MLA Commons | GS Speculative Fiction | Activity https://mla.hcommons.org/groups/speculative-fiction/ Activity feed for the group, GS Speculative Fiction. Sat, 04 Apr 2026 10:25:33 -0400 https://buddypress.org/?v=10.6.0 en-US 30 hourly 2 91883107bb3d582cdb8572c4bc16a7f0 Hua Li started the topic CFP for the 2027 MLA Conference in the forum GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/groups/speculative-fiction/forum/topic/cfp-for-the-2027-mla-conference/ Thu, 15 Jan 2026 21:52:18 -0500 This is a CFP for a guaranteed panel sponsored by the forum of GS Speculative Fiction for the 2027 MLA conference.
Title: Ecocriticism and Speculative Fiction

Submit to Hua Li: huali@montana.edu
Description & Requirements: We invite papers engaging ecocritical approaches to Western and non-Western science fiction and fantasy exploring…[Read more]

]]> 0 b6010ba603cf4913c2e985663f1bcee6 Cristina Bacchilega replied to the topic GS Speculative Fiction--- New Committee Member Needed in the forum GS Speculative Fiction via email https://mla.hcommons.org/groups/speculative-fiction/forum/topic/gs-speculative-fiction-new-committee-member-needed/#post-1040713 Tue, 13 Jan 2026 19:52:21 -0500 Sorry. I am no longer an MLA member. I do not appreciate their lack of
support for Palestine.

Cristina Bacchilega
Professor Emerita of English
University of Hawai‘i-Mānoa

Cristina Bacchilega


Recent books
https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph?docid=b-9781350348295&st=
(open ac…[Read more]

]]> 0 72598d4118062ad915c9dcf0b367e509 Hua Li started the topic GS Speculative Fiction--- New Committee Member Needed in the forum GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/groups/speculative-fiction/forum/topic/gs-speculative-fiction-new-committee-member-needed/ Tue, 13 Jan 2026 19:47:28 -0500 The GS Speculative Fiction Forum needs one new committee member to serve a five-year term starting from 2027. This is an excellent opportunity for junior or senior faculty to serve at a national level. Please email me if you are interested or have any questions at huali@montana.edu by Feb. 27, 2026.

]]> 0 639a867bf8db30aa009a75233916b3e3 Rachel Haywood started the topic CfP for MLA 2026: Speculative Fiction forum (guaranteed session) in the forum GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/groups/speculative-fiction/forum/topic/cfp-for-mla-2026-speculative-fiction-forum-guaranteed-session-2/ Tue, 21 Jan 2025 21:19:48 -0500 MLA Call for Papers #29768

Session Title:  Genealogies and Futurities of AI in Speculative Fiction

Submit proposals to:  Rachel Haywood, Iowa State University (rhaywood@iastate.edu)

 

Description & Requirements:

Inviting proposals examining AI’s historical and futuristic representations in speculative fiction. How have speculative nar…[Read more]

]]> 0 01fa46361ee29cc820b32791fd95f438 andré carrington started the topic [CFP: Eaton Conference on Speculative Fiction, April 4-5 2025] in the forum GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/groups/speculative-fiction/forum/topic/cfp-eaton-conference-on-speculative-fiction-april-4-5-2025/ Fri, 01 Nov 2024 17:34:09 -0400 [CFP: Eaton Conference on Speculative Fiction, April 4-5 2025]

deadline for submissions: November 30, 2024
Speculative Fiction & Cultures of Science at UC Riverside
contact email: eatonconference@gmail.com
Conference Date: April 4-5, 2025

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AVXufNHQQFN00hrpVBOOsl2jMpv5-_ss/view

We warmly invite established and…[Read more]

]]> 0 044f20111b0751c85aed46f10b528901 Louise Bethlehem deposited The Anthropocene and the Environmental Humanities in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1887205/ Sun, 26 May 2024 04:10:32 -0400 Interim bibliography on the Anthropocene and the Environmental Humanities generated in conjunction with the Rift Futurism Project supported by a grant from the ISRAEL SCIENCE FOUNDATION (grant No. 3011006089), May 2024

