in film, television, literature, art, or other media.
For additional submission information, visit our website:
Each manuscript must be accompanied by a statement that it has not been published elsewhere and that it has not been submitted simultaneously for publication elsewhere. All manuscripts should be typed, double-spaced, one-sided, and formatted according to MLA guidelines. Essays should be approximately 25 pages in length. Authors should also supply a shortened version of the title for a running head, not exceeding 50 character spaces, an abstract of approximately 100 words, the author's affiliation and location. Each submitted article must contain author's mailing address, telephone number, e-mail, and a stamped self-addressed envelope.
To be included in the first round of reviews for our upcoming issue, submissions must be received by August 18, 2006.
Send a cover letter, three copies of the manuscript, and a copy on disk to:
Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal
Tara Prescott, Assistant Editor
Claremont Graduate University
Department of English, Blaisdell House
143 East Tenth Street
Claremont, CA 91711
Posted by ChrissieMains at 01:11 AM | Comments (0)
July 18, 2006
ICFA 28 - Call for Papers
Representing Self and Other:
Gender and Sexuality in the Fantastic
International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts 28
March 14-18, 2007
Wyndham Fort Lauderdale Airport Hotel
Fort Lauderdale, Florida
The focus of ICFA-28 is on issues of gender and sexuality, long a concern of the fantastic in literature, film, and other media. Given the oft-marginalized status of science fiction and fantasy in relation to mainstream literature and culture, it’s not surprising to see fantastic works considered in the light of queer theory and feminist approaches. The hero doesn’t have to be a guy, but it’s just as rewarding to examine the construction of the masculine hero in space opera, sword-and-sorcery, and superhero comics. In graphic novels, book cover illustrations, and art, the gendered Other is the BEM, the elf, the alien, the vampire. Awards such as the Tiptree and the Lambda, and the success of WisCon, speak to the importance of this theme to the communities of the fantastic.
We look forward to papers on the work of this year’s guests:
Guest of Honor Geoff Ryman, author of the Tiptree Award-winning Air as well as Was; The Child Garden, winner of the Campbell Award; The Unconquered Country, winner of the World Fantasy Award; The Warrior Who Carried Life.
Guest Scholar Marina Warner, award-winning critic and fiction author. Her scholarly work includes Alone of All Her Sex, From the Beast to the Blonde, Monuments and Maidens.
Special Guest Writer Melissa Scott, winner of the Lambda Award, author of Trouble and her Friends; The Kindly Ones, Dreaming Metal, and with Lisa Barnett, Point of Hopes and Point of Dreams.
Suggested topics include, but are by no means limited to:
· Childhood in Geoff Ryman’s works
· Boyhood and violence
· Revising gender roles in traditional children’s literature
· Mothers & Fathers
· The "hard" man vs. the "soft" man in film and other media
· the representation of gay men and women in SF/H/F
· changes or patterns in the representation of the feminine in 21century films
· Gender blending and bending
· The Other as love/sex object
· Vampires/werewolves as the "first" transsexuals
· Tiptree award winners
· Gender stereotypes in the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, etc
· Alien sex
· Slash fan fiction
· 1st, 2nd, or 3rd wave feminism and sf
· Judith Butler and gender performativity
· Donna Haraway and cyborg feminism
· Anthropology and gender
· gender cues in anime art
· performing gender in Role Playing Games
· female protagonists in action games for video and computer
· the exaggeration and stereotyping of sexual characteristics in comic art
A more complete list of suggested topics, frequently updated, is available on the website.
As always, we also welcome proposals for individual papers and for academic sessions and panels on any aspect of the fantastic in any media, even outside the conference theme.
