By way of Geoffrey Long at MIT come two very interstitial calls for contributions. First, from H-Net:

THRESHOLDS, SOGLITUDES

Special issue edited by

Tatjana Barazon, Docteur en Philosophie de Paris IV-Sorbonne

THRESHOLDS, SOGLITUDES

This is an invitation to meditate on thresholds, the space where we enter a house and where we leave it, it is where we don’t dwell. The threshold designates the passing from one state to another, from the inside to the outside, or the point where things start to become different. A threshold is a step to overcome, a passage in itself, a moment of opening significant in anthropology of rituals, a hyphen that separates and unites at the same time. Nevertheless, in philosophy, the threshold also expresses the human condition itself, a state that we never leave, a state we should not even try to overcome because it concentrates our whole being. The threshold would then be a “zone” as Walter Benjamin calls it, a space where man evolves, always “in between”. On the threshold of the other, as in Martin Buber’s thought, or always on the verge of becoming as Henri Bergson describes “the creation of the self by the self”, the state of the human condition is on the threshold of being. The Hegelian becoming also is a threshold, the overcoming of the self in a dynamic momentum.

In order to introduce the threshold as a technical term in philosophical vocabulary, we suggest the theme of “soglitude”, taking its etymology from the Italian word soglia for threshold and the consonance of the solitary state of the human condition, a loneliness however that always leads to another world, another being, or matter, or even colour.

[…]

More than a call for papers, this is a call for meditations. From all corners – philosophy, social sciences, mathematics, physics, chemistry, medicine, poetry, literature or other – we invite you to give your liminary (or “soglitary”) point of view.

Abstracts due by December 15. You’ll find more details in the link.

Next call is for an upcoming issue of Reconstruction: Studies In Contemporary Culture:

Genre became differentiated from within itself, no longer identical but constituted at the interface of various media and readers. It was assembled from other genres, a combination of overlapping, discontinuous tropes that played ironically with its own established forms. Postmodernism had broken with both the neo-classicism of the New Criticism and with a historically minded structuralism to produce a new critical view of genre, one that fostered the emergence of hybrid and self-conscious fictions between media. Its readers were no longer seen as isolated but, in their engagement with multiple practices of interpretation, were recognized in distinct communities. Studies like Janice Radway’s Reading the Romance: Women, Romance and Popular Fiction (1991) and Henry Jenkins’ Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (1992) explored new ways of looking at popular texts within their contexts.

It is with a view to addressing these changes that this issue of Reconstruction will investigate the function of genre in theory and fictions alike. Papers are sought that address the fragmented state of genre theory, spread as it is across studies of new and old media, fan and reading communities, narrative and visual theory. We are interested in the function of genre in different medias, such as comics and games. Why has genre persisted in this age of multi-modal expressions? What makes it tick, travel across media, to return and coalesce in new and old forms of narrative, visuality and intertextuality?

Deadline is December 20, 2008. More details can be found here.
In other news, “soglitude” very well may be our new favorite word here at the IAF.

Two weeks ago I attended one of the more interstitial conferences I’ve ever been to, the Technology in the Arts Conference sponsored by Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh.  As both a writer and an arts administrator/fundraiser, I found it to be an eye-opening couple of days, and I recommend it highly to both those like me who are striving to get up to speed so they understand just want a micronarrative is, and to those to whom topics like “Bridging Physical and Digital Animation Processes with Cinetropes” actually mean something. 

The conference had a strong emphasis this year on social networking, which today takes such a staggering number of forms that even the professionals are striving to keep up. But as I sat there trying to understand the strengths and weaknesses of Facebook, MySpace, Twitter,  Flickr, and Second Life, I came to realize that social networking, in all its infinite variety, is what IAF is all about.  We’re here to meet the strong need expressed to us by so many artists participating in IAF events for greater community – across genre, across state and national boundaries, and across many media – as well as to help the world recognize how much future creativity lies in interstitiality. Artists with a quest to break down borders should be helped in that quest by the technologies that are dedicated to tearing down barriers.  And so, if you have the time next year, I highly recommend a trip to Pittsburgh, where you, too, can spend a few days learning about how people will be creating art and communicating with one another about it in the future.  

Interfictions II will be edited by Delia Sherman & Christopher Barzak. It will be published by Small Beer Press under the auspices of the Interstitial Arts Foundation in the Fall of 2009.

Submission Guidelines for
Interfictions II: The Second Anthology of Interstitial Writing
Read more…

Hello to all supporters of interstitiality!

We hope you had a wonderful summer, packed with both Interstitial and vacation fun.
While you were sunning at the beach (we can but hope) we were toiling away with plans for fall and winter Interstitiality. Here is our report on our summer Board meetings: The IAF Executive Board met for their monthly phone conferences on July 13 and August 24, 2008.  Present on one or both dates were:  Victor Raymond (President), Ellen Kushner (V-P), Delia Sherman (Treasurer), Kris McDermott (Secretary), Wendy Ellertson, Stephen Segal, and new Board members Elizabeth Genco & Deborah Atherton.
Here is a digest of those meetings: Read more…

See, for instance, his August 21, 2008 interview in the LATimes; the interviewer says he spoke to Chabon about “a process by which sophisticated writers are kept in the genre ghetto and readers are scared away from novels and stories they might otherwise love” (didn’t we just put that in our mission statement?) and Chabon says things like:
[T]here is a whole list of borderland writers — John Crowley, Jorge Luis Borges, Steven Millhauser, Thomas Pynchon — writers who can dwell between worlds. 

and

Tolkien’s “Cauldron of Story” is one of my central ways of thinking about what I do…. the “Cauldon of Story” includes not only recognizably literary elements, and root elements like folk tale and fairy tale and Bible stories which have always been acknowledged as part of the writers tool kit, but also this other material [e.g.  Norse mythology, Jewish fables, ’80s American comics, Sherlock Holmes], which in turn is just further reflections and emanations of these fundamental kinds of stories.

So what does it all mean?  Can the IAF just pack it up and go home, because someone with a lot more clout is doing our work for us?  Or can we use our own resources to help Chabon fight the good fight?

The IAF tries to keep an eye out for announcements of markets & venues that seem friendly to interstitial work. (See our Archive of Artists’ Resources for more - and feel free to write us with your hot tips at info [the at thing] interstitialarts [the dot thing] org.)

Editor Mike Allen is currently reading for the second volume of Clockwork Phoenix: Tales of Beauty & Strangeness.

His description of the ideal story for Clockwork Phoenix 2 sounds pretty darned interstitial to us:

The stories should contain elements of the fantastic, [but] bring something new and genuine to the equation, whether it’s a touch of literary erudition, playful whimsy, extravagant style, or mind-blowing philosophical speculation and insight… I hope to see stories that will lead the reader into unfamiliar territory, there to find shock and delight.

And, indeed, several of the authors in his first volume (Michael DeLuca, Vandana Singh & Catherynne Valente) also appeared in Interfictions.

Allen adds:

[A]s a reader, I enjoy stories that experiment, that push the envelope, that dazzle with their daring, but I’m often personally frustrated when an experimental story ends without feeling complete, without leaving an emotional crater for me to remember it by. At the same time, I find myself increasingly bored with the traditional, conventionally-plotted and plainly-written Good Story Competently Told. For better or for worse, I envision the CLOCKWORK PHOENIX books as places where these two schools of story telling can mingle and achieve Happy Medium; where there is significance to both the tale that’s told and the style of the telling.

Allen is reading submissions through Nov. 16, 2008. Here are detailed submission guidelines for Clockwork Phoenix 2.