Event: Birkbeck University "Steampunk: A Symposium" (11/30/2013)

Steampunk: A Symposium
The Guildhall Art Gallery

Birkbeck University
November 30, 2013
1:00-5:00pm

Steampunk is one of the more peculiar genres to mutate out of Neo-Victorianism. Although tethered to an aesthetic idea of the past, it has severed any link to authenticity, freely reinventing and repurposing Victorian technology and culture in order to imagine a counter-factual world of hybridity and playfulness. Ranging across media from film to fashion, literature to design, its identity is fluid but unmistakable. But do these impossible pasts and futures tell us something about our present reality?

Programme
1.00-1.15: Welcome

1.15-2.45: Panel discussion: Steampunk: remaking the past and the future
Jeanette Atkinson – ‘Top Hats, Corsets and Tea Duelling: the Well Mannered World of Steampunk’
Tony Venezia – ‘Science and Monsters:  A Guide to Steampunk Comics’
Anna Powell – ‘Mixing the Planes in Hellboy’

2.45-3.45: Viewing of the exhibition

3.45-4.15: Q&A with Steampunk artist Ian Crichton (aka Herr Döktor) and Guildhall curator Katty Pearce

4.15-4.45: Discussion of the exhibition

4.45: Closing remarks and thanks

This symposium is free to attend but please reserve a place using our online booking form found here:http://www.bbk.ac.uk/events-calendar/steampunk-a-symposium

There will be a concessionary £5 charge for entry to the Guildhall's exhibition on the day.

This event forms part of our Victoriana series, which includes an exhibition and film screenings - see full details here: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/arts/news/victoriana-the-art-of-revival-exhibition-and-film-series

CFP: Neo-Victorian Humour: The Rhetorics and Politics of Comedy, Irony and Parody (2/28/2014; 9/1/2014)

The editorial board for Neo-Victorian Studies invite contributions on the theme of Neo-Victorian Humour for the fifth volume in Rodopi’s Neo-Victorian Series, to be published in 2015. This edited collection will examine the manifold modes, functions, and implications of humour across neo-Victorian media, such as literature, film, anime, graphic novels, videogames, visual art, performance and lifestyle (e.g. steampunk). The volume will explore neo-Victorianism in the light of contemporary aesthetics as the art of indirect speech, what Umberto Eco famously described as   “accept[ing] the challenge of the past, of the already said” to “consciously and with pleasure play the game of irony” (Reflections on The Name of the Rose, 1994) – but also to engage in more aggressive games of parody, aesthetic travesty, confrontation and denunciation. The omnipresence of a humorous awareness tends to insist on a crucial difference and distance between neo-Victorianism and its nineteenth-century referent, thus seemingly arguing against a nostalgic stance. Yet humorous devices can also be employed to recycle invidious ideologies (e.g. racism, imperialism, classism, sexism) under the politically correct guise of comical debunking or subversion, even to the point of carrying forward a pro-nostalgic agenda. From a technical point of view, humour also implies the establishment of a complicity with the audience, involving readers/viewers in complex games that may finally have less bearing on the diegetic world than on the textual, intertextual and metatextual nineteenth-century worlds being re-imagined. We encourage chapters to investigate the inherent contradictions of neo-Victorian humour’s aims and effects, both as a means of self-consciously creative experimentation and adaptation of historical events, figures, and artifacts and as a self-defeating nihilistic or anti-historical project. Possible topics may include, but need not be limited to the following:

• humour’s shaping of contemporary views of ‘the Victorian’ and the long nineteenth century
• the postmodern features and implications of neo-Victorian humour
• the technical distancing devices of neo-Victorian humour: anachronism, parody, comedy, irony, structural counterpoint, double or multiple narratives, mise en abyme, and all forms of metatextuality
• comic modes, audience complicity, and resistance
• neo-Victorian humour and the Gothic
• the politicisation of neo-Victorian humour
• neo-Victorian humour, empathy, and its limits
• comic innovation and the principle of ironic reprise
• the role of playfulness and narrative games
• ethical and non-ethical humour in neo-Victorianism
• humour’s functions within and across neo-Victorian genres and media
• neo-Victorian humour and trauma
• the principle of humour  in adaptations and adaptive practice
• neo-Victorianism, symbolic justice, and having the last laugh

Please send 300-500 word proposals (for 8,000-10,000 word chapters) by 28 February 2014 to the series editors, Marie-Luise Kohlke and Christian  Gutleben (m.l.kohlke@swansea.ac.uk and Christian.GUTLEBEN@unice.fr). Please add a  short   biographical  note  in  the  body of your email. Completed chapters will be due by 1 September 2014.

