The Fifth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium on the topic of Race and SF was held on Thursday, Nov. 19, 2020 as a Zoom Webinar. You can read the full program here.

Included below are videos of each session as well as links to expanded presentations and SF writers reading their stories.

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

Opening

Opening
Jason W. Ellis
Justin Vazquez-Poritz, Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences

Literary Afrofuturism Roundtable

Roundtable: Literary Afrofuturism in the Twenty-First Century
Moderator: Lisa Yaszek
Panelists:
Rebecca Holden
Isiah Lavender III
Nedine Moonsamy
Lisa Yaszek

Pedagogy Paper Session

Paper Session 1: Pedagogy
Moderator: Jill Belli
Doug Davis – Teaching Afrofuturism with Open Educational Resources
Sadia Reza – Theory of Mind, the “Other,” and Composition
Peter Sands – Morrison’s Paradise: Slow Pedagogies for Generating Deep Conversations about Race

Film Paper Session

Paper Session 2: Film
Moderator: Wanett Clyde
Jacob Adler – A Sickness Known as Hate: Race and Identity in the Twilight Zone
Kanta Dihal and Stephen Cave – The Whiteness of the AI Uprising (in UK, 4 hours ahead)
Sharon Packer – Sinophobia and Tibetophilia: Recurring Racist Memes in SF Cinema and Comics
Jessica Wagner Webster – Race, Propaganda, and Sci-Fi/Horror Films During World War II

Student Roundtable

Student Roundtable: “If you had that kind of power … What would you do? What would you change?”: Thinking Critically about Race and Science Fiction
Moderator: Jill Belli
Students from Science Fiction, ENG2420:
Oscar Abundez,
Derick Bardales
Khoury Douglas
Ronald Gordon
Tommy Su

Pulps and Golden Age SF Paper Session

Paper Session 3: Pulps and Golden Age SF
Moderator: Lucas Kwong
Christopher Leslie – “The Menace of Mars”: Resistance to White Male Privilege in Golden Age Science Fiction
Steven Shaviro – Exorcising Lovecraft | View Expanded Presentation

Science Fiction Writers Roundtable

Roundtable: Science Fiction Writers
Organizer: Emily Hockaday
Moderator: Joy Sanchez-Taylor
Panelists:
Alaya Dawn Johnson | Reading from “Reconstruction”
Cadwell Turnbull | Reading “Loneliness in Your Blood”
Erin Roberts | Reading from “Sour Milk Girls”
Carlos Hernandez | Reading from Sal and Gabi Break the Universe

Theories and Readings of Otherness and Representation

Paper Session 4: Theories and Readings of Otherness and Representation
Moderator: Ann Matsuuchi
Matthew David Goodwin – Gloria Anzaldua and the Making of an Alien Consciousness
Subhalakshmi Gooptu – Livepods and Seedlings: Legacies of Colonial Labor in Contemporary Science Fiction
Rebecca Hankins and Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad – Islamicate Afrofuturuism: Visions of Muslim Afrofuturism and Beyond
Kathrin Lachenmaier – Defying the Colonial ‘Story of Indigenous Deficiency’ in Louise Erdrich’s Future Home of the Living God | View Expanded Presentation
Aaron Zwintscher – But They Aren’t Human and They Don’t Complain …: Writing Race(s), Diversity, and the Colonial Mindset on Roshar and Elsewhere in Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere

Keynote Address by Johnathan W. Gray

Keynote Address by Jonathan W. Gray on “Past Tense, Future Perfect: American Atrocities in HBO’s Watchmen and Lovecraft Country“
Introduction: A. Lavelle Porter