Science Fiction, Radical Visioning, and Social Justice (Panel for ICFA 40)

deadline for submissions: 
October 19, 2018
full name / name of organization: 
Karina A. Vado
contact email: 

Panel for the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (ICFA) 40: Politics and Conflict

Orlando, Florida

March 13-16, 2019

Extended abstract submission deadline: Friday, October, 19th.

Inspired by the premise of SF authors and prison abolitionists Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown’s 2015 edited collection Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, that all social justice organizing is speculative fiction, this panel seeks papers engaging social justice visioning strategies (and liberatory potentials) of the literature of the fantastic. The panel will highlight how SF and related fantastic genres, through the language of critique and possibility (to borrow from black feminist scholar bell hooks), does more than mirror our dystopian present and futures. SF’s visionary disruptions of the status quo can, in fact, animate movements of social justice that actualize sustainable, emancipatory worlds in the here and now. Paper topics may include but are not limited to:

  • Afrofuturism and social justice
  • Animal studies
  • Bioethics, medical humanities, and public health activism
  • Building accessible futures
  • Chicanxfuturism/Latinxfuturism and social justice
  • Climate change and the post-Anthropocene
  • (Dis)ability studies
  • Ecocriticism and environmentalism
  • Feminist futures
  • Indigenous futurisms and social justice
  • Labor movements
  • Multi-ethnic futurities and multi-ethnic coalition building
  • Post-capitalist futures
  • Prison abolition
  • Queer futurities
  • Racism and racial justice
  • Trans futurities
  • Transhumanism

Please submit a 300-500-word abstract with 4-5 keywords for a 15-20-minute presentation, along with contact information, to kvado1224@ufl.edu by Friday, October 19th, 2018.  Authors of accepted presentations will be notified by October 24, 2018.