]]> 0 bbb36dfa631ec1f34935ae82dc60ee48 Louise Bethlehem deposited Speculative Fiction from the Global South--Anthropocene Intersections, Interim Bibliography in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1887200/ Sun, 26 May 2024 04:02:08 -0400 Interim bibliography on science fiction and speculative fiction with an emphasis on the global South and on Anthropocene-related perspectives generated in conjunction with the Rift Futurism Project supported by a grant from the ISRAEL SCIENCE FOUNDATION (grant No. 3011006089)
Louise Bethlehem, PI, English and Cultural Studies, The Hebrew…[Read more]

]]> 0 bfbcfe0405bdb0fb578f124df5c3caf7 Louise Bethlehem deposited Lauren Beukes and African Futurism Interim Bibliography in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1887044/ Fri, 24 May 2024 04:05:00 -0400 Research at the intersection between the African Futurism and the work of post-apartheid writer, Lauren Beukes.

]]> 0 6a6a0bf97842de957d94923de1abecea Louise Bethlehem deposited African Futurism Interim Bibliography in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1887042/ Fri, 24 May 2024 04:02:13 -0400 A compilation of articles on African Futurism generated in conjunction with the Rift Futurism research project supported by THE ISRAEL SCIENCE FOUNDATION (grant No. 3011006089), updated May 2024.

]]> 0 dd49efb595d90502b082567e4ca80f36 Robert Nguyen started the topic Silicon Valley Beyond the Valley (CFP due 3/15, MLA2025 Sp. Session Proposal) in the discussion GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/groups/speculative-fiction/forum/topic/silicon-valley-beyond-the-valley-cfp-due-3-15-mla2025-sp-session-proposal/ Wed, 06 Mar 2024 16:26:56 -0500 Dear colleagues,

This post is a solicitation for papers for a special session proposal for MLA 2025 in New Orleans. The call is pasted further below and can also be found on the MLA website; as those calls are quite brief, I’ve included further below additional details.

I’m happy to respond to questions here, and I can also be reached at…[Read more]

]]> 0 530d1090145ed949612e0e9ce1d801b1 Darren J. Borg started the topic CFP: Collection on Intersectionality and Speculative Fiction in the discussion GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/groups/speculative-fiction/forum/topic/cfp-collection-on-intersectionality-and-speculative-fiction/ Mon, 29 Jan 2024 21:18:49 -0500 Please consider submitting to the attached CFP for a collection we are putting together as a follow up to our panel at the MLA, “What is a Life Worth Living?”: Speculative Fiction and Eternal Life.

]]> 0 3a53fd4deb2ba6a532d10503fbe7e1e1 Patrick McEvoy-Halston deposited Wolfenheimer in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1854168/ Tue, 08 Aug 2023 01:24:23 -0400 Makes use of the opportunity of the release of “Oppenheimer” to explore how Gene Wolfe uses his texts as factories into which guilt is inserted, but emerge ameliorated. Narrative serving the primary purpose of restructuring subconscious memory.

]]> 0 78b8869494a4d212cb62583f029216ad Carl Gelderloos posted an update in the group GS Speculative Fiction: Very excited that my essay on Paul Scheerbart's Lesabéndio […] https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1843357/ Wed, 03 May 2023 00:30:13 -0400 Very excited that my essay on Paul Scheerbart’s Lesabéndio is now live on Modernism/modernity Print Plus! https://modernismmodernity.org/articles/gelderloos-nowhere-obstacle

]]> 0 b8a36048220ccbe2ab5ea51a499b5af8 Seo-Young Chu deposited Utopias Misplaced:  The Cost of Outsourcing Dystopian Poetics to North Korea in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1785501/ Mon, 04 Jul 2022 02:24:09 -0400 This is a slightly revised version of the text of a talk that I (Seo-Young Chu) gave as part of the Fall 2014 Franke Lectures in the Humanities at Yale University. I’m sharing the text here to make the lecture more accessible. Topics include: North Korea/the DPRK, the “uncanny body politic,” the uncanny valley, “dystopian poetics,” what it means…[Read more]

