#146 = Volume 49, Part 1 = March 2022
NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCECharles L. Elkins (1940-2021). It saddens me to report the death, this past December, of Charles Elkins (Chuck to just about everyone but me, including his loving and beloved wife, Mary Jane).
Charles was co-editor of SFS during much of my tenure in that capacity, starting in 1982. By then our predecessors had largely or totally dropped out. Dale Mullen, SFS’s inspirational source and sine qua non, was the first to leave: health considerations had made it impossible for him to continue the arduous (and literally back-breaking) work of seeing to SFS’s actual production (copy editing, printing, record keeping, and mailing inter alia). Dale, of course, returned in 1990-1991 to save SFS from extinction. Darko Suvin subsequently reduced his role, at least seemingly, to that of Contributing Editor while continuing to be a conduit for essays/articles. And Marc Angenot’s “leave of absence” proved to be permanent.
Dale’s departure had dictated moving all of SFS’s operations from Terre Haute to Montreal. That posed an intractable problem for Charles’s and my co-operation, given the continuous pressure of publishing deadlines. The two of us, though in the same time zone, were 1,500 miles apart. And in 1982, the Apple computer had barely left Steve Jobs’s garage, and the Internet wasn’t even a figment of someone’s imagination (at least so far as I know). We therefore decided, Charles and I, that he would deal mostly with book review(er)s. And he continued to do that, scrupulously, for the next five years (maybe more).
My brain still retains film footage, as it were, of my first meeting with Charles. And while there’s no date stamp, this must have been in 1980 at the initial Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, held in the vicinity of Florida International University (where Charles taught for several decades and also put in a stint as a Dean). My brain hasn’t retained a sound track of our meeting, but I’m sure that, inter alia, we discovered our shared admiration for Kenneth Burke, whom Charles knew personally. (I found out only a few days ago that the University of Pennsylvania holds their correspondence.) We also must have talked about Southern California, where he spent his early years and where I had gone to grad school.
Charles had a rather distinctive voice which I found to be extraordinarily well-suited to conveying his mindset—a voice capable of at once expressing both amusement and (when called for) moral outrage. One instance in particular remains firmly in my memory. In talking with me, telephonically, about his first heart attack (my recollection is that it occurred 25-30 years ago, but Mary Jane says it was closer to 40), he told me that as he was lying on a hospital corridor gurney, a doctor filling a syringe asked: “Do you know how much this anticoagulant costs?” And then, uninvited, answered his own question: “$20,000.” That made me furious: not at the price per se (which I subsequently found out was 50 times more than that of the same-purposed, but more efficacious, med. generally used in Europe), but because it hadn’t occurred to Dr. Thoughtless to ascertain that his patient had medical insurance before volunteering the price info. Charles instead found the whole bizarre incident mildly funny. Likewise self-revelatory is his October 2021 response to Art Evans’s news re: the republication of one of Charles’s early SFS essays. He expressed astonishment that anyone would be interested in his 1976 article on Asimov and would be willing to pay for its reprint. “Wow,” he said, “maybe I should frame the check!”
Charles didn’t leave behind a long (auto)bibliography. Apart from a book on Robert Silverberg, his publications consist mostly of a relatively small number of essays and a larger number of book reviews. But I am not aware of any version of, say, a Christian conception of an afterlife wherein a list of one’s publications (scholarly or not) is even called for, let alone requisite for admission to heaven.—Robert M. Philmus, Montreal
The Planet after Geoengineering. Comprised of three parts in three distinct media forms—an animation, an installation of 25 illustrations that appeared as a part of “Design Earth,” at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale in May-November 2021, and a graphic novel published by Actar Publishers—Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy’s The Planet after Geoengineering (Actar 2021) offers a multimodal approach to a complicated problem. The graphic novel makes use of science-fictional tropes to illustrate the risks inherent in specific technologies of geoengineering, a term the authors define as “technologies that counteract the effects of anthropogenic climate change by deliberately intervening in Earth systems” (np). Each of the graphic novel’s five sections speculates about a distinct technology, its potential consequences, and the general uncertainty surrounding all such “climate promissory technology” (np). The images are intriguing collages of schematic designs, and the accompanying prose is suggestive of a strange, as yet unsettled future that is haunted by the past. The first section, for example, describes a city space as “a repurposed cold-war nuclear shelter” that is also a “recovery plant that compresses carbon,” transforming it into diamonds. In addition to speculative technology, the authors refer to works of science fiction, including Jules Verne’s Purchase of the North Pole (1889) and Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Word for World Is Forest (1972). The graphic novel’s appendix includes brief essays by Kathryn Yusoff, Benjamin Bratton, and Holly Jean Buck, the last offering its own eloquent meditation on the speculative nature of prior iterations of geoengineering in the form of Biosphere II.—Lisa Swanstrom, SFS
