Cultural Fictions II - on 15-16 June

Cultural Fictions II

The Centre for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College (London) is hosting a conference on the significance of science fiction for disciplines and practices associated with cultural studies, to be held on 15-16th June, 2006. In particular, we will be asking whether sci-fi’s privileged relationship to alterity – e.g. in the forms of the alien, the non-human and above all the future – is what makes it so attractive to politically and philosophically oriented research and other contemporary artistic practices.

Main speakers:

Greg Tate, journalist, cultural critic and filmmaker, regular contributor to Village Voice, founder of the band Burnt Sugar; publications include Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America (Simon and Schuster, 1992) and Everything But the Burden (Broadway, 2003).

Roger Luckhurst, Senior Lecturer, Birkbeck College; publications include “The Angle Between Two Walls”: The Fiction of J G Ballard (Liverpool UP, 1997), The Invention of Telepathy (Oxford UP, 2002), Science Fiction (Polity Press, 2005).

Anthony Joseph, poet, musician, novelist and lecturer; publications include Desafinado (poisonenginepress, 1994), Teragaton (poisonenginepress, 1997) and The African Origins of UFOs (forthcoming, Salt, autumn 2006).

There is no charge for this event (held in the Goldies Cinema, Main Building),
but please register your attendance by emailing culturalfictions@gold.ac.uk.

Call for Papers:

Postgraduate students with relevant research interests are invited to present short papers (15 minutes) alongside our main speakers. Please submit abstracts of 200-300 words to culturalfictions@gold.ac.uk by Monday 8th May. Topics may address any aspect of science fiction but preference will be given to those that emphasize its political and philosophical potential for research in cultural studies, the humanities and the arts. Suggested topics: utopia/dystopia/uchronia, alternative history, human-machine interfaces, philosophies and politics of time, future as ‘other’.

This event is funded by the Arts Humanities Research Council and the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths.
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