Call For Papers - The World's Largest Index/List of Call For Papers

Literophile

URL: https://literophile.org/
Call For Paper Type: Regular
H2 Index: 0
Submission Date: 2020-12-20
Notification Date: 2020-12-27
Final Version Date: 2021-04-30

Fantasy Narratives: Modes, Tropes, and Meaning

Fantasy narratives have carved out an essential space in our daily existence, creating worlds that range from the magical (such as in Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings) and the mythological (such as in The Mahabharata or The Odyssey) to fantastical (Game of Thrones, Twilight, American Gods, Kari) and the utopic and/or dystopic (The Hunger Games, Black Mirror). Fantasy opens up new possibilities of individuals interacting with society, its people, the beings that inhabit it, and the world in general. Fantasy in new media, literature, comics, and cinema has also acquired a wider, more personal reach through the creation of fandoms and alternate authorial interpretations of the source in the form of multiverses.

Investigation of the self and its articulation is at the center of fantasy narratives and subsists on the afterlife of the text in the form of adaptations, fanfiction, and reboots. Pedagogical strategies of reading fantasy engage with this afterlife, questions of the self, and socio-political realities. Classic Fairy tales are now being re-examined through feminism, psychoanalysis, anthropocentrism, sociology, and postcolonialism. Narrative selves are no longer merely human, they appear as posthuman (cyborgs), anti-human (Resident Evil), anthropomorphic (werewolves, shapeshifters), or less-than-human (zombies). New media in the form of virtual reality and video games are transforming the ways of engaging with fantasy.

Vol. 8, Issue 1 of Literophile will focus on the evocations of fantasy narratives across regional, linguistic, contextual, formal, and semantic levels and explore the intersections between created worlds and contemporary worlds. We are keen to receive writings based on the following sub-themes and questions but will also accommodate contributions that broadly interpret them:

· Historical Speculation: How has fantasy been narrated historically? Who was given the agency of narration? How does religion use fantasy? Mythological epic narratives such as The Ramayana, The Iliad, or The Odyssey, have all been reinterpreted across disciplines. How do fantasies help in creating national and religious identities? How do they impact the narratives of peoples’ origins and their existence in the larger universe?

Global and Vernacular Fantasies: Attention towards narratives from the marginalised and not just mainstream media and literature is essential in unravelling deeper layers of regional and vernacular fantasy. Regional graphic narratives from India and non-English narratives bring enriching perspectives into understanding fantasy. How does regional fantasy compete with mainstream forms of fantasy? Who decides what gets published and becomes popular and what does not?

· Fantastical Fandom: Fanfiction is the ultimate creative representation of a text’s afterlife. Fanlore perpetuates canonical ideology while simultaneously rearranging character arcs through Headcanons, OTPs (One True Pairing), AUs (Alternate Universes), Crossovers, Shipping, Slashing, and Gender/Racebending. Fanfiction even gets published under different character names: Fifty Shades of Gray was Twilight’s fanfiction and After reimagined Harry Styles’s (One Direction) numerous love affairs. Fanfiction is dominated by queer women writers and is ripe with questions about authorial intent, reimaginings, alternate universe, reader response, and experiments of form.

· Fantasy visualised: How do cinema and the graphic form narrativize fantasy? Canonical works such as Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman Chronicles, and the worlds of Nagraj, Parmanu, Superman, Supergirl, and Shaktimaan are extensively loved and reimagined by fans. The fantasy world and its expression in the cinematic, televised and animated universe raise questions about the form. For instance, Avatar: The Last Airbender, the live-action film adaptation of a beloved animated show has been unanimously criticised by fans and creators. How does form change the ways of interaction? How do adaptations of famous works change the imaginative evocation of beloved characters and their worlds?

· Fantastical Selves: Is the self of a fantasy realm akin to the real self? What are the physiological and psychological changes that the self undergoes in the fantasy narrative? Does an individual engage in alternate ways of knowing and furthering their understanding of the world they inhabit and hope to inhabit in the future? Moving away from a fantasy vs. reality debate, the question is rather how the human is being replaced by artificial intelligence/cyborgs.

· Fantastical Games: Video Games have always upturned the normative and the conventional through fantasy. These games explore political, social, economic, and cultural themes in challenging and reevaluating society through the world of video games (Civilisation). RPGs (Role-Play Games) allow players to embody a character and have multiple story arcs that immerse them in a world of fantasy (The Witcher, Mass Effect). Cyberpunk is another sub-genre that refers to a futuristic world populated by artificial intelligence and an oppressive social order (Syndicate, Shadowrun, Matrix, Ghost in the shell, Cyberpunk 2077).

· Fantasy and Sexuality: Fantastic worlds give access to desires which might conventionally be taboo. The intersections between sexuality and fantasy find articulation through slash (same-sex) pairing in fandom across different forms, mainstream erotica, and the popularity of franchises like 365 Days. Many fandoms explore alternative sexualities raising concerns about shipping (the relationship between two fictional or real people), queerbaiting (teasing LGBTQ+ ships for ratings without making characters canonically queer like Harry Potter’s Dumbledore), and the power of the reader in dictating how fandoms progress and develop.

We invite research papers, photo essays, critical articles, book reviews, and other critical and reflective writings not longer than 3000 words for Vol. 8, Issue 1, to be published in March 2021. Proposals of no more than 300 words should reach literophile@gmail.com by 20 December 2020. Acceptances will be sent between 25-27 December 2020. Final submissions will be due by 15 February 2021. The journal will be released in April 2021.

About the Journal

Literophile is a half-yearly, theme-based journal for amateur academic research in Literature in English, Cultural Studies, Comparative Literature, and Translation Studies. Our aim is to encourage and inculcate critical thinking and writing amongst students and young scholars. Students and research scholars from undergraduate to doctoral level of all disciplines can send in their entries to the journal.

Established in 2005 as a collegiate journal, Literophile has had many avatars. It has been run and managed as a campus tradition, going through succeeding generations of student editors. From being a purely academic journal, we hope now to transition into an enabling platform that will not simply provide an unbiased space for debate and criticism but also mentor graduate students in the ethics and practicality of research. We look forward to your support in re-centring Literophile as an open, non-partisan, and enabling forum for criticality in our troubled times.

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