#147 = Volume 49, Part 2 = July 2022
NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE
Fandoms and Platforms: Special Issue of Transformative Work and Cultures. Fandom today is often entangled with digital platforms, which offer spaces and features that make some aspects of fan culture more widely accessible amid increasingly globalized communities and models of consumption. Fans are perceived to be early adopters of new technologies, particularly those that provide space for gathering and community building. Likewise, many types of fan works, fan labor, and fandom participation depend on certain platforms for hosting, sharing, distributing, and discussing such content. Nonetheless, fans have complicated relationships with platforms, whether because their needs and uses are in conflict with other stakeholders or because platforms can generate and challenge notions of access, accountability, and community. This special issue seeks to explore how, in the broadest sense, fans and fandom communities engage with platforms. We are particularly interested in essays that complicate a “black box” view of platforms or that engage critically with what platforms make possible for their users, as well as how and/or why. Ideally, such contributions will further understanding of how interactions among fans, fandoms, texts, and fan works are co-constitutive of the spaces in which they operate.
We encourage contributions from fans as well as from fan-studies scholars, and we are particularly interested in works that cover or draw from global contexts. Topics may include connections between fans/fandoms and the platforms they utilize; fan/fandom migrations, practices, and communities enabled by platforms; and platform policies, governance, affordances, or architectures as experienced by fans. Other themes might include platforms and questions of access (TOS, content moderation, etc.); networked harassment and other negative practices enacted on and/or enabled by platforms; genealogies and histories of fan communities; fan works associated with specific platforms; platforms and fandoms that are less frequently addressed in fan studies; and nondigital platforms, including relationships between digital and nondigital spaces. Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC) is an international, peer-reviewed, online Gold Open Access publication of the nonprofit Organization for Transformative Works; it is copyrighted under a Creative Commons License. TWC aims to provide a publishing outlet that welcomes fan-related topics and to promote dialogue between the academic community and the fan community. The journal accommodates academic articles of varying scope as well as other forms that embrace the technical possibilities of the Web and test the limits of the genre of academic writing. Submit final papers directly to Transformative Works and Cultures by 1 January 2023 for March 2024 publication. Please visit TWC’s Web site <http://journal.transformativeworks.org/>for submission guidelines, or e-mail the TWC Editor <editor@transformativeworks.org>. Contact guest editors Maria Alberto, Effie Sapuridis, and Lesley Willard with any questions before or after the due date at <fandom.and.platforms@gmail.com>.—Maria Alberto, University of Utah; Effie Sapuridis, Western University, Ontario; and Leslie Willard, University of Texas, Austin, Guest Editors
Call for Proposals: “What Writing is Like: The Many Worlds of Russell T. Davies.” Davies has been one of the foremost voices in British television for the last three decades. The range of Davies’s work is formidable—from his early work on children’s television such as Dark Season (1991) and Century Falls (1993) to his ground-breaking work creating programmes such as Queer as Folk (1999-2000), Bob and Rose (2001), The Second Coming (2003), and Mine All Mine (2004). Then there is his phenomenally successful rejuvenation of Doctor Who (2005) and recent work such as Cucumber (2015), Years and Years (2019), and It’s a Sin (2021). He has transformed the British televisual landscape.
The proposed volume will be the first book-length scholarly appraisal of his works. We are looking for 6000- to 7000- word chapters on any aspect of Russell T. Davies and his work. Innovative, interdisciplinary, and comparative approaches are encouraged. Possible topics may include sex and sexuality, religion, Wales and Welsh identity, politics, science fiction and fantasy, children’s television, the AIDS pandemic, dystopian futures, the television industry, and televisual forms.
