Disruptive Imaginations: Joint Annual Conference of Science Fiction Research Association & Gesellschaft für Fantastik­forschung J Aug 15-19 | TU Dresden

Disruptive Imaginations

Joint Annual Conference of Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA) and Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung (GfF)

August 15-19, 2023, TU Dresden

This conference will merge the annual meetings of the Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA) and the German Association for Research in the Fantastic (GfF). With some overlap in membership and a shared interest and mission, we believe that a joint conference offers great potential for dynamic exchange, constructive discussions, and new insights and perspectives. This expanded focus on SFF allows for a consideration of a wide range of genres and forms that include science fiction, fantasy, horror, and the weird. 

Science fiction and the fantastic (SFF) have the power to disrupt entrenched narratives and worldmaking practices. Whether in the form of hard science fiction, utopian speculation, high fantasy or supernatural horror, SFF is fundamentally anchored in imaginations of disruption—a tear in the fabric of reality, an estrangement of the senses, a break with the known world, or a transgression of boundaries. The conference theme “Disruptive Imaginations” invites participants to engage with disruption as a variegated paradigm of the SFF imagination. As a mode of disturbance or interruption, a disruption implies that habitual patterns of perceiving, inhabiting, and ordering the world are unsettled, giving way to uncertainty and the unknown. It can occur at scales that range from the micrological to the cosmic. At the precarious threshold between chaos and order, a disruption carries the potential for transformative system change and can produce a shift in hegemonic articulations of ‘the im/possible.’ 

For more information and program, please see: www.disruptiveimaginations.com.

Call for Papers
Book of Abstracts
Conference Program

Keynotes:

David M. Higgins
(Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University)"Alt-History and Reactionary Worldbuilding"

Priscilla Layne
(University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)"Utopias of Restorative Justice: Speculative Fiction, Gender and Violence in SchwardRund's Biskaya and Sharon Dodua Otoo's Ada's Realm"

Lou Cornum
(New York University)"Lunar Landings: How to (Not) Approach the Moon"

Public Events:

• Contactics: Performing Science Fictions (with Irina Gheorghe, Emma Waltraud Howes--curated by Alison Sperling), Technische Sammlungen Dresden, August 16, 20:00. 
• Das Erbe der Science Fiction in der DDR (with Karlheinz Steinmüller, Elisabeth Schaber, Evan Torner, Erik Simon, Hardy Kettlitz--curated by Sonja Fritzsche), Deutsches Hygiene Museum Dresden, August 17, 7pm. Details: https://www.dhmd.de/veranstaltungen/kalender/veranstaltungsdetails/678/science+fiction+in+der+ddr/2023-08-17. 
• Progressive Fantastik: Neue Impulse für das Genre (with Patrizia Eckermann, James Sullivan, Judith C. Vogt--curated by Lars Schmeink), Deutsches Hygiene Museum Dresden, August 18, 19:30. Details: https://www.dhmd.de/veranstaltungen/kalender/veranstaltungsdetails/682/progressive+fantastik+%25e2%2580%2593++neue+impulse+fuer+das+genre/2023-08-18

The Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung  (the German association for research in the fantastic), was founded 2010 with the mission to promote academic research of the fantastic in art, literature and culture in German-speaking countries and to contribute to a deepening of scholarly and cultural knowledge in these fields. To that end, the GfF publishes the peer reviewed open-access journal “Zeitschrift für Fantastikforschung” and convenes for an annual conference at varying locations in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.

The Science Fiction Research Association, founded in 1970, is the oldest professional association dedicated to the scholarly inquiry of Science Fiction and the Fantastic in literature, film, and the arts. The SFRA’s open access journal SFRA Review is published four times a year and the SFRA meets annually for a conference at varying international locations.

Organizing team:
Julia Gatermann
Moritz Ingwersen