]]> 0 5efb264e20e2e7420f24be673230163f Louise Bethlehem deposited Hydrocolonial Johannesburg in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1783367/ Tue, 07 Jun 2022 03:49:31 -0400 Johannesburg is a landlocked city, famously the largest human concentration in the southern hemisphere not located on a river. What opportunities does it afford for hydrocolonial analysis, given Isabel Hofmeyr’s anchoring of that term in oceanic studies? How might a hydrocolonial orientation defamiliarize the relations between surface and depths…[Read more]

]]> 0 b023272b1a75cdfd0ccd1c144a15fa63 Seo-Young Chu deposited "I, Stereotype: Detained in the Uncanny Valley" in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1782736/ Fri, 27 May 2022 02:26:35 -0400 In “I, Stereotype,” Seo-Young Chu applies Mori’s theory of the uncanny valley not to robots but to a different species of humanoid artifact: stereotypes of the “yellow peril.” Through analyses of stories by Sax Rohmer, World War Two propaganda, and films from the Bond franchise, Chu investigates ways in which the logic of the uncanny valley has…[Read more]

]]> 0 d44318cb1cbbb4d5252f7b8906469b90 Patrick McEvoy-Halston deposited Interlibrary Loan: Wolfe borrowing some of his fans for permanent loan in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1777439/ Wed, 06 Apr 2022 03:48:43 -0400 In Craig Brewer’s analysis of Gene Wolfe’s Interlibrary Loan he argues that the treasure, the green box, is something that allows characters means to keep their memories intact; it affords them integration which is otherwise ostensibly unavailable to them for being reclones who have only partial memories.

]]> 0 a760c088f5c3bdab89347497fb102c1c Patrick McEvoy-Halston deposited Rollback: Leaving Women to Demons in Gene Wolfe's Fiction in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1755573/ Sat, 16 Oct 2021 03:48:43 -0400 Gene Wolfe, living though Severian, re-experiences via Thecla’s characterization of him as not being worth enough to value highly for being what he thought he could only amount to her when he first met her, that is, simply a boy at hand, his own once being lured into the attentions’ of his mother and then dismissed by her when she was done usi…[Read more]

]]> 0 b88ade09d86ae7e7feff4166901fe9e8 Patrick McEvoy-Halston deposited Expanding the non-Took-side in Bilbo, for victory, in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1750092/ Thu, 26 Aug 2021 03:56:13 -0400 I think the thing that must seem most curious about this adventure to slay a dragon and reclaim a homeland and its treasure, is how the hell could adding a burglar be adding the decisive factor? What’s the trick? For there must be one, since the dragon has only gotten larger and more deadly as the years have gone by. Peter Jackson changes…[Read more]

]]> 0 eca3417cf3d53eb2e58fb7824db8ab19 Mark Sample deposited ENG 296 - Science Fiction (Spring 2021) in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1725437/ Fri, 29 Jan 2021 02:24:53 -0500 The syllabus for science fiction course offered Spring 2021 in the English Department at Davidson College.

]]> 0 890489563d7966cbe3bb9c286abfa6d9 Adrian Versteegh replied to the topic Delegate Assembly Nominees Sought! in the discussion GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/groups/speculative-fiction/forum/topic/delegate-assembly-nominees-sought-2/#post-1024115 Tue, 09 Jun 2020 13:53:05 -0400 Hi Jeffrey—I’d be happy to volunteer. I’m a member and I attend every year. Just let me know what you need.