CFP, Reminder: Steaming into a Victorian Future: A Steampunk Anthology (8/15/2011)

We are seeking contributors for a collection of critical essays on Steampunk. Steampunk remains an elusive topic even among its admirers and practitioners, but at its heart, it re-imagines the Victorian age (both in the future and the past), and re-works its technology, fashion, and values with a dose of anti-modernism. From sci-fi and fantasy to websites catering to a steampunk lifestyle, this multi-faceted genre demands greater scholarly analysis.

The editors of this anthology seek contributions in the following suggested subject areas (but we are not limited to these):

• Steampunk Film Steampunk Literature (romance; historical fiction/sci fi, etc
• Steampunk History Steampunk Fashion/dress history
• Steampunk Technology Steampunk Fandom/fan culture
• Steampunk Art & Design Steampunk as Culture/Lifestyle
• Gender, Race, Class and Steampunk Critiques of existing analyses of s.p.

Submission Guidelines: Send a 1000 word abstract in Microsoft Word by email attachment on or before August 15, 2011; include a brief biography or vita. International submissions are welcomed and encouraged.

Abstracts chosen for inclusion in the anthology will be considered “conditional acceptances” – the editors will secure the submission in the volume, but the editors reserve the right to reject any full essay that does not meet the standards (of style/content, etc) agreed to between the editors and authors. Endnotes are mandatory; illustrations are encouraged and must be secured (along with permissions)by the author and submitted with the final draft.

Editors:
Dr. Julie Anne Taddeo
History Dept., University of Maryland
Email: taddeo@mail.umd.edu

Dr. Cynthia Miller
Institute for Liberal Arts, Emerson
Email: cynthia_miller@emerson.edu

Dr. Ken Dvorak
Northern New Mexico College
email: krdvorak@gmail.com

CFP: Steaming into a Victorian Future: A Steampunk Anthology (8/15/2011)

Steaming into a Victorian Future: A Steampunk Anthology

We are seeking contributors for a collection of critical essays on Steampunk. Steampunk remains an elusive topic even among its admirers and practitioners, but at its heart, it re-imagines the Victorian age in the future, and re-works its technology, fashion, and values with a dose of anti-modernism. From sci-fi and fantasy to websites catering to a Steampunk lifestyle, this multi-faceted genre demands greater scholarly analysis.

The editors of this anthology seek contributions in the following suggested subject areas: Steampunk film, technology, fashion, literature, art & design, gender and steampunk, steampunk fan culture, steampunk as culture and lifestyle, and critiques of existing analyses of steampunk.

Submission Guidelines: Send a 1000 word abstract in Microsoft Word by email attachment on or before August 15, 2011; include a brief biography or vita. International submissions are welcomed and encouraged.

Abstracts chosen for inclusion in the anthology will be considered “conditional acceptances” – the editors will secure the submission in the volume, but the editors reserve the right to reject any full essay that does not meet the standards (of style/content, etc) agreed to between the editors and authors. Endnotes are mandatory; illustrations are encouraged and must be secured (along with permissions) by the author and submitted with the final draft.

Editorial Team:

• Dr. Julie Anne Taddeo, History Dept., University of Maryland (Taddeo@mail.umd.edu) 
• Dr. Cynthia Miller, Institute for Liberal Arts, Emerson College (cynthia_miller@emerson.edu)
• Dr. Ken Dvorak, Distance Education, Northern New Mexico College (krdvorak@nnmc.edu)

Steampunk Exhibit

Lisa Hager forwards a link to the site devoted to an upcoming Steampunk exhibit at Oxford's The Museum of the History of Science.

You'll need to scroll a bit, but there are some fascinating images here.


(Steampunk aficionados might be interested in this interview I did with Ann and Jeff VanderMeer about their recent anthology.)