Imagination, Annotated. A new book series by the MIT Press, Imagination, Annotated, seeks to open up contemporary concerns by reconsidering the seeds of imagination that have shaped our collective dreams of the future. Inspired by the success of Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds (MIT 2017), each volume is annotated by experts to highlight the historical context and to explore the enduring questions that make these works relevant for diverse future-makers, especially STEM students and practitioners. By curating and explicating historical futures from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we hope to inspire reflection and include contemporary readers in a continuing conversation about what world we want to live in. Through annotations, original essays, and discussion prompts, each volume grapples with scientific creativity and responsibility as well as the interplay of technical and moral imagination. We seek to engage diverse perspectives and audiences in order to advance the fundamental premise that the future is for everyone. While there is some flexibility in what volumes we will publish, some books we would like to prioritize include H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, Karel Čapek’s Rossum’s Universal Robots, Mary Shelley’s The Last Man, Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde, Yevgeni Zamyatin’s We, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, and Edgar Rice Burroughs’s A Princess of Mars. Prospective editors interested in proposing a volume for the series should first contact the series editors with a short note indicating their interest and the title they wish to annotate. We expect the series to focus primarily on works that are out of copyright in the United States, although we are open to considering copyrighted volumes for which prospective editors have secured permissions from an author or their estate. We especially welcome prospective editors who will bring diversity, equity, and inclusion perspectives to historical works of science fiction, as well as individual or small teams of editors who bring interdisciplinary backgrounds and approaches to these works. The Series Editors are Ed Finn (edfinn@asu.edu) and David H. Guston (David.Guston@asu.edu).—Ed Finn and David H. Guston, Arizona State University
Journal of Dracula Studies. We invite manuscripts of scholarly articles (4000-6000 words) on any of the following: Bram Stoker, the novel Dracula, the historical Dracula, and the vampire in folklore, fiction, film, popular culture, and related topics. Submissions should be sent electronically (as an e-mail attachment in .doc or .rtf). Please indicate the title of your submission in the subject line of your e-mail and follow MLA style. Contributors are responsible for obtaining any necessary permissions and ensuring observance of copyright. Manuscripts will be peer-reviewed independently by at least two scholars in the field. Copyright for published articles remains with the author. For detailed information, as well as digitized copies of articles published from 1999-2011, visit <www.dractravel.com/drc>. The material will be updated regularly. We also include at this site the guidelines for submission of articles. Those interested should contact Dr. Anne DeLong or Dr. Curt Herrl at <https://research.library.edu/dracula-studies/>. To be considered for the Fall 2021 issue, the deadline for submission is 1 May 2022.—Anne DeLong and Curt Herrl, Kutztown University
New Book Series: Routledge Advances in Popular Culture Studies. A new book series has been established by Routledge with a focus on popular culture. We are seeking original, interdisciplinary monographs or edited volumes that expand our understanding of popular culture as reflecting world challenges, contexts, and situations. The emphasis is on evolutions and transformations within popular culture, with a focus on icons, narratives, practices, and identities, examined in terms of interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transmedia perspectives. The series editor welcomes proposals for projects on topics including genre evolutions and transformations (from horror to fantasy, comedy, and beyond), forms of storytelling from mainstream to the margins, fandom, subcultures and identity, and popular narrative platforms from film to television, comics, games, music, and beyond. Prospective authors who wish to discuss their ideas for a proposal are welcome to contact the editor, Lorna Piatti-Farnell, at lorna.piatti-farnell@aut.ac.nz. The deadline for submissions is 31 August 2023.—Lorna Piatti-Farnell, Auckland University of Technology
“Romancing the Gothic” Lecture/Class Series: Horror, Gothic, Romance, Supernatural, and Folklore Talks. This is a free online project that started in March 2020; it provides classes and talks on various aspects of horror, the Gothic, the supernatural, folklore, and more. We arrange weekly talks that are then also made available online for participants. We are looking for contributors, both for creative workshops and for talks/classes. “Days of Creation” (a collection of creative showcases and workshops) are not themed and we welcome any applications, including writing workshops, author showcases, craft workshops, film showings, film-making workshops, fashion sessions, gothic make-up (or sfx), or anything creative! For the talks, each month will have a theme. When you send in a proposal you should state which months you would like to be considered for (one talk may be suitable for various themes). You should pitch this as a lecture for an open audience that will include both specialists and nonspecialists. We are particularly interested in papers with queer and decolonial perspectives and that consider traditions outside England and the USA.
To apply to the “Romancing the Gothic Project,” send an abstract (max: 250 words) to sam@romancingthegothic.com. Please include details of which months you would be available. “Romancing the Gothic” runs on a first-come, first-served basis, so if you delay application until the deadline, there may not be any spaces left. There is a small honorarium for participation sourced from audience donations. The deadline for submissions is March 31, 2022.—Sam Hirst, PhD
Special Issue of Interdisciplinary Humanities on Myth and Art. “Myth and Art” will explore the interrelation of the multiple functions of myth, literature, and art, as well as the interpretation of mythological narratives and their visual depictions. The approach will be intertextual and intermedia, and contributors will grapple with several questions: How do artists incorporate myth into their own works of art? How are the combinations of myth and art interpreted by ancient and modern-day spectators? Are there differences or similarities in those interpretations? What factors (psychological, religious, political, financial, etc.) influenced the selection of the myth and the artistic medium?
