The Seventh Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium on the Archive and SF was held on Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2022 as a 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
Jason W. Ellis
Justin Vazquez-Poritz

Paper Session 1: Archival Research
Jill Belli – Moderator
Jessica Aaron – “Preventing Planetary Patriarchy: Subversions of the White Man’s Ideal World in Early SF Pulps”
Chris Leslie – “The Republic of (Interstellar) Letters: From the Archives of Asimov and Merril”
Gillian Polack – “Story as Archive: How Speculative Fiction Novels Both Preserve and Interpret Cultural Material”

Panel Discussion: A Tale of Two Archives
Jason Ellis (City Tech)
Matthew Frizzell (Georgia Tech)
Kel Karpinski (City Tech)
Alison Reynolds (Georgia Tech)
Lisa Yaszek (Georgia Tech)

Panel Discussion: Georgia Tech’s Sci Fi Lab: Archival Research, Octavia’s Ancestor’s Project, and Radio Play
Lisa Yaszek – Moderator
Panelists:
Val Barnhart
Laurence Copeland
Killian Vetter
Edeliz Zuleta

Analog Writers Panel and the Analog Emerging Black Voices Award
Emily Hockaday – Moderator
Kedrick Brown
Meghan Hyland
Kelsey Hutton
Douglas Dluzen
Trevor Quachri and Emily Hockaday – Award Presentation

Paper Session 2: Archives in SF
Lucas Kwong – Moderator
Jacob Adler – “Summit of Knowledge: Archiving the Fantastical”
Rhonda Knight – “A Data Thief in the Archive: Reading Sofia Samatar’s ‘An Account of the Land of Witches’”
Adam McLain – “‘Only an Echo’: The Memory of the Archive and the Archive of Memory in Lois Lowry’s The Giver“
Kenrick H. Kamiya Yoshida and Ida Yoshinaga – “An Okinawan Speculative Arts Archive”

Paper Session 3: Latinx SF in the Archive
Leigh Gold – Moderator
Matthew David Goodwin – “The Latinx Multiverse and the Fictional Recovery of Latinx Science Fiction”
Dolores González Ortega and Valeria Seminario – “Inside the Latin American Science Fiction Archive: Challenges and Contributions to a Growing Academic Field”

Keynote
Jeremy Brett – “Making Space: Science Fiction Archives and the Archival Citizen”
Jason Ellis – Introduction and Moderator

Registration and Viewing

The Seventh Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium on the Archive and Science Fiction will be held on Tuesday, December 6, 2022 from 9:00am-5:00pm EST (GMT/UTC -5 hours) online via Zoom Webinar.

To participate in this free event, attendees will need to do these two things: (1) Signup for a free Zoom account here (if you don’t already have one), and (2) Register here to receive access instructions to the Zoom Webinar. Participants may register any time before or during the event!

For those who would like to watch the event without registering, you can join the YouTube Livestream here (click on the top-most video labeled “Live” or go directly to the Livestream here).

In addition to the Zoom Webinar Chat and YouTube Live Chat, join the event conversation with the event hashtag #CityTechSF and #SFArchive and follow us on Twitter @CityTechSF.

As indicated below in the program, some symposium content is pre-recorded to offer more time for discussion on the day of the event. Pre-recorded content includes author readings and full paper presentations. Some of this content is in production and will be posted soon.

Program

9:00am-9:15am
Opening
Jason W. Ellis
Justin Vazquez-Poritz

9:15am-10:05am
Paper Session 1: Archival Research
Jill Belli – Moderator
Jessica Aaron – “Preventing Planetary Patriarchy: Subversions of the White Man’s Ideal World in Early SF Pulps”
Chris Leslie – “The Republic of (Interstellar) Letters: From the Archives of Asimov and Merril”
Gillian Polack – “Story as Archive: How Speculative Fiction Novels Both Preserve and Interpret Cultural Material”

