21st-century Canadian science fiction is unique and varied. Its production is a reflection of the country’s size, history, its status as a former colony of both Great Britain and France, its vast geography and its close proximity to the United States, as a country of immigrants and a colonizer in its own right over its Indigenous Peoples.

The Canadian imagination expresses itself in English, French, Indigenous languages and the languages of its immigrant groups, and speaks to a multicultural environment. The Canadian landscape, so vast and varied, inspires the writers, and has been re-imagined as alien worlds and foreign cities.

The editors seek contributions which present an overview of current Canadian science fiction in all media. The volume’s objective is to create a comparative overview demonstrating the variety and depth of the Canadian science fictional imagination. The editors aim to include sections on narrative fiction, television and cinema, and gaming. This will be a part of McFarland’s Critical Explorations in Science Fiction series and will be edited by Gillian I. Leitch (independent scholar) and Caroline-Isabelle Caron (Queen’s University).

Suggested topics include:

History of Canadian science fiction

Colonialism and Empire

Afro-futurisms

Indigenous futurisms

Linguistic communities and science fiction

Regionalisms in science fiction

Science fiction production in Canada

Canadian futures

Specific authors

If you are interested in contributing to this book, please submit a proposal of 250 words along with a short biography to: [email protected]

The deadline for submissions is 30 September 2026.

A few days ago, I signed the contract for a forthcoming volume which I am editing. The new book, entitled Challenging Boundaries in Language Education, will be published by Springer within the Second Language Learning and Teaching series, and we are aiming for a publication date towards the end of 2019.

(more…)

The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories

I love a good thematically organized short story collection, be it situated around an issue or a specific concept, the variety of stories around a singular subject matter can make for some intriguing reading. Every author interprets the theme differently and comes at it from new and interesting angles. The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories is no exception to this. The book is edited by the…

These days scholarly publishers often chop up edited collections to sell chapters separately. Not because we make a lot of money off this (we don't make a lot of money) but because it's something libraries and scholars want in this new digital age. So, if you are an editor of an edited collection, please be sure each chapter has its own bibliography at the end of the chapter (and when would you be using a bibliography? when you're using in-text or shortened citations, you say!). Even if multiple chapters use the same citations and you think it will save pages in the end, your editor's assistant will require that you break them up.

We made a promise to ourselves when starting I Like It Here to seek and bring out the best of new talent, limited and exclusive editions of artworks and objects for our Edited collection.

Launching this we are excited to introduce the work of artist-designer Sampo Lehtinen.  An alumni of London College of Fashion and Aalto University Helsinki, Lehtinen has worked for the likes of John Galliano in Paris, and through illustration techniques developed studying and working in fashion, the designer has produced a series of collages inspired by the Austrian artist Egon Schiele.

Arthur Roessler (aka The Biscuit Man) from the Schiele series, 2011.

What appealed to us about these pieces were technique Lehtinen uses, the texture and tones of his work, and use of recycled materials — the old fashion magazines. 

Working from the depths of a cottage in the Finnish forest, where the artist had set up a temporary studio over the holidays, we caught up with Lehtinen last month and asked him some questions about his work.

How did you start making these collages? Well, originally I studied fashion design and we used to religiously make these sketchbooks of ideas to support the actual design work.  They were scrapbooks of images, materials, drawings, details, notes and all that, and I very much enjoyed doing them - perhaps even more than the actual garment design!  I used to compose images by tearing one or two principal images into pieces, then reassembling them to visualise a desired silhouette. I thought it was more layered and interesting way to describe the idea than traditional drawing.

One of my tutors suggested that I could make the actual illustrations of the collection with that technique.  After graduation (2002) I developed the technique further, but not very systematically.  As a professional fashion designer you don't really have the same time to create these sketchbooks.

Female Nude from Schiele series, 2011.

Were any of your fashion illustrations ever published? Some of them, yes.  There was some interest from different kinds of publishers, which is interesting because I wasn't really active on that front myself and didn't have an agent.  Also there was virtually nothing going on the internet at the time, especially in France were I was living at the time!  I guess it was just word-of-mouth or something.  Anyway, college wasn't common at all in the commercial media at the time and people were afraid of copyrights and that sort of things.  But I must say my style was much more spontaneous and less detailed than now, you could recognise the original images used more easily. Why did you start making these reinterpretations of world famous paintings? Last year I started reviving the idea of these collages and wanted to develop my technique.  I thought the best way to concentrate purely on the technique would be by choosing recognisable images.  I have always been very passionate about modern art history in particular and naturally wanted bring own perspective to the original paintings, but I never expected people to react so positively to the first sketches.  That also gave me a boost to go ahead and carry on developing my expression along those lines. The Schiele series struck us as intensely beautiful, what interests you about this artist?

