Workshop Program

“International & Minority Science Fiction in a Global World”

All workshop events are free and open to the public. For copies of recommended readings noted below, contact Terry Harpold at < tharpold@ufl.edu >.

8 AM, Smathers Library Room 100 – Coffee & bagels available to workshop attendees

8:30–8:45 AM, Smathers Library Room 100 – Welcome and introductory remarks by Terry Harpold (UF Department of English)

8:45-10:00 AM, Smathers Library Room 100 – “How to Teach with Science Fiction” (Moderator: Melissa Bianchi, PhD candidate, UF Department of English)

Jennifer Rea (Associate Professor, UF Department of Classics) and Konstantinos Kapparis (Associate Professor, UF Department of Classics, Director of the UF Center for Greek Studies). Professor Rea regularly teaches courses on the origins of science fiction and fantasy in classical antiquity to classes of over 80 students. Both Professors Rea and Kapparis encourage students to make connections between myth and classical concepts to the modern literary imagination and to wider ethical and literary questions. In Ad Astra Per Vetusta : Why the Origins of Science Fiction Matter in a Global World” they will discuss sf’s roots in ancient Greek and Roman literature, some definitions of science fiction, and how the modern scientific imagination is inspired by the texts of Vergil, Lucian, and Pliny.

    • Recommended readings: Vergil, Aeneid, Book XII • Excerpt from Lucian, True Stories.

Terry Harpold (Associate Professor, UF Department of English) Professor Harpold regularly teaches courses on Anglo-American and European proto-sf of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In “Air Serpents, Air Kraken, and the Blue Peril” he will discuss how introducing students to the founding literature of modern sf, before the genre was recognized as such and while its conventions were still in flux, can deepen students’ historical understanding of sf’s cultural and technological contexts. For example: American, British, and French aerial contact fiction – aviators meeting bizarre and menacing creatures living in the upper atmosphere – signaled now largely-forgotten anxieties associated with the new spatial order of the airship and was an important precursor to later extraterrestrial contact fiction.

    • Recommended readings: Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Horror of the Heights.” Illus. Henry Reuterdahl. Everybody’s Magazine 29.5 (November 1913): 578–90 • Maurice Renard, The Blue Peril (Le Péril bleu, 1911). Ed. and trans. Brian Stableford. Black Coat Press, 2010. 257–71.

10:00–10:30 AM, Smathers Library Room 100 – Coffee break

10:30 AM–12:00 PM, Smathers Library Room 100 – “Marginal Voices: Latin America and Spain and Science Fiction” (Moderator: Shaun Duke, PhD candidate, UF Department of English)

M. Elizabeth Ginway (Associate Professor, UF Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies). Professor Ginway has taught courses on science fiction and fantasy in the Spanish– and Portuguese-speaking world, mainly Latin America. In “Cyborgs and Zombies in Latin America” she will trace the history of Latin American cyborg and zombie texts, illustrating their transformation from physical beings into digital, viral, and ghostly swarms, paralleling the shift to ever more digital and ghostly forms of capital in the global economy.

    • Recommended reading: M. Elizabeth Ginway, “The Politics of Cyborgs in Mexico and Latin America.” Semina: Ciências Sociais e Humanas 34.2 (2013): 161–72.

Luis Álvarez-Castro (Associate Professor, UF Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies) Professor Álvarez-Castro is engaged in the recovery of nineteenth-century literature from Spain. Several of the texts he works with concern fantastic journeys or alternate histories from this period, parodying the imperialism of European powers in Africa and of Spain in the Americas. In “Imperial Fantasies in Nineteenth-Century Spanish Science Fiction” he will propose that Spanish sf of this period offers a unique perspective on the socio-political crisis leading to and following Spain’s demise as an imperial power.

    • Recommended reading: Geraldine Lawless, “Unknown Futures: Nineteenth-Century Science Fiction in Spain.” Science Fiction Studies 38 (2011): 253–69.

12:00–1:30 PM, Smathers Library Room 100 – Lunch Break – A catered buffet-style lunch from Reggae Shack Café will be served to all attendees. (Vegetarian and vegan options available.)