10:05am-10:10am
Break

10:10am-11:00am
Panel Discussion: A Tale of Two Archives
Jason Ellis (City Tech)
Matthew Frizzell (Georgia Tech)
Kel Karpinski (City Tech)
Alison Reynolds (Georgia Tech)
Lisa Yaszek (Georgia Tech)

11:00am-11:05am
Break

11:05am-11:55am
Panel Discussion: Georgia Tech’s Sci Fi Lab: Archival Research, Octavia’s Ancestor’s Project, and Radio Play
Lisa Yaszek – Moderator
Panelists:
Val Barnhart
Laurence Copeland
Killian Vetter
Edeliz Zuleta

11:55am-12:00pm
Break

12:00pm-1:55pm
Analog Writers Panel and the Analog Emerging Black Voices Award
Emily Hockaday – Moderator
Kedrick Brown
Meghan Hyland
Kelsey Hutton
Douglas Dluzen
Trevor Quachri and Emily Hockaday – Award Presentation

1:55pm-2:00pm
Break

2:00pm-3:20pm
Paper Session 2: Archives in SF
Lucas Kwong – Moderator
Jacob Adler – “Summit of Knowledge: Archiving the Fantastical”
Rhonda Knight – “A Data Thief in the Archive: Reading Sofia Samatar’s ‘An Account of the Land of Witches'”
Adam McLain – “‘Only an Echo’: The Memory of the Archive and the Archive of Memory in Lois Lowry’s The Giver“
Kenrick H. Kamiya Yoshida and Ida Yoshinaga – “An Okinawan Speculative Arts Archive”

3:20pm-3:25pm
Break

3:25pm-4:10pm
Paper Session 3: Latinx SF in the Archive
Leigh Gold – Moderator
Matthew David Goodwin – “The Latinx Multiverse and the Fictional Recovery of Latinx Science Fiction”
Dolores González Ortega and Valeria Seminario – “Inside the Latin American Science Fiction Archive: Challenges and Contributions to a Growing Academic Field”

4:10pm-4:15pm
Break

4:15pm-5:00pm
Keynote
Jeremy Brett – “Making Space: Science Fiction Archives and the Archival Citizen”
Jason Ellis – Introduction and Moderator

Participants

Jacob Adler has worked as the Metadata/Cataloging Librarian at Bronx Community College Library since 2017. Before that he worked in a variety of cataloging positions, including in the library department of The Paley Center for Media in New York from 2010 to 2016. His interests include early television history, game design, and creative writing. He participated in the 2018 National Novel Writing Month, and hopes to turn the resultant work into a published novel in the future. He has also presented at the 2018 CUNY Games Conference, and has given presentations at the City Tech Science Fiction Symposium in 2020 and 2021.

Jessica Aaron is a third-year undergraduate student at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on the intersection between ethics and science fiction. She received funding to conduct intensive archival research on “Planetary Epistemology in the Science Fiction Pulps” from the University of Chicago’s College Summer Institute and Quad Scholars program.

Val Barnhart is a second year Literature, Media, and Communications student in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at Georgia Tech. She works on the production team in Dr. Lisa Yaszek’s Sci-Fi Lab. Her inspiration for her work stems from a mix of real-world observations and fake-world TTRPG campaigns. 

Jill Belli is Associate Professor of English at New York City College of Technology, CUNY, where she happily teaches science fiction and utopian studies often. She’s working on long-standing projects on well-being & happiness in education and writing & revising in speculative fiction. Newer interests include nature writing, healing & illness, tarot & astrology as storytelling / intuitive literacy, and grief. Learn more about Jill and her interdisciplinary research and teaching: jillbelli.org.

Jeremy Brett is an Associate Librarian at Cushing Memorial Library & Archives, Texas A&M University, where he is both Processing Archivist and the Curator of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Research Collection. He has also worked at the University of Iowa, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the National Archives and Records Administration-Pacific Region, and the Wisconsin Historical Society. He received his MLS and his MA in History from the University of Maryland – College Park in 1999. His professional interests include science fiction, fan studies, and the intersection of libraries and social justice.

