[Commlist] Call for Papers: Constructing Fantastical Worlds from Antiquity to the Present

*/Constructing Fantastical Worlds: from Antiquity to the Present/*

**

University of Amsterdam, Thursday 30^th June– Friday 1^st July 2022

Keynote Speakers:**DrBenjamin Stevens (Trinity University) and Dr Rutger 
Allan (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

**

This interdisciplinary two-day workshop is devoted to the construction 
of fantastical worlds across various narrative media from antiquity to 
the present.

In recent years, media and literary studies have drawn attention to the 
process of constructing ‘imaginary’ or ‘secondary’ worlds. We define 
these fantastical universes as fictional worlds that involve creatures 
and/or events whose existence and/or occurrence is impossible in our 
actual world. Being often heterotopic and heterochronic and endowed with 
their own geographies, populations, histories, governments, etc., 
fantastical worlds may in complex ways reflect, contrast, and/or 
transcend ordinary reality.

Yet while this phenomenon is generally considered to originate in 
Tolkien, fantastical worldbuilding can be recognised in antiquity as 
well. Recent studies in classical literature and receptions have 
emphasised the fantasy-like quality of classics like Homer’s/Odyssey/, 
Ovid’s/Metamorphoses/, and Plato’s eschatological myths, while linguists 
and narratologists have brought to light literary devices that might be 
used by ancient authors to construct fantastical worlds and mediate the 
audience’s experience of them. Rarely, however, has the connection been 
made between the classical and contemporary construction of fantastical 
worlds, let alone between classics and modern media studies. The 
overarching aim of the workshop is to launch such an interdisciplinary 
discussion in search of a comparative, diachronic perspective on 
fantastical worldbuilding.

Principally, the workshop will focus on the*how*of fantastical 
worldbuilding, i.e.,//on the devices and techniques used in different 
times and media to create a fantastical world, as well as the ways in 
which this world is presented as different from yet somehow anchored in 
reality.

We invite papers that address one (or more) of the following research 
questions:

 1. What devices do authors or artists use to construct fantastical
    worlds? (E.g., common ground management, deixis, the general
    rendering of time and space)
 2. How are these fantastical worlds anchored to the audience’s actual
    world, and what devices are used to express this relationship?
    (E.g., metalepsis, immersive/enactive devices, shifts in the deictic
    centre)
 3. How do fantastical worlds encourage the audience to reflect on the
    actual world? (E.g., metaphor, metonymy, contrast)
 4. What differences and similarities exist between the construction of
    fantastical worlds in different periods and different media?
 5. How are the devices used by ancient authors to construct fantastical
    worlds reused (consciously or unconsciously) in later times?

We are interested in contributions from a variety of disciplinary 
backgrounds that discuss the construction of fantastical worlds in or 
across different media (e.g., written narratives, drama, film, 
television, video games). Papers may focus on single narratives, 
authors, and periods, or discuss fantastical worldbuilding techniques 
more broadly, e.g., from a theoretical, comparative or reception point 
of view.

The workshop will take place in Amsterdam on the 30^th of June and the 
1^st of July 2022. Should the state of the pandemic require it, the 
workshop will be held on the same days as either a hybrid or a virtual 
event.

We invite submissions for 25-minute presentations. To register your 
interest, please submit an*anonymous abstract of max.**400 
words*(excluding references and bibliography) 
to*(constructingfantasticalworlds /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(constructingfantasticalworlds /at/ gmail.com)>*by the*15*^th ***of 
March 2022*. Your name and affiliation should be included in the body of 
your email. We aim to respond no later than the 15^thof April.

This workshop is generously funded byOIKOS, the National Research School 
in Classical Studies in the Netherlands, and the gravitation project 
Anchoring Innovation.

Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions.

The organizing team: Caterina Fossi ((c.fossi /at/ uva.nl) 
<mailto:(c.fossi /at/ uva.nl)>), Merlijn Breunesse ((m.r.e.breunesse /at/ uva.nl) 
<mailto:(m.r.e.breunesse /at/ uva.nl)>) and Koen Vacano ((k.vacano /at/ uva.nl) 
<mailto:(k.vacano /at/ uva.nl)>)

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