The tenacious and mostly harmless Stacie Hanes started the Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA) group on Facebook some time ago. Recently, I signed on as an admin of the group with Stacie after I became SFRA’s Publicity Director. Now, I would like to ask all SFRA members on Facebook (and there are a whole lot of you out there) to join the group. It is a terrific way to put faces to the names of folks that you work with professionally, and it is another way in which we can all stay informed and connected about the going-ons of the organization and our fellow members. Also, the group is not exclusive to SFRA members, so I would like to extend the invitation to curious passersby to find out more about SFRA. You can find the group by clicking here, or you can search Facebook for “Science Fiction Research Association.”
Join the SFRA Group on Facebook
January 27, 2009
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SFRA | Tagged: facebook, group, SFRA | 
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Posted by Jason W Ellis
Journal Announcement for Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies
January 21, 2009Kent State University Professor Masood Raja has established a new peer-reviewed electronic journal called Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies, and he asked me to be its layout editor. I’m excited to make a contribution to this cutting-edge journal.
A description of the journal along with a call for papers is listed below:
Masood Raja (Kent State University) has started a new academic journal entitled Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies. This is a peer-reviewed, multi-disciplinary electronic journal offering a forum for a serious academic and creative engagement with various aspects of Pakistani culture, literature, and politics. Though several existing journals do pay a fair degree of attention to the issues of South Asia and Postcoloniality, we feel that under the current climate of high capital and war on terror, Pakistan, often subsumed under the larger registers of South Asia or Postcolonial Studies, needs a particular space of its own in our academic and creative undertakings. Thus, Pakistaniaat aims to provide a public space on the Internet to introduce and discuss hitherto neglected aspects of Pakistani cultural and literary production and to make this knowledge available to a worldwide audience.
Pakistaniaat, thus, aims to provide an inclusive venue to all those interested in issues specifically related to Pakistan, its culture, literature, and its place in the region as well as in the world. We aim to accomplish the important mission of “covering Pakistan” by publishing scholarly articles, creative works, translations, and reviews of books about Pakistan. To visit the journal, go to http://www.pakistaniaat.org.
The journal is currently seeking submissions for its first issue in June 2009; all those interested in submitting to the journal or working on the staff, should contact Dr. Raja at mraja@kent.edu.
Leave a Comment » | Kent State, Personal | Tagged: journal, masoodraja, pakistan | Permalink
Posted by Jason W Ellis
SFRA 2009, Five Months Away
January 13, 2009It’s already the middle of January and SFRA 2009 in Atlanta, Georgia is only five months away! Remember to get in your paper and panel proposals to sfra2009@gmail.com by 1 April 2009 (no kidding!). For all of you folks needing early semester confirmation for institutional funding, submit your proposals in the next seven days by 20 January 2009.
I’m particularly excited about the terrific special author lineup that we have this year. Our Guest of Honor is Michael Bishop, and the Special Guest Authors are F. Brett Cox, Paul di Filippo, Andy Duncan, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Jack McDevitt, and Warren Rochelle.
If you haven’t seen one of the ubiquitous emails that I’ve been sending out as SFRA’s Publicity Director, then see the CFP below for more details.
SFRA 2009: Engineering the Future and Southern-Fried Science Fiction and Fantasy
June 11-14, Atlanta, GA (Wyndham Midtown Hotel)
Guest of Honor: Michael Bishop
Special Guest Authors: F. Brett Cox, Paul di Filippo, Andy Duncan, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Jack McDevitt, and Warren Rochelle.
SFRA is currently accepting individual abstracts and panel proposal for its 2009 conference. We welcome paper and panel submissions that explore any aspect of science fiction across history and media and are particularly interested in those that engage one or both of the conference themes, “Engineering the Future” and “Southern-FriedScience Fiction and Fantasy,” or the work of one or more of the conference’s guest authors.
The 2009 conference’s two themes and its selection of guest authors are inspired by the conference’s location in Atlanta and its co-sponsorship by Georgia Tech’s School of Literature, Communication, and Culture. Atlanta, a storied locale in American history, is also in many ways an international city of the future, home to 21st century information, entertainment, technological and military industries, peopled with 21st century demographics, and prone to 21st century situations.
How is the future engineered in science fiction and how has science fiction already engineered our present? The American south has long been well known for its gothic fiction, but it has increasingly figured in works of science fiction and fantasy too. So it is equally fitting to ask, how has the south been an inspiration of science fiction and fantasy and what will its global future in speculative arts and letters be?
The deadline for proposals is April 1, 2009 at midnight EST. Please submit paper and panel proposals by email to sfra2009@gmail.com. Include all text of the proposal in the body of the email (not as an attachment). Please be sure to include full contact information for all panel members and to make all AV requests within each proposal.
For more information, email sfra2009@gmail.com. And be sure to check out www.sfra2009.com for more details!
1 Comment | Conference, Georgia Tech, Science Fiction, SFRA | Tagged: atlanta, Conference, georgiatech, publicity, SFRA | Permalink
Posted by Jason W Ellis