Kedrick Brown, now residing in Cambridge, MA, is a trader and inventor who believes in the power of stories to inspire amazing forms of human cooperation. His first introduction to science fiction was watching episodes of Star Trek in Liberia, which later helped inspire him to major in physics at Rutgers as an undergraduate. Kedrick has been most inspired in his writing by science fiction works that suggest that the universe may be far more wondrous than commonly believed. He also has an MBA from Wharton and is pursuing a Masters in Design Engineering at Harvard.

Laurence Copeland is an undergraduate researcher in the Sci Fi Lab@Georgia Tech.

Douglas Dluzen, PhD, is the Director of the Professional Development and Career Office at Johns Hopkins University. He’s previously been a senior science writer and editor at the NIH and a geneticist studying the genetic contributors to aging, cancer, hypertension, and other age-related diseases. He loves to write science and science fiction while sitting on the couch with his wife Julia (who has immeasurably helped him fact-check and edit his work), son Parker, and daughter Cedar. You can find him on Twitter (for now) at @ripplesintime24! 

Jason W. Ellis is an Associate Professor of English at the New York City College of Technology, CUNY, where he coordinates the City Tech Science Fiction Collection and directs the B.S. in Professional and Technical Writing Program. He coedited The Postnational Fantasy: Postcolonialism, Cosmopolitics and Science Fiction (McFarland, 2011) and a special issue on Star Wars: The Force Awakens of New American Notes Online, and talked with Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson about the relationship between SF and society on StarTalk Radio. He holds a Ph.D. in English from Kent State University, M.A. in Science Fiction Studies from the University of Liverpool, and B.S. in Science, Technology, and Culture from Georgia Tech.

Matt Frizzell is the Assessment Librarian and Subject Specialist for Science Fiction Studies at Georgia Tech. He has a master’s in library and information science from Florida State University and a bachelor’s in anthropology from Emory University.  In his role as a Subject Specialist for Science Fiction studies he develops and curates GT’s circulating Sci-Fi collection as well as collaborating and assisting with sci-ficentric activities on campus.  As the Assessment Librarian Matt Provides assessment leadership and support for pilot projects, services, and spaces to facilitate evidence-based decision making.  He has presented at numerous professional conferences and published articles in library journals. His most recent article describes using program evaluation in a library context.

Leigh Gold is a Doctoral Lecturer in the English Department at City Tech. She currently teaches composition, fiction, drama, and poetry. Her doctoral work explored mourning in the work of Else Lasker-Schüler. Since then she has deepened her focus on interdisciplinary work such as writing about Ursula K Le Guin, Mary Shelley and Le Guin’s intersections, Eastern philosophies and ethics in Le Guin’s work, trauma in women writers of science fiction including Octavia Butler, and the role of the body and movement in poetry; Leigh is currently working on an essay about Judith Merril for an upcoming anthology.

Matthew David Goodwin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chicana/o Studies at the The University of New Mexico and Assistant Director of Publications at the Southwest Hispanic Research Institute. He maintains the latinxarchive.com.

Emily Hockaday is the managing editor and poetry editor for Asimov’s Science Fiction and Analog Science Fiction and Fact. Her first full-length poetry collection, Naming the Ghost, will be out in November 2022 with Cornerstone Press. You can find her online at www.emilyhockaday.com or @E_Hockaday.

Kelsey Hutton is a Métis author of speculative fiction from Treaty 1 territory and the homeland of the Métis Nation (Winnipeg, Canada). She particularly loves writing space opera, fantasy, and historical fiction.  Kelsey was born in an even snowier city than she lives in now (“up north,” as they say in Winnipeg). She also used to live in Brazil as a kid. She tries to appreciate the clean, cold winters, but mostly misses the beautiful wide-open lakes of summertime. Connect with her at KelseyHutton.com, on Instagram at @KelseyHuttonAuthor, or on Twitter at @KelHuttonAuthor.

Meghan Hyland started writing to distract herself from graduate school. Since then, she’s completed her Ph.D. in computer science, served as a college professor, and worked for multiple well-known technology companies. Nowadays she lives with her two cats in the Pacific Northwest, where she still manages to distract herself, and hopefully others, with her writing.