]]> 0 4adfccf21c77b182cf7b0f1c1c7b89b0 Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock started the topic Delegate Assembly Nominees Sought! in the discussion GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/groups/speculative-fiction/forum/topic/delegate-assembly-nominees-sought-2/ Tue, 09 Jun 2020 13:35:49 -0400 Hi Folks–want to get more involved in the MLA Gothic Studies forum? We need to submit to MLA a short list of nominees (2 or 3 people) to attend the delegate assembly meeting at the annual convention. So the person needs to be a member of MLA (or willing to become one!) who plans to attend the convention at least twice in the next 3 years. Please…[Read more]

]]> 0 41d84721605a70330394aa2adb1ad6a4 Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock started the topic MLA Gothic Studies Facebook Group in the discussion GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/groups/speculative-fiction/forum/topic/mla-gothic-studies-facebook-group-2/ Fri, 17 Apr 2020 13:34:02 -0400 For anyone interested, there is now an MLA Gothic Studies Facebook Group (easier to use / access than the MLA forum site I think).  You can sign on at http://www.facebook.com/groups/MLAGothicStudies

]]> 0 8567ae6728e3f1d1a28c295e628a4ca3 Anita Harris Satkunananthan deposited Monsters at the End of Time: Alternate Hierarchies and Ecological Disasters in Alaya Dawn Johnson’s Spirit Binders Novels in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1678216/ Wed, 12 Feb 2020 03:48:48 -0500 This paper interrogates the connection between entities that hover in the liminal state between life and death (such as vampires and spirits) and the manner in which these entities relate to Alaya Dawn Johnson’s conjurings of alternate political structures and hierarchies in her Spirit Binders series. Johnson’s alternate hierarchies are com…[Read more]

]]> 0 6614b261b7f861483d518e0a881aa910 Ted Underwood deposited Machine Learning and Human Perspective in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1678175/ Tue, 11 Feb 2020 16:27:27 -0500 Numbers appear to have limited value for literary study, since our discipline is usually more concerned to explore differences of interpretation than to describe the objective features of literary works. But it may be time to re-examine the assumption that numbers are only useful for objective description. Machine learning algorithms are actually…[Read more]

]]> 0 839e65925e4a6eb90c040206d8afd0b9 James Gifford deposited Hobgoblins of Fantasy: American Fantasy Fiction in Theory in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1672842/ Tue, 17 Dec 2019 16:31:33 -0500 “A frightful hobgoblin stalks through Europe. We are haunted by a ghost, the ghost of Communism.” This epigraph comes from the 1850 translation of The Communist Manifesto by Helen Macfarlane, and this special feature in The New Americanist assumes that a similarly frightful hobgoblin stalks through genre fiction, too. Fantasy as a genre is haunted…[Read more]

]]> 0 932d67a077a87ebe80ff700ed3694f7a Laurie Ringer deposited Day 1: Draft Prep Sheet on the 8 Parts of Speech through the Story of Hidden Figures in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1659977/ Fri, 09 Aug 2019 16:25:34 -0400 Because it is all too easy to (accidentally) make assumptions about what first-year students know about language, in 2019-2020 my lit and comp type courses will begin with a segment on language, before moving on to sentences, paragraphs, and essays.

Our exploration of language will start by jumping into a story, to help us identify the 8 parts…[Read more]

]]> 0 dace013054b7f6fad31504cb05be5e85 James Gifford deposited Philosophy of Middle-earth (Syllabus) in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1657846/ Wed, 17 Jul 2019 16:42:38 -0400 The recent popularity of the film version of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings has renewed interest in this widely read work set in the realm of Middle-earth. A careful study of Tolkien’s work can be used to raise several philosophical questions, particularly in the area of ethics. This course will examine such questions, also considering topics fro…[Read more]

]]> 0 41e03360649daa325d98b17f04ccbc5e Caroline Edwards deposited MLA 2020 Roundtable Proposal (accepted) - Reading Utopia in Dark Times in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1640882/ Sat, 25 May 2019 03:54:23 -0400 Within the context of an increasingly dystopian sense of global crisis, how can the idea of Utopia help us galvanise political literary readings? This special session will present a roundtable discussion in which panelists consider how we can use utopian methods to understand different kinds of literary texts, reflecting upon the importance of the…[Read more]

