[csaa-forum] CFP - IMAGINING THE FUTURE: UTOPIA, DYSTOPIA AND SCIENCE FICTION

[Andrew Milner]

Call for Papers

IMAGINING THE FUTURE: UTOPIA, DYSTOPIA AND SCIENCE FICTION
6-7 December 2005

Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
Monash University, Clayton Campus
Melbourne, Australia
 
Keynote Speaker:

FREDRIC JAMESON 
Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature, Duke University

Other Speakers will include: 

Kate Rigby (Director, CCLCS), Andrew Milner (Professor of Cultural
Studies, CCLCS), Peter Fitting (Director of Cinema Studies, University
of Toronto), Ian Buchanan (Professor of Communications and Cultural
Studies, Charles Darwin University), Roland Boer (Logan Research Fellow,
Monash University) and
Andrew Benjamin (Professor of Critical Theory, CCLCS).

CONFERENCE WEBSITE:

http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/lcl/conferences/utopias/

In the 20th century earlier utopian traditions were progressively
displaced by supposedly more 'scientific' understandings of progress,
whether liberal, Fabian or Marxist. But in the 1960s utopian politics
re-emerged in and around
the 'new social movements'. As with earlier utopianisms, these found
significant aesthetic expression in literary science fiction, including
the work of writers like Ursula Le Guin, Joanna Russ, Marge Piercy,
Samuel R. Delany and Kim Stanley Robinson. Their most important
philosophical expression came belatedly by way of the Deleuzian
influence on Hardt and Negri's Empire. In a 1982 essay for Science
Fiction Studies, Fredric Jameson famously defined the problem of
'Progress v. Utopia' through the question 'Can We Imagine the Future?'
Timed to coincide with the long-awaited publication of Archaeologies of
the Future, Jameson's full-length monograph on the subject, this
conference will return to the question of whether and how we can imagine
the future and whether or not such imaginings remain open to the
unforeseeable. 
 
The conference invites papers that will address these questions via the
themes of utopia, dystopia and science fiction.

ABSTRACTS

Abstracts (approx. 100-150 words) should be sent by 30 September 2005 by
e-mail to <utopias at arts.monash.edu.au> or by post to Utopias Conference,
Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, Monash
University, Building 11, Melbourne, Victoria 3800, AUSTRALIA.

REGISTRATION

The conference will take place over two days.

Full registration for the two days costs $150, with a concessional price
for students and the non-employed of $75.
        
Registration for one day, either the 6th or 7th December, costs $80,
with a concessional price of $40.
        
All prices are GST inclusive.

Please make cheques payable to Monash University.

Registration forms may be downloaded in Acrobat PDF format [121 KB] or
as a Rich Text File [RTF format 3.29 MB] from:

http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/lcl/conferences/utopias/registration.html

Send cheques and registration forms by 31 October 2005 to:

Utopias Conference
Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies 
Building 11
Monash University
Victoria 3800
AUSTRALIA