Submit 500 word abstracts for proposals and panel sessions, including contact information and A/V requests, to the appropriate Division Head (full mailing information is available on the website):
(CYA) Fantastic in Children’s & Young Adult Literature & Art: Joe Sutliff Sanders, dr.joess AT gmail.com
(FE) Fantastic Literatures in English: Charles W. Nelson, cwnelson AT mtu.edu
(FM) Fantastic in Film & Media: Susan A. George, sageorge13 AT sbcglobal.net
(CC) Communities & Culture in the Fantastic: Barbara Lucas, barbedwriting AT yahoo.com
(VPA) Visual & Performing Arts in the Fantastic: Stacie Hanes, shanes1 AT kent.edu
(H) Horror: Stephanie Moss, smoss AT cas.usf.edu
(IF) International Fantastic Literature: Dale Knickerbocker, knickerbockerd AT mail.ecu.edu
(SF) Science Fiction Literature & Theory, svint AT stfx.ca
The deadline for submission of proposals for papers or panels is November 30, 2006, although Division Heads will accept proposals at any time before that date.
You can review all conference information at the IAFA website. Bookmark the site to keep checking back for updates.
Posted by ChrissieMains at 03:44 PM | Comments (0)
July 09, 2006
SFS - Special Issue on The Animal
Science Fictions Studies invites proposals for a special issue on The Animal, exploring the variety of ways that science fiction may be analysed from the perspective of animal studies. Animals are among the oldest metaphors through which humanity has defined itself. We welcome both papers that deal with representations of animals and the metaphorical use of the category of speciesism to enforce social boundaries and establish a humanist subject, and also papers that consider our changing material relationships with animals as they are mediated by changing technologies. Science fiction's long history of engaging with themes of alterity and of narrating the social consequences of technological change point to the many fruitful intersections of the genre with animal studies research.
Proposals might consider, but are not limited to, some of the following conjunctions of animal studies and science fiction:
o Manufactured animals as commodities, workers, or tools within the sf world, including manufactured 'lab tool' animals such as Oncomouse
o Animal-like aliens as companions, family members, pets or comrades of humans
o Animal-like aliens as competition or threat, invading force, vermin, or predator of humans
o Representations of humans as animals from the point of view of alien species
o Challenges to the species boundary through human/animal hybrids
o Darwinian stories especially those dealing with non-human primates including proto-human species
o Animals and nature seen as resource for human projects including scientific experimentation
o Stories of animal cognition, including uplift stories or those in which animals naturally evolve to a point beyond humans
o New technological relationships with animals and their implications (factory farming, gene splicing, xenotransplantation, pharming, etc.)
Please send abstracts of no more than 500 words by September 30, 2006 to:
Sherryl Vint
Department of English
St. Francis Xavier University
P.O. Box 5000
Antigonish, NS B2G 2W5
Canada
FAX (902) 867-5400
svint AT stfx.ca
Posted by ChrissieMains at 10:57 PM | Comments (0)
Arthur Hlavaty reports on ICFA 2006
Once again I have attended the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, in the company of my spouse, Bernadette Bosky, and my cohusband, Kevin Maroney. Once again I enjoyed it and am trying, two months later, to reconstruct the experience. (Thanks as usual to Bernadette for allowing me to use her notes.)
This year's theme was the visual arts. I am an old-fashioned linear-literate sort who prefers the written word, and as usual I mostly attended sessions in that area, but I did learn a few things about comics, movies, and games. For instance, the first paper I heard, by Robin Woods, dealt with maps and how online games, such as World of Warcraft, can feed the human desire to understand by mapping.
***
Thursday, the first full day of the conference, began with a panel entitled "Drawing Down the Word: Prose and Pictures Speaking Together with One Voice." These days, we hear a certain amount of viewing with alarm the possibility that movies, television, and online visuals will return us to an oral culture like the one I am glad humanity has evolved out of, the sort Walter J. Ong described in Orality and Literacy. This session made clear, however, that comics and graphic novels are not that sort of thing, but rather a combination of visual and textual communication. Bernadette and the other panelists discussed forerunners, such as emblem books, curiosity books, and illustrated fairy tales.
The next session considered some of the ways graphic fiction is looking at the world. David Higgins talked about how the DC universe mirrored the crisis of 9/11 and its sequelae, while Doug Davis discussed In the Shadow of No Towers, Art Spiegelman's rich and moving examination of the same event. Kevin had to follow these two with his very first conference paper, and he gave us a good one. "Capes, Types, and Prototypes" used theories of definition to consider why the Amber books are not considered textual Superhero Comics.