Kel R. Karpinski is a Librarian and Assistant Professor at the New York City College of Technology, CUNY. Their research focuses on mid-century queer films and novels as they relate to sailors and hustlers in Times Square and how these texts map queer desire onto the city. They have a forthcoming article in The Journal of American Culture. Kel is also a zine maker and a NY Queer Zine Fair organizer.

Rhonda Knight is a Professor of English, Director of the Honors Program, and the James Wayne Lemke Endowed Chair in College Service and Leadership at Coker University in Hartsville, South Carolina. Rhonda was Coker’s 2018 recipient of the South Carolina Independent Colleges and Universities’ Excellence in Teaching Award. She has published articles on subjects from Sir Gawain to Doctor Who. She has co-edited two collections, Stage Matters: Props, Bodies and Space on the Shakespearean Stage (2018) and Who Makes the Franchise?: Essays in Fandom and Wilderness Texts in Popular Media (2022). She serves on the Board of Advisors for Kallion Leadership, Inc., which promotes leadership through study of the humanities.

Lucas Kwong is a writer, musician, and associate professor of English at New York City College of Technology. He’s written at eschatontwist.substack.com, Institute for Christian Socialism’s Bias Magazine, Public Books, Journal of Narrative Theory, and Victorian Literature and Culture. His podcast series, Monster In The Mirror, is a spinoff of Straight White American Jesus. His music can be found at brotherkmusic.com.

Chris Leslie (he/him) is a visiting professor in the School of Foreign Languages at the South China University of Technology in Guangzhou, a creative consultant for Zhejiang Hexin Toy Group in Yunhe, and the chair of the International Federation of Information Processing’s working group on the history of computing. His research focuses on the intersections among science, technology, and society. A two-time recipient of a Fulbright award, he has also taught at John Jay College, Hunter College, the University of Potsdam (Germany), and New York University Tandon School of Engineering. Dr. Leslie is finalizing a book project, From Hyperspace to Hypertext: Masculinity, Globalization, and Their Discontents, which will be published by Palgrave next year.

Adam McLain is a MA/PhD student and first-year writing instructor in the department of English at the University of Connecticut. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English, editing, and women’s studies from Brigham Young University, where he was managing editor at Leading Edge for three years, and a master of theological studies in women, gender, sexuality, and religion from Harvard University, after which he fulfilled a Frank Knox Traveling Fellowship to study George Orwell and sexual violence in the UK. He studies dystopian literature, legal theory, and sexual justice. Most recently, he edited two symposia for SFRA Review, one on Mormonism and science fiction and the other on sexual violence and science fiction.

Dolores González Ortega is a PhD candidate from Mendoza, Argentina. She holds a bachelor degree in Literature and Spanish Language Teaching from the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo and an MA in Literatures Languages and Cultures from the University of Connecticut. Her research interests focus on the interactions of gender, sexuality and politics in contemporary Latin American science fiction. She co-organizes the interdisciplinary science fiction critical theory study group Alien Readings at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Gillian Polack is a Jewish Australian speculative fiction writer based in Canberra, Australia. She was the 2020 recipient of the Ditmar (best novel, for her 2019 novel The Year of the Fruit Cake) and the Bertram A. Chandler (lifetime achievement in science fiction) awards. She is an ethnohistorian with a special interest in how story transmits culture, both Medieval and modern. Her current research examines how contemporary speculative fiction novels serve as vectors for cultural transmission. Her book on this, Story Matrices: Cultural Encoding and Cultural Baggage in the Worlds of Science Fiction and Fantasy, was released in April 2022. Her research at Deakin University furthers this work. Dr. Polack’s publications include ten novels, short stories, a monograph (History and Fiction, shortlisted for the William Atheling Jr Award for Criticism or Review) and various works of non-fiction. A list of her books can be found at https://gillianpolack.com/my-books/.

