CFP: Fan Fiction and the Study of Biblical Commentary and Scribal Culture Workshop, European Association of Biblical Studies, Spain, July 2015

January 17, 2015 by

Fan Fiction and the Study of Biblical Commentary and Scribal Culture Workshop

Chairs

Sonja Ammann, Humboldt Universität Berlin (sonja.ammann@hu-berlin.de)

Mette Bundvad, University of Copenhagen (mbu@teol.ku.dk)

Solveig Grebe, Universität Göttingen (solveig.grebe@phil.uni-goettingen.de)

Frauke Uhlenbruch, De Gruyter Berlin (f.uhlenbruch@gmail.com)

Programme

This workshop uses the model of fan fiction to conceptualize early Jewish and Christian text production.

Fan fiction are texts, films, or other media created by fans of TV series, films, books, or book series, etc. Fans engage with the universe created by the makers of a specific series, film, or book. For example, they create new storylines, “repair” plots they do not agree with, write prequels or sequels, and fill in scenes that are missing. The internet allows an unprecedented visibility of fan fiction – up to the point where writers of the “canonical” series look to fan fiction and take the opinions of fans into account when writing new “canonical” material. Significantly, writers of fan fiction work within a set of rules defined by the fandom over time. For example, inventing a new character who does not exist in the “canon” is frowned upon; also, one does not write oneself into the storyline.

As an interpretative model, fan fiction provides excellent heuristic tools for exploring anew the composition of early Jewish and Christian texts. Two perspectives are particularly relevant. Firstly, fan fiction helps us explore questions of textual authority. How did the early Jewish and Christian texts acquire their authority, and in what ways did they make creative use of the authority of already existing texts? Contemporary fan fiction offers a very useful analogy here. As texts are rewritten and reimagined by their fans, they may gain in authority, for example. Similarly, the rewritten media itself occasionally gains a measure of authority, inspiring perhaps further rewritings.

Secondly, fan fiction enables us to study the continuity between the production and reception of texts. Fan fiction writers are readers of texts who become writers of their own texts. A similar relationship between the reception of existing material and new text production existed in early Judaism and Christianity. Here practitioners of fan fiction can offer important insights about writing additional material to supplement an existing “canon”.

This workshop brings together contributions by biblical scholars and writers and theorists of fan fiction. Two sessions are planned. Half of the first session will be an interview with a fan fiction theorist and practitioner, conducted by a biblical scholar. The second half of this session will feature three invited papers. We welcome paper proposals for a second open session.

Call for Papers

We welcome paper proposals which apply fan fiction as an interpretative model to study any text(s) in the range of Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, Dead Sea Scrolls, Pseudepigrapha, New Testament, Christian Apocrypha, or Rabbinic literature. Of particular interest are papers dealing with issues such as a) forms and techniques of literary production based on a revered tradition; b) scribal conventions and restrictions on creative supplementation; c) possible effects of the production of additional material on the development of a “canon”.

The EABS conference is being held in Cordoba, Spain, July 12-15 2015 and the deadline for proposals is March 15.

You can submit abstracts here:
http://www.eabs.net/ocs/index.php/annualmeeting/EABS2015

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Transmedia Storytelling and Its Reception: Economies and Politics of Participation

January 13, 2015 by

Transmedia Storytelling and Its Reception:
Economies and Politics of Participation
Schloss Herrenhausen, Hanover
25-27 February 2015

Hailed by many as a paradigm shift in the way stories are told and experienced, transmedia storytelling has in recent years become a firmly established practice and presence in mainstream media. The conference “Transmedia Storytelling and Its Reception: Economies and Politics of Participation” brings together a group of national and international experts who will engage with mainly two aspects of the phenomenon. The first is the theorisation and specification of transmedia storytelling as a storytelling mode and a cultural product, for example in relation to intermediality, franchising, games and the notion of storyworlds. The second concerns the reception of transmedia narratives. Transmedial story set-ups can be highly complex and, especially when they involve the so-called social media, can challenge the traditional unidirectional model of textual communication. At the same time they raise questions about the means of creating audience immersion, about offers of participation and interactivity – or a lack thereof – and about the implications of transmedial narratives for notions of production and reception. Addressing psychological and physiological aspects of transmedia reception as well as questions of transmedia literacy and reception aesthetics, the conference offers an array of perspectives on the reception of transmedial narratives.

