Wednesday, January 6, 2016

Paper/Panelists for Wiscon & Worldcon?

SF/F scholars and thinkers-abouters of all types, I am once again looking to see if anyone is interested in writing something for an academic panel. Two panels, actually!

Wiscon is May 27-30 in Madison, WI. I'm working on a presentation on Cherryh & alterity ethics; my paper would pair well with work on:
  • SF writers who deal with interspecies contact & communication, like Cherryh.
  • Philosophy/psychology/sociology of "the other"--I'm touching mainly on Levinas, but there are many others that would resonate. 
  • Discussions of reality, virtual reality, or hyper-reality in SF/F
  • The use of art, artistic creation, and aesthetics within SF/F works
  • Wiscon welcomes discussions of gender, sexuality, race, class, and disability, as well as any work on this year's Guests of Honor: Sofia Samatar, Nalo Hopkinson, and Justine Larbelestier.
Worldcon is August 17-21 in Kansas City, MO. I'm working on a presentation on Swanwick, narrative, and genre; it would pair well with work on:
  • Michael Swanwick (a guest of honor this year).
  • Meta-fiction, framing, and other narrative techniques.
  • Genre construction and deconstruction, particularly "mixed genre" (like the New Weird etc.) or "anti-fantasy".
  • Detective, private eye, or procedural stories or tropes
  • "Real Magic" (illusion etc., or confidence games, as opposed to the supernatural) in Science Fiction & Fantasy
  • I'm not making more than an offhand reference to his work, but I feel like any discussion of David Mitchell would pair well with this.
My abstracts are essentially done and ready to go, so I'm just making a quick pass around to see if anyone is interested in forming a panel with me. I find paper panels with some kind of pre-planned themes or connections preferable to the occasional "really disparate grab-bag" panels that sometimes wind up happening.

If you have any interest whatsoever in putting together a 15ish minute paper on these topics, contact me. You can also get ahold of me on Facebook & Twitter. If you're already planning on doing a paper for either of these conferences and trying to form a panel yourself, I'd be happy to signal-boost.

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