SFFTV Special Issue CFP: Creature Features & the Environment

Creature Features & the Environment
A special issue of Science Fiction Film & Television
Edited by Bridgitte Barclay and Christy Tidwell

Creature Features & the Environment, a special issue of Science Fiction Film and Television (SFFTV), seeks essays that engage with creature features as a specific subset of environmental science fiction. Popularized in the mid-20^th century as sf/horror, creature features are films with creatures of various sorts attacking, whether awakened from dormancy by radiation, discovered in distant locales, or accidentally created in labs.

Frogs (1972)

While some creature features, like George McCowan’s Frogs (1972), may be intentionally commenting on environmental issues, many are simply ripe for environmental readings. In fact, many creature features mushroomed from midcentury atomic fears but played more on the science-gone-awry aspects than on environmental devastation or human-nonhuman relationships. Analyzing these films with an ecocritical focus may unearth fears of science damaging the natural world, of the natural world as something we do not fully understand, or of the natural world seeking justice for environmental damage.

Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954)

Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957)

Additionally, the campiness of many creature features is useful to ecocritical readings and offers alternatives to solemn environmental discourse. Creature features, in fact, illustrate “bad environmentalism,” Nicole Seymour’s term for irreverent texts that provide an alternative to stereotypically sanctimonious environmental narratives. Drawing on Stacy Alaimo’s claim that “if we cannot laugh, we will not desire the revolution” (Exposed 3), Bridgitte Barclay argues in Gender and Environment in Science Fiction that creature features can be “pleasurably resistant texts” for delving into environmental issues with laughter and playful scares (“Female Beasties” 5). After all, while the science, horror, and environmental crises of some creature features may have real-world resonance, one of the stylistic components of the genre is also a great deal of fun – radioactive mollusks, jet-propelled turtles, colossal bunnies, and justice-seeking frog armies. Imagining how creature features can be framed as ecomedia therefore offers us new ways of reckoning with the Anthropocene – as well as the Capitalocene, Plantationocene, and/or Chthulucene.

Boar (2017)

Gojira (1954)

We seek proposals for articles examining the relationship between creature features and the environment. Proposals engaging with global texts (outside the U.S. and U.K.) and with film and television from outside blockbuster cinema are especially welcome.

Proposed articles may consider the following questions (among others):

• What do creature features contribute to conversations about environmental science fiction as a subgenre?
• What do creature features contribute to conversations about climate change, nonhumans, and/or the Anthropocene?
• What do creature features contribute to conversations about ecomedia?
• How do viewers engage with creature features?
• What social, political, or personal effects might creature features have?
• How are the texts intentionally or unintentionally campy, and how does that campiness engage with or contribute to environmental discourse?
• How does the cultural context of creature feature films impact their engagement with environmental issues?
• How do creature features function as science fiction and as ecohorror?

Please send proposals of approximately 250 words and a brief bio to the special issue editors, Bridgitte Barclay (bbarclay@aurora.edu) and Christy Tidwell (christy.tidwell@gmail.com), by February 17, 2020. Notifications of accepted proposals will be sent in early March, and drafts of selected articles will be due by September 1, 2020.

If you have any questions about the fit of a topic for the special issue, please feel free to contact the special issue editors.

CFP: Edited Collection on Ecohorror (with updated deadline)

In recent years, there has been increasing attention within both ecocriticism and horror studies to the intersections between the two fields. The country/city split and the civilized person’s fear of the wilderness and rural spaces, key issues for ecocritics, also loom large over the horror genre.

Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

Furthermore, there are entire horror subgenres dedicated to the revenge of wild nature and its denizens upon humanity. As Rust and Soles write, ecohorror studies “assumes that environmental disruption is haunting humanity’s relationship to the non-human world” as well as that ecohorror in some form can be found in all texts grappling with ecocritical matters (509-10).

Them! (1954)

There have been some critical examinations of this intersection – e.g., Ecogothic, edited by Andrew Smith and William Hughes (2013); an ecohorror special cluster in ISLE, edited by Stephen A. Rust and Carter Soles (2014); Monstrous Nature: Environment and Horror on the Big Screen by Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann (2016); and Plant Horror: Approaches to the Monstrous Vegetal in Fiction and Film, edited by Dawn Keetley and Angela Tenga (2017) – but we feel that it is time for a fuller examination of ecohorror as a genre. To that end, we invite submissions of approximately 6000-7000 words to be included in the first edited collection devoted exclusively to ecohorror. Because our interest is in the genre as a whole, there is no limit on time period or medium; we want this collection to explore the range of ecohorror texts and ideas.