There are many problems with the sort of essentialist approach--"genus and differentia"--that Aristotle suggested. Ludwig Wittgenstein, for instance, claimed that the word game cannot be defined in that fashion, instead requiring us to find examples that we agree are "games" and discuss their "family resemblances." I believe that the game problem has been solved by Bernard Suits, in his delightful and undeservedly forgotten book, The Grasshopper: Games are activities in which the participants agree to forgo certain direct approaches to their goals for the purpose of play. But even if that is the case, family resemblance can be a useful approach.
There is another implement as well. George Lakoff believes that human language cannot refer to anything beyond the material world because there is nothing beyond the material world. He supports this denial by adapting the ingenious literary theory that universals are constructed from prototypes, a useful approach to many definitional issues that fortunately does not require acceptance of Lakoff's assumptions. The prototypes for superhero comics include Superman and Batman. Batman is not "super," in the sense of having special powers, but he resembles others of the superhero family in such traits as secret identity and costume. Kevin used the question to open a general discussion of how genre can be defined.
After the Guest of Honor Slide Show, there was a panel on the crisis in comics. Comics seem to moving through the life cycle of an art form to become a Fabulous Invalid, like the Theatre and the Novel, with continuing predictions of demise and continuing accomplishment. Thence to an enjoyable session on images of teaching in children's literature. Amie Rose Rotruck discussed stories of the doll as teacher, and Zina Peterson compared the schooling of wizards in Earthsea and at Hogwarts.
***
Usually, the ICFA is adventure two steps removed: discussion of stories of heroic quests. The first paper I saw on Friday, however, was more direct: a first-person account by Neil Easterbrook of his valiant slog through the tangled prose of Frederic Jameson. Like a good first-person narrator, Easterbrook told the tale without expressing awareness of his own heroism, indicating the difficulties without melodramatizing them and claiming to have brought back a moderate number of gems from his perilous voyage.
Jean Lorrah followed with one of the things I most seek in critical writing: a model that finds a common element in a lot of seemingly different works and makes me wonder why I didn't think of it. She suggests a developing sort of archetypal tale: the intimate adventure, in which two protagonists who may not care for each other are forced to struggle together, trust one another, and become intimate, at least psychologically: Don Quixote, Enemy Mine, any number of "buddy movies." (This is of course one of the dynamics driving slash and the equally lewd but less pleasant imaginings of the Fredric Werthams of this world, but that's only one aspect and rarely the most interesting one.)
Scholar Guest of Honor Thomas Inge, who modestly reported that he became a professor because he lacked the skill to make it as a cartoonist, enlivened lunch with a lecture on one of the great subverting influences of my formative years, Harvey Kurtzmann's original Mad. Inge noted that one way Mad gained credibility was by openly satirizing Kurtzmann's other publications. The day also featured a panel on defining the fantastic/mimetic boundary in visual arts (Irma Hirsjarvi had particularly interesting things to say and pictures to show), a discussion of photography in Lois Lowry's children's books, and a fanfic panel in which I learned a new term: darkfiction, which is like hurt/comfort, only without the comfort.
***
Saturday began with a session I think of as distinctively ICFA: scientific and literary looks at the same topic, in this case sleepwalking. Then Bernadette presented her paper: a copiously illustrated look at "Fantastic Fat Bodies in Comic Strips and Books." She pointed out that since the 1940s fat bodies have been, for the most part, either stigmatized or ignored, but more recently, with inputs from feminism, postmodernism, and foreign cultures, we are getting more variety. The afternoon featured a panel on Guest Writer Kathleen Ann Goonan, which made me more bitterly regret the reader's block that keeps me only halfway through her quartet of nanotech novels, and one of Jeri Zulli's typically thorough and absorbing discussions of the fantastic in respectable lit, in this case Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
As is becoming traditional, we sat at the same table with Peter Straub for the banquet. The awards ceremony was decorous, as they all have been lately, but I had to suppress an inappropriate snicker at one point. I'm a pink-diaper baby who grew up hearing Wobbly songs, and here they were telling me that the Crawford Award went to Twentieth-Century Ghosts, by Joe Hill.
