Update- Gated Communities of the Post-Apocalypse -- NeMLA Panel:
Speculative Fiction (SF) creators regularly imagine worlds in precipitous decline where the privileged few live in a safe, prosperous, hazard-free enclave from which surplus subaltern populations are excluded. What do these stories of safety for the few while the “surplus” rot outside or join a captive servant class status tell us about our own concepts of borders, citizenship, and expendability? Presenters are invited to engage with one or more texts using cultural studies, postcolonial theory, or other relevant analytic tool to analyze how gated communities function in the SF canon or the real world.