]]> 0 77b571b38c2da021a8076833be784c7c Marisa Parham deposited Saying “Yes”: Textual Traumas in Octavia Butler’s Kindred in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1640725/ Wed, 22 May 2019 16:25:21 -0400 The problem of the “yes,” of affirming an historical identity that is potentially harmful to oneself, troubles some of the imaginative leaps necessary to how readers desire to identify with texts. With that in mind, this article reads Octavia Butler’s 1979 novel Kindred as a story about memory, history, and embodiment as written both on and thr…[Read more]

]]> 0 08595de66b8a47b013f84b349adc8b65 Lauren Rule Maxwell deposited Graphic Atwood in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1636851/ Sun, 31 Mar 2019 16:27:36 -0400 Abstracts for the panel “Graphic Atwood” proposed by the Margaret Atwood Society for the 2020 MLA Convention.

]]> 0 d77abe68310c0e340bf533d2df209045 Patrick McEvoy-Halston deposited Essays on the Lord of the Rings in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1636200/ Mon, 25 Mar 2019 03:54:31 -0400 Full collection of four essays on J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings,” comprising “Lord of the Rings: the anti-adventure,” “Reader’s Guide to the Fellowship of the Ring,” “Reader’s Guide to the Two Towers,” and “The (True) Lord of the Ring.” Emphasis throughout is to suggest that it is not just wise but essential to encounter very, very…[Read more]

]]> 0 5e88450acbae6c387d84a4f515348b76 Patrick McEvoy-Halston deposited The (True) Lord of the Rings in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1635891/ Thu, 21 Mar 2019 04:11:35 -0400 The critic, as guide, is here in the penultimate of a four-part series on “Lord of the Rings,” suggested to be, if not Sarumon himself (Sarumon’s voice is used), certainly someone who could readily imagine him as someone who could have been presented in the text as a flat-out ally, if he himself wasn’t relegated to being the reader’s guardian and…[Read more]

]]> 0 88a7b49a949f3042c2730ddd02e9bb7f Patrick McEvoy-Halston deposited The Lord of the Rings: the anti-adventure in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1635751/ Wed, 20 Mar 2019 04:09:26 -0400 Argues that J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” is an adventure in reverse, an “argument” for “your” regression. Rather than play with your ability to maybe succeed in threatening environments, it confirms your worst suspicions about yourself, lending you in mood to cling to others in a master-slave relationship, so long as they’ll agree to…[Read more]

]]> 0 338076b51fa1b30884f5091f4ca4ec02 Patrick McEvoy-Halston deposited Reader's Guide to Fellowship of the Ring in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1635746/ Wed, 20 Mar 2019 03:55:46 -0400 Delineates how much of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Fellowship of the Ring” is about preparing Frodo especially so that if caught out alone, he’d never dare venture a decent listen to anyone who might attempt to sway him to consider the due fate for the Ring, other than according to Gandalf’s specifications. Positions the text as one that bates the reader…[Read more]

]]> 0 12e086a3995f23d5f0e1b8808ceb8732 Patrick McEvoy-Halston deposited Not Meat in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1633308/ Tue, 26 Feb 2019 03:58:11 -0500 Explores a passage of Angela Carter’s “The Company of Wolves.” Delineates how Carter makes play with such things as the dialogue between the subconsciously experienced meanings of actual words ostensibly serving as only overt alphabetic components within words, to dramatize the fitfulness of the protagonist’s emergence at the finish of the story…[Read more]

]]> 0 36184518cc74cb078f65c51310f4fa0d Patrick McEvoy-Halston deposited Not Meat in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1633307/ Tue, 26 Feb 2019 03:57:06 -0500 Explores a passage of Angela Carter’s “The Company of Wolves.” Delineates how Carter makes play with such things as the dialogue between the subconsciously experienced meanings of actual words ostensibly serving as only overt alphabetic components within words, to dramatize the fitfulness of the protagonist’s emergence at the finish of the story…[Read more]

