From the SFRA EC – Page 10

From the SFRA Executive Committee

From the Vice President

Sonja Fritzsche
Michigan State University

It is out! Check out the call for papers for the SFRA 2020 conference at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. The theme is Forms of Fabulation. Questions and abstract submissions should be sent by March 15, 2020 to SFRA2020IU@gmail.com. See the website for any questions concerning the conference, logistical or otherwise. You can also contact our intrepid conference hosts Rebekah Sheldon rsheldon@indiana.edu and De Witt Kilgore dkilgore@indiana.edu. Consider submitting a paper, or even better, organize a panel or a series of panels! Send in your abstracts!

Yes, IU will give society members a big Hoosier welcome from July 8-11, 2020 this summer! For those of you who have not spent time in this fair city, it is a beautiful drive between Indianapolis and B-town, only 1 hour south. It has developed a wonderful restaurant culture over the past twenty years. For you cycling buffs, the film Breaking Away was filmed here. The Memorial Union building is one of a kind in the center of a wooded campus and a winding river where many superior conversations on science fiction will be had! Make sure you take a walk and explore.

It is also exciting to say that SFRA has committed to a site for the 2021 conference at Seneca College in Toronto, Canada to be hosted by Graham Murphy. SFRA also has a location for the 2022 conference! This will be at the University of Oslo in Oslo, Norway generously to be hosted by Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay. Thanks to everyone who has committed to host in such exciting locations.

We have a growing list of country reps. For more information, select the “country reps” menu on the SFRA website. I’m going to organize a get-together for country reps who are able to attend the conference, so that we can touch base on strategies, initiatives, and other ways that the SFRA can support the reps and they can support each other and the science fiction network in their countries. If you are interested in being a representative, please contact me at sfritzsc9@msu.edu.

⮌ SFRA Review, vol. 50, no. 1

From the SFRA Executive Committee

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From the President

Gerry Canavan
Marquette University

It’s my pleasure to write my first SFRA President’s letter in the impossibly distant future of 2020, a number I don’t think I’ll ever get used to seeing as the actual year. I’ve been getting back up to speed on what’s been going on with the organization since my term as VP ended and I am looking forward to some truly great years for SFRA ahead, including our upcoming conferences in Bloomington, Toronto, and Oslo. Before anything else, a few thanks are in order: thanks to Keren Omry for serving as president for the last three years and serving as immediate past president for the next three, and thank you to Jenni Halpin for her absolutely indispensable service as SFRA secretary this last term. Thanks also to Pawel Frelik, whose improbably long term as immediate past president has now finally come to an end, to our great regret! While we’re at it, thanks to Sonja Fritzsche, Hugh Charles O’Connell, Katherine Bishop, and Sean Guynes, who I’m very excited to be working with on the executive committee the next few years.

I’d also like to thank Rebekah Sheldon, Graham Murphy, and Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay for all the work they have done, are doing, and will do over the next few years on behalf of the organization in hosting a conference. Having done it recently, I know it is no small thing! We are all very much in your debt.

Finally, I’d like to note the work done by Sean Guynes, Jeremy Brett, and Hal W. Hall to make the early years of the SFRA Review available digitally. With the help of the Cushing Library at Texas A&M, Hall’s personal collection of the first thirty issues of what was then called SFRA Newsletter is now available at the journal’s website. This is a terrific boon not only to our scholarship but to our organization’s understanding of its own history, so we are incredibly grateful for those who went above and beyond to make this happen.

It’s a very exciting time for SFRA, and I’m looking forward to working with you on our shared projects in the coming year. One thing we’ll be looking to do is continue to grow and internationalize the membership, as well as forge new connections and partnerships with adjacent disciplinary organizations. If you have ideas about ways we might accomplish that, or would be interested in serving as a local country rep, please, contact me! I’m also always open to any ideas that you may have about making SFRA a stronger and better scholarly organization; please, send me an email, anytime… Thanks all! See you in the next Review.