I have never been a huge Schiele fan by any account, but what I find inspiring about his work is the dialogue between the line and surface.  I really admire the sketchy, spontaneous, progressive nature of his paintings and drawings.  The other interesting thing is the nudity.  I am not talking about the amount of bare skin, but the way he illustrated people with patchy, tattered skin and imbalanced, even bruised limbs and placed them in front of pure, pale but very organic backgrounds.  It's also interesting how Schiele thematically, and in terms of composition and dynamics, is so important to contemporary fashion photography, and yet retouching with smudge tools is normally taken for granted within the industry, something that seems completely contradictory to his aesthetics.  By patching the perfect skin from cosmetics advertisement, I am almost taking it back to Schiele! What tools and materials do you use and how long does it take to create these colleges? In principal, I only use a ruler for tearing the pieces and a glue stick to attach.  But then of course I keep a selection of different sizes and types of glue and varnishes for finishing.  I usually sketch the subject roughly on the paper with pencil first, but the finished artwork shows only what I find from existing images.  Unlike most contemporary collage artists, I don't use scissors or a scalpel as I prefer the effect of the torn edge.  One artwork takes one days work to finish, sometimes a bit less sometimes a lot more!  Obviously, the size of the artwork and level of detail reflects that too, but they doesn't necessarily go hand in hand.  Now I usually work on a small series or pair of independent collages simultaneously, which I think is a good way of keeping the work flowing.

Egon Schiele with Chinese Fruit and Lantern from Schiele Series, 2011.

Humanities scholars have a significant role to play in analyzing, charting, and interrogating practices of intellectual property. We invite you to submit proposals for the edited collection Cultures of Copyright.

Deadline for 500–750 word proposals: December 15, 2011 (notification by January 15, 2012)

Humanities scholars have a significant role to play in analyzing, charting, and interrogating practices of intellectual property. Doing so is a humanistic endeavor that connects directly with our history of both interrogating and protecting authorship, and with our history of developing, constructing, and delivering information - in print and digitally, including graphic and other visual arts, and via manuscripts, essays, plays, and much, much more (DeVoss & Porter, 2006; DeVoss & Webb, 2008; Heins & Beckles, 2005; Herrington, 2001, 2003, 2010; Lessig, 2004, 2008, 2009; Logie, 2006; Ray & Graeff, 2008; Reyman, 2010; Westbrook, 2006, 2009).

To deeply understand the dynamics of intellectual property, we require attention to legal issues and cases; to statutes, codes, and exemptions; and to official policies and governmental regulations. We also require deep attention to the cultural considerations surrounding the rhetorics of intellectual property. Cultural considerations, as we frame them for this collection, include (but are not limited to) global and international issues related to intellectual property, feminist research in intellectual property, issues of cultural cannibalism, and considerations of intellectual commons that span time and/or cultures.

This edited collection will attend to these - and other - issues, with a particular focus on the cultural considerations and consequences of what counts as “property” from historical, economic, cultural, religious, digital, etc. perspectives. We invite scholars in rhetoric and composition, English studies, digital humanities, and other related disciplines and subdisciplines to submit proposals for this edited collection.

Questions we invite authors to consider and respond to include, but are not limited to:

How is “culture” typically framed, defined, and/or identified in conversations about intellectual property?

In what ways are the humanities—scholars, movements, curricula, research, and more—implicated in intellectual property issues?

Where are the significant intersections between copyright and humanities scholarship? What intersections have thus far remained invisible or buried?

In what ways and regarding what issues might we predict that the humanities will continue to rub up against copyright? (These might include, for instance, issues of authorship, authorial agency, ownership of texts, etc.)

Of the changes to copyright law in the United States in the past thirty years, what changes have been - or may prove to be - most significant to the humanities?

In what ways do different cultures and bodies of literature approach intellectual property? What competing dynasties andmarginalized voices exist beyond the dominant U.S. copyright paradigm?

In what ways might “the information commons” or the concept of shared or “community-owned knowledge” extend bothwork in and the circulation of knowledge from humanities scholarship?

In what ways might “cultural appropriation” or “cultural cannibalism” be attended to by humanities scholars?

In what ways can the long history of the humanities in analyzing authorship and ownership of texts contribute to how we approach intellectual property issues? How does this long history perhaps submerge issues we might be discussing?

What global, international, or cross-cultural intellectual property issues should humanities disciplines be attentive to?

What are some of the ways in which cultural rhetorics scholarship in intellectual property can inform or extend our approaches to intellectual property? For example, is there a connection between racism and the commodification of culture via intellectual property regimes? A connection with sexism? Where are the intersections between discourses of race and/or gender and intellectual property-related discourse?

The edited collection will likely consist of: 1) an editors’ introduction, which will provide some historical, cultural, legal, and philosophical context drawing from past humanities work attentive to intellectual property; 2) approximately 10–12 chapters addressing issues of intellectual property and culture; and 3) approximately 5–8 mini-chapters focusing on cultural implications and analysis of legal cases/case studies  (e.g., an analysis of Alice Randall’s The Wind Done Gone through a cultural lens).

Deadline for 500–750 word proposals: December 15, 2011 (notification by January 15, 2012)

Deadline for chapter manuscripts: April 15, 2012 (response by May 15, 2012)

Please direct questions and email proposals to: Dànielle Nicole DeVoss, Michigan State University, devossda(at)msu.edu Martine Courant Rife, Lansing Community College, martinerife(at)gmail.com