The conference brings together experts from the fields of media studies, literary studies, communication studies and cultural studies, as well as practitioners, journalists and editors. Speakers include Sarah Atkins (University of Brighton, UK), Martin Butler (University of Oldenburg), Elizabeth Evans (University of Nottingham, UK), Dorothea Martin (Das wilde Dutzend Verlag), Irina Rajewsky (FU Berlin), Pamela Rutledge (Fielding Graduate University, USA), Eckart Voigts (Braunschweig University) and Mark J.P. Wolf (Concordia University Wisconsin, USA).

One of the aims of the conference is to offer a platform for exchange among young scholars. We would therefore like to invite them in particular to join us and contribute to the interdisciplinary discussion that we are hoping to generate. For further information, please see the conference website:https://www.tu-braunschweig.de/anglistik/seminar/liku/forschung/projekte

Conference convenors: PD Dr. Monika Pietrzak-Franger (University of Hamburg)
PD Dr. Lucia Krämer (Leibniz University Hanover)

Contact: transmedia@tu-braunschweig.de (Registration possible until 10 February 2015)

The conference is sponsored by the VolkswagenStifung.

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CFP: Edited collection – ‘Transitions, endings and resurrections in fandom’

January 13, 2015 by

Periods of transition and change, as well as endings, can have huge impact on fans who either engage with texts collectively via fan communities or who have more individual connections with fan objects. This edited collection seeks to draw on existing work on fandom in this area to offer greater insight into how fans respond to and cope with transitions or periods of ending such as actors or characters leaving television shows; the cancellation of shows entirely; the deaths of famous people; the splitting up of bands or the ends of careers of musical acts; players leaving particular sports teams, and so on. It also examines how fandom continues and changes after these periods of transition or cessation, exploring ongoing practices such as fan discussion, creativity, or identification, along with cases of fans who may abandon favoured objects and move onto new objects of fandom entirely. Issues of return and resurrection can also be explored to examine cases such as returning television series, the reforming of musical bands, or the revival or reboot of a film franchise.

The proposed collection draws on the work being conducted on endings more broadly by writers such as Jason Mittell (2013), C. Lee Harrington (2012) and Joanne Morreale (2011), and on specific fan studies including Bertha Chin’s work on post-series X-Files fandom (2012), Bore & Hickman’s (2011) study of post-West Wing fan practices on Twitter, Whiteman and Metevier’s (2013) study of the ends of online fan communities, and Rebecca Williams’ (2011; forthcoming) work on fan reactions to the ends of television shows. However, it seeks to extend these approaches and offer new ways of theorising periods of transition and change, as well as the concept of the ‘ending’ in fandoms, along with broadening the field of inquiry beyond television to consider examples including cinema, popular literature, games, sport, celebrity, music, TV, media technology (e.g. hardware, consoles) and more.

The collection already has a number of proposed chapters but I now invite proprosals on the from other interested contributors. I am particularly interested in proposals on the following topics:

• The impact of media production contexts
• Transmedia and multi-platforming
• Fan reactions to deaths of celebrities
• Examples of fan objects on hiatus (where a return is unknown)
• The role of memory and/or nostalgia
• The role of archives and/or memorials
• Fan activism and endings/transitions
• Non-Western case studies
• Endings and transitions in sports fandom

Please send an abstract of 300 words, along with a short author biography of 150 words to Dr. Rebecca Williams rebecca.williams@southwales.ac.uk by 15th February 2015. Please also address any queries to this email address.

