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July 2017, Week 2

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Subject:
From:
Gerry Canavan <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 13 Jul 2017 18:12:34 -0500
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CFP: *“When the Astronaut is a Woman: Beyond the Frontier in Film and
Television” special issue of Science Fiction Film and Television*
Guest Editors: Lorrie Palmer and Lisa Purse

https://gerrycanavan.wordpress.com/2017/07/13/sfftv-special-is…-for-submissions/
<https://gerrycanavan.wordpress.com/2017/07/13/sfftv-special-issue-cfp-when-the-astronaut-is-a-woman-and-open-call-for-submissions/>

With the release of *Hidden Figures* (Melfi, 2016), public perception of
the iconic era of the space race was reconfigured. The central image of the
white male astronaut was replaced by one in which women of color dominated
mathematics, science, and technology, thereby prompting a new cultural
conversation. Indeed, this narrative of science fact signals another
significant re-embodiment in our science fictions: the female astronaut.

Spaceflight and the astronauts who embark on mythic journeys of exploration
have long been in the shadow of the macho military test pilots of the
Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions. These men evoke nostalgia through
their Right Stuff swagger, their personae as space race Cold Warriors, and
as a collective Kennedy-esque metaphor for the American frontier. In the
postwar decades of space travel, “the body of the astronaut [was]
increasingly used as a projection screen for anxieties concerning the
stability of gender categories” (Brandt 2006), so it is significant that
recent iterations are moving beyond the traditional white male astronaut.
We see this in the diversification of representations of space travelers in
television and fiction film, particularly along the lines of gender, race
and sexuality, as corporations race to Mars with crowd-sourced crews, and
entertainment media revise cultural narratives about space exploration.

This special issue of *Science Fiction Film and Television*, therefore,
seeks to integrate this contemporary moment of challenge to the hegemonic
imagery of space travel by examining the genre’s aesthetic and
representational characteristics and their relation to wider cultural
discourses around gender, race, technology and ecology, and to theoretical
debates about the body, technoscience and the post-human.

Along these lines, contributors may wish to re-evaluate depictions of
female astronauts in films like *Contact* (1997), *Solaris* (2002),* Event
Horizon* (1997), or *Supernova* (2000), or to map more contemporary
representational trends in films such as* Interstellar* (2014), *The
Martian* (2015), the Star Wars or Star Trek reboots, or Ripley’s legacy in
the recent installments of the Aliens franchise. Television series like *Dark
Matter* (2015-), *Ascension* (2014), *The Expanse* (2015-), or the new *Star
Trek: Discovery* (2017-) would be of particular interest to this special
issue. At the heart of these texts are female astronaut-protagonists who
must negotiate their relationship to the legacy of existing depictions of
space exploration, while also speaking to their contemporary context.
Ultimately then, we ask how the reconfiguration of space race history—now
made visible in *Hidden Figures*—broadens the frontier of science fiction
scholarship.

Please send proposals by 30 September 2017 to Lorrie Palmer,
[log in to unmask] and to Lisa Purse, [log in to unmask] with an
author’s bio and a short (5-7 entries) bibliography.

--

*Science Fiction Film and Television* also has a year-round open reading
period. Preferred length for articles is approximately 7000-9000 words; all
topics related to science fiction film, television, and related media will
be considered. Typical response time is within three months. Check the
journal website at Liverpool University Press for full guidelines for
contributors;
<http://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=55:science-fiction-film-and-television-&catid=8>
please
direct any individualized queries to the editors, Gerry Canavan (
[log in to unmask]) and Dan Hassler-Forest (
[log in to unmask]).
---------------------
Gerry Canavan
Assistant Professor of 20th and 21st Century Literature
English Department, Marquette University
[log in to unmask]
http://www.gerrycanavan.com

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Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite
http://www.ScreenSite.org

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