I'm pleased to announce I'll be co-editing an issue of American Literature next year on science fiction, fantasy, and myth. Here's the CFP; the deadline is May 31, 2010.

American Literature (Duke University Press)
Special Issue on SF, Fantasy, and Myth
http://www.duke.edu/~gc24/americanliterature.html

DEADLINE: 31 May 2010

More than one commentator has mentioned that science fiction as a form is where theological narrative went after Paradise Lost, and this is undoubtedly true…The form is often used as a way of acting out the consequences of a theological doctrine….Extraterrestrials have taken the place of angels, demons, fairies and saints, though it must be said that this last group is now making a comeback.
—Margaret Atwood, “Why We Need Science Fiction”

Fantasy is the impossible made probable. Science fiction is the improbable made possible.
—Rod Serling

In this work I am attempting to create a new mythology for the space age. I feel that the old mythologies are definitely broken down and not adequate at the present time.
—William Burroughs (on the Nova trilogy)

From revolutions in communications technology and transportation to encounters with space travelers and aliens, from leaps in human evolution to new dimensions of existence, from creation stories of the past to speculations about the future, science fiction, fantasy, and myth have variously captured the far reaches of the human imagination, making the familiar strange and the strange inevitable. From the vantage point of the twenty-first century, it is fascinating to watch the rapid innovations in science and technology overtake their fictional anticipation and to return to our most speculative and fantastical literature to see how perceptively it anticipated the social and geopolitical transformations—and challenges—these innovations would inspire. We can, moreover, look through these fictions and recognize in them a prolonged engagement not just with the transient social anxieties of their individual moments, but also with the timeless drama of human contact with the divine, the transcendent, the otherworldly, and the sublime.

This special issue brings together these genres with their divergent but intersecting histories and asks why they might be particularly relevant to study in the contemporary moment. While science fiction has garnered increasing attention in recent years in the academy (and increasing recognition in mainstream publications), the status of fantasy is even more controversial—and the line between them itself a subject of debate. Myth, by contrast, has long been a source of scholarly fascination, although the term typically emerges in the study of American literatures in its pejorative sense. Yet, myth plays a seminal role in the genres of science fiction and fantasy, so much so that science fiction and fantasy can arguably exceed the category of genre to contribute to what William Burroughs calls “a new mythology for the space age.” The issue seeks to move past the definitional debates—beyond, for example, determining the distinction between science fiction and fantasy or the precise definition of myth—to explore broadly the relationship of these genres and modes (individually or in combination) to American literatures and cultures. How, for example, might a focus on science fiction, fantasy, and/or myth change our understanding of literary history? Of literary engagements with scientific and technological innovations as well as with the most pressing political concerns of the moment? How might we use these literary forms to understand genre as a historical repository? The role of mythology in modern culture? What social and geopolitical conditions might produce a genre or mode—or perhaps a critical category that newly classifies certain literary conventions as genres? What themes or questions surface when we read more canonical works through the lens of science fiction, fantasy or myth? Conversely, what happens to these categories when we take seriously, as scholars such as H. Bruce Franklin have done, their early appearance in American literary history? This issue will explore the insights that emerge when we consider the various imaginative engagements that characterize science fiction, fantasy, and myth as central concerns of American literary history and cultural production.

Special issue editors: Priscilla Wald and Gerry Canavan. Submissions of 11,000 words or less (including endnotes) should be submitted electronically at www.editorialmanager.com/al/default.asp by 31 May 2010. When choosing a submission type, select “Special Issue.” Please contact us at 919-684-3948 or am-lit@duke.edu if you need assistance with the submission process. Please direct other questions to Priscilla Wald (pwald@duke.edu) or Gerry Canavan (gerry.canavan@duke.edu).

We've decided to extend the deadline for the Cultures of Recession graduate conference I'm organizing with Ryan, Alex, Lisa, and Sara, to be held at Duke on Nov. 20 & 21. The new and final deadline is September 15; the full CFP can be found here.