Trevor Quachri, who took the reins of Analog Science Fiction and Fact as editor in 2012, started off as an editorial assistant in 1999 and worked his way up the ladder at Analog and Asimov’s Science Fiction, under Stanley Schmidt, Sheila Williams, and Gardner Dozois, respectively. On top of that, he’s also been a Broadway stagehand, collected data for museums, and executive produced a science fiction pilot for a basic cable channel. He lives in New Jersey with his fiancée, daughter, and way, way too many comic books.

Alison Reynolds is the Research Services and Instruction Archivist at the Georgia Tech Library. She holds an MLS from Indiana University Bloomington with a specialization in Archives and Records Management, an MA in English from the University of Connecticut, and BA degrees in English and history from Denison University. She manages the Archives Reading Room and archival instruction programs and serves as the curator for the special collections science fiction and rare book collections. Her interests include teaching with primary sources and working to make archival collections more easily accessible to users.

Valeria Seminario’s research explores the encounter between literature, science, and technology in Latin American modernities and is increasingly becoming interested in the aesthetics of infrastructure and logistics. She is the author of “Un pasado inevitable: La Corriente del Golfo y la reescritura de los orígenes de la República cubana” in the edited volume Ficción y Ciencia (2022). Valeria is a PhD candidate in the Department of Hispanic and Portuguese Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She holds an M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies from NYU. Her M.A. thesis —which recovers from obscurity the first Cuban science fiction novel—, was prized with the Hirschhorn Master’s Project Award by the Center for Experimental Humanities and Social Engagement at NYU.

Or Szyflingier is a multidisciplinary artist who focuses on graphic design, advertising, motion, and video – manifesting that love for design, creativity, and a natural ability to communicate visually. She has worked for organizations such as Symphony Space, CUNY, and NYPIRG, while being featured at the AIGA’s SHIFT summit, and Carnegie Hall. She directed an award-winning documentary entitled The SoHo Memory Project, which has garnered praise and recognition at international and national film festivals such as the Telly Awards and DOCNYC – the largest documentary film festival in the country. She designed the poster for this year’s symposium. Learn more about her work at orszyflingier.com.

Justin Vazquez-Poritz is the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at New York College of Technology, CUNY.

Killian Vetter is an undergraduate researcher in the Sci Fi Lab@Georgia Tech.

Lisa Yaszek is Regents’ Professor of Science Fiction Studies at Georgia Tech, where she explores science fiction as a global language crossing centuries, continents, and cultures. Her most recent books include Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction (2016); Literary Afrofuturism in the Twenty-FirstCentury (2020, co-edited with Isiah Lavender III) and The Future is Female! Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women series (2018-present). Professor Yaszek’s ideas about science fiction as a window to cultural history have been featured in venues including The Washington Post, Food and Wine Magazine, and USA Today, and she has been an expert commentator for CBS Sunday Morning, the BBC4, Turner Classic Movies, and the AMC miniseries James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction. A past president of the Science Fiction Research Association, Professor Yaszek currently serves as a juror for the Eugie Foster Speculative Fiction Award and as Georgia Tech’s ambassador to the AtlantaFuturism movement. 

Kenrick H. Kamiya Yoshida is a Okinawan speculative fiction writer and independent scholar. His article on post-war Okinawan SF film and TV will be published in The Routledge Handbook of CoFuturisms (upcoming). He lives in Atlanta with his wife and two spectral cats.

Ida Yoshinaga is an Assistant Professor of science-fiction film at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her collection of thinkpieces, co-edited by Gerry Canavan and Sean Guynes, Uneven Futures: Strategies for Community Survival from Speculative Fiction, is being published by MIT Press this winter.

Edeliz Zuleta is a Biomechanical Engineering Major and Science Fiction Minor at Georgia Tech. She works in Professor Lisa Yaszek’s Sci Fi Lab, with funding from Georgia Tech’s Center for Women, Science, and Technology and the Ivan Allen College for the Liberal Arts.

