SATURDAY<\/b><\/p>\n
Abstracts by Panel, Saturday morning<\/a><\/p>\n Abstracts by panel, Saturday afternoon<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Embassy Suites Guest Breakfast<\/b> 7:30-8:15<\/b><\/p>\n Session IX 8:15-9:45<\/b><\/p>\n Robust democracy remains a utopian vision in formally democratic societies, partly because the voices of the youngest third of their people are officially excluded. As adult officials fail to address the most pressing issues of our times\u2014including climate change, gun control, Black Lives Matter, the rights of LBGTQIA+ persons, and the defense of democracy itself\u2014activist children, tweens, teens, and young adults are taking matters into their own hands while gaining adult allies. Adultist disenfranchisement is arbitrary, capricious, and unjust, its rationale mirroring historical reasons for preventing poor people, people of color, and women from voting: alleged political immaturity, irresponsibility, and incapacity. In the meantime, young activists have found creative ways to make their voices heard, as in the cases of Nobel nominee Craig Kielburger (Founder of <\/span>Free the Children<\/span><\/i>), Nobel winner Malala Yousafzai (on girls’ rights), Nobel nominee Greta Thunberg (on climate change), and Parkland survivor Emma Gonzalez (on gun control). The 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, signed on to by all the functioning governments in the world, has spawned a generation of child and youth activism, significant policy changes, and an explosion of scholarship on children’s rights, voice, engagement, and empowerment. This roundtable will address the intersectionality of marginalization by age, race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability; youth-elder mentoring and alliances; multiple paths to youth empowerment including media and the arts; and adult \u201capathy\u201d as a lifelong toxic effect of the official silencing of our voices during the most formative years of our lives.<\/span><\/p>\n Chair:\u00a0 Lyman Tower Sargent, University of Missouri, St. Louis<\/span><\/p>\n Participants:\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Michael Cummings, University of Colorado Denver<\/span><\/p>\n Philip Wegner, University of Florida<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Hoda Zaki, Hood College<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Chair:\u00a0 <\/span>Diana Palardy, Youngstown State University\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n David Schappert, King’s College (PA), \u201cEast of Utopia\u2014Philip K Dick\u2019s Utopian-Adjacent Spaces\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Diana Palardy, Youngstown State University, \u201cIsolating the Prophet: The Cassandra Curse in Spanish Environmental Apocalyptic Literature\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Session X 10:00-11:30<\/b><\/p>\n Chair: Eric D. Smith, University of Alabama in Huntsville<\/span><\/p>\n Edward K. Chan, Waseda University<\/span>, <\/span>and Patricia Ventura, Spelman College<\/span>, \u201c<\/span>Black Lives Matter Utopian Literature\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n John Mark Robison, University of Florida, \u201cMoney, Utopia, and the Politics of Disgust in Toni Morrison’s <\/span>Tar Baby<\/span><\/i>\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Chair: Richard Bodek, College of Charleston<\/span><\/p>\n Richard Bodek, College of Charleston, \u201cJames Bond & the Post-War Tory Anti-Utopia\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Amanda Rose, University of Florida, \u201cRelational Space as a Means to Collectivity: The Critical Dystopia of J.G. Ballard\u2019s <\/span>The Day of Creation<\/span><\/i>\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Chair: Claire Curtis, College of Charleston<\/span><\/p>\n Peter Sands, UW-Milwaukee, \u201cSlowtopia\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Briana McGinnis, College of Charleston, \u201cTeaching Radical Possibility in Hopeless Times\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Boxed lunch available for pick up at 11:30<\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n 12:30-1:30 Business Meeting (Colonial East\/ West)<\/b><\/p>\n Session XI 1:45-3:15<\/b><\/p>\n Chair: Aaron Hammes<\/span>, <\/span>John Jay College<\/span><\/p>\n Aaron Hammes<\/span>, <\/span>John Jay College<\/span>, \u201c<\/span>A Pyramid of Queer and Trans Counter Utopias\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Josephine Holland, University of Richmond, \u201cEmerging Online Community Building, World-Making, and the Utopian Impulse in Queer Speculative Podcasts\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Solarpunk Futures: A Workshop for Utopian Remembrance <\/i><\/b>utilizes the artist’s table-top game, <\/span>Solarpunk Futures<\/span><\/i>, to engage attendees of the 2022 Society for Utopian Conference in a process of visionary social storytelling around the collective struggle required to win our utopia. The game employs backcasting in a \u201cFestival of Remembrance,\u201d whereby <\/span>Assemblies for the Future <\/span><\/i>(groups of 1-8 players) play for 45 minutes from the perspective of a future utopia in which they collectively \u201cremember\u201d how their <\/span>Ancestors <\/span><\/i>utilized <\/span>Tools<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Values<\/span><\/i> to overcome a real-world <\/span>Challenge<\/span><\/i>. <\/span>Assemblies<\/span><\/i> will report back on the form of their utopian scenarios, insights gained along the way, and how their experiences might inform their present-day actions.