Call for Papers: CRSF 2014

The Call for Papers for Current Research in Speculative Fiction 2014 is now here!

The conference will be held on Friday 20th June at the University of Liverpool.

We are proud to be able to announce two brilliant keynote speakers with Dr. Mark Bould (University of the West of England) and Prof. Roger Luckhurst (Birkbeck University London), both will be giving lectures as part of the conference schedule.

Now in its fourth year, CRSF is a one day postgraduate conference designed to promote the research of speculative fictions, including SCIENCE FICTION, FANTASY and HORROR; showcasing some of the latest developments in these dynamic and evolving fields. CRSF attracts an international selection of delegates and provides a platform for postgraduate students to present their current research, encourages discussion with scholars in related subjects and the construction of crucial networks with fellow researchers. The University of Liverpool, a leading centre for the study of speculative fiction and home to the Science Fiction Foundation Collection, will host the conference.

We are seeking abstracts relating to speculative fiction, including, but not limited to, papers on the following topics:

•Alternate History •Alternative Culture •Anime •Apocalypse •Body Horror •Consciousness •Cyber Culture •Drama •Eco-criticism •Fan Culture •Gaming •(Geo)Politics •Genre •Gender •Graphic Novels •The Grotesque •The Heroic Tradition •Liminal Fantasy •Magic •Meta-Franchises •Morality •Monstrosity •Music •Non-Anglo-American SF •Otherness •Pastoral •Poetry •Politics •Post-Colonialism and Empire •Proto-SF •Psychology •Quests •Realism •Sexuality •Slipstream •Spiritualism •Steampunk •Supernatural •Technology •Time •TV and Film •Urban Fantasy •Utopia/Dystopia •(Virtual) Spaces and Environments •Weird Fiction •World Building •Young Adult Fiction.

Please submit an abstract of 300 words for a 20 minute English language paper and a 100 word biography to CRSF.team@gmail.comby Monday 10^th March 2014.

For further information email the conference team at CRSF.team@gmail.com or visit our FAQ

In Praise of CRSF 2013

One of our keynote speakers for CRSF 2013, Pat Cadigan, took to our facebook page to express her opinions on the conference and because they delighted us so much (and because due to some quirk of facebook, it's actually quite hard to find the comment unless you're a page administrator), I decided to post it up here:

Hi, everybody–

Well, I am officially spoiled rotten. I'm sure this is great news for our friends who have been waiting for us to come home, as I am already insufferable anyway.

Chris and I have had a wonderful couple of days here in Liverpool. We loved listening to the speakers, talking with the attendees, and hanging around listening to new ideas, new perspectives, and every other kind of new and different. What a wonderful collection of lively, varied ideas.

Perhaps it's a measure of just how restricted our movements became while we were caring for my elderly parent that we spent Sunday and Monday jumping up and down (sometimes not just metaphorically) about the papers presented on comics, zombies, disasters, inner space, outer space, and Umwelt(en) (to name only a few). We are going home to London today tired, happy, and encouraged.

We really hope that we can come back again next year just to hang around and enjoy the company of so many highly intelligent, stimulating people. Props to Glyn, Chris, Michelle, Leimar, everyone who gave papers, listened to papers. Respect also to Waterstone's at Liverpool1–anyone who hasn't been to this bookshop should hustle their bad selves over there right now and see what a bookshop is supposed to look like/be like–and to the extraordinary staff at the Hope Street Hotel, who not only go out of their way to be helpful but also know when you need help even if you don't know it yourself.

I have been to bigger conferences that lasted longer in fancier places with budgets equal to the GNP of a medium-sized country. I'm not trying to take anything away from any other conference that has graciously hosted me but CRSF is an example of how to take something from a basic level and turn it into Disneyland-for-your-brain.

The secret is, everyone who works on it slaves like mad, never gets to rest, seldom gets an uninterrupted meal (if they get a meal at all), and they treat all the guests' partners/plus-ones with the same respect and consideration as the guests themselves. (Syntax much? Huh? I'm tired. But happy. I think I mentioned that.)

I'm exhausted, so happy you invited me. Thank you all again.

She continued in a comment:

Also, I would just like you to know that CRSF tired me out so much, I wrote a 4000-word short story yesterday. (For reference: 4000 words is twice as much as I usually squeeze out on my best days, and four times my average.) You guys did me a lot of good.

CRSF 2013: Post-Conference Report

Another year, another successful Current Research in Speculative Fiction.