Although this special issue’s purpose is to discuss why artists select certain myths and reject others, universal themes will be included within their historical, political, economic, sociological, conceptual, and aesthetic contexts. For example, understanding art in conjunction with literature will enable contributors to write about the meaning of humanity and how one maintains personal freedom and dignity in an increasingly technological world. In addition to making the readers of the special issue cognizant of the role of art and literature in their lives, they will also be motivated to build a strategy for argumentation through myth and art. The deadline for abstract submission is 31 March 2022. Decisions on publication will not be made until the full drafts have been peer reviewed. The guest editors will invite full texts by 29 April 2022; the full drafts will be due on 1 October 2022. The review process for all submissions will be double-blind. Abstracts should be 400 to 500 words in length. A brief autobiographical blurb should accompany the abstract. The guest editors of this special issue are Dr. Anna Tahinici (atahinci@mfah.org) and Dr. Ed Cueva (cuevae@uhd.edu). Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.—Anna Tahinici, the Glassel School of Art, and Ed Cueva, University of Houston-Downtown
STEM in US Popular Culture: Assessing Gender Discourse, Stereotypes, and Mainstreaming. The Age of Enlightenment saw the emergence and development of science fiction as a way of imagining different futures and of making sense of the world and humanity through scientific and technological advances. This genre not only explores imagined (dys/u)topias but also reflects the current ideologies that instigate them and provides a space for marginalized communities and minorities to represent their realities. Despite the success of this type of genre fiction in US popular culture with people from diverse backgrounds and identities, the persistent gender inequality in STEM-related fields tends to prevail in fiction. This has been widely discussed both in scholarly work and in the public sphere. The fight for equality and gender mainstreaming has been included in numerous political agendas and discourses (national and international), along with pedagogical interventions and science dissemination programs. Popular culture is still in further need of explorations that interrogate the ideologies that perpetuate or challenge patriarchal heteronormative representations of gender in connection to science and technology.
This special thematic dossier aims to offer different explorations and analyses of how US popular culture texts can offer both positive and negative representations of the STEM fields in connection to gender. We are looking for intersectional approaches that go beyond a limited understanding of gender, paying attention to gender-nonconforming individuals, class-related issues, neurodivergence, and any instances of othered bodies in fictional and non-fictional popular culture from the United States. We are interested in papers that engage with questions of intersectionality and STEM in US popular culture, prominently focusing on gender representation, spanning cultural products aimed at dissemination and debate on STEM to sf texts such as films, television series, comics, graphic novels, and genre fiction. REDEN accepts proposals of articles (6000-7000 words approx. including references) about any aspect related to the call. Please upload your full article to <https://erevistas.publicaciones.uah.es/ojs/index.php/reden> as a single file (.doc, .docx, .odt). Keep in mind that you will have to upload an abstract (and keywords) during the submission process.
Guidelines for authors and submissions are published at <https://erevistas. publicaciones.uah.es/ojs/index.php/reden/about/submissions>. Prepare your paper using MLA style (8th/9th edition). REDEN (Revista Española de Estudios Norteamericanos, ISSN: 2695-4168) is an open-access interdisciplinary, academic, double-blind, peer-reviewed journal. In 2021 it was relaunched focusing on the study of the US popular culture and representations of the US in popular culture. The deadline for submission is 15 April 2022. —The Editors
Multimodal Student Projects for ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies.ImageText: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies, a peer-reviewed journal published quarterly, is seeking submissions of articles and multimodal student projects for its thirteenth volume. This open-access, online journal advances the academic study of an emerging and diverse canon of imagetexts, including but not limited to comic books and strips, graphic novels, animations, illustrated fiction, picture books, zines, and other media that blend images and texts in complex ecologies.
ImageTexT welcomes essays of 4,000 to 10,000 words examining the aesthetics, cognition, production, reception, distribution, and dissemination of imagetexts, along with translations of previously existing research in the field of visual culture. The journal also welcomes submissions of multimodal projects created by undergraduate students for our new “From the Classroom” section. This portion of the journal showcases exemplary examples of multimodal composition created in undergraduate classes. Submissions could take the form of comics and zines, infographics, podcasts, Twine games, and videos. Instructors or students may submit assignments for consideration. All submissions should be in the most recent MLA style and should include a short biographical statement (50 to 100 words). Please submit all articles and multimodal projects to our submission portal: <https://imagetext.submittable. com/submit>. Email any questions and proposals to the managing editors, Brianna Anderson and Laken Brooks, at imagetext@english.ufl.edu. The deadline for submissions is 31 March 2022.—Brianna Anderson and Laken Brooks, University of Florida
website at <https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/mullenawards.html>.—SFS Editors
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