Videos from the Eighth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium on SF, Gender, and Sexuality

Poster designed by Lucas Kwong.

The Eighth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium on on SF, Gender, and Sexuality was held on Thursday, November 30, 2023 from 9:00am-5:00pm EST (GMT/UTC -5 hours) online via Zoom Webinar. You can read the full program here.

Included below are videos of each session.

Many thanks again to everyone who participated and contributed to this year’s event!

Opening
Wanett Clyde
Justin Vazquez-Poritz

Paper Session 1
Moderator -Kel Karpinski
Cynthia Lam – Lost in Translation: The Inevitable Gendered Language in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness
Chris Leslie – The Gender Performances of L. Taylor Hansen
Sinchan Chatterjee – “Science Fiction and Postgendered Maternity: A Care-ethics based reading of Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Left Hand of Darkness.”
Marleen S. Barr – Naomi Alderman’s The Power as Jewish Feminist Power Fantasy

Paper session 2
Moderator – Lucas Kwong
Alicia Matheny Beeson – Considering the Intersections of Class and Gender through Utopia
Shrishti Chakraborti – Transforming Fiction: Cultural Pitfalls of Patriarchy and Gender Subjectivity in Sowmya Rajendran’s Dystopia, The Lesson
Ben DeVries – “Shit Hits the Fan . . . When? Gendered Futures, Violence, and the Composition of Catastrophe in Parable of the Sower and Patriots”

Panel Discussion 1
“Notes from The Sci Fi Lab@Georgia Tech: Sexuality and Gender in Early Black and White Speculative Fiction”
Dr. Lisa Yaszek – Moderator
Val Barnhart
Max Anthony Mateer
Diya Patel
Killian Vetter

Analog Writers Panel and the Analog Emerging Black Voices Award
Introduction -Jill Belli
Emily Hockaday – Moderator
Phoebe Barton
Chana Kohl
Marie Vibbert
Trevor Quachri and Emily Hockaday – Award Presentation

Paper session 3
Moderator -Vivian Papp
Josie Garza Medina – Gender Performance and Nascent Dystopia in CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077
Kimberly Jenerette – Embodied Sex (n.) and Embodied Sex (v.): Reexamining Embodied Sexuality in Mass Effect in 2023
Jess Tucker – From Red Sonya to Red Sonja: The Sexualization of a Fantasy Feminist?
Hale Lam – Ghost and the machine – techno spectral femininity in Ling Ma’s Severance

Paper Session 4
Moderator -Leigh Gold
Omotoyosi Odukomaiya – Identity, Otherness and Alterity in Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon and Tade Thompson’s Rosewater
Jacob Adler – Speculative Fiction and the “Illusory Woman”
Jo Ann Oravec – You May Now Kiss the Robot: Human-Robot Marriages in Science Fiction Literature and Movies

Panel Session 2
Introduction -Jill Belli
Visions and Universes: The Past, Present, and Future of Gender and Sexuality in the Science Fiction Novel
Lavelle Porter – Moderator
Julia Aiello
Elizabeth Lodvikov
Nathalie Segarra Valle

Keynote: Ytasha Womack “Afrofuturism: Time/Space Relations in Valuing Humanity”
Introduction and Moderator -Wanett Clyde

The event is sponsored by the School of Arts and Sciences at the New York City College of Technology, CUNY.

The Annual City Tech Symposium on Science Fiction is held in celebration of the City Tech Science Fiction Collection, an archival holding of over 600-linear feet of magazines, anthologies, novels, and scholarship. It is in the Archives and Special Collections of the Ursula C. Schwerin Library (Library Building, L543C, New York City College of Technology, 300 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201). More information about the collection and how to access it is available here: https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/sciencefictionatcitytech/librarycollection/.

Participation in this Pride event is made possible due to generous funding from the New York City Council Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual Caucus and the Office of the Mayor, and supported by The LaGuardia and Wagner Archives

This entry was posted in symposia and conferences on by .

About Wanett Clyde

Assistant Professor Wanett Clyde is the Collections Management Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology, where in addition to managing the library’s collection she oversees the university archives. Her research seeks to explore the intersection of Black history and fashion history, drawing out under credited African-American contributors, their critical innovations and accomplishments, and other meaningful connections in the overlapping research spheres.

Leave a Reply