What good news is out there in the world? Advances in medicine, breakthroughs in climate change, what do you have for us? Does it come with a Professor Farnsworth caveat?
Andrea Hairston is a novelist, playwright, poet, and L. Wolff Kahn 1931 Professor Emerita of Theatre and Africana Studies at Smith College. She ran away from the physics lab to the theatre when she was a young thing and has been a scientist, artiste, and hoodoo conjurer ever since... Read More →
A space to discuss the way US immigration law is becoming actively hostile and making conventions like WisCon in person potentially seriously unsafe for non-US-based fans.
Naomi Kritzer is a science fiction and fantasy writer from St. Paul, Minnesota. In Minneapolis and St. Paul, she is probably best known for her political blog, which provides deep-dive information on candidates in local political races. Outside of the Twin Cities, she is best known... Read More →
Andrea Hairston is a novelist, playwright, poet, and L. Wolff Kahn 1931 Professor Emerita of Theatre and Africana Studies at Smith College. She ran away from the physics lab to the theatre when she was a young thing and has been a scientist, artiste, and hoodoo conjurer ever since... Read More →
Melissa A Watkins is a writer now, but used to be a teacher, a singer, an actress, and a very bad translator(thankfully, not all at the same time).. Her short stories have previously appeared in midnight & indigo, khoreo, Fantasy Magazine, Lightspeed and The Magazine of Fantasy... Read More →
This panel will feature two academic paper presentations followed by a live Q&A.
Liberation Through Queer Romance in Fembot Narratives Panelist: Faye Lynch (she/her) Abstract: Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods (2007) and Ros Anderson’s The Hierarchies (2021) both depict fembots which are subject to forms of suppression or entrapment, and both texts use the romantic and sexual relationships that the fembots have with human women as a metaphorical shorthand for, and doorway to, freedom. This freedom does take the form of a physical escape, but also has mental and philosophical aspects, with the fembots and their paramours both having their perception of the world expanded through their relationship with the other. This paper examines this depiction of queer-coded love in fembot freedom narratives and asks whether it is compelling enough to avoid the tropes of the oft problematic romances depicted between men and the machines built to serve them.
No, We’re Not Too Strong: Asserting Women’s Power in a Time of Backlash Panelist: Nancy Jane Moore (she/they) Abstract: Building on my earlier papers on the relationship of our bodies to feminism, I will focus on the recent misogynistic definitions of appropriate body type and behavior for women, particularly those of international sports organizations and the current United States administration, including bans on participation by transwomen, requirements that some women take hormones because of their genetic makeup, and claims that some athletes are too strong to “really” be women. The paper will also discuss the value to women in discovering their own physical power and address the importance of SF/F as a tool to undermine these attacks.
Cecilia Tan is the award-winning author of over a dozen novels (and three collections of short stories) including the Magic University series and The Prince's Boy . Her work has appeared everywhere from Ms. Magazine and Asimov's to Nerve and Best American Erotica. Her novel Slow Surrender... Read More →
A 2016 MBA graduate and published author, Priya Sridhar has been writing fantasy and science fiction for fifteen years, and counting. Capstone published the Powered series, and Alban Lake published her works Carousel and Neo-Mecha Mayhem. Priya lives in Miami, Florida with her fa... Read More →
This panel will feature two academic paper presentations followed by a live Q&A.
The Mothership: Embodiment of/as Domestic Space in Shawl and Little Badger Panelist: Tessa Crosby (she/her) Abstract: This project examines the “colony ship” trope in SF, from its imperialist, heteropatriarchal roots to its queer, feminist, decolonial resurrection. In its mainstream configuration, the colony ship distills and embodies the problematics of social reproduction: “her” raison d’etre is not only to maintain and reproduce humankind, but to maintain and reproduce the structures and hierarchies that “her” programmers believe will afford a productive labor force. This presentation highlights texts that challenge this trope’s logic and, more broadly, the logic of a genre that seems stuck in rigid, overdetermined formulations of love, care, and kin.
Speculative Reproduction in Joanne Ramos’ The Farm and Cherie Dimaline’s Hunting By Stars Panelist: Dana Smith (she/her) Abstract: This talk argues that speculative fiction is a prescient framework through which to analyze the critical and pressing stakes of the contemporary fight for reproductive justice. By analyzing two near-future speculative fiction novels, I demonstrate the inextricable nature of extractive capitalist practices and the state’s prioritization of heteropatriarchal reproductive futurity–and how this is deeply tied to settler-colonial projects which commodify vulnerable populations to reproduce whiteness. Yet, while each text reflects tensions between “choice,” power, and survival–differentially mediated by hegemonic constructions of cultural, gender, and/or racial difference–they also present the powerful potential of reproduction and kinship as resistance.
Come join us for this special WisCon edition of the crafting circle. Work on your project, whether that's needle crafts, woodworking, rocketry, baking, home repair, or whatever else you're working on. Talk as much or as little as you like. We tend to have pauses in conversation as people concentrate. It's a nice place to make a little progress! We usually meet twice a month, on the first and third Mondays.
I've been attending WisCon for over 25 years, but I have not been there in person since 2019. I host the community Zoom hangouts and craft circles that began during the gap year (ask me for the schedule and links). I'm hard of hearing, neurodivergent, and weakened by various medical... Read More →