The standard of papers at this year's conference was once again superb, as was the diversity of both speakers and topics. We heard everything from zombies to umwelts, Doctor Who to the Holocaust, Final Fantasy to the Mars Trilogy, William Gibson, Margaret Atwood, and so much more besides. The first of several rounds of thanks has to go to the delegates who once again delighted us and took the ethos of CRSF to heart with their friendly, inclusive and open-minded discussions and debates...

Our 2013 Conference Photo. As with past years, a handful of people had to rush off early and so, sadly, couldn't be included here.

A conference is, after all nothing without its delegates!

This year we maintained last year's thirty-five papers, by delegates representing institutions all over the UK, as well as Brazil, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Poland. Counting non-presenting delegates, attendance was further boosted to a respectable forty-nine attendees.

Huge thanks must also go to our keynote speakers Dr. Peter Wright (Edge Hill University) and Pat Cadigan (Queen of Cyberpunk), and their respective partners - who also attended the entire day - Jennifer Woodward and Chris Fowler, for maintaining the high standards of our previous keynote speakers and for being brilliantly encouraging, kind, and inquisitive about every paper they sat in on, as well as for their remarkable (and remarkably different, but both brilliant) keynote speeches. Peter's talk "Science Fiction from Text to Screen: Towards a Taxonomy of Cinematic Estrangement" was a thought provoking and entertaining way to start our day, whilst Pat's examination of, and commentary on, some science fictions staples was frequently stimulating, as well as emotionally challenging, brave, and often funny.

We also have to thank the University of Liverpool's staff who provided support both on the day and in the build up to the conference: the AV technician, the porter of the Mathematical Science Building, and Filomena Saltao who was our liaison point for everything from catering to stationary. Thanks also to Andy Sawyer, academic librarian for the Science Fiction Foundation collection at the University of Liverpool's Sydney Jones Library (and keynote speaker at CRSF 2011), for once again arranging for all delegates to receive free copies of Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction. And to Prof. David Seed for kindly donating a recent Liverpool University Press edition for us to raffle off as a bonus for our delegates.

We should also thank Waterstones Liverpool One and the Il Forno restaurant for so ably accommodating our social events and for making so much effort to help us keep things going smoothly.

As ever we would appreciate feedback for CRSF 2013 and suggestions on how we could improve for the future, please leave comments on this post or send us an e-mail to crsf.team@gmail.com. We're also interested in any photos you may have taken of the conference or any of the affiliated social events, if you've got anything you'd be willing to share then please email it to us, or post it on our facebook page.

CRSF will return in 2014. Watch this space.

- Glyn Morgan, Chris Pak, Michelle Yost and Leimar Garcia-Siino

CRSF 2013 Final Schedule

Barring any last minute problems or issues, the below schedule is representative of how the day will go:

VENUE: The Mathematical Sciences Building, The University of Liverpool.

9:00 - 9:30	Registration and Refreshments    Mathematical Sciences Building Reception
9:30 -10:30	Keynote Lecture #1: Dr. Peter Wright          Room 029
10:30 -12:00	Fans & Fandom Room 029 • Kerry McAuliffe • Kasi Paterson • Mark R. Adams	The Urban Room 103 • Felicia Buciu • Amy Butt • Adam Welstead	Undead Icons Room 104 •  Beverley Dear •  Jennifer Harwood-Smith •  Michelle Yost	Linguistics Room 105 • Mateusz Marecki • Amanda Dillon • Lykara Rydar
12:00 -13:00	Television Room 029 • Marie Lottman • Eve Bennett	Anthropology and Travel Room 103 • Giulia Iannuzzi • Rhys Williams	Margaret Atwood Room 104 • Miriam Rune • Lucas Alexander Boulding	Gibson and Cyber-Culture Room 105 • Grace Halden • Anna McFarlane
13:00 -13:45	Lunch           Mathematical Sciences Building Reception
13:45 -14:45	Keynote Lecture #2: Pat Cadigan         Room 029
14:45 -16:15	Biology and Environment Room 029 • Sandra Mänty • Katherine Buse • Chris Pak	Myriad Horrors Room 103 • Valerio De Simone • Vitor Cei • David McWilliam	Liminal Fantasy Room 104 • Carolyn Ellam • Audrey Taylor • Leimar Garcia-Siino	[Room Vacant]
16:15 -16:30	Refreshment Break          Mathematical Sciences Building Reception
16:30 -18:00	Alternative Media Room 029 • Jacob Murphy • Andrew Cooper • Glyn Morgan	Post-Catastrophic Room 103 • Claire Browne • Arthur Newman • Zosia Kuczynska	[Room Vacant]	[Room Vacant]
18.00 -19.00	Post-Conference Wine Reception                    Mathematical Sciences and Official Conference Group Photo                  Building Reception