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The World Hobbit project

January 9, 2015 by

World Hobbit Project (www.worldhobbitproject.org)

The World Hobbit Project, the most ambitious film audience research project yet undertaken, launched on December 1 of this year to coincide with the premiere of the final film of The Hobbit trilogy. Research groups in 46 countries, operating in over 30 languages, will be gathering a range of demographic data (age, sex, country, education, occupation, etc), asking a series of orientation questions (designed to show patterns in responses, kinds of evaluation, modal questions about the kind of story The Hobbit is seen to be, etc.) and probing how people watch (and like to watch) a film of this kind. We are also interested in what else audiences do in connection with watching the films (reading the book, taking part in online discussions, following particular stars, creating fanworks, etc.). Crucially, the survey is designed on the principle of linked quantitative and qualitative questions. We believe that if we can recruit a large and diverse array of respondents, we can make contributions to many current debates: about globalisation, cultural identities, the role of online participation, and the role of film and cinema, among them.

What can we offer In return? All our findings will be made publicly available, in as many forms as we are able; and once we have completed our own work on the database, the entire body of data and materials will be placed in the public domain for other researchers to use in whatever way they choose. Please, help us in simple ways:

By completing the survey yourself, of course, if you have seen the films.
By passing on this information to students, colleagues, family, friends, and asking them to do the same.
By mentioning and pointing to the project’s address in blogs, postings, and conversations.
By mentioning the project and showing the link on Facebook and the like, so that it is as widely visible as we can possibly make it.

Our survey is available at: http://www.worldhobbitproject.org . If you have any questions about the project, we will do our best to answer them. Please contact either:

Martin Barker (mib@aber.ac.uk)
Matt Hills (mjh37@aber.ac.uk)
Ernest Mathijs (ernest.mathijs@gmail.com)

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CFP: U:Pop – The First International Popular Music Studies Undergraduate Conference, Northampton, UK, 30 May 2015

January 6, 2015 by

The University of Northampton, United Kingdom
Saturday 30th May 2015

As the academic study of popular music has developed over the last thirty years, reaching both across disciplines and across the globe, our understanding of the economic, social, political and cultural significance of this most ubiquitous of forms has only become ever more sophisticated and dynamic. Whilst the discipline(s) has developed both scholars of international repute and a thriving postgraduate research body, the work produced by undergraduate students studying relevant courses has had little opportunity to be recognized outside their own institutions.

Following the highly successful Undergraduate Panel at the PopLife conference at the University of Northampton in 2014, students and staff recognized the need to offer a conference platform to the very best work in the field coming out of undergraduate courses in popular and commercial music. As such we would like to offer undergraduate students working in the field of Popular Music Studies the opportunity to submit proposals for the First International Popular Music Studies Undergraduate Conference to be held on the 30th May 2015. The aim of the conference is to promote the very best scholarship at undergraduate level and to encourage continued engagement with the field, and the introduction of new blood into the research community.

Submissions

There is no fixed theme for the conference as long as it relates to the study of popular music. Both conventional papers and practice-based research may choose to engage with the following themes:

Music making
Performing popular music
Audiences / fandom / subcultures
Patterns of consumption
Music media
The music industry / industries
Pop historiography
Writing about music
Technology and innovation
Popular music and the political realm
Proposals may be entirely novel pieces of work or may be presentations or extensions of current dissertation or project work.

Abstracts should be no longer than 300 words (for a 20 minute paper) and should be submitted with a short author biography to nathan.wiseman-trowse@northampton.ac.uk by 14th February 2015. Proposals for dedicated panels or for practice-based sessions will also be considered.

