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Videos of Presentations and Discussions from the Third Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium

Students at Third Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium.

The Third Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium was an amazing success! Here are videos from the symposium’s presentations and discussions from Nov. 27, 2018. Watch them all on YouTube via this playlist, or watch them as embedded videos below.


9:00am-9:20am
Continental Breakfast and Opening Remarks
Location: Academic Complex A105
Justin Vazquez-Poritz, Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, New York City College of Technology
Jason W. Ellis, New York City College of Technology


9:20am-10:35am
Session 1: Affect and Experimentation
Location: Academic Complex A105
Moderator: Jason W. Ellis
Leigh Gold, “The Legacy of Frankenstein: Science, Mourning, and the Ethics of Experimentation”
Lucas Kwong, “The Island Of Dr. Moreau, Fantastic Ambivalence, and the Victorian “Science Of Religion”
Robert Lestón, “Between Intervals: A Soundscape for all Us Monsters”


10:45am-12:00am
Session 2: Identity and Genre
Location: Academic Complex A105
Moderator: Jill Belli
Anastasia Klimchynskaya, “Frankenstein, Or, the Modern Fantastic: Rationalizing Wonder and the Birth of Science Fiction”
Paul Levinson, “Golem, Frankenstein, and Westworld”
Joy Sanchez-Taylor, “Genetic Engineering and non-Western Modernity in Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl and Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl”


1:15pm-2:30pm
Session 3: American Culture and Media
Location: Academic Complex A105
Moderator: A. Lavelle Porter
Aaron Barlow, “‘Fraunkensteen’: What’s No Longer Scary Becomes Funny or, How American Popular Culture Appropriates Art and Expands the Commons”
Marleen S. Barr, “Trumppunk Or Science Fiction Resists the Monster Inhabiting the White House”
Sharon Packer, “Jessica Jones (Superhero), Women & Alcohol Use Disorders”


2:40pm-3:40pm
Student Round Table: “Shaping the Future: A Student Roundtable on Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower”
Location: Academic Complex A105
Moderator: A. Lavelle Porter
Panelists: Zawad Ahmed
Marvin Blain
Kartikye Ghai
Devinnesha Ryan


4:00pm-4:50pm
Frankenstein Panel: Mary Shelley’s Novel’s Influence on Scientists and Technologists
Location: Academic Complex A105
Moderator: Justin Vazquez-Poritz
Panelists:
Heidi Boisvert, Entertainment Technology Department
Robert MacDougall, Social Sciences Department
Ashwin Satyanarayana, Computer Systems Technology Department
Jeremy Seto, Biological Sciences Department


5:00pm-6:00pm
Closing and Tour of the City Tech Science Fiction Collection
Location: City Tech Library L543
Remarks by Jason W. Ellis

Third Annual City Tech Symposium on Science Fiction, Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2018, 9:00am-6:00pm, Academic Complex A105

Third Annual Symposium Poster

Third Annual City Tech Symposium on Science Fiction, Poster Designed by Julie Bradford.

Download the program as a PDF here.

The Third Annual City Tech Symposium on Science Fiction

200 Years of Interdisciplinarity Beginning with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2018, 9:00am-6:00pm

New York City College of Technology, CUNY
Academic Complex, Room A105
285 Jay St., Brooklyn, NY 11201

Organizing Committee: Jill Belli, Jason W. Ellis, Leigh Gold, Lucas Kwong, Robert LestĂłn, and A. Lavelle Porter

Hosted by the School of Arts and Sciences.

Event hashtag: #CityTechSF


The kind of literature that came to be known as Science Fiction (SF) owes a tremendous debt to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818). In addition to being an (if not the) inaugural work of SF, Mary Shelley builds her cautionary tale around interdisciplinary approaches to science, and she takes this innovation further by applying the humanities to question the nature of being in the world, the effects of science on society, and the ethical responsibilities of scientists. These are only some of Frankenstein’s groundbreaking insights, which as Brian Aldiss and David Wingrove observe in Trillion Year Spree (1986), “is marvellously good and inexhaustible in its interest” (20). The many dimensions of interdisciplinarity in Frankenstein and the SF that followed are the focus of the Third Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium.


