SESSION DESCRIPTION

Afrofuturism, Latinx altermundos, Indigenous futurisms, solarpunk, cli-fi — the speculative modes through which BIPOC writers have imagined, contested, and survived the present are not marginal subgenres. They are among the most politically urgent literary formations of the last half-century, and among the least fully mapped by existing scholarship. This special session invites papers that read across these formations to ask: what does speculative fiction do when it is written from the borderlands, from the barrio, from the reservation, from the maquiladora corridor, from communities that have been made to inhabit the dystopian present that other traditions only project?

A guiding distinction for the session is Curtis Marez’s differentiation between futurism – the projection of a specific future social order – and futurity: an open-ended hunger for a world beyond the limits of the present. Where futurism projects and forecloses, futurity holds open. This distinction names something crucial about the speculative imagination of writers who cannot afford the luxury of a clean break from the present: their futures are always entangled with colonial history, racial capitalism, and bodily vulnerability. This session asks how BIPOC speculative fictions navigate that entanglement, and what critical tools best illuminate the traditions they constitute.

The session also takes up the conference theme of “Our Ruling Classes” from the perspective of those most violently excluded from ruling-class power. In Octavia Butler’s speculative world-building, in the Indigenous futurisms of authors like Rebecca Roanhorse and Darcie Little Badger, in Chicanx and Latinx speculative writing, in the diasporic science fiction of Ted Chiang, Nalo Hopkinson, and Ken Liu, speculative genre conventions are systematically repurposed to theorize globalization from below, to map the spatial, bodily, and temporal experience of those whose labor makes futurism possible for others.

TOPICS OF INTEREST

Papers may address any speculative mode, genre, or medium. Topics of particular interest include, but are not limited to:

• Chicanx and Latinx speculative fiction, science fiction, and genre writing
• Afrofuturism and Black speculative traditions across the African diaspora
• Indigenous futurisms and Native speculative fiction in North America and beyond
• Asian American, South Asian, Southeast Asian, and East Asian diasporic science fiction
• Intersections of genre fiction and Chicana/o, feminist, and queer of color critique
• Intersections between environmental justice, slow violence, and speculative forms
• Multi-ethnic speculative traditions in dialogue: comparative and transnational approaches
• Speculative fiction in visual culture: comics, graphic novels, film, and performance art

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Please submit a paper proposal of 250–300 words via the PAMLA submission portal at pamla.ballastacademic.com. Select this session from the CFP list when submitting.

Strong proposals will: present a clear and arguable thesis; identify specific primary texts; situate the argument within relevant scholarly conversations (e.g., speculative fiction studies, ethnic American literary criticism, postcolonial theory, Chicanx studies, Afrofuturist criticism); and indicate a clear methodological approach. Papers at any stage of completion are welcome.

Paper proposal deadline: August 31, 2026

PRESIDING OFFICER

Lysa Rivera, Western Washington University