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CFP: Media Archaeologies Forum: Journal of Contemporary Archaeology

January 3, 2015 by 
Media Archaeologies Forum: Journal of Contemporary Archaeology

The recent emergence of ‘media archaeologies’ is an exciting theoretical and methodological shift within media studies. In 2010, in The Routledge Companion to Film History (ed. William Guynn), Erkki Huhtamo defined ‘media archaeology’ as ‘a particular way of studying media as a historically attuned enterprise’ that involves researchers ‘”excavating” forgotten media-cultural phenomena that have been left outside the canonized narratives about media culture and history’ (203). In the same year, Jussi Parikka added that ‘media archaeology needs to insist both on the material nature of its enterprise – that media are always articulated in material, also in non-narrative frameworks whether technical media such as phonographs, or algorithmic such as databases and software networks – and that the work of assembling temporal mediations takes place in an increasingly varied and distributed network of institutions, practices and technological platforms’ (http://mediacartographies.blogspot.ca/2010/10/what-is-media-archaeology-beta.html). German media theorist and trained archaeologist, Wolfgang Ernst, describes media archaeology’s focus on the ‘nondiscursive infrastructure and (hidden) programs of media’ (2013, Digital Memory and the Archive, p. 59). If media archaeologists such as Thomas Elsaesser, Wolfgang Ernst, Lisa Gitelman, Erkki Huhtamo, Jussi Parikka, Cornelia Vismann and Siegfried Zielinski are interested in scalar change, material-discursive assemblages and deep time relations as they pertain to media technologies and networks, how might archaeologists with interests in the media actively contribute to the shaping of this field?

Alongside archaeology’s discursive travels across the humanities, most notoriously via Michel Foucault, archaeologists have long engaged with media. From Silicon Valley to Atari dumps, from the mobile phone to the media technologies of post-war astronomy and from telegraphy to the material-discursive actions of media as sensory prostheses, the global archaeological community has produced a large number of important studies of media techno-assemblages that both map specifically archaeological approaches and push at the limits of archaeology as a discipline. What are the archaeological specificities that mark out a distinct disciplinary approach to understanding media? How might the practices of media archaeologists such as Huhtamo, Parikka, et al challenge assumptions that archaeologists located within the discipline might have about their methodological and conceptual specificities? In short, where are the boundaries between media archaeologies and archaeologies of media? How are those boundaries drawn, performed and maintained? And how might we work together to ask new questions of media technologies and their relations?

This forum invites contributors to submit responses to the provocations contained in the first paragraph. The forum invites contributors to draw out key archaeological theories and practices to contribute to the rich field of media ecologies, archaeologies and ‘variatologies’ in order to explore the implications of distinct yet diverse archaeological approaches to media assemblages. Commentaries are welcomed in the form of short texts (1,000 – 3,000 words) or in any other genre suitable for print, including drawings and images. We welcome especially original thoughts and specific examples from around the world.

Commentaries will be selected in terms of originality, diversity and depth and will be published in a forthcoming Forum in Journal of Contemporary Archaeology (http://www.equinoxpub.com/journals/index.php/JCA). Deadline for submissions is 3 February 2015.

For submissions and questions, please contact Angela Piccini, a.a.piccini@bristol.ac.uk.

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CFP: Essay Collection, “Supernatural” and the Gothic Tradition

December 30, 2014 by

CFP: Essay Collection, “Supernatural” and the Gothic Tradition (abstracts: 15 March 2015)

Essays are invited for an edited collection of essays focusing on the television series “Supernatural” and its relationship to the Gothic tradition. This study seeks to examine how the series is directly tied to Gothic concerns of anxiety, the monstrous, family/generational trauma, curses, and of course, the supernatural itself. In addition to these overarching themes, the series provides a rich framework with which to discuss major Gothic sub-genres such as the Comic Gothic, Suburban Gothic, Political Gothic, Female Gothic, and Postmodern/Meta Gothic. As a television show, “Supernatural” also allows connections between the Gothic and reception studies (such as comparisons of Gothic serialization on the page and screen). The collection is under contract with McFarland Press and will be part of their expanding Pop Culture series. Essays may examine any aspect of the representation of the Gothic/supernatural within the context of the series.