2–3:30 PM, Smathers Library Room 100 – “Women’s and Minority Voices in American SF” (Moderator: Andrea Krafft, PhD candidate, UF Department of English)

Tace Hedrick (Associate Professor, UF Department of English, UF Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research). Professor Hedrick teaches courses on contemporary Chicana/o and Latina/o literature, feminist and queer theory, and modern science fiction. She will discuss feminist representations of alienness and sexuality in United States Latina/Chicano writing.

    • Recommended reading: Tace Hedrick, “History is What Hurts: Queer Feelings, Alien Temporalities in the Work of Gloria Anzaldúa” (Unpublished MS).

Stephanie A. Smith (Professor, UF Department of English). Professor Smith teaches courses in 19th and 20th century American literature, and on women and popular culture. In “‘An Empire O’er the Disentangled Doom’: Re-staging the Prometheus Myth,” will discuss two recent retellings of the Prometheus myth, director Ridley Scott’s film Prometheus, and England’s National Theatre’s stage production of Frankenstein. She will argue that changes in perspective, tone, and narrative focus of each revision of the myth show that contemporary western cultures remain attached to misogynist fears of technology, reproductive sexuality, and the discomforting facts of human isolation and mortality.

    • Recommended readings: Stephanie A. Smith, “Morphing, Materialism and the Marketing of Xenogenesis.” Genders 18 (1993): 67–86 • Stephanie A. Smith, “Octavia Butler: A Retrospective.” Feminist Studies 33.2 (2007): 385–93.

3:30–4 PM, Smathers Library Room 100 – Coffee Break

4:00-5:30 PM, Smathers Library Room 100 – “Race, Region, and the Emergence of Postcolonial Science Fiction” (Moderator: Joseph Weakland, PhD candidate, UF Department of English)

Andrew Gordon (Emeritus Professor, UF Department of English).Professor Gordon has taught numerous courses on contemporary sf fiction and film. In “Becoming the Alien: Avatar (2009) and District 9 (2009),” he will discuss representations of race and colonial power in two recent commercially-successful films, one American, one South African: James Cameron’s Avatar (2009), and Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 (2009).

    • Recommended readings: Analee Newitz, “When Will People Stop Making Movies Like Avatar?” io9 December 18, 2009 • Max Novendstern, “When Will White People Stop Writing Articles Like This?” Harvard Political Review January 9, 2010.

Phillip E. Wegner (Professor, UF Department of English). Science fiction and film are important elements of Professor Wegner’s courses on the ways a wide range of narrative forms help us make sense of and act in our worlds. In “Farewell to Liviöjoki: From Magical Realism to Postcolonial Science Fiction in the Work of Mikael Niemi” he will build upon the recent work of UF graduate Eric Smith to show how contemporary science fiction has emerged as a preeminent practice for thinking our global situation.

    • Recommended readings: Eric D. Smith, “Introduction: The Desire Called Postcolonial Science Fiction.” In Globalization, Utopia, and Postcolonial Science Fiction: New Maps of Hope. Palgrave, 2012. 1–19 • Phillip E. Wegner, Preface to Shockwaves of Possibility: Essays on Science Fiction, Globalization, and Utopia. Peter Lang, 2014. xiii–xix.

7:30–9 PM, Ustler Hall Atrium – NOTE THE CHANGE OF LOCATION – Keynote Address by Anabel Enríquez Piñeiro, “The Image of Women and Female Identity in Cuban Science Fiction and Fantasy.” (Introductory remarks by M. Elizabeth Ginway. Keynote moderator: Patricia Infantino, PhD candidate, UF Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies)

    • Recommended readings: Emily Maguire, “Islands in the Slipstream: Diasporic Allegories in Cuban Science Fiction Since the Special Period.” In Latin American Science Fiction: Theory and Practice, eds. M. Elizabeth Ginway and J. Andrew Brown. Palgrave, 2012. 19–34 • Anabel Enríquez Piñeiro, “Borrowed Time.” Trans. Daniel W. Koon. In The Apex Book of World SF 2. Ed. Lavie Tidhar. Apex Publications, 2012. 130–35.

Co-sponsored by the UF Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere, the UF Departments of English and Spanish and Portuguese Studies, the UF Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research, and the George A. Smathers Libraries.