[csaa-forum] CALL FOR PAPERS - CHANGING THE CLIMATE: UTOPIA, DYSTOPIA AND CATASTROPHE

[Andrew Milner]

CALL FOR PAPERS

CHANGING THE CLIMATE: UTOPIA, DYSTOPIA AND CATASTROPHE
The Fourth Australian Conference on Utopia, Dystopia and Science Fiction

30th August – 1st September 2010

Monash University Conference Centre
30 Collins Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia

A conference organised by the Centre for Comparative Literature and 
Cultural Studies at Monash University

WEBSITE: http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/cclcs/conferences/utopias/4/index.php

In December 2001 the University of Tasmania hosted a successful 
conference around the theme of Antipodean Utopias. In December 2005, 
Monash University hosted a second conference, around that of Imagining 
the Future, to mark the long-awaited publication of Fredric Jameson’s 
book Archaeologies of the Future. A third conference, Demanding the 
Impossible, followed in December 2007, again at Monash. Despite the 
apparent optimism of all three conference themes, dystopia remained a 
recurrent preoccupation in their discussions. This fourth conference 
will directly address the questions of dystopia and catastrophe with 
special reference to a problem that increasingly haunts our imaginings 
of the future, that of actual or possible environmental catastrophe. As 
Jameson himself wrote in The Seeds of Time: ‘It seems … easier for us 
today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of 
nature than the breakdown of late capitalism; perhaps that is due to 
some weakness in our imaginations’.Hopefully, this conference will play 
some small part in changing that particular climate of opinion.

The conference invites papers from scholars, writers and others 
interested in the interplay between ecology and ecocriticism, utopia, 
dystopia and science fiction.

OPENING ADDRESS

The opening address will be given by Kate Rigby, Founding President of 
the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, 
Australia-New Zealand, and author of Topographies of the Sacred: The 
Poetics of Place in European Romanticism (2004).

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

John Clute
Science fiction writer, Director of the Department of Story Future in 
the Centre for the Future at Slavonice and co-author of The Encyclopedia 
of Science Fiction (1993) and The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997).

Tom Moylan
Emeritus Professor and Founding Director of the Ralahine Center for 
Utopian Studies, University of Limerick, author of Demand the Impossible 
(1986) and Scraps of the Untainted Sky (2000) and co-editor of Dark 
Horizons (2003).

Kim Stanley Robinson
Distinguished science fiction writer, winner of two Hugo Awards and 
author of the Orange Country Trilogy, the Mars Trilogy, Antarctica, The 
Years of Rice and Salt and the Science in the Capital Trilogy.

Deborah Bird Rose
Professor of Social Inclusion, Macquarie University, author of Dingo 
Makes Us Human (2000), Reports from a Wild Country (2004) and Wild Dog 
Dreaming: Love and Extinction (in press).

Linda Williams
Associate Professor in Art History at RMIT University, curator of The 
Idea of the Animal exhibition (2004) and the HEAT: Art and Climate 
Change exhibition (2008).

The conference invites papers from scholars, writers and others 
interested in the interplay between ecology and ecocriticism, utopia, 
dystopia and science fiction.

CONFERENCE ABSTRACTS

Abstracts (approx. 100-150 words) should be sent by 30 June 2010 by 
e-mail to:

     <Utopias at arts.monash.edu.au>

or by post to:

     Utopias4 Conference
     Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
     School of English, Communications and Performasnce Studies
     Clayton campus
     Monash University
     Victoria 3800
     Australia

REGISTRATION

The conference will take place over three days.

Full registration for the three days costs $A280, with a concessional 
price for students and the non-employed of $A140.

Registration for one day only costs $A110, with a concessional price of 
$A55. All prices are GST inclusive.

Registration is due by 31 July 2010.


-- 

   Professor Andrew Milner
   Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
   Monash University
   Melbourne
   Victoria 3800
   AUSTRALIA

   Phone: (61) (3) 9905 2979
   Fax: (61) (3) 9905 5593
   Email: Andrew.Milner at arts.monash.edu.au
   Homepage:
     http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/ecps/people/andrew-milner/