[Sfts-students] Fwd: CFP: Screening Speculative Animals (SFFTV special issue)

Tue Jul 11 09:56:12 PDT 2023

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Gerry Canavan <gerrycanavan at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2023 at 09:52
Subject: CFP: Screening Speculative Animals (SFFTV special issue)
To: <SFRA at jiscmail.ac.uk>

Dear colleagues, please consider and pass along the CFP below for a special
issue of SFFTV on animals. Gerry

https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/pb-assets/documents/Journals/sfftv_%20Animals%20Special%20Issue%20CFP-1689072550.pdf

*CFP: Screening Speculative Animals *

*Science Fiction Film and Television special issue*

*Guest editors*
Paweł Frelik (p.frelik at uw.edu.pl) and Anna Maria Grzybowska (
a.grzybowska at uw.edu.pl)

*300-word abstracts due October 2; please email both editors.*

Feared, tamed, loved, hunted, protected, or slaughtered, nonhuman animals
have always been central to human existence, exploited for food, work, and
companionship. Yet despite their ubiquitous presence, nonhuman animals have
been rendered selectively visible (Ortiz-Robles 2016, 9) and pushed to the
margins of human consciousness. With the recent flourishing of animal
ethics, posthumanist approaches, and general attempts to challenge
anthropocentric ways, the matter of nonhuman presence and agency has gained
momentum, pressing scholars across disciplines to engage with other animals
and acknowledge our interdependence. To rethink the world beyond the human
is to rethink the past, the present, and the future, a project that, among
others, requires a thorough examination of nonhuman animals’ representation
within culture, for as Sherryl Vint writes in *Animal Alterity* (2010, 8),
“how we think about animals affects how we live with them, and how we live
with them determines who they are, socially and biologically.”

Following this understanding, this special issue of *Science Fiction Film
and Television* is dedicated to exploring the interface of nonhuman
animals, speculation, and audiovisual media. Within the realm of sf
audiovisual media, other animals assume diverse roles and functions,
embodying themes such as bioengineering, posthumanism, or ecological
concerns. However, other animal figures do not merely enrich the narrative
landscapes, but further invite critical reflections on the nature of
interspecies relationships and the ethical dimensions of human-animal
interactions. Thus, we are seeking to uncover the speculative and
imaginative potentialities of sf film, television, and video games to
deepen, challenge, and redefine more-than-human worlds, and transcend
anthropocentric ways of seeing and, more importantly, of looking.
Considering the centrality of nonhumans within human worlds, the goal of
this issue is not only to counter the selective (in)visibility of nonhumans
but also to address the lacuna within the field of media analysis, the
frameworks of which “have rendered their goals impossible” by ignoring
other animals (Mills 2017, 7). It is, in other words, to consider nonhuman
animals as more than catalysts, protagonists, or objects of exploration,
and recognize them as subjects within audiovisual speculations.

In view of the above, a non-exhaustive list of possible topics of interest
across sf audiovisual media (film, television, video games, etc.) includes:

●      narrative representations of other animals

●      animal worlds and worldbuilding

●      animal rights and speculation

●      non-anthropocentric subjectivities

●      other animals and capitalism in speculative media

●      playing animals in video games and interactive texts: mechanics and
politics

●      human and nonhuman animal encounters

●      non-mammalian speculations and futurities

●      queer/trans, differently-abled, working-class, Global South, and
BIPOC methods and ways of approaching animals

●      fantastic animals

●      animal and plant encounters

●      other animals in speculative media production

●      other approaches to speculative animals: biopolitics, food studies,
new materialisms

Film and television remain firmly within the issue’s scopes, but the
editors especially encourage submissions focused on video games.

The issue’s timeline is planned as follows:

●      Oct 2, 2023: Deadline for 300-word abstracts (email both guest
editors)

●      Oct 23, 2023: acceptance decisions

●      May 6, 2024: full articles due (earlier submissions are encouraged)

●      May 27, 2024: feedback and comments from editors

●      Jun 24, 2024: return to editors and send to peer readers

●      Aug 12, 2024: peer reports

●      Sept 9, 2024: return revisions after peer reports

References:

Mills, Brett. *Animals on Television: The Cultural Making of the Non-Human*.
London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.

Ortiz-Robles, Mario. *Literature and Animal Studies*. London; New York:
Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2016.

Vint, Sherryl. *Animal Alterity: Science Fiction and the Question of the
Animal*. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010.

---------------------
My working day may not be your working day. Please don't feel any
obligation to reply to this email outside of your normal working hours.

Need a meeting? Set one up here: *https://calendly.com/gerrycanavan/30min
<https://calendly.com/gerrycanavan/30min>*

Gerry Canavan (he/him)
Immediate Past President, Science Fiction Research Association (2023-2025)
Managing Editor, *Science Fiction Film and Television *
Professor of 20th and 21st Century Literature and Chair
English Department, Marquette University

gerry.canavan at marquette.edu
http://www.gerrycanavan.com

<http://www.gerrycanavan.com/>
Marquette University is located in Milwaukee County, the ancestral lands of
the Menominee, Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk, Fox, Mascouten, Sauk, and Ojibwe
nations.

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-- 
Sherryl Vint (she/her)
Professor, UC Riverside
Editor, *Science Fiction Studies *
Editor, Palgrave *Science and Popular Culture *series

"Insisting on the value of what or whom you love is an ongoing act of
revolutionary refusal and creation."--Max Haven, *Revenge Capitalism*
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