Call for Chapters:

“Fantasy geographies: Tourism, worldbuilding, heritage, meaning-making, ecologies and futures”
http://commlist.org/archive/all/2024-all/msg01792.html

Deadline for submission of abstracts: January 31, 2025

Edited by Jane Lovell, Evgenia Amey, Stijn Reijnders, Nitasha Sharma and Nicola MacLeod

We invite abstract chapter submissions of 1000 words for a new volume on geographies of fantasy, to be submitted by 31 January 2025. The volume welcomes interdisciplinary viewpoints and encourages submissions from authors based in different geographical regions.

PURPOSE OF THE BOOK

This book aims to bring a significant new addition to critical tourism studies, dealing with an economically, culturally and environmentally significant topic that is yet often under-researched. We are interested in how different aspects of fantasy worlds inform and inspire placemaking, inclusive experiences, and greening practices, as informed by research in the fields of geography, ecology, tourism, heritage, media, fan, religion, literature, and cultural studies. The book offers insights into meaning-making processes, human-place relationships and the greening of our imaginations. The popularity of the fantasy genre, its critical and transformative potential, and the setting’s narrative importance – geographically, historically and culturally – gives the focus of the book high contemporary relevance.

TOPICS

Relevant topics include, but are not limited to:

• The Otherworldly: place in the fantasy genre (secondary worlds, portals)
• Geo-fiction: localisations and mobilities
• Fantasy maps / actual-world mapping
• Production of fantasy /worldbuilding: localisations and mobilities
• (Re)imagining place and time through fantasy
• Fantasy spaces, rituals and practices
• Fantasy spaces and nostalgia

• Authenticating fantasy spaces
• Fantasy and forests/natural locations
• Fantasy, inclusion and accessibility
• Fantasy-themed environments
• Fantasy architectures
• Fantasy festivals and events
• Getting lost in fantasia
• VR/AR experiences of fantasy
• Fantasy and nation branding, mythologisation and heritage
• Evolving fantasy heritages
• Fantasy spaces and overtourism/mediatisation/globalisation

• Critical and transformative potential of fantasy and mobilities inspired by it
• Fantasy and (post) colonial imaginaries
• Environmental fantasy
• Fantasy mobilities and wellbeing
• Fantasy dystopias
• Spatial politics of fantasy
• Affective atmospheres
• Global variations of fantasy spaces and mobilities

CHAPTER ABSTRACT GUIDELINES

Each chapter will be approximately 7000 words in length and contain original research on the topic of fantasy tourism. Please submit your abstracts to (Jane.Lovell /at/ Canterbury.ac.uk) and (Evgenia.Amey /at/ gmail.com), copying both in.

Include:

• Name(s), affiliation(s), and email contact(s) of author(s), clearly indicating the corresponding author
• Proposed title
• A 500-word text including your topic, research question, method and original contribution
• 3 key references
• 5 keywords

TENTATIVE SCHEDULE

Call for Chapters – Issued 4 December 2024
Abstract deadline – 31 January 2025
Abstract deadline – 28 February 2025
Draft Chapters Received – 31 July 2025
Chapter Revision Guidelines – 31 September 2025
Tentative submission – February 2026