Themes might include:
American Gothic (particular characteristics)
Comic Gothic (the comedic episodes that recur on the show)
Religious Gothic (the involvement of angels and demons on the show)
Political Gothic (leviathans, vampires, demons, angels, world dominance, social control)
Contemporary/Postmodern Gothic (the fragmented self, shifting/multiple identities)
Gothic Television (how the series relates to this emerging field of study)
Meta Gothic and Fan Fiction

Other suggested topics:
Monsters; ghosts; vampires; revenants; shapeshifters; haunting/memories; familial anxiety; curses; cursed objects; the beast within; monstrous or victimized women; folklore, mythology and urban legends; monstrosity; hybridity; fairy tales; demons and angels; possession; identity; death and dying; the occult; mysticism; sexuality; class; race; gender.

Please send a 300-500 word abstract (or complete essay) and C.V. by 15 March 2015. All submissions will be acknowledged. If your abstract is accepted, the complete essay (5,000-6,000 words, including endnotes and bibliography) will be due 1 July 2015.

Submissions should be emailed to Melissa Makala at me.makala@gmail.com

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CFP: “I’ll See You Again in 25 Years: The Return of Twin Peaks and Generations of Cult TV”, University of Salford, UK, 21-22 May 2015

December 23, 2014 by

Call for Papers

“I’ll See You Again in 25 Years: The Return of Twin Peaks and Generations of Cult TV”

A two-day international conference.

School of Arts and Media, University of Salford, UK

21st- – 22nd May 2015

Confirmed keynote speakers:
• Professor David Lavery (Middle Tennessee State University, USA)
• Cristina Alvarez (Barcelona based independent video artist)
• Dr Adrian Martin (Monash University, Australia)

Proposals are invited for a two-day international conference on the return of the popular cult television series Twin Peaks. The conference presents a timely reconsideration of the critically acclaimed programme with the announcement of its return to television after a twenty five year hiatus. In the meantime, cultures of television production, circulation and viewer practices have changed dramatically; the US cable sector in this period becoming the primary site for a model of auteur-driven, big-budget offbeat serial drama that Twin Peaks served as prototype for, with this trend underpinning Showtime’s recommissioning of this series of broadcast network origin. But alongside such transformation, the cultural prominence of this landmark programme has endured, as the considerable enthusiasm among critics and fans for the series’ return demonstrates.

This conference seeks to address the issue of Twin Peaks’ significant influence and lasting appeal from a number of multi-disciplinary perspectives. We welcome proposals from scholars in the fields of cultural studies, television studies, film studies, visual arts, popular music studies, sound studies performance studies, digital and social media and related disciplines.

Proposals are invited on (but not limited to) the following topics:

Twin Peaks and fandom
Twin Peaks and generations of cult television
Music and sound design in Twin Peaks
Set design and visual style
The use and subversion of the crime and melodrama genres
Feminism and gender relations
Seriality in Twin Peaks and contemporary television
Camp performance styles in Twin Peaks
David Lynch and televisual auteurism
Twin Peaks and social media
Generations of quality television
Intertextuality between television, film and literature
Comic and melodramatic performance styles
Film and television convergence
Twin Peaks and the contemporary television industry

Deadline for abstracts: 31st January 2015

300 word abstracts plus a 100 word biography should be sent to the conference organisers:
Kirsty Fairclough K.Fairclough@salford.ac.uk
Michael Goddard M.Goddard@salford.ac.uk
Anthony Smith A.N.Smith@salford.ac.uk

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CFP: The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship

December 20, 2014 by

As we open a new volume for 2015, The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship would like to invite all authors to submit contributions to the journal.

