CFP: For Love of the Fans: Fandom, Comics and Film Adaptations (Nov. 1; Nov. 11-14, 2010)

Call for Papers
For Love of the Fans:
Fandom, Comics and Film Adaptations
2010 Film & History Conference:
Representations of Love in Film and Television
November 11-14, 2010
Hyatt Regency Milwaukee
www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory
Second Round Deadline: November 1, 2009

AREA: For Love of the Fans: Fandom, Comics and Adaptations

Since comic books began featuring letters to the editor in each issue, fan culture has been a pivotal and clear presence in comics. This presence and investment became even more potent as fandom culture began to reside in physical settings such as comic book shops and conventions. Fandom culture has become more present and powerful in the Internet age and while they were once solely the butt-end of jokes, they now garner the attention of producers, directors, and writers. Their love and investment in comics are now considered important by creators in generating promotion and excitement for films. Unlike the previous 50 years of comic adaptations, the last 20 years have seen significant efforts by producers to tie into fan expectations from as far back as the X-Men and Batman cartoon series of the 1990s up through the latest superhero-blockbuster.

This area welcomes multiple papers and panels that consider the following questions about comic fandom and television/film adaptation as well as additional topics in this vein:

• How have studios used the fanbase to encourage or promote comic adaptations such as Watchmen?
• In what ways have studios and directors relied on the fanbase to determine the direction of sequels or future seasons with regards to plot, villains, and character development in such franchises as X-Men, Spider-Man, Batman, Superman (including Smallville), Fantastic Four and the like?
• What roles have the fans played in comic-film reboots such as Batman, Superman, the Incredible Hulk, the Punisher, and the supposedly forthcoming reboot of Fantastic Four franchise?
• Does the role of same-universe strategies being explored by Marvel Comics with its release of Iron Man and the reboot of Incredible Hulk operate as a means to attracting fans?
• In what ways have comic forums, such as Wizard Magazine or Comic Book Resources played in influencing the casting of particular actors and actresses for certain roles?
• What’s to be made of the increasing and dominant presence of film studios at “comic events” such as San Diego’s ComicCon?
• What role do famous fans (Kevin Smith, Nicholas Cage, et al) have in the construction of or success of comic book adaptations?
• How do films target “in-crowd” moments for fans such as Stan Lee cameos in Marvel films or self-reflective comments about comics and superheroes by superhero films?
• How has film and television represented comic fandom from the Simpsons’ Comic Book Guy to movies such as Fanboys, Comic Book Villains, and Chasing Amy or Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back?

Please send your 200-word proposal via e-mail by November 1 to the area chair:

Lance Eaton, Area Chair
Emerson College
Institute for Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies
120 Boylston St.
Boston, MA 02116
Email: Lance_Eaton@emerson.edu (email submissions preferred)

Panel proposals for up to four presenters are also welcome, but each presenter must submit his or her own paper proposal. For updates and registration information about the upcoming meeting, see the Film & History website: www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory

CFP: Desiring the Text, Touching the Past: Towards An Erotics of Reception (Bristoll UK: Nov. 30; July 10)

Note that this CFP specifically addresses those working on visual texts and those working on fan culture. I think papers on comics would fit in well here...

Call for Papers

Desiring the Text, Touching the Past:
Towards An Erotics of Reception

A one-day conference co-organized by
the Bristol Institute of Greece, Rome and the Classical Tradition
& the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto

University of Bristol, 10 July 2010

Keynote Speaker:
Professor Carolyn Dinshaw, NYU

In reading Cicero’s letters I felt charmed and offended in equal measure. Indeed, beside myself, in a fit of anger I wrote to him as if he were a friend and contemporary of mine, forgetting, as it were, the gap of time, with a familiarity appropriate to my intimate acquaintance with his thought; and I pointed out those things he had written that had offended me.
(Petrarch, Rerum Familiarum Liber I.1.42)