University of Wales Press has expressed interest in this volume, and we will be submitting a formal proposal by the end of the year. Those interested should send a short abstract (250 words) and a biographical outline to <ar220@st-andrews.ac.uk> by 30 July 2022. Full papers will be due around December 2022.—Dr Anindya Raychaudhuri, Senior Lecturer, St Andrews University, Scotland
Multiverse SF and Fantasy Convention, 14-16 Oct. 2022, Atlanta, GA. We seek academic presentations of 15, 25, and 45 minutes for our forthcoming convention. Topics may include analysis of an interesting historical event that garners immense speculation, a comparison between modern governments and dystopian societies, a sociological approach to examining a popular speculative-fiction TV show or movie, or a scientific approach. For instance, could one of the monsters from horror tropes really exist? Proposals could also consider how fantasy elements in speculative fiction lend themselves to teaching various lessons to children: a chemistry presentation might teach children how to create spider webbing or offer a presentation on emerging technologies or scientific breakthroughs (e.g., artificial intelligence, biotech, space travel, etc.). Presentations focused on specific authors, works of fiction, or genres within speculative fiction are also welcome.
Of particular interest are presentations on the works of any of our Guests of Honor: Nilah Magruder, Sheree Reneé Thomas, and Mary Robinette Kowal, as well as presentations on voices within speculative fiction that are not typically amplified. We would like to include at least one presentation per convention day that fits our theme but is targeted to children and/or a family audience, so please do submit those proposals, too.
While we require presentations to reflect solid scholarship, we are not requesting conference paper readings. We instead seek presentations that approach an academic topic in a way that non-academic audiences will find accessible and entertaining. Ideally, presentations will incorporate a core theme or topic of interest to sf fans. Please provide the following in your submission: a 300-500 word abstract, preliminary bibliography, the length of the proposed presentation (15, 25, or 45-minutes category), and a 100-word professional biography that should include academic credentials. We should be made aware of any required props or specialized A/V equipment and any special accommodations or additional requests. Any request for a video presentation should be indicated here as well. Let us know your preferred pronouns. Accepted presenters will receive a complimentary convention membership for 2022 and may be invited to participate in other panels in the convention’s other programming tracks.
If you would like to be considered for other programming at the convention, separately or in conjunction with your proposed academic presentation, please fill out our guest application. The preferred submission deadline is June 30th, but proposals will be accepted on a rolling basis until 31 July 2022. Email your submissions and/or questions to Rhonda Jackson Joseph at: <Learn@Multiversecon.org>.—Rhonda Jackson Joseph, Lone Star College, TX
Studies in Popular Culture: Book Reviews. The journal Studies in Popular Culture publishes reviews of books in the field. If you are interested in reviewing a book submitted to the journal or would like to suggest one for review, please contact the Book Reviews Editor, Clare Douglass Little, at <douglac2@erau.edu>. If you have not already reviewed a book for the journal, please include either a CV or a brief description of your interests and qualifications in the email. Members of the Popular Culture Association in the South who have published a book are encouraged to inform the Book Reviews Editor of that fact. Reviews should be approximately 500-700 words long and, like article submissions, should be emailed as a Microsoft Word attachment with the contributor’s surname in the file name. In some cases, reviews of 1000-1200 words may be assigned. Deadline for submissions is 30 July 2022. Queries are welcome. Contact <douglac2@erau.edu> with any questions. —Clare Douglass Little, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, FL
Critical Plant Studies. This new book series published by Lexington Books, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield, calls us to reexamine in fundamental ways our understanding of and engagement with plants, drawing on diverse disciplinary perspectives. The series encourages work grounded in the humanities and social sciences that provides innovative reformulations of the scope and practice of critical plant studies.
Books in the series include monographs as well as edited volumes that target academic audiences. To introduce critical plant studies to readers unfamiliar with this field, the series publishes work relevant to those engaged in critical plant studies yet at the same time of interest to scholars from the author’s primary discipline. Of special interest are studies that examine plants with reference to particular countries or regions of the world, or with respect to specific cultural, philosophical, religious, or literary traditions. Contemporary and historical works are equally appropriate. We especially welcome books that bridge academia and activism.
Topics appropriate for this series include: representations of plants in literature, art, film, and popular culture; relationships between humans and plants; boundaries and distinctions between plants and animals; plants and the environmental crisis; phytosemiotics and plant communication; plant sensation and consciousness; vegetal agency, agriculture, plant medicine and other applied uses of plants; plant ethics and veganism; invasive plants and plants as objects of allegory, metaphor, or fable; diversity of plants, including algae, moss, and ferns; and plants as embedded in larger ecosystems.