Schedule

9:00am-9:20am
Continental Breakfast and Opening Remarks
Location: Academic Complex A105
Justin Vazquez-Poritz, Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, New York City College of Technology
Jason W. Ellis, New York City College of Technology

9:20am-10:35am
Session 1: Affect and Experimentation
Location: Academic Complex A105
Moderator: Jason W. Ellis
Leigh Gold, “The Legacy of Frankenstein: Science, Mourning, and the Ethics of Experimentation”
Lucas Kwong, “The Island Of Dr. Moreau, Fantastic Ambivalence, and the Victorian “Science Of Religion”
Robert Lestón, “Between Intervals: A Soundscape for all Us Monsters”

10:35am-10:45am
Break

10:45am-12:00am
Session 2: Identity and Genre
Location: Academic Complex A105
Moderator: Jill Belli
Anastasia Klimchynskaya, “Frankenstein, Or, the Modern Fantastic: Rationalizing Wonder and the Birth of Science Fiction”
Paul Levinson, “Golem, Frankenstein, and Westworld”
Joy Sanchez-Taylor, “Genetic Engineering and non-Western Modernity in Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl and Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl”

12:00am-1:15pm
Lunch

1:15pm-2:30pm
Session 3: American Culture and Media
Location: Academic Complex A105
Moderator: A. Lavelle Porter
Aaron Barlow, “‘Fraunkensteen’: What’s No Longer Scary Becomes Funny or, How American Popular Culture Appropriates Art and Expands the Commons”
Marleen S. Barr, “Trumppunk Or Science Fiction Resists the Monster Inhabiting the White House”
Sharon Packer, “Jessica Jones (Superhero), Women & Alcohol Use Disorders”

2:30pm-2:40pm
Break

2:40pm-3:40pm
Student Round Table: “Shaping the Future: A Student Roundtable on Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower”
Location: Academic Complex A105
Moderator: A. Lavelle Porter
Panelists: Zawad Ahmed
Marvin Blain
Kartikye Ghai
Devinnesha Ryan

3:40pm-3:50pm
Break

4:00pm-4:50pm
Frankenstein Panel: Mary Shelley’s Novel’s Influence on Scientists and Technologists
Location: Academic Complex A105
Moderator: Justin Vazquez-Poritz
Panelists:
Heidi Boisvert, Entertainment Technology Department
Robert MacDougall, Social Sciences Department
Ashwin Satyanarayana, Computer Systems Technology Department
Jeremy Seto, Biological Sciences Department

4:50pm-5:00pm
Break/Relocate to Library

5:00pm-6:00pm
Closing and Tour of the City Tech Science Fiction Collection
Location: City Tech Library L543
Remarks by Jason W. Ellis


Symposium Participants & Contributors

Aaron Barlow teaches English at New York City College of Technology (CUNY).

Marleen S. Barr is known for her pioneering work in feminist science fiction and teaches English at the City University of New York. She has won the Science Fiction Research Association Pilgrim Award for lifetime achievement in science fiction criticism. Barr is the author of Alien to Femininity: Speculative Fiction and Feminist Theory, Lost in Space: Probing Feminist Science Fiction and Beyond, Feminist Fabulation: Space/Postmodern Fiction, and Genre Fission: A New Discourse Practice for Cultural Studies. Barr has edited many anthologies and co-edited the science fiction issue of PMLA. She is the author of the novels Oy Pioneer! and Oy Feminist Planets: A Fake Memoir. Her latest publication is When Trump Changed, the first single authored short story collection about Trump.

Jill Belli, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English and Co-Director of the OpenLab, the college’s open-source digital platform for teaching