PCA Update 9/30

There is one day until the submission deadline for our sponsored session for PCA 2018 on children's and young adult versions of Frankenstein. I am disappointed to report that so far we have received ZERO proposals.

I am assuming the session will not be running.

My thanks to those that have helped spread the word about the call. Your efforts are much appreciated.

We will focus our attention now on promoting NEPCA 2018. Details can be found in the call for papers section of this site.

Michael Torregrossa
Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Area Chair

Han Cholo's Frankenstein

A quick update, all of the items from ThinkGeek licensed by Universal Studios are part of a larger product line from designer Han Cholo.

You can view all of the items and more at https://www.hancholo.com/collections/monster-lovers.

A Shocking New Discovery?

A final post on ThinkGeek. The retailer has yet another item licensed from Universal Studios. This one is a pin designed to resemble some of the apparatus in the lab of Henry Frankenstein. (That's not a typo; remember Universal reverses the first names of Victor and Henry Clerval.) 

Ordering instructions and full details at: https://www.thinkgeek.com/product/jpkn/.

Frankenstein the Tee-Shirt!

ThinkGeek also offers a cool-looking Frankenstein-inspired tee-shirt. The design features Mary Shelley writing and the Creature (though not a very Shelleyian one) manifesting from her imagination behind her.

A nice design here, BUT it is a woman's only shirt. If that applies to you, ordering instructions can be found at https://www.thinkgeek.com/product/jkhh/.

More from ThinkGeek

In my continued browsing of the ThinkGeek site, I also came across a set of ID bracelets (another licensed product from Universal Studios) with the following description:

You're my favorite monster 

It's important to remember that Mary Shelley never gave her monster a name. It is we who named him Frankenstein after his creator. Frankenstein may be about many things, but one of the topics the story broaches is loneliness - that feeling the monster has that he is the only one of his kind in the world. He needs his own monster to feel kinship in this world.

We know that feeling of not fitting in, and maybe you do, too. Perhaps you also have a special monster in your life, or you are that special monster for someone else. This set of bracelets, reading "His Monster" and "Her Monster," lets you declare both your relationship and your otherworldliness all in one.

More details and ordering instructions at: https://www.thinkgeek.com/product/jpkl/.

Puttin' on the Glitz?

Online retailer ThinkGeek is selling a set of Frankenstein-themed cufflinks this season. The items are officially licensed products from Universal Studios.

The set includes one Frankenstein's Monster and one Bride of Frankenstein.

Ordering instructions at https://www.thinkgeek.com/product/jpkm/.

CFP Frankenstein 1818 to 2018: 200 Years of Mad Scientists and Monsters: A First Call for Papers (6/1/2018; NEPCA 2018)

Frankenstein 1818 to 2018:

200 Years of Mad Scientists and Monsters

A First Call for Papers



The Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Area of the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association seeks proposals for papers and/or complete sessions to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in 1818 and to celebrate the longevity of her iconic characters of scientist Victor Frankenstein, “the pale student of unhallowed arts,” and his monstrous construct, “the thing he had put together,” as she succinctly describes them in her introduction to the 1831 reissue of the work.

Proposals should explore aspects of the novel as representations of the fantastic and/or the afterlife of the text in later fantastic narratives of any genre or medium in which adaptations have occurred.



Presentations will be part of the conference of the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association to be held in the fall of 2018.



Please contact area chair Michael A. Torregrossa at FrankensteinandtheFantastic@gmail.com with your proposals in advance of the 1 June 2018 deadline.

Further details and submission instructions will be available at Frankenstein and the Fantastic, an outreach effort of the Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Area of the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association, based at https://frankensteinandthefantastic.blogspot.com/.