Love, desire, fannish obsession and emotional identification as modes of engaging with texts, characters and authors are often framed as illegitimate and transgressive: excessive, subjective, lacking in scholarly rigour. Yet such modes of relating to texts and pasts persist, across widely different historical periods and cultural contexts. Many classical and medieval authors recount embodied and highly emotional encounters with religious, fictional or historical characters, while modern and postmodern practices of reception and reading – from high art to the subcultural practices of media fandom – are characterized by desire in all its ambivalent complexity. Theories of readership and reception, however, sometimes seem unable to move beyond an antagonistic model: cultural studies sees resistant audiences struggling to gain control of or to overwrite an ideologically loaded text, while literary models of reception have young poets fighting to assert their poetic autonomy vis-à-vis the paternal authority of their literary ancestors.

This conference aims, by contrast, to begin to elaborate a theory of the erotics of reception. It will bring together scholars working in and across various disciplines to share research into reading, writing and viewing practices characterized by love, identification, and desire: we hope that it will lead to the establishment of an international research network and the formulation of some long-term research projects. In order to facilitate discussion at the conference, we will ask participants to circulate full papers (around 5,000 words) in May 2010.

We now invite abstracts of 300 words, to be submitted by email by 30 November 2009. Abstracts will be assessed on the basis of their theoretical and interdisciplinary interest. We particularly welcome contributions from scholars working on literary, visual and performance texts in the fields of: history, reception studies, mediaeval studies, fan studies, cultural studies, theology, and literary/critical theory.

Some ideas which might be addressed include, but are not limited to:

• Writing oneself into the text: self-insertion and empathetic identification
• Historical desire: does the historian desire the past?
• Hermeneutics and erotics
• Pleasures of the text, pleasures of the body: (how) are embodied responses to the text gendered?
• Anachronistic reading: does desire disturb chronology?
• Erotics and/or eristics: love-hate relationships with texts

This conference is part of the ‘Thinking Reciprocity’ series and will follow directly from the conference ‘Reception and the Gift of Beauty’ (Bristol, 8-9 July 2010). Reduced fees will be offered to people attending both conferences.

If you have any queries, or to submit an abstract, please contact one of the conference organizers:
Dr Ika Willis (Ika.Willis@bristol.ac.uk);
Anna Wilson (anna.wilson@utoronto.ca).

New Journal: Transformative Works and Cultures

The first issue of the new (peer-reviewed!) fan studies journal Transformative Works and Cultures was launched yesterday. From the press release:

This open-access online multimedia fan studies journal publishes scholarly essays, personal essays, and book reviews. TWC is published under the umbrella of the nonprofit fan advocacy group Organization for Transformative Works, and although its audience will primarily be acafans (academic fans), its scope ranges widely with the aim of providing a forum for fannish voices, academic or not.

"One important aspect of the journal is its open-access nature," Karen Hellekson, coeditor of TWC, commented. "It will be available for anyone to read, without any subscription restrictions. Plus it's online, so the articles can use hotlinks and embed videos. It's really time to move beyond the print model, so it's exciting that we're able to do that." She points to Francesca Coppa's essay, "Women, Star Trek, and the Early Development of Fannish Vidding," as an example of an essay that uses embedded media. "It's got screen caps from fan vids, plus embedded links to video, all to support her argument. It really explores the range of what multimedia has to offer." The issue also contains an audio feature, presented by Bob Rehak, with two downloadable recordings of a discussion held at the 2008 Console-ing Passions academic conference.

While the journal isn't focused solely or even primarily on comics, the first issue contains Madeline Ashby's "Ownership, Authority, and the Body: Does Antifanfic Sentiment Reflect Posthuman Anxiety?" It's an article that references manga while "examin[ing] three Japanese anime texts - Ghost in the Shell, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Serial Experiments: Lain - in order to discover metaphors for female fan practices online."

They're already soliciting content for issue No. 2, to be released March 15, 2009, focused on "Games as Transformative Works." Complete information - and, of course, the journal itself - may be found at its website: http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/

TWC promises to be a journal that comics scholars should keep their eye on, both for information and for publishing opportunities.