Spring Cleaning:
Rediscovering and Revitalizing the Artifact
University of Calgary Free Exchange Graduate Conference
16-18 March 2007
Calgary, Alberta
For more information, please visit Free Exchange at www.english.ucalgary.ca

Future as Artifact: Anthropology, Archeology & Mythology in Contemporary
Science Fiction

In the Spirit of Ursula K. Le Guin, who once wrote that "The future is not
mere space," this panel will investigate the recent anthropological and
archeological revolutions in science fiction. The panel will explore the
possibilities of science fiction that (re)locates the past "in front of
you, right under your nose" and (re)imagines a future "behind your back,
over your shoulder" (Le Guin 143). Pioneered by writers such as Le Guin
herself, Kurt Vonnegut, Anthony Burgess, Aldous Huxley, John Gardner,
Frank Herbert, Margaret Atwood, and George Saunders, this panel will focus
on the essential roles of the human, textual, and social artifacts in
science fiction, examining texts that revise educational, political,
environmental/ecological, religious, and sexual structures, that
deconstruct myth in order to construct a future, and that demonstrate how
the human past is, however (un)subconsciously, inextricably interwoven
into imaginative visions of not only how we will develop, implement, and
manipulate future technologies but also how we will evolve as a species
and as a culture.

Questions and topics could include, but are not limited to:

- man vs. environment: ecological artifact as context for science fiction
- culture as artifact
- (re)invention: the past as future text
- sources/ resources for the science fiction writer
- (re)visions of the mythological artifact in science fiction
- voice as artifact: the role of the Other – poet, feminist, clown – in
science fiction
- the technological artifact; or, locating the past in technology
- gender as artifact: how science fiction revises and revives traditional
roles
- evolution; or, the genetic marker: how is our biological past imprinted
on science fiction
   futures?

Deadline for submissions: 2 February 2007
Please submit 250 word proposals (for papers approx. 15 minutes in length)
to panel chair Emily Carr at ylimerrac_at_gmail.com. Attachments should be in
Rich Text or Word format only, and please include your name, professional
affiliation, and contact information in the body of your email.

Le Guin, Ursula K. Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words,
Women, Places. New York: Grove Press, 1997.

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Received on Sat Jan 06 2007 - 18:56:14 EST