*Upcoming issue of Paradoxa: “Global Weirding”*

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ttps://gerrycanavan.wordpress.com/2016/03/15/cfp-upcoming-issue-of-paradoxa-on-global-weirding

Editors:  Andy Hageman ([log in to unmask]) and Gerry Canavan (
[log in to unmask])

The editors of this special issue of *Paradoxa* on “Global Weirding” invite
contributions that explore the aesthetic, political, ethical, and
existential potentials that arise when weird ecological patterns or events
converge with weird speculative literature. Jeff Vandermeer’s acclaimed
2014 Southern Reach Trilogy (*Annihilation*, *Authority*, *Acceptance*)
cracked open the space for thinking the weird and the ecological
together—for experimenting with radical new ways of representing massive
and mind-bending things like global warming, geological time, the
Anthropocene, the life and afterlife of infrastructures, and so on. This
issue invites further analyses of this eco-literary link we’re calling
“Global Weirding—mirroring the term proposed by some climate scientists to
register that global warming does not simply mean higher temperatures but a
global planetary ecology transformed in radical and sometimes highly
unexpected ways.

Essays might range through the strange catalog of weird fiction to
illuminate those elements that offer alternative perspectives on and/or
representations of ecological ethics, thought, aesthetics. China Mieville’s
Bas-Lag, for example, offers a trove of beautiful-awful engagements with
environmental catastrophes and interspecies struggles to exist and coexist.
Or, amidst this H.P. Lovecraft resurgence, through new criticism and
literary grapplings with his racism, it is time to return to the mountains
of madness to see what Cthulhu and Lovecraft’s geology and geologists in
those stories can offer to the still-forming concept of the Anthropocene.
The editors are eager to consider submissions that deal with concepts
originating from across the fantasy, horror, New Weird, and speculative and
science fiction genres, in prose, art, film and television, comic, video
game, or other media forms.

An additional note on contributions: we welcome contributions that focus on
indigenous and non-Western speculative fictions. We recognize that these
texts may deploy myths,n arratives, and cognitive frames that are not in
themselves “weird,” but might be characterized as such by Eurocentric ways
of thinking—and we encourage authors to consider using this issue as a
forum for working through the dynamics of genres moving amongst cultures,
as well as for excavating the fundamental “weirdness” of Western and
post-Enlightenment habits of thought.

Proposals and/or inquiries should be directed to  Andy Hageman (
[log in to unmask]) and Gerry Canavan ([log in to unmask]). We
are happy to consider not only traditional academic essays of approximately
7000-10000 words but also shorter essays (3000-7000), interviews, and other
nontraditional projects.

Proposals are due April 15, 2016. Invited contributors will be notified by
May 15, and the full submission is due in July 2016. This issue is slated
for a December 2016 publication date, following peer review, so prompt
completion of the submission and subsequent response to editorial feedback
is imperative.

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