Panel 1.1: Fans and Fandom (10:30 – 12:00, Room 029)

• McAuliffe, Kerry – Fandom in Fiction and “The Family Business”: Fan Participation and Reformation in the Narratives of Supernatural
• Paterson, Kasi – “Silhouettes from Popular Culture”
• Adams, Mark Richard – Lunatics Running the Asylum: Exploring the Influence of Fandom and Fan-Producers on the Narrative Worlds of Doctor Who

Panel 1.2: The Urban (10:30 – 12:00, Room 103)

• Buciu, Felicia – Anger and Abulia: Two Faces of Collective Anxiety in Selected English and Italian Dystopian Fiction
• Butt, Amy – The Tower City
• Welstead, Adam – Dystopia and the “Crowd” in 21^st Century British Writing

Panel 1.3: Undead Icons (10:30 – 12:00, Room 104)

• Dear, Beverley – From Coffin to Couch: Fin-de-Siècle Anxieties and the Rise of the Psychological Vampire.
• Harwood-Smith, Jennifer – The Death of the Mind: The True Fear at the Heart of the Zombie Narrative
• Yost, Michelle – Preparing for Horror: the Zombie Survival Market

Panel 1.4: Linguistics (10:30 – 12:00, Room 105)

• Marecki, Mateusz – From the Real to the Fantastic to the Scientific: Double Reading in Joan Slonczewski’s Brain Plague
• Dillon, Amanda – Worlds Out of Words: World-Building and Metafiction in Ursula K. LeGuin’s ‘Feeling at Home With the Hennebet’ and ‘The Language of the Nna Mmoy’
• Ryder, Lykara – Not All Conlang Material is Written in a Conlang

Panel 2.1: Television (12:00 – 13:00, Room 029)

• Lottman, Marie – Ambiguous Objects in 1970s SF Set Design: “Raumpatrouille Orion”
• Bennett, Eve – The Mad Doll in the Attic: Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse as Female Gothic for the Neoliberal Era

Panel 2.2: Anthropology and Travel (12:00 – 13:00, Room 103)

• Iannuzzi, Giulia – Italy on Mars: Italian SF Between Space Travel and Hallucination
• Williams, Rhys – Anthropology & the Fantastic: Magic, Rationality & Fetish

Panel 2.3: Margaret Atwood (16:30 – 18:00, Room 104)

• Rune, Miriam – ‘Seeing Gestalt’: Genre Expectations, and How Perspectives Further the Transhumanism Debate in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake.
• Boulding, Lucas Alexander – Mrs Brown Among The Crakers: Character and Virtue in Speculative Fiction

Panel 2.4: Gibson and Cyberculture (14:45 – 16:15, Room 105)

• Halden, Grace – The Technologically Rapine: Science Fiction and Technology during the 1980s with specific reference to William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984)
• McFarlane, Anna – Gestalt Perception in William Gibson: ‘Fractals’ and Pattern Recognition

Panel 3.1: The Environment (14:45 – 16:15, Room 029)

• Mänty, Sandra – Umwelt and its Application in Literary Analysis
• Buse, Katherine – Heat Maps: American SF, Global Warming, and the Shape of History in the 1990s
• Pak, Chris – ‘The Goal of Martian Economics is not “Sustainable Development” but a Sustainable Prosperity for its Entire Biosphere’: Science Fiction and the Sustainability Debate

Panel 3.2: Myriad Horrors (14:45 – 16:15, Room 103)

• De Simone, Valerio – “Slasher Movies and Feminism”
• Cei, Vitor - New Aeon: Aleister Crowley and Raul Seixas on Thelema and Counterculture
• McWilliam, David – ‘Beyond the Mountains of Madness’: Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror and Posthuman Creationism in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus (2012)

Panel 3.3: Liminal Fantasy (14:45 – 16:15, Room 104)

• Ellam, Carolyn – “Falling Between Categories”: Realism and Fantasy in Looking for Eric (Ken Loach, 2009)
• Taylor, Audrey – The Formulation of ‘Active Time’ in Fantasy Literature
• Garcia-Siino, Leimar – Exploring Gaiman: The Colourless Worlds of Coraline and The Graveyard Book

Panel 4.1: Alternative Media (16:30 – 18:00, Room 029)

• Murphy, Jacob - ‘Always “We Had No Choice”’: An Exploration of Freedom and Unfreedom in the Final Fantasy X Saga.
• Cooper, Andrew – Smallville: From Print to Screen and Back Again.
• Morgan, Glyn – More Than Just Maus: The Holocaust in Comics.

