The Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic is pleased to announce that our blog here is back up after technical issues affecting University webpages. Welcome back!
Additionally, we have changed email newsletter providers. Please check your spam folders as the email may be mistakenly labeled spam. The email was sent on Monday April 3rd at 12:32pm BST. You can also find the contents of this email below.
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Welcome to the April 2023 Newsletter of the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic! Please see below for our latest news and forthcoming events and opportunities:
Future Voices of Scottish Science Fiction and Fantasy – 19 April 2023
The last event of our AHRC-funded Research Network “Future Voices of Scottish Science Fiction and Fantasy” will take place in 19 April 2023. The Network privileges under-represented Scottish voices of Science Fiction and Fantasy (SFF) working across different media (literature, gaming, film, art), with an emphasis on BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities as well as practitioners with disabilities. In these dramatic times, we ask how creative practitioners imagine future worlds and respond to rapidly-changing global circumstances (e.g. the COVID-19 pandemic), concerns and anxieties (e.g. as expressed in the #MeToo or #BlackLivesMatter movements) through SFF writing/art/creativity. Join us forour last event:
- 19 April 2023, 6-7:30pm: Challenging the past (canon and history) in SFF narratives
- Participants: Iain Clark, Amal El-Mohtar, Harry Josephine Giles, and T. L. Huchu
- Book your free ticket here
In addition to these events the network is publishing commissioned academic responses, and holding online discussions on the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic Discord server which you can join here.
- Watch our first event on Inclusive Worldbuilding in SFF across different media (October 12) here
- Watch our second event on Representation of change and the future in SFF worlds and narratives (December 2022) here
- Watch our third event on Representation of social issues in SFF worlds and narratives (March 2023) here
You can follow the Network on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Celebrating 70 years since J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sir Gawain lecture in Glasgow (1953-2023)
On 15 April 1953, Tolkien delivered the W.P. Ker Memorial Lecture, on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, to an audience of 300 at the University of Glasgow. The essay was published posthumously, in 1983, in The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, edited by Christopher Tolkien.
Join us at Glasgow on Thursday 27 April 2023, 5-6:30pm, on-campus (Joseph Black Building) or online, to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the lecture and its significance, Tolkien’s links to Glasgow, and the importance of the Sir Gawain text in Tolkien’s creativity.
- Professor Jeremy Smith, Honorary Senior Research Fellow, University of Glasgow
- Dr Lydia Zeldenrust, Lecturer in Middle English Literature, University of Glasgow
- Dr Andoni Cossio, Postdoctoral Fellow, Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic, University of Glasgow
- Chair: Dr Dimitra Fimi, Senior Lecturer in Fantasy and Children’s Literature, and Co-Director of the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic
For those attending on-campus, there will be an opportunity to see a pop-up exhibition with documentation related to Tolkien’s appointment as the 1953 W.P. Ker Memorial Lecturer (including a hand-written letter by Tolkien), in collaboration with Archives & Special Collections, University of Glasgow.
To book your free ticket (on-campus or online) click here
GIFCon 2023: Boundaries and Margins (10-12 May 2023) – registration open!
GIFCon (Glasgow International Fantasy Conversations) is the annual conference of the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic. GIFCon 2023: Boundaries and Margins will take place online from 10-12 May 2023.
- We’re delighted to host a trio of amazing keynote speakers: Professor Sami Schalk, Nghi Vo, and Dr Will Tattersdill!
- Registration is now open and free! Register here
- You can read more about GIFCon here
You can access the GIFCon website, which includes the themes and programmes of previous conferences, here. You can follow GIFCon on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Fantasy International Summer School – June 2023
Our Fantasy International Summer course, “Fantastic Texts and Where to Find Them: Approaching Fantasy Literature” will take place on-campus in June 2023. It will introduce students to fantasy and the fantastic, often defined as the “literature of the impossible”. Students will survey key texts across different media (e.g. by J.R.R. Tolkien and Ursula K. Le Guin, as well as cinematic and TV fantasy), while exploring critical approaches and recent theoretical debates. There is also the opportunity to have a go at writing fantasy as the course includes a creative writing workshop.
Registration is open now until 14 April 2023.
- Apply here.
This is a Level 2 undergraduate course (15 credits). For further details on curriculum, dates, etc. please see here.