Polygraph 23—Call for Papers
"Parties, Factions, Organizations"
http://www.duke.edu/web/polygraph/cfp23.html

Recently, there has been a great deal of work by those discussing political agency and organization on the decline of the nation-state and its displacement by non-state and sub-state actors. Writers on the left, from David Harvey looking at the global city to Hardt and Negri working on political mobilization to the American Studies scholar John Carlos Rowe looking at "post-Nationalism" see the nation state as, increasingly, one factor among many rather than as the central factor in political and economic organization. This change in the role of the nation-state, it is argued, is also leading to a change in the nature of political organization. The party, once the locus of revolutionary desire, seems to be changing significantly as a spate of NGOs and transnational corporations increasingly take on the role of political actor. Both within nation-states and at the level of international party imaginaries, the party and partisanship are taking on a different role. We see, for example, the 2004 Democratic National Convention speech of then-Illinois State Senator Barack Obama, when he told the audience at the Democratic National Convention, "There is not a liberal America and a conservative America... there is the United States of America." Likewise, French President Nicolas Sarkozy attempted to create the illusion of a non-partisan world by recruiting members of the French Left, such as the economist Jacques Attali, into his cabinet. The Leninist vision of the party as a nexus of action and a starting-point for praxis appears to face displacement by a concept of the party as an ideology-disseminating and fund-raising apparatus, which can be rhetorically sloughed off when the need is felt.

At the same time, nationalist parties, national religious parties, and peasant and indigenous movements are as active as ever. If the role of the party is losing ground, there nevertheless seems to be a retention of interest in institutions that can enable and promote collective activity. What were once derided as "issues politics" and "identity politics" have proven to create real political allegiances that do not adhere to a party structure, mobilizing groups toward political action. Using a different but related tactic, autonomous social movements are trying to re-envision the role of people in politics, trying to shift the locus of action to the humans involved in political practice. Parties continue to be active in national and international politics, but at the same time, people are increasingly searching for and implementing alternatives to the party structure. These alternatives can entail ground-up advocacy and activism, networked through various channels, or they can entail measures such as the Washington Consensus that aim to control the political environment through economic sanctions and privatized governance. Both of these forms of governmentality aim to circumvent the state and the party systems.

The Polygraph Editorial Collective would therefore like to assemble a collection of essays that confront the direction "the party" and parties have taken since the large social and economic shifts of the 1950s, '60s, and '70s. We want to look at both the concept of the party and its relevance or lack of relevance in an increasingly globalized society. The party had liberatory aims at one point; have those evaporated or migrated elsewhere, or do they continue to have force within the party and within global politics? Is the party still a category with utopian potential or have parties been rendered into the propaganda wings of international capital? Whither party politics?

Possible topics for this issue include:
* politics without parties
* parties and capital
* the problematic of party affiliation and party identity
* parties and identity/"identity" politics
* alternatives to the party structure
* the concept of "party" in late capitalism
* the relationship of the party to the nation-state
* anti-governmental movements and organizations
* the rise of NGOs
* the left/right division
* parties and religion/religious parties
* movements vs. organizations
* parties/organizations and exclusion
* divisions and splits within parties
* parties and utopias

Polygraph welcomes work from a variety of different disciplines, including political theory, critical geography, cultural anthropology, political economy, political theology, and area studies. We also encourage the submission of a variety of formats and genres: i.e. field reports, surveys, interviews, photography, essays, etc.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE
December 31, 2009

ISSUE EDITOR
Alexander Greenberg

CONTACT
partiescfp@gmail.com

Ongoing projects update.

* The Cultures of Recession graduate student conference (Nov. 20 & 21) is still accepting abstracts. We've just received word that the Duke Center for International Studies will be providing travel support for visiting grad students, which is very exciting.

* Polygraph 22: "Ecology & Ideology" is rapidly moving into the editorial phase. About half our articles are in and the other half will be in by the end of the Fall semester. Look for a great interview between Kim Stanley Robinson and the three editors in this space as the publication date draws closer...

* Fantasy soccer starts in two weeks. Don't miss out; email me or comment for the league codes.