CFP Revisiting 1818 in 2018 (9/30/2017; NeMLA 2018)

Of potential interest:

Revisiting 1818 in 2018
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2017/09/04/revisiting-1818-in-2018

deadline for submissions: September 30, 2017

full name / name of organization: Northeast Modern Languages Association

contact email: richard.johnston@usafa.edu



Call for Papers

Panel: "Revisiting 1818 in 2018"

Northeast Modern Languages Association

12-15 April 2018

Pittsburgh, PA

Richard Johnston, United States Air Force Academy



Panel Description: 1818 is a seminal year in British literary and cultural history. Mary Shelley published Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, and Thomas Love Peacock published another important Gothic novel, Nightmare Abbey. Other notable literary works to appear in 1818 include William Hazlitt’s Lectures on the English Poets, John Keats’ Endymion, Sir Walter Scott’s The Heart of Midlothian, and Percy Shelley’s enduring sonnet “Ozymandias” (as well as Horace Smith’s less-enduring sonnet “Ozymandias,” later retitled “On a Stupendous Leg of Granite.")  In January of that year, Lord Byron sent John Murray the final part of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage; by September, he had written the first canto of Don Juan. Also in January, Samuel Taylor Coleridge delivered a lecture on Hamlet, the first in a series of major lectures on literature and philosophy. In April, Coleridge met Keats; seven months later, Keats met Fanny Brawne. Elsewhere in the arts, the Scottish painter David Wilkie finished The Penny Wedding, and the Besses o’ th’ Barn Band was established near Manchester. Building on the 1816 and 1817 panels at the last two meetings of the Northeast Modern Languages Association, this panel welcomes papers on the literature, culture, and/or enduring legacy of 1818.



Submission Guidelines: Please submit 300-word proposals by 30 September 2017. Proposals must be submitted electronically through the NeMLA website:



http://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention/callforpapers/submit.html

The title of this panel is “Revisiting 1818 in 2018,” and the number is 16938.


Questions? Contact Richard Johnston at Richard.Johnston@usafa.edu.


Last updated September 6, 2017

CFP Bicentenary Conference on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (11/1/2017; Venice 2/21-22/2017)

Sorry to have missed this; the search engine for the U Penn CFP is a bit buggy:


The Bicentenary Conference on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2017/08/18/the-bicentenary-conference-on-mary-shelleys-frankenstein

deadline for submissions: November 1, 2017

full name / name of organization: University of Venice, Italy

contact email: maria.parrino@unive.it



Call for papers

International Conference, Venice, 21-22 February 2018

University of Venice – Cà Foscari



The Bicentenary Conference on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Ever since Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was first published (1818), the story of the scientist and the Creature has been constantly and widely told, discussed, adapted, filmed, and translated, making generations of readers approach the novel in an extraordinary variety of ways and languages. The myth of the ‘modern Prometheus’ which Mary Shelley invented has been passed down throughout the centuries and morphed into countless shapes and figures contributing to the enhancement of the original text.

If first-time readers are surprised to discover that Frankenstein is not the name of the monster, and that in fact the monster has no name, all readers are given the opportunity to discover that the novel is a sort of encyclopedia, a text which explores different disciplines, from science to sociology, from psychology to medicine, from history to geography. Moreover, the numerous critical approaches to the text, varying from psychoanalytic, Marxist, feminist, deconstructionist, to ecocritic, all point out the multi-faceted features of the novel.

Although it is difficult to add new and original interpretations of Frankenstein, the pressure and the pleasure to celebrate the novel remains strong and authentic. In this spirit, the conference welcomes participants to share old and new interpretations, and contributes to the promotion of the worldwide events which will be held in 2018, all paying tribute to what is unarguably one of the most famous novels in world literature. When Mary Shelley, in her long Introduction to the1831 edition, wrote about the ‘invention’ of Frankenstein, she did not know that two hundred years later others would enjoy ‘moulding and fashioning’ her original idea, fulfilling the writer’s wish for her ‘hideous progeny [to] go forth and prosper’.