Panel 4.2: Post-Catastrophic (16:30 – 18:00, Room 103)

• Browne, Claire – Worse Games to Play: Death, Hope and Trauma in Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games Trilogy 
• A Short Suite on the Theme of Post-Catastrophic Space-Time:
• Newman, Arthur – ‘An Argument in Time’: Iron Council as Post-Catastrophic Novel.
• Kuczyńska, Zosia – ‘Total Event Collapse’: Post-Catastrophic Space-Time and its Place in Speculative Fiction

CRSF 2013 Provisional Schedule

Below is the provisional schedule for CRSF 2013, including paper titles. It is worth stressing that this schedule is subject to change, a finalised version will be circulated in hard copy to delegates at the conference.

This year's conference is due to be held on Monday 17th June at the University of Liverpool's Mathematical Sciences Building (206 on the University's campus map).

If you wish to attend as a non-presenting delegate then you need to pay the £30 conference fee. To do so please visit the Univeristy of Liverpool School of English online shop: http://payments.liv.ac.uk/browse/product.asp?catid=53&modid=1&compid=1

Refreshments and lunch are included in this cost.


See you in June!

9:00 - 9:30	Registration and Refreshments    Mathematical Sciences Building Reception
9:30 -10:30	Keynote Lecture #1: Dr. Peter Wright          Room 029
10:30 -12:00	Fans & Fandom Room 029 • Kerry McAuliffe • Kasi Paterson • Mark R. Adams	The Urban Room 103 • Felicia Buciu • Amy Butt • Adam Welstead	Undead Icons Room 104 •  Beverley Dear •  Jennifer Harwood-Smith •  Michelle Yost	Linguistics Room 105 • Mateusz Marecki • Amanda Dillon • Lykara Ryder
12:00 -13:00	Horror Cinema Room 029 • Patrick Bingham • Valerio De Simone	Anthropology and Travel Room 103 • Giulia Iannuzzi • Alun Williams	[Room Vacant]	[Room Vacant]
13:00 -13:45	Lunch           Mathematical Sciences Building Reception
13:45 -14:45	Keynote Lecture #2: Pat Cadigan         Room 029
14:45 -16:15	Environment Room 029 • Sandra Mänty • Katherine Buse • Chris Pak	Gibson and Cyber-Culture Room 103 • Papori Rani Barooah • Grace Halden • Anna McFarlane	Liminal Fantasy Room 104 • Carolyn Ellam • Audrey Taylor • Leimar Garcia-Siino	Alternative Media Room 105 • Jacob Murphy • Artem Zubov • Andrew Cooper
16:15 -16:30	Refreshment Break          Mathematical Sciences Building Reception
16:30 -18:00	Television Room 029 • Marie Lottman • Laura Osur • Eve Bennett	Atwood and Shelley Room 103 • Miriam Rune • Ayan Mitra • Lucas Alexander Boulding	Post-Catastrophic Room 104 • Claire Browne • Arthur Newman • Zosia Kuczynska	Other Horror Room 105 • Vitor Cei • David McWilliam
18.00 -19.00	Post-Conference Wine Reception        Mathematical Sciences Building Reception

9.00 – 9.30      Registration and Refreshments

                                    Mathematical Sciences Building Reception

9.30 – 10.30    Keynote Lecture #1: Dr. Peter Wright

                                    Room 029

10.30 – 12.00  Panel 1.1: Fans & Fandom

                                    Room 029

• Kerry McAuliffe, Fandom in Ficton and “The Family Business”: Fan Participation and Reformation in the Narratives of Supernatural.

• Kasi Patterson, Silhouettes from Popular Culture.

• Mark Richard Adams, Lunatics Running the Asylum: Exploring the Influence of Fandom and Fan-Producers on the Narrative Worlds of Doctor Who.

Panel 1.2: The Urban

            Room 103

• Felicia Buciu, Anger and Abulia: Two Faces of Collective Anxiety in Selected English and Italian Dystopian Fiction.

• Amy Butt, The Tower City.

• Adam Welstead, Dystopia and the “Crowd” in 21^st Century British Writing.

Panel 1.3: Undead Icons

            Room 104

• Beverley Dear, From Coffin to Couch: Fin-de-Siècle Anxieties and the Rise of the Psychological Vampire.

• Jennifer Harwood-Smith, The Death of the Mind: The True Fear at the Heart of the Zombie Narrative.

• Michelle Yost, Preparing for Horror: the Zombie Survival Market.

Panel 1.4: Linguistics

            Room 105

• Mateusz Marecki, From the Real to the Fantastic to the Scientific: Double Reading in Joan Slonczewski’s Brain Plague.