Chapters may consider the following:

• How is human violence against the natural world represented in such texts? Or, vice-versa, how is violence against humanity by the natural world represented? What effect does this violence have on the relationship between human and nonhuman?
• How do ecohorror texts blur human/nonhuman distinctions in order to generate fear, horror, or dread?
• What fears of, about, or for nature are expressed in ecohorror? How do these expressions of fear influence environmental rhetoric and/or action more broadly?
• How are ecohorror texts and tropes used to promote ecological awareness or represent ecological crises?

Submit completed chapters to Christy Tidwell (christy.tidwell@gmail.com) and Carter Soles (csoles@brockport.edu) by July 6, 2018. We are requesting submissions of completed chapter drafts (6000-7000 words) to be considered for this project rather than abstracts. Please feel free to reach out with questions and/or ideas before submitting a completed chapter, however; we would be happy to provide feedback or guidance.

Frogs (1972)

Gender + Environment in Science Fiction (revised CFP with extended deadline)

Building on our previously posted CFP, we are inviting contributions focusing not only on non-print SF media and expanding our project to include any form of science fiction. We believe this will lead to a stronger and more inclusive examination of gender and environment within the genre.

CFP: Gender & Environment in Science Fiction (edited collection)

There are many important studies of gender in science fiction and a growing number of studies of environmental science fiction, but more work is needed to bring these fields together. We wish to fill this gap and invite contributions exploring the intersections of gender and environment in science fiction.

The central question of this project is as follows: How do gender and environment intersect and/or influence each other in or across science fiction texts and media? Projects might also address the following questions: How do varying media forms influence representations of gender and environment in science fiction? How might examining gender and environment together influence ideas about or definitions of science fiction as a genre? How do the language and/or imagery of science fiction contribute to our conceptions of gender and environment?

We have previously solicited essays focusing primarily on non-print science fiction, but we are now interested in expanding the project’s scope to include print science fiction as well. At this point, therefore, we invite abstracts addressing the intersections of gender and environment in any science fiction text or media.

Please submit abstracts of no more than 300 words and a brief CV to Christy Tidwell (christy.tidwell@gmail.com) and/or Bridgitte Barclay (bbarclay@aurora.edu) by October 1, 2016. We have been strongly encouraged by the editor of the Ecocritical Theory and Practice series, published by Rowman & Littlefield’s imprint Lexington Books, to submit a proposal. For those asked to contribute, we anticipate completed essays of approximately 15-18 pages will be due by April 1, 2017.

CFP: Gender in Science Fiction Ecomedia

Bridgitte Barclay and I are currently working on a book proposal exploring gender in science fiction ecomedia. The following is the call for papers for the project. We hope to receive lots of exciting proposals! Please pass this along to anyone you know who might be interested.

CFP: Gender in Science Fiction Ecomedia

There are many important studies of gender in science fiction and a growing number of studies of environmental science fiction, but these fields rarely come together and are even more rarely specifically applied to science fiction film, television, and other media. We wish to fill this gap and invite contributions exploring gender in science fiction ecomedia. Projects might address the following questions:

• How do gender and environment intersect and/or influence each other in or across science fiction media?
• How do varying media forms influence representations of gender and environment in science fiction? Does television, for instance, provide different opportunities than film? Or video games than either of those? Etc.
• How might examining gender and environment together in non-print media influence ideas about or definitions of science fiction as a genre?

We are open to projects on any non-print science fiction, but we particularly wish to encourage projects exploring new media and forms outside of traditional film and television.

Please submit abstracts of no more than 300 words and a brief CV by August 1, 2016, to Christy Tidwell (christy.tidwell@gmail.com) and/or Bridgitte Barclay (bbarclay@aurora.edu). We have been strongly encouraged by the editor of the Ecocritical Theory and Practice series, published by Rowman & Littlefield’s imprint Lexington Books, to submit a proposal. For those asked to contribute, we anticipate completed essays of approximately 15-18 pages will be due by March 1, 2017.