Organizers

The 7th Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium was organized by Jill Belli, Wanett Clyde, Leigh Gold, Lucas Kwong, and Kel Karpinski. The event is supported by the School of Arts and Sciences at the New York City College of Technology, CUNY (City Tech).

Deadline for the call for papers has been extended to Nov. 15, 2022! Details below.

Call for Papers:

Science Fiction and the Archive: The Seventh Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium

Date and Time: 

Tuesday, December 6, 2022, 9:00AM-5:00PM EST

Location: 

Online via Zoom, Sponsored by the School of Arts and Sciences at the New York City College of Technology, CUNY.

Organizers:

Jill Belli, Wanett Clyde, Jason W. Ellis, Kel Karpinski, and Lucas Kwong

Continuing the explorations and conversations of the previous two symposia on “Race” and “Access” respectively, this year’s City Tech Science Fiction Symposium is focused on the idea of the “Archive.” The potential of the SF Archive as an inclusive and celebratory concept is increasing, and we hope this symposium will be a space to facilitate its expansion through our conversations and collegial debate. Of course, an archive (little a) can refer to practical considerations of Library-based Special Collections like those in the City Tech Science Fiction Collection and others, including the collected materials, cataloging, and providing access. However, we are also thinking of the Archive (big A) in terms of canonicity, cultural preservation, reading lists, and bookstore shelfspace. These latter considerations raise questions about what does and doesn’t get included within what we might call the SF Archive as well as who does and doesn’t get a say in those selections. Therefore, the SF Archive is a broadly based concept that encompasses Libraries and Special Collections and the larger cultural space of fandom, social media, and the marketplace, all of which involve the exchange of cultural capital, influence by different forms of gatekeepers, and conversations on many levels by different readers about what SF should be valued, recognized, and saved. 

The SF Archive changes over time. Perhaps most exciting for the present are the many initiatives to excavate our shared cultural histories for SF that had been overlooked or forgotten but certainly deserving of inclusion, such those by writers of color, women, and LGBTQ+ persons; and efforts to bring global SF to wider audiences thanks to growing networks of readers and scholars versed in the original language of a text and those wanting to experience those stories through translation. 

Also, Analog Science Fiction and Fact will announce the winner of their second Analog Award for Emerging Black Voices at this year’s symposium (https://www.analogsf.com/about-analog/analog-emerging-black-voices-award/).

We invite proposals for 10-20 minute scholarly paper presentations or 40-60 minute panel discussions related to the topic of Science Fiction and the Archive. Please send a 250-word abstract with title, brief 100-150-word professional bio, and contact information to Jason Ellis (jellis@citytech.cuny.edu) by November 15, 2022 October 31, 2022. Topics with a connection to the SF Archive might include but certainly are not limited to:

• What is an/the SF Archive? 
• What is the relationship and interaction between SF archives as physical places and the larger concept of an SF Archive?
• What constitutes the SF Archive? 
• Who decides what goes into the SF Archive?
• What role does generation or age play in forming the SF Archive?
• What media is included in the SF Archive?
• How can the SF Archive be inclusive and representative?
• What lineages or clusters of SF based around geography, country, language, identity, culture, etc are in or should be included in the SF Archive?
• What barriers are there to building awareness or inclusiveness of an SF type within the larger SF Archive?
• What role do digital technologies and social networks play in creating the SF Archive? How do these relate to other technologies of archive formation, including journals, magazines, zines, and conventions? 
• How are archives depicted in SF? What do these archives hold and what role do they serve within their respective narrative? Can SF depictions of archives serve as a model for the SF Archive? 

Like last year  (https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWEFb3DcsZdnfTmMuoZN3sRXxe3VRojf1), the symposium will be held online as a Zoom Webinar. This facilitates a larger and wider audience. Therefore, there are no geographical limitations for participants, but the time for the event’s program will follow Eastern Standard Time (UTC-5:00).

This event is free and open to the public as space permits: an RSVP will be included with the program when announced on the Science Fiction at City Tech website (https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/sciencefictionatcitytech/). Free registration will be required for participation.

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/.