Fandom Report for Sep 21 2017: Get Your Republican Hands Off Our Health Care

It’s been awhile since an update–so let’s see what’s happened this week, what I missed, and some older but significant content to share.

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CFP: “Strong Female Characters: Subversive Femininity in Literature and Popular Media” (Northeast MLA, April 2018, Pittsburgh), Submission Deadline 9/30/17

Below is a call for papers by my colleague, Mary Ellen Iatropoulos. “Strong Female Characters: Subversive Femininity in Literature and Popular Media” seeks abstracts that draw parallels between 19th-century literature and 21st-century popular media representations of subversive femininity. Successful papers will describe what critical insights such a comparison yields, as well as what conclusions for modern audiences such analysis reveals.

The CFP summary is below, and you may read the full CFP and submit abstracts online with a free NeMLA CFP List account at this link by September 30, 2017: https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/16962

Please email me (derek.s.mcgrath@gmail.com) or tweet at Mary Ellen (@metamare) or me (@dereksmcgrath) with any questions.

Image layout by Mary Ellen Iatropoulos

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CFP: “Of Superpowers and Privilege: Diversity in Superhero Narratives” (Northeast MLA, April 2018, Pittsburgh), Submission Deadline 9/30/17

I had shared calls for papers related to comics for the April 2018 convention of the Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA), with abstracts due September 30, 2017. I have updated that list to include this CFP by my colleague, Mary Ellen Iatropoulos.

“Of Superpowers and Privilege: Diversity in Superhero Narratives” emerges partially as a response to comics publishers, in particular Marvel, facing criticism for whitewashing of adaptations such as Doctor Strange and Iron Fist, even blaming “diversity” for slumping comics sales. Fans’ backlash to such failure to increase diversity, even to blame diversity, demonstrates that, for all the repetition of the word “diversity,” its ideals are far from its implementation.

The CFP summary is below, and you may read the full CFP and submit abstracts online by September 30, 2017, with a free NeMLA CFP List account at this ink: https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/16965

Please email me (derek.s.mcgrath@gmail.com) or tweet at Mary Ellen (@metamare) or me (@dereksmcgrath) with any questions.

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CFP: Comics sessions at the Northeast MLA in Pittsburgh (Deadline: September 30, 2017)

Updated September 18, 2017

Each year, the Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) organizes numerous sessions on topics related to the research and teaching of comics, graphic novels, and other visual texts. The 49th annual convention will take place April 12 to 15, 2018, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and abstracts are due online by September 30, 2017.

Below is a list of some sessions related to comics. Each link takes you directly to the web page to submit your abstracts. To submit, you will need a free NeMLA CFP List account at https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/CFP.

For questions about specific sessions, please click the session’s link below for the session’s chairs. For general questions about submitting abstracts or the 49th annual convention, please email support@nemla.org.

Right: Lin-Manuel Miranda in the title role of his musical Hamilton, April 20, 2016. Credit: Steve Jurvetson. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.

CFP: “Whitewashing and Racebending: Diversity in Literature and Popular Culture” (Northeast MLA, April 2018, Pittsburgh), Submission Deadline 9/30/17

Right: Lin-Manuel Miranda in the title role of his musical Hamilton, April 20, 2016. Credit: Steve Jurvetson. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.

Rafael Ponce-Cordero and I have collaborated on numerous sessions at the Northeast Modern Language Association, focusing on representations of gender, race, and other markers of identity in comics and graphic narratives. For this session, we are interested in looking beyond comics and graphic narratives to consider numerous practices of changing the identity of a character in adaptations and other re-imaginings of earlier texts. Source material may include comics and graphic narratives but can be expanded to adaptations of traditional texts, films, plays, and fan productions.

Please forward the full call for papers below to potentially interested contributors. 300-word abstracts are due online September 30, 2017, at https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/16951. If you have any questions for Rafael and me, please email derek.s.mcgrath@gmail.com or message me on Twitter.

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New addition: Call for Papers page

Given how many CFPs I organize or promote each year, I have added a calls for papers page. Check it out for some panels I’m organizing at the Northeast Modern Language Association in Pittsburgh (deadline for abstracts: September 30, 2017). And please email me at derek.s.mcgrath@gmail.com or tweet at me any CFPs you would like me to consider promoting on my site.