Book purchasing is always a major feature of an ICFA for me, and this time I picked up and enjoyed two books directly connected with the conference: Soundings, the first collection of Gary Wolfe's Locus reviews (since nominated for a Hugo, which it deserves), and Polder, a festschrift for John and Judith Clute, edited by Farah Mendlesohn and Edward James and chock full of highly readable reminiscences, literary discussion, and fiction.
Next year's conference looks like fun: Representing the Other: Gender and Sexuality in the Fantastic, with GoH Geoff Ryman and Guest Writer Melissa Scott, March 14-18, 2007, same bat-channel.
Posted by ChrissieMains at 10:36 PM | Comments (0)
IAFA International Scholarship Award
Dale Knickerbocker, Division Head for International Fantastic Literatures, would like to announce a new award sponsored by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts.
The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts Announces its
1st Annual Award for the Best Non-English Language Scholarly Essay on the Fantastic
We define the fantastic to include science fiction, folklore, and related genres in literature, drama, film, art and graphic design, and related disciplines.
Prize: $250 U.S. and one year’s free membership in the IAFA to be awarded at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts in March 2007
Winning essay to be published online at the IAFA website
Deadline for consideration: November 30, 2006
Essays may be unpublished scholarship submitted by the author, or already published work nominated either by the author or another scholar (in which case the author’s permission should be obtained before submission). An abstract in English must accompany all submissions. Submissions may be made electronically (preferred) in MS Word, Word Perfect, or RTF format, or by mail.
Please direct all inquiries and submissions to:
Dale Knickerbocker
Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures
East Carolina University
Greenville, NC 27858
USA
knickerbockerd AT ecu.edu
Fax: 252-328-6233
The following is a list of those who have volunteered to serve as judges:
German
David Dickens, Professor of German, Washington and Lee University (up through 19th c)
Viveke Rutzou Petersen, Associate Professor of Women´s Studies, Drake University (women and fantasy)
Elizabeth Borchardt, Professor of German, University of Minnesota at Morris (19th-20th cc, film)
French
Amy J. Ransom, Associate Professor of Modern Languages, Anna Maria College, Paxton MA (Quebecois)
Stephanie Perrais, ABD Penn State University (19th-Early 20th centuries)
Helen Pilinovsky, ABD Columbia University (Fairy Tales, Folklore)
Charlene Gill, Texas State University, (comics/graphic)
Alfred Fralin, Professor of Romance Languages (French, Spanish, Italian), Washington and Lee (20th c.)
Japanese
Antonia Levi, Associate Professor of Japanese History, Portland State (manga, anime)
Miri Nakamura, ABD Stanford (19th c.)
Hiroko Chiba, Associate Professor of Modern Languages, DePauw University (20th c.)
Sarah E. Thompson, PhD, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, (visual arts)
Northern Europe
Edward James, Professor of History, University College, Dublin Ireland (medieval, SF)
Irma Hirsjarvi, ABD, Jyväskylä University (Finnish, general Scandinavian)
K.A. Laity, Assistant Professor of English, University of Houston (Medieval, Folklore, Fairy Tale-Finnish)
Stefan Ekman, ABD, (Swedish, general Scandinavian)
Hispanic
Andrea Bell, Professor of Spanish, Hamline University (Latin American SF, esp. Venezuela)
Yolanda Molina-Gavila´n, Associate Professor of Spanish, Eckerd College (Peninsular and Latin American SF)
Rafael Montes, Assistant Professor of Spanish, St. Thomas University (Latin American SF, esp. Mexico)
Juan Carlos Toledano, Assitant Professor of Hispanic Studies, Lewis and Clark College (Latin American SF, esp. Cuba)
Sharon Sieber, Professor of Spanish, Idaho State University, (Latin American fantasy, esp. Argentina)
Robin McAllister, Professor of Spanish, Sacred Heart University (Latin American fantasy, esp. Argentina, Southern Cone)
Dale Knickerbocker, Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies, East Carolina University (Peninsular fantasy & SF)
Pablo Brescia, Assistant Professor of Hispanic Languages and Literatures, University of South Florida (Latin American fantasy)
Maria Aline Ferreira, Associate Professor, University of Aveiro, Portugal (Portuguese, Spanish, Italian fantasy)
Posted by ChrissieMains at 10:28 PM | Comments (0)