Cultures of Recession
An Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference Hosted by The Program in Literature, Duke University
November 20 & 21, 2009
http://www.duke.edu/~gc24/culturesofrecession.html

Keynote Speaker: Stanley Aronowitz (CUNY), author of How Class Works and Just Around The Corner: The Paradox of a Jobless Recovery

Around 5:00 AM on Nov. 28—the day after Thanksgiving—a Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death by shoppers eager to participate in the store’s annual “Black Friday” sales blitz. On Dec. 1, after three months of violent upheaval in the banking sector, the National Bureau of Economic Research announced that the U.S. had been in economic recession for almost a year. On Dec. 5, a group of mostly Hispanic workers staged a sit-in at Republic Windows and Doors after being laid off from the Chicago-based factory with only three days’ notice. Throughout mid-December 2008, critics lauded the “tightness” and “economy” of Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy, an 80-minute long independent film featuring a young woman, a dog, the Pacific Northwest, and not much else. Meanwhile, the country of Iceland—designated a terrorist state by Britain in an effort to freeze some of its assets—has declared bankruptcy. Widespread economic and institutional breakdown has resulted in a new wave of urban radicalism spreading across Greece, France, Italy, Spain, and the U.K. In China, mass deprivation and joblessness riots have escalated as authorities struggle to prop up a falling GDP. Despite unprecedented bailout and stimulus spending by the Bush and Obama administrations, the U.S. stock market has receded to levels last seen in 1997, with the unemployment rate crossing 10% in some states.

This conference invites graduate students from humanities and social science disciplines to think about how the idea and experience of recession—a sustained national or global-economic downturn that makes itself visible through declines in industrial production, employment, sales, and income—frames the cultural life and livelihood of affected communities, places, and governing bodies. This shift in communal and political makeup opens space for discussion about the impact of recession on cultural forms. What sort of cultural phenomena—artistic, political, or otherwise—find expression during times of recession? Are there features of recession that seem to transcend history or geography? Are certain socioeconomic climates more or less poised to give birth to recession—and what sort of political positionalities or modes of thought find themselves competing to “solve” recessive crises? How does recession change the parameters of social and political institutions? Within the governing structure, how do power dynamics shuffle as blame is distributed between institutions and people? How might the idea of recession compare to related concepts like depression, inflation, deflation, unemployment, crisis, or overproduction? Can we identify specific literary or artistic forms, motifs, and icons that emerge during times of recession?

Possible panel or paper topics
• Recession and cultures of work
• Recession and the global economy
• Recession and the language of loss, failure, or decline
• Recession and establishment discourse
• Recession, labor struggle, and “class warfare”
• Recession and the banking-sector bailout
• Recession and debt
• Recession and the politics of greed or waste
• Recession, crisis theory, and the logic of capital
• Recession and radical political resurgences
• Recession and nostalgia
• Recession and consumer culture
• Historical recessions: the post-war ‘40s, the 1970s, Japan’s Lost Decade, etc.
• Recession in an age of Facebook, blogs, and “instant” information
• Recession and cultural production
• Recession and the politics of religion
• Recession and the politics of race, gender, and/or sexuality
• Recession and environmental/energy crises
• Recession and the university

Please send a 250-500 word abstract to culturesofrecession@gmail.com by August 31, 2009.

ORGANIZERS
Sara Appel
Gerry Canavan
Alex Greenberg
Lisa Klarr
Ryan Vu

CONTACT
culturesofrecession@gmail.com

Glory Days: A Bruce Springsteen symposium. Don't miss the CFP.

CFP: "LitCrit 2.0: Academic Blogging and Other New Forms of Scholarly Publishing."

My membership in Cult Media Studies is already paying off; here's a call for papers on zombies.

CFP: An Interdisciplinary Collection of Essays on the Zombie

We are seeking proposals for an interdisciplinary edited volume discussing the zombie from a wide variety of perspectives and within a wide range of contexts. We encourage submissions from any discipline, including but not limited to English literature, film studies, media studies, cultural studies, gender studies, queer studies, philosophy, religious studies, anthropology, sociology, history, psychology, economics, and political science. We especially welcome new approaches to the study of zombies. In addition to theoretical essays on zombies, we also welcome critical discussions of specific zombie films, novels, and graphic novels, including those both pre- and post-Romero.

Faith in humanity rising: It's been decades since anybody tried to vandalize Stonehenge. Sure, a pair of idiots just tried to, but it was decades before that.

Faith in humanity falling (and Žižek was right!): New explosives could be more powerful and safer to handle than TNT and other conventional explosives and would also be more environmentally friendly.

Now seems like a good time to mention again that I'll be co-editing a special issue of Polygraph that among other things seeks to examine the ways in which ecology quickly comes to function as a contentless rhetoric of control...

Via MeFi.