We welcome submissions from graduate students, scholars, artists, teachers, curators, researchers, publishers and librarians from any academic, disciplinary or artistic background interested in the study and/or practice of comics or other related cultural expressions. Submissions can cover any thematic field and approach as long as they fulfil The Comics Grid’s editorial guidelines, available here: http://www.comicsgrid.com/about/submissions

For 2015 we have also identified 15 priority general thematic areas we encourage authors to consider:

Online comics, digital comics and comics in non-print platforms
Comics and print culture; comics and history of the book; comics and caricature
Comics and cultural value
Comics and libraries, archives; comics preservation; comics and the digital humanities
Data research on comics; data science and comics
Comics and international development; comics and human rights
Comics in languages other than English
Comics and translation
Comics as educational resources
Long-form and short-form non-fiction comics and comics journalism
Comics and science or scholarly communication
Comics fan networks on line and off line; amateur comics as fan fiction
Academic engagement with comics in comics or other visual forms
Women in comics; comics scholarship and feminism, gender studies
Comics and multimodality and transmedia; comics as immersive documents

The Comics Grid publishes one issue per year, with rapid publication as soon as articles are ready. Submissions can be sent throughout the year, however editorial deadlines are:

March 31st
October 31st

http://www.comicsgrid.com/announcement

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CFP: Music and Fandom special issue, Journal of Fandom Studies

December 14, 2014 by

Music operates simultaneously as an object of, an accessory to, and a production of fandom. Though this phenomenon has been addressed by scholars such as Henry Jenkins, Solomon Davidoff, and Mark Duffett, the use and production of music remains a relatively ignored area of research within the field of fan studies. This leaves a wide variety of important fan practices unexplored, including music-making (filk, geek rock, wizard rock, fanvids, and cover bands), the hybridization of media in fan creations (i.e., music in fan fiction, music in fanvids, and music in LARPing and Cosplay), fan performance and recording practices, and music-making as a community-building exercise within fandom, to name a few.

The editors invite article proposals for a special issue of The Journal of Fandom Studies that critically investigate the intersections between music and fandom. As fan studies is an inherently interdisciplinary field, we welcome scholars from a variety of disciplines (musicology, ethnomusicology, media and communication studies, ethnography, social/subcultural theory, philosophy, etc.) to contribute. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
Adaptation and Labor
Amateur music-making and musical training within fandom
Fans as musical producers/fan-musicians
Music and anti-fandom
Music and convention culture
Music and cult media fandom (movies, television shows, web serials, video games, comics, novels, etc.)
Nonwestern, global, and transnational music fandoms
Popular music fandom
Music and sports fandom
Music and DIY Culture
Musical fan communities
Music as fan ritual
Music’s relationship to other fan-created media (fan fiction, fanvids, podcasts, etc.)
Music and historical (re)enactment
Music as a site for national, communal, and personal identity negotiation
Music tourism
Present and past music fandoms
To submit, please send proposals of no more than 500 words in PDF format to jfsmusicfandom@gmail.com by February 1, 2015. Up to two additional pages of musical examples and/or references may also be included, though this is not required. The proposal should include name of the author, institutional affiliation, and the title of the proposal. Accepted proposals will be notified by March 1, 2015, and completed articles will be expected by September 1, 2015, for publication in October 2016.

Jessica L. Getman
jgetman@umich.edu
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Aya Esther Hayashi
ahayashi@gc.cuny.edu
The Graduate Center, City University of New York

The Journal of Fandom Studies is an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal published by Intellect. The multi-disciplinary nature of fan studies makes the development of a community of scholars sometimes difficult to achieve. The Journal of Fandom Studies offers scholars a dedicated publication that promotes current scholarship in the fields of fan and audience studies across a variety of media. We focus on the critical exploration, within a wide range of disciplines and fan cultures, of issues surrounding production and consumption of popular media (including film, music, television, sports and gaming). The Journal of Fandom Studies aims to address key issues, while also fostering new areas of enquiry that take us beyond the bounds of current scholarship.

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