This conference aims to explore, analyse, and debate Mary Shelley’s novel and bicentenary, its reception in European culture and its influence on the media.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• Frankenstein: the 1818 and 1831 version
• Mary Shelley’s biography
• Frankenstein and translations
• Frankenstein and multilingualism
• Multicultural Frankenstein
• Frankenstein and the visual arts
• Frankenstein and films
• Frankenstein and adaptations
• The reception of Frankenstein
• Teaching Frankenstein
• Publishing Frankenstein

Papers may be given in English, Italian, French and Spanish. Please send 200 words abstract for a 20-minute paper to Michela Vanon Alliata, Alessandro Scarsella and Maria Parrino at frankensteinvenice@libero.it by 1 November 2017.



Scientific committee

Michela Vanon Alliata, Università di Venezia

Alessandro Scarsella, Università di Venezia

Maria Parrino, Università di Venezia


Last updated August 21, 2017

CFP 200 Years of the Fantastic: Celebrating Frankenstein and Mary Shelley (10/31/2017; ICFA 3/14-18/2018)

Finally available:

CfP: “200 Years of the Fantastic: Celebrating Frankenstein and Mary Shelley,” ICFA 39, March 14-18, 2018
https://www.fantastic-arts.org/2017/cfp-200-years-of-the-fantastic-celebrating-frankenstein-and-mary-shelley-icfa-39-march-14-18-2018/
Posted on August 25, 2017 by Skye Cervone

Please join us for ICFA 39, March 14-18, 2018, when our theme will be “200 Years of the Fantastic: Celebrating Frankenstein and Mary Shelley.”

We welcome papers on the work of: Guest of Honor John Kessel (Nebula, Locus and Tiptree Award winner), Guest of Honor Nike Sulway (Tiptree and Queensland award winner; nominee for Aurealis and Crawford awards), and Guest Scholar Fred Botting (Professor, Kingston University London; author of Making Monstrous: “Frankenstein”, Criticism, Theory; Gothic; and Limits of Horror).

Mary Shelley and her Creature have had a pervasive influence on the fantastic. Brian Aldiss famously proclaimed Frankenstein as the first science fiction novel, fusing the investigation of science with the Gothic mode. Its myriad adaptation on stage, in film and beyond have continually reinvented Shelley’s tale for contemporary audiences, from James Whale’s iconic 1931 film through Showtime’s Penny Dreadful (2014-16). Frankenstein exists in many avatars and many languages. Its central invention of the scientifically created being has become a staple of the fantastic imaginary from Asimov’s robots through Ava in Ex Machina (Alex Garland 2014) or Samantha in Her (Spike Jonze 2013). Shelley Jackson’s early hypertext Patchwork Girl (1995) and Danny Boyle’s innovatively staged version of Nick Dear’s play both shows us how Frankenstein continues to push us toward innovations in form, while the novel’s interest in themes of scientific responsibility, social isolation, and gender inequality remain sharply relevant. We invite papers that explore the many legacies of Frankenstein on fantastic genres, characters, images and modes, especially those that explore the ongoing importance of women’s contributions to them, beginning with Mary Shelley. We also welcome proposals for individual papers, academic sessions, creative presentations, and panels on any aspect of the fantastic in any media.

The deadline for proposals is October 31, 2017. We encourage work from institutionally affiliated scholars, independent scholars, international scholars who work in languages other than English, graduate students, and artists.

To submit a proposal, go to http://www.fantastic-arts.org/icfa-submissions/.

To contact the Division Heads for help with submissions, go to http://www.fantastic-arts.org/annual-conference/division-heads.

To download a copy of the CfP, please click here.

CFP The Frankenstein Story in Children’s and Young Adult Culture (10/1/2017; PCA 2018)

Pleased to announce our sponsored session for PCA:

Friend or Fiend?
The Frankenstein Story in Children’s and Young Adult Culture

A Special Session of the Children’s and YA Literature and Culture Area of the Popular Culture Association

Sponsored by Frankenstein and the Fantastic, an outreach effort of the Fantastic (Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction) Area of the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association

For the 2018 Annual Conference of the Popular Culture Association meeting in Indianapolis, Indiana, from 28-31 March 2018

Proposals no later than 1 October 2017


Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein celebrates its 200th anniversary in 2018. It is a work that has permeated popular culture, appearing in versions found across the globe, in all known media, and for all age groups. However, many aspects of this tradition remain underexplored by scholars. One of these is how the story and its characters have manifested in children’s and young adult culture.