<\/span><\/p>\n This panel discussion will consider the insights and impact of Peter Fitting\u2019s utopian scholarship, to mark last year\u2019s publication of <\/span>Utopian Effects, Dystopian Pleasures<\/span><\/i>, vol. 21 in the Ralahine Utopian Studies Series. In this collection of essays written over a span of three decades (1979-2009), Fitting touches on an impressive range of utopian topics: from gender politics, urban planning, cinema, and technology to right-wing utopias, ideological closure, and the crucial question of how to transform utopian visions into social practice. Together, these writings provide an unprecedented glimpse into the changing currents of utopian thought and expression, as well as the formation of both Utopian and Science Fiction Studies as scholarly fields in their own right, developments in which Fitting has been instrumental.<\/span><\/p>\n Chair: Jennifer Wagner-Lawlor<\/span><\/p>\n Participants:<\/span><\/p>\n Peter Fitting, University of Toronto<\/span><\/p>\n Lyman Tower Sargent, University of Missouri-St. Louis<\/span><\/p>\n Jennifer Wagner-Lawlor, Penn State University<\/span><\/p>\n Peter Marks, University of Sydney<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Session XII 3:30-4:45<\/span><\/p>\n Chair, Victoria Wolcott, University of Buffalo<\/span><\/p>\n Darrell Varga, NSCAD University (Nova Scotia College of Art and Design), \u201cMaking Bread and Telling Stories: <\/span>Bread in the Bones<\/span><\/i>\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Victoria Wolcott<\/span>,\u00a0 University of Buffalo, \u201c<\/span>Abundance in a Time of Scarcity: Father Divine\u2019s Peace Mission and Utopian Solutions to Economic Crises\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Chair:\u00a0 <\/span>Diana Palardy, Youngstown State University\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Daniel Sarkela, University of Florida, \u201cLa vida volver\u00e1- reconstructing Chilean Utopia\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Eunice Rojas<\/span>, Furman University, \u201c<\/span>Until Dignity Becomes Tradition: The Dawn of a New Utopia in the Songs of Chile\u2019s 2019 Social Upheaval\u201d<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Session XIII 5:00-6:30<\/b><\/p>\n Chair: Ryan Kerr, University of Florida<\/span><\/p>\n Eric Smith, The University of Alabama in Huntsville, \u201cFuture Perfect and the Vanishing Present: \u2018The Great Circularity\u2019 and Anti-Utopianism in Mukherjee\u2019s <\/span>The Lives of Others<\/span><\/i>\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Phillip Wegner, University of Florida, \u201cA Future Worthy of Her Spirit: Neoliberal Dystopia in Kazuo Ishiguro\u2019s <\/span>Klara and the Sun<\/span><\/i>\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n T<\/span>he First Book Celebration Roundtable brings together first-time authors of books in the field of utopian studies. It serves as a means of celebration of a milestone, as well as facilitates a conversation among roundtable members and their audience on current subjects in book-length inquiries in the field. In this, the first annual First Book Celebration Roundtable, the discipline overwhelmingly represented is literary studies. All three roundtable members are literary studies scholars who investigate the utopian (or dystopian) impulse in narrative in a variety of ways and during a variety of historical periods. For instance, Daniel Dimassa traces the influence of Dante on Germanic romantic writing, both of which \u2013 Dante and the German romantics \u2013 drew upon utopian ideals to create a mythology of German cultural identity. Similarly, Stephanie Peebles Tavera excavates how, later in the century and across the pond, the utopian impulse would also inform women writers of medical fiction in their attempt to simultaneously critique medico-legal narratives of the female body and offer an alternative history and practice of women\u2019s reproductive health. Dimassa\u2019s and Peebles Tavera\u2019s findings may not be wholly surprising given the popularity of utopianism throughout the long nineteenth century. Rounding out the discussion is Anne Stewart\u2019s study of the \u201cangry planet\u201d in decolonial and dystopian literature, which explores how a long-term commitment to any political imaginary, whether cultural, medical, or industrial, can be dangerous. Whether the utopian impulse propels German romanticists, nineteenth-century American writers, or contemporary authors of environmental literature, it is clear that the act of writing to create cultural change hinges upon utopianism\u2019s penchant for hope as well as finds utopianism\u2019s narrative structure of critique and reform as a useful tool for projects of identity formation.<\/span><\/p>\n Chair: Stephanie Peebles Tavera, <\/span>Texas A&M University\u2013Central Texas<\/span><\/p>\n Daniel Dimassa, <\/span>Dante in Deutschland: An Itinerary of Romantic Myth<\/span><\/i> (Bucknell 2022),<\/span> https:\/\/www.rutgersuniversitypress.org\/bucknell\/dante-in-deutschland\/9781684484188\/<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n Stephanie Peebles Tavera, Author of <\/span>(P)rescription Narratives: Feminist Medical Fiction and the Failure of American Censorship <\/span><\/i>(Edinburgh UP, 2022),<\/span> https:\/\/edinburghuniversitypress.com\/book-p-rescription-narratives.html<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0Anne Stewart, <\/span>Angry Plant: Decolonial Fiction and the American Third World<\/span><\/i> (University of Minnesota Press, 2022),<\/span> https:\/\/www.upress.umn.edu\/book-division\/books\/angry-planet<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SATURDAY Abstracts by Panel, Saturday morning Abstracts by panel, Saturday afternoon Embassy Suites Guest Breakfast 7:30-8:15 Session IX 8:15-9:45 A. Utopian Themes in Michael Cummings, Children’s Voices in Politics (Peter Lang, 2020) (Colonial East) Robust democracy remains a utopian … Continue reading \n
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