[Discussion] CFP: Imagining the Future: Utopia, Dystopia, and Science Fiction (Australia) (9/30/05; 12/6/05-12/7/05)

[Sule Tarakcioglu]

From: Robert Savage <Robert.Savage@arts.monash.edu.au>

Conference Announcement and 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 earlierutopianisms, 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@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


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