So I recently joined SF Canada at the recommendation of my friend and fellow SF author Karen Danylak, and I’ve really been enjoying the member’s discussions I get via e-mail.
One cool thing that came today was a notice about a new peer-reviewed journal called Science Fiction Film and Television which is set to start publishing in March 2008. For anyone so inclined I include the full submission guidelines below.
I found this notice cool for three reasons:
1) As an SF writer and fan I’m glad that, at least to some degree, SF is being taken seriously in the academy…even if it has to start with sci-fi film and television, much of which is just bad (*cough*Andromeda*cough*) and isn’t really representative of the field or what I think SF could/should be. But hey–ya gotta start somewhere.
I know people like Ursula Le Guin, Ray Bradbury, and Robert J. Sawyer have their books assigned and discussed in various university literature courses, but that’s certainly the exception. More of this needs to happen for SF to start being taken as seriously as literature as, say, the works of Margaret Atwood (that closet SF writer amongst the literary elite), and not just pulp fiction (to borrow a phrase), so here’s hoping.
(OT: Did you know that Tesseracts Ten was recently adopted for course use by Prof. Mike Johnstone of the University of Toronto Department of English? U of T is Canada’s largest university and Tesseracts Ten is being used for ENG237H1F: Science Fiction this summer, as well as in the Fall and Winter semesters. We need more profs like Prof. Johnstone. Maybe he’ll be interested in Tesseracts Eleven when it comes out…)
2) My day job is as an acquisitions editor at an academic publisher, so I find this interesting from a SECOND professional stand-point. Film studies isn’t one of the areas I acquire in (I do social sciences like sociology, anthropology, and political science) but my colleague Siobhan does a great job in the area. Which brings me to my third reason for finding this cool–
3) One of the journal editors is not only Canadian, but is a UTP author (one of Siobhan’s).
Sherryl Vint (Brock University) recently published her book Bodies of Tomorrow: Technology, Subjectivity, Science Fiction with UTP.
Very cool, indeed.
– S.
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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Science Fiction Film and Television
Science Fiction Film and Television is a biannual, peer-reviewed journal published by Liverpool University Press. Edited by Mark Bould (UWE) and Sherryl Vint (Brock University), with an international board of advisory editors, it encourages dialogue among the scholarly and intellectual communities of film studies, sf studies and television studies.
We invite submissions on all areas of sf film and television, and which situate texts, practices and institutions within broader national, historical, cultural, theoretical and critical contexts. In addition to popular and contemporary works, we are interested in papers which consider neglected texts, propose innovative ways of looking at canonical texts, or explore the tensions and synergies that emerge from the interaction of genre and medium. We encourage work that considers the specificities of the genre and what its increasing centrality to film and television globally might suggest for critical approaches to film, sf and television.
We publish articles (6000-8000 words), book and DVD reviews (1000-2000 words) and review essays (up to 5000 words). Suggestions for papers include but are not limited to the following areas:
* silent sf
* European sf (e.g., French New Wave, Turkish pop cinema)
* East Asian sf (e.g., kaiju eiga, anime)
* Hollywood sf blockbusters
* animation and greenscreen
* adaptations
* low-budget and independent sf
* children’s sf
* costume, design and music
* spectacle and special effects
* the `soap opera-isation’ of television sf
* sf and avant-garde practice
* the relationships between globalisation, transnationalisation, media convergence and sf
* the science-fictionality of media technologies and forms themselves
* cross-media and transnational franchises
* audience, fans and consumption
Articles should be 6000-8000 words (MLA format) and include a 100-word abstract. Electronic submission in MS Word is preferred. The deadline for submissions for the inaugural issue (March 2008) is September 1, 2007. Send submissions to both editors at mark.bould@gmail.com and sherryl.vint@gmail.com. If you are interested in reviewing a book or DVD, or have materials you would like reviewed, please contact Sherryl Vint.
Advisory Editorial Board:
Jonathan Bignell (University of Reading),
Catherine Constable (University of Warwick),
Susan A. George (University of California, Berkeley),
Elyce Rae Helford (Middle Tennessee State University),
Matt Hills (Cardiff University),
Brooks Landon (University of Iowa),
Rob Latham (University of Iowa),
Sharalyn Orbaugh (UBC),
David Seed (Univ. of Liverpool),
Steve Shaviro (Wayne State University),
Vivian Sobchack (University of California, Los Angeles)
and JP Telotte (Georgia Institute of Technology)