Deadline for submissions is 31 December 2022. Please send proposals and queries about the Critical Plant Studies series to Douglas Vakoch <dvakoch @meti.org> and Acquisitions Editor Courtney Morales <cmorales@ rowman.com>.—Douglas Vakoch, General Editor
New Series: Posthumanities and Citizenship Futures. Through the innovative interface of posthumanities and citizen humanities, this new series examines the changing status of subject, subjectivity, agency, humanity, and citizenship, depending on the complex relationships among nature, technology, science, and culture. Given today’s rapid and extensive technoscientific developments, we need to conceive new species and planetary narratives beyond anthropocentrism.
The Posthumanities and Citizenship Futures series reflects on the possible future outcomes of humankind and defamiliarizes the mainstream narratives of humanity so they can be better understood. The implications of human and non-human life forms’ coexistence within our networked world are researched in the theoretical framework of posthumanism and citizenship studies as well as through various fields and concepts, including literature, art, urban ecology, smart cities, the Anthropocene, and the future of humans and the Humanities. Proposals are invited that use cross-cultural and transnational approaches, including environmental posthumanities, citizen humanities, literary theory, cultural studies, philosophy, animal studies, plant studies, religious studies, disability studies, narrative studies, AI and robotics, biotechnology, biopolitics, civil justice, bioethics, medical humanities, gender studies, digital humanities, art and visual studies, media studies, indigenous studies, educational and social studies, psychology, and anthropology.
The series seeks to foster an ongoing dialogue among academics and scholars across the globe by featuring monographs and edited collections exploring new narrations raised by the intersections of biosphere and technosphere in a more-than-human citizenship world. Deadline for submissions is 31 December 2025. If you are interested in submitting a proposal, please contact series editors Peggy Karpouzou <pkarpouzou @phil.uoa.gr> and Nikoleta Zampaki <nikzamp@phil.uoa.gr) or Courtney Morales <cmorales@rowman.com>. —Peggy Karpouzou and Nikoleta Zampaki, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Palgrave SFF: A New Canon is a Palgrave Pivot book series of short (c. 30,000 words) critical introductions to major sf and fantasy novels, comics, games, albums, etc. (non-film/non-TV texts). A new canon will be defined by scholars for critics, students, and fans. Written for a student and academic audience, books in this new series will introduce, contextualize, and provide field-level insights on a single work of science fiction or fantasy. Books in this series answer two basic, yet complicated questions about their texts: Why does this text matter to SFF—as a genre, mode of production, cultural and historical phenomenon, and artistic practice? Secondly, why does (or should) this text matter to readers, scholars, and fans?
Palgrave SFF provides the focused attention on significant individual genre works that rarely goes beyond the length of online essays, academic articles, or chapters in an edited collection or monograph; the series seeks to offer “go-to” books for thinking about, writing on, and teaching. By subtitling the series “A New Canon,” we acknowledge the role of scholarship in creating ideas of a canon but also seek to destabilize definite notions of “the canon.” Thus, the series will survey a range of “classic” and should-be-classic texts.
Volumes in the series will emphasize the critical approaches and major questions that each text inspires. Each begins with introductory material of about 5,000 words that (1) provides a thesis answering the two questions stated above; (2) gives a brief biocritical background of the author; (3) places the text in question in the context of the author’s oeuvre; and (4) provides a brief socio-historical contextualization of the novel. The body of the book—c. 20,000 words—should survey the major approaches to the text in question, balancing consideration of the expected and the innovative so as to provide a thorough, yet novel, introduction of the text. Palgrave SFF is best compared to such series as BFI Film and TV Classics, TV Milestones, Constellations, Devil’s Advocates, Pop Classics, and other short “minigraph” series that focus on a single text and are written for broad appeal. Palgrave SFF is a “Pivot” book, i.e., a short book (c. 25k-30k words) with series-standard book covers, typically published and available within 12 weeks of the final manuscript’s submission. For questions, queries, and/or submissions, please contact both editors by email: Keren Omry <komry@research.haifa.ac.il> and Sean Guynes <guynesse@msu.edu>.—Keren Omry, U of Haifa, and Sean Guynes, Michigan State U
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