• Amanda Dillon, Worlds out of Words: World-Building and Metafiction in Ursula K. Le Guin’s ‘Feeling at Home with the Hennebet’ and ‘The Language of the Nna Mmoy’.

• Lykara Ryder, Not All Conlang Material is Written in a Conlang.

12.00 – 13.00  Panel 2.1: Horror Cinema

                                    Room 029

                        • Patrick Bingham, ‘Shaky Cam’: The ‘Nauseating’ Genre.

• Valerio De Simone, Slasher Movies and Feminism.

 

Panel 2.2: Anthropology and Travel

                                    Room 103

•Giulia Iannuzzi, Italy on Mars, Italian SF Between Space Travel and Hallucination

•Alun Williams, Anthropology & the Fantastic: Magic, Rationality & Fetish

13.00 – 13.45  Lunch

                                    Mathematical Sciences Building Reception

13.45 – 14.45  Keynote Lecture #2: Pat Cadigan

                                    Room 029

14.45 – 16.15  Panel 3.1: The Environment

                                    Room 029

                        • Sandra Mänty, Umwelt and its Application in Literary Analysis.

• Katherine Buse, Heat Maps: American SF, Global Warming, and the Shape of History in the 1990s.

• Chris Pak, ‘The Goal of Martian Economics is not Sustainable Development but a Sustainable Prosperity for the Entire Biosphere’: Science Fiction and the Sustainability Debate.

                        Panel 3.2: Gibson and Cyber-Culture

                                    Room 103

• Papori Rani Barooah, Recrafting Human Bodies: Metamorphosis of Human into the Cyborg in William Gibson’s Neuromancer.

• Grace Halden, The Technologically Rapine: Science Fiction and Technology During the 1980s With Specific Reference to William Gibson’s Neuromancer.

• Anna McFarlane, Gestalt Perception in William Gibson: ‘Fractals’ and Pattern Recognition.

                        Panel 3.3: Liminal Fantasy

                                    Room 104

• Carolyn Ellam, “Falling Between Categories”: Realism and Fantasy in Looking for Eric (Ken Loach, 2009).

• Audrey Taylor, The Formulation of ‘Active Time’ in Fantasy Literature.

• Leimar Garcia-Siino, Exploring Gaiman: The Colourless Worlds of Coraline and The Graveyard Book.

 Part 3.4: Alternative Media

            Room 105

• Jacob Murphy, ‘Always “We Had No Choice”’: An Exploration of Freedom and Unfreedom in the Final Fantasy X saga.

• Artem Zubov, ‘A Russian Gernsback’: Yakov Perelman and “Scientific Imagination”.

• Andrew Cooper, Smallville: From Print to Screen and Back Again.

 

16.15 – 16.30  Refreshment Break

                                    Mathematical Sciences Building Reception

16.30 – 18.00  Panel 4.1: Television

                                    Room 029

• Marie Lottman, Ambiguous Objects in 1970s SF Set Design: “Raumpatrouille Orion”.

• Laura Osur, The Aesthetics of Countervisuality: 21^st Century Dystopian Science Fiction Television.

• Eve Bennett, The Mad Doll in the Attic: Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse as Female Gothic for the Neoliberal Era.

                        Panel 4.2: Atwood and Shelley

                                    Room 103

• Miriam Rune, ‘Seeing Gestalt’: Genre Expectations and How Perspectives Further the Transhumanism Debate in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx Crake.

• Ayan Mitra, Frankenstein: Deconstructing the Myth of Humanity and Monstrosity in Close Relation to Manichean Ethics.

• Lucas Alexander Boulding, Mrs Brown Among The Crakers: Character and Virtue in Speculative Fiction.

Panel 4.3: Post-Catastrophic

                                    Room 104

• Claire Browne, Worse Games to Play: Death, Hope and Trauma in Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games Trilogy.

• Zosia Kuczynska, A Short Suite on the Theme of Post-Catastrophic Space-Time 1: ‘Total Event Collapse’: Post-Catastrophic Space-Time and its Place in Speculative Fiction.

• Arthur Newman, A Short Suite on the Theme of Post-Catastrophic Space-Time 2: ‘An Argument in Time’: Iron Council as Post-Catastrophic Novel.

Panel 4.4: Other Horrors

                                    Room 105

• Vitor Cei, New Neon: Aleister Crowley and Raul Seixas on Thelma and Counterculture.

• David McWilliam, ‘Beyond the Mountains of Madness’: Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror and Posthuman Creationism in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus.

18.00 – 19.00  Post-Conference Wine Reception

                                    Mathematical Sciences Building Reception