]]> 0 4f5d6c52227e919faf5cc202964401de Carl Gelderloos deposited Alien Evolution and Dialectical Materialism in Eastern European Science Fiction in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1620613/ Wed, 10 Oct 2018 16:36:51 -0400 This essay reads Ivan Efremov’s “Andromeda Nebula” (1957), Stanisław Lem’s “Solaris” (1961), and Angela and Karlheinz Steinmüller’s “Andymon” (1982) in order to explore the relationship between biological evolution and dialectical materialism, as it was negotiated through the trope of the alien in the context of the cultural politics of Eastern E…[Read more]

]]> 0 42e023e372784b64d3dfd2afdb80115f Ida Yoshinaga started the topic CFP International Fantastic Division for ICFA #40 (proposals due 10/31) in the discussion Science Fiction and Utopian and Fantastic Literature https://mla.hcommons.org/groups/speculative-fiction/forum/topic/cfp-international-fantastic-division-for-icfa-40-proposals-due-10-31/ Fri, 28 Sep 2018 22:53:54 -0400  

International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts #40

March 2019

Orlando, Florida

CFP Deadline 10/31/18

 

Please join us on <u>March 13-16, 2019</u>, for the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (ICFA) #40 in its theme of “Politics and Conflicts.”  We welcome ideas for papers and panels on science fiction, fant…[Read more]

]]> 0 e582bf9b6b72522c9f891d630de58873 Laurie Ringer deposited Entangled States: Putting Affect Theory into Play with Nnedi Okorafor and Ann Leckie in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1604811/ Fri, 30 Mar 2018 04:12:25 -0400 Whatever your theory and whatever your fandom, you don’t have to abandon it to do affect theory. This is because affect theory isn’t about telling you which side to pick in an agonistic contest; it’s about finding out what a body can do as it moves with other bodies in entangled states, whether or not we notice them. Affect theory offers more…[Read more]

]]> 0 c1b0f801c7e48d3e6dfd79731d66c770 Silvia G. Kurlat-Ares deposited Políticas de lo estético en la ilustración de ciencia ficción. El caso de “Think Blue, Count Two” de Cordwainer Smith in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1592096/ Sun, 10 Dec 2017 05:46:46 -0500 Desde el período del Dadá se han ido borrando los límites entre las formas artísticas y sus soportes, entre las estéticas de uso y las estéticas formales, entre los espacios altos y bajos de producción cultural, y también, entre la percepción de centros y periferias que parecen haberse astillado y reproducido a la interioridad de espacios hasta ha…[Read more]

]]> 0 7e480f2d60d6c6f63de9126b37045d5c Caitlin Duffy started the topic CFP: Literature as Activism, Stony Brook University English Graduate Conference in the discussion Science Fiction and Utopian and Fantastic Literature https://mla.hcommons.org/groups/speculative-fiction/forum/topic/cfp-literature-as-activism-stony-brook-university-english-graduate-conference-8/ Thu, 12 Oct 2017 16:15:17 -0400 Stony Brook University
30th Annual English Graduate Conference
February 23rd, 2018
Literature as Activism
Keynote Speaker
Dr. Lisa Duggan, NYU
Literature is a social act. Our encounters with literature, history, philosophy, and even science are informed by the world in which these encounters take place. No matter what text we choose, we are…[Read more]

]]> 0 97dae88075067b88b3f5a8e0ac6bf741 Caitlin Duffy started the topic CFP: Literature as Activism, Stony Brook University English Graduate Conference in the discussion Science Fiction and Utopian and Fantastic Literature https://mla.hcommons.org/groups/speculative-fiction/forum/topic/cfp-literature-as-activism-stony-brook-university-english-graduate-conference-8/ Thu, 12 Oct 2017 16:15:17 -0400 Stony Brook University
30th Annual English Graduate Conference
February 23rd, 2018
Literature as Activism
Keynote Speaker
Dr. Lisa Duggan, NYU
Literature is a social act. Our encounters with literature, history, philosophy, and even science are informed by the world in which these encounters take place. No matter what text we choose, we are…[Read more]