CFP: “Teaching Anime and Manga” (Northeast MLA, April 2018, Pittsburgh), Submission Deadline 9/30/17

This session emerges out of presentations Stevi Grimm and I have given at Anime Expo’s annual Anime and Manga Studies Symposium, particularly our discussions how we have used various Japanese animated and comics series in teaching critical thinking, composition, gender studies, and literature.

While the Northeast Modern Language Association is a language and literature conference, we welcome proposals that incorporate anime and manga outside of strictly language and literature courses: proposals may consider the use of these texts in courses on history, music, science, and more–because as long as there is an anime or manga about just about anything, there is likely one that fits almost any class.

Please consider sharing the call for papers below with interested colleagues. 300-word abstracts are due online September 30, 2017, at https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/16923. If you have any questions for Stevi and me, please email derek.s.mcgrath@gmail.com or message me on Twitter @dereksmcgrath.

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CFP: “Slow Violence and Urban Ecology” (Northeast MLA, April 2018, Pittsburgh), Submission Deadline 9/30/17

Photograph: “Le Plan d’Eau à Metz,” Kristina BEDIJS, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Plan_d%27Eau_2.jpg

This session is inspired by the work of Rob Nixon, the Currie C. and Thomas A. Barron Family Professor in the Humanities and the Environment and author of Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (2013), who will deliver the keynote address, “Environmental Martyrdom and the Defenders of the Forest,” at the April 2018 convention of the Northeast Modern Language Association. Therefore, this session is an excellent opportunity for scholars in ecocriticism to share their research with NeMLA’s audience, as well as to attend Professor Nixon’s address. A preliminary summary of Professor Nixon’s address topic is available here.

Please forward the full call for papers below to potentially interested contributors. 300-word abstracts are due online September 30, 2017, at https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/16996. If you have any questions, please email me at derek.s.mcgrath@gmail.com or message me on Twitter.

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CFP: “New Approaches in Zombie Studies” (Northeast MLA, April 2018, Pittsburgh), submission deadline 9/30/17

I had proposed this session in April because, with the Northeast Modern Language Association meeting in Pittsburgh, where George Romero filmed Night of the Living Dead, it seemed appropriate to consider how his work and those of other artists have altered what we know about zombies in art and popular culture. Sadly, since this session was approved, Romero passed away. I hope this session, in some small way, can honor his accomplishments and critically assess his work in the context of other texts centered on the living dead.

While this session welcomes proposals that look at Romero’s zombies or the fascination with zombies in Pittsburgh, it is opened to all recent critical approaches to zombie narrative, from Haitian folklore to iZombie and The Walking Dead–and all in-between.

Please forward the full call for papers below to potentially interested contributors. 300-word abstracts are due online September 30, 2017, at https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/16935. If you have any questions, please email me at derek.s.mcgrath@gmail.com or message me on Twitter.

Artwork credits: George Romero (Day of the Dead; credit: Rex), Solomon Grundy (Faces of Evil: Solomon Grundy #1 March 2009 by Shane Davis), iZombie (CW / Warner Bros / Vertigo), Space Dandy (BONES / Bandai Namco)

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CFP: “Hollywood F. Scott Fitzgerald” and “New Approaches to Teaching Fitzgerald” (Northeast MLA, April 2018, Pittsburgh), submission deadline 9/30/17

The Last Tycoon is out on Amazon–so why not submit an abstract about it?

While F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short stories and The Great Gatsby continue to dominate scholarship and teaching, these conference calls for papers look at a wider scope of his literary output, including the stories and scripts he developed while in Hollywood.

The CFP “New Approaches to Teaching Fitzgerald” welcomes a wide range of proposals. And the scope of “Hollywood F. Scott Fitzgerald” is broad enough to focus on multiple ways in which Fitzgerald and California intersect: film adaptations, the place of Hollywood as a setting in his fiction like The Last Tycoon, and his last years living in the state.

300-word abstracts for “New Approaches to Teaching Fitzgerald” and “Hollywood F. Scott Fitzgerald” are due September 30th at those links. Please consider sharing the full CFPs below–and also consider submitting to NeMLA’s special event featuring F. Scott Fitzgerald biofiction novelist Stewart O’Nan!

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