Like Frankensteiniana for older audiences, versions of the story for young audiences offer interesting and important approaches to the novel and its textual progeny, and they deserve to be better known and analyzed, especially since, for many, works designed for the young represent their first encounters with Frankenstein and its characters.

Criticism on these works remains limited; though a growing number of scholars (see the selected bibliography appended to this call) have begun to offer more in the way of critical analysis, as opposed to just seeing them as curiosities. It is our hope that this session will continue this trend and foster further discussion and debate on these texts

In this session, we seek proposals that explore representations of Frankenstein, its story, and/or its characters in children’s and young adult culture. We are especially interested in how the Creature is received in these works, especially by children and young adult characters, but other approaches (and comments on other characters) are also valid.



SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS:

Please submit paper proposals (100 to 200 words) and a short biographic statement into the PCA Database by 1 October 2017. The site is accessible at https://conference.pcaaca.org/. Do include your university affiliation if you have one, your email address, your telephone number, and your audio-visual needs.

Upon submission, be sure, also, to send your details to the organizers (Michael A. Torregrossa, Fantastic [Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction] Area Chair, and Amie Doughty, Children’s and YA Literature and Culture Area Chair) at FrankensteinandtheFantastic@gmail.com, notifying them of your intentions to serve on the panel. Please use the subject “Frankenstein at PCA”.

Presentations at the conference will be limited to 15 to 20 minutes, depending on final panel size.

Do address any inquiries about the session to FrankensteinandtheFantastic@gmail.com.


Further details on the Frankenstein and the Fantastic project can be accessed at https://frankensteinandthefantastic.blogspot.com/.

Further details on the Children’s and YA Literature and Culture Area can be found at http://pcaaca.org/childrens-literature-culture/.


Additional Information to Note:

The Popular Culture Association does not allow submissions to multiple areas and limits presenters to one paper per conference. (Further information on these policies appears at http://pcaaca.org/national-conference/proposing-a-presentation-at-the-conference/rules-exceptions-for-presenting/.)

Accepted presenters must register AND be members of the Popular Culture Association or join for 2018. (Details can be found at http://pcaaca.org/national-conference/membership-and-registration/.)

The Popular Culture Association does offer a limited number of travel grants for the conference; nevertheless, potential presenters, when submitting their proposal, should be sure to have the necessary funds to attend the conference, as no shows are noted.



SUGGESTED BIBLIOGRAPHY:

(please send details on additional references to FrankensteinandtheFantastic@gmail.com)

Coats, Karen, and Farran Norris Sands. “Growing Up Frankenstein: Adaptations for Young Readers.” The Cambridge Companion to Frankenstein, edited by Andrew Smith, Cambridge UP, 2016, pp. 241-55.


Hawley Erin. “The Bride and Her Afterlife: Female Frankenstein Monsters on Page and Screen.” Literature/Film Quarterly, Vol. 43, No. 3, pp. 218-231.

- - -. “ ‘Children Should Play with Dead Things’: Transforming Frankenstein in Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie.” Refractory, Vol. 26, October 2015. http://refractory.unimelb.edu.au/2015/10/07/hawley/

- - -. “Reimagining the Horror Genre in Children’s Animated Film.” M / C Journal, Vol. 18, No. 6, 2015. http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/1033


Hitchcock, Susan Tyler. Frankenstein: A Cultural History. W. W. Norton, 2007,


Jowett, Lorna, and Stacey Abbott. TV Horror: Investigating the Dark Side of the Small Screen. I. B. Tauris, 2013. (see especially “ ‘Show Us Your Fangs!’: Children’s Television,” pp. 26-30)