]]> 0 282aa454ebc0033d9df4032527072b2f Jay Clayton deposited The Ridicule of Time: Science Fiction, Bioethics, and the Posthuman in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1576811/ Thu, 27 Jul 2017 20:09:58 -0400 The article traces two phases of SF about human species change, the first in the 1940s and early 1950s, the so called “golden age” of SF. In this first phase the advent of the posthuman is brought on by eugenics or sudden mutations caused by fallout from nuclear war. It consists of well-known books by most of the leading authors of the period: C…[Read more]

]]> 0 081b41a360a89308fde07f8d9efe47de Carl Gelderloos deposited Book review: Robert Leucht. Dynamiken politischer Imagination. Die deutschsprachige Utopie von Stifter bis Döblin in ihren internationalen Kontexten, 1848–1930 Ulrich E. Bach. Tropics of Vienna: Colonial Utopias of the Habsburg Empire in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1576725/ Wed, 26 Jul 2017 20:16:41 -0400 A review of Robert Leucht’s “Dynamiken politischer Imagination. Die deutschsprachige Utopie von Stifter bis Döblin in ihren internationalen Kontexten, 1848–1930” (2016) and Ulrich Bach’s “Tropics of Vienna: Colonial Utopias of the Habsburg Empire” (2016)

]]> 0 8c05c7e1bcbaebdeb4591d868adf51ff selisker deposited “Stutter-Stop Flash-Bulb Strange”: GMOs and the Aesthetics of Scale in Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1570678/ Wed, 17 May 2017 01:00:08 -0400 This article raises questions about the aesthetics of scale as they appear relative to genetically modified organisms in science fiction and especially in Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl (2009). Bacigalupi makes the unusual choice of representing GMOs largely through science fictional tropes of automatism rather than the grotesque. Because of t…[Read more]

]]> 0 be59fb40a90b46a25ce4d9a352b90d75 selisker deposited The Cult and the World System: The Topoi of David Mitchell's Global Novels in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1570592/ Tue, 16 May 2017 01:19:32 -0400 This article describes how the novelist David Mitchell employs the “topos of the cult,” a set of conventions that describe a mental state of unfreedom, in the novels Ghostwritten (1999) and Cloud Atlas (2004). This figuration of an unfree form of society—characterized by a group’s specialized language, closed social spaces, and charismatic leade…[Read more]

]]> 0 5830279f0b4156734d23791d222e1bf3 Lee Skallerup Bessette deposited Re-Evaluating Suvin: Brown Girl in the Ring as Effective Magical Dystopia in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1565291/ Sat, 25 Mar 2017 01:04:03 -0400 This paper will begin by looking at the historical theoretical relationship between science fiction and dystopia. It will then proceed to demonstrate how recent theorists have failed to adequately incorporate the practical changes authors have introduced to the genre, which includes the incorporation of aspects of magical realism. Brown Girl in…[Read more]

]]> 0 5930e0c1d83e13879e68ef463101dcd8 James Gifford deposited NOTES 1984 in the group GS Speculative Fiction https://mla.hcommons.org/activity/p/1563209/ Fri, 24 Feb 2017 20:12:48 -0500 Lecture/class notes on George Orwell’s Nineteen Eigthy-Four. I’m sharing my teaching notes (rough) for works that may be helpful to others and are widely taught.

]]> 0 d556483d92b436fc068eefff96cd5308 Gloria Lee McMillan started the topic Story in NW Times of Children of Steel unity in diversity lit. project in the discussion Science Fiction and Utopian and Fantastic Literature https://mla.hcommons.org/groups/speculative-fiction/forum/topic/story-in-nw-times-of-children-of-steel-unity-in-diversity-lit-project-5/ Thu, 12 Jan 2017 14:40:53 -0500 Hello, and happy new year all!

Our writers have diverse roots. For instance, one such industrial community,  East Chicago, Indiana (host to Arcelor-Mittal’s current flagship and largest US full process steel mill) was listed on censuses in the 1940s and 1960s as having 82 nationalities.  As times have changed people have moved to suburbs s…[Read more]

]]> 0