7-8 Jul 2015 • Locating Fantastika (conference), Lancaster University (Charles Carter Building), UK.
Charles Carter Building, Lancaster University, Great Britain
“Fantastika”, a concept and a term borrowed from the slavic languages and employed (“coined” ? the term and the concept was invented in several slavic cultures and languages and introduced from the end of the 19th century) by John Clute , is an umbrella term which incorporates the genres of fantasy, science fiction, and horror, but can also include alternative histories, steampunk, young adult fiction, or any other imaginative space. The 3rd annual Fantastika Conference will focus on productions of Fantastika globally, as well as considering themes of contact across nations and borders within Fantastika. It is our hope to draw together academics with an interest in Fantastika from an international audience to share and disseminate Fantastika-related research globally.
Dr. Philippa Semper and Dr. Ruth Heholt are the Locating Fantastika Conference, keynote speakers.
Dr. Semper (University of Birmingham) lectures in medieval English, with a special interest on the interaction between text and image in manuscript studies; she also teaches and publishes on fantasy literature. Her keynote will be examining the relation between the medieval world and modern fantasy.
Dr. Heholt (Falmouth University) is a senior lecturer focusing on the supernatural. Her recent work has focussed on the concepts of regions and the Gothic and haunted landscapes. She is editor of a new e-journal, Revenant: Critical and Creative Studies of the Supernatural: www.revenantjournal.com.
The Locating Fantastika Conference‘s suggested topics are:
– the production and development of Fantastika in non-Western or non-English-speaking countries
– Fantastika genres predominant in non-Western/non-English cultures (e.g. magical realism, contemporary mythologies)
– fictional and real empires
– globalization, industrialization, development and the future
– global networks, mobilities, migrations
– borders, defence of borders, crossing borders and occupations
– (post)colonial texts and readings
– notions of the ‘other’
– ecologies, technologies and biopolitics
And stay tuned for the special “Visualizing Fantastika” edition of The Luminary, featuring extended papers from last year’s conference, due out in 2015 !
http://www.fantastikajournal.com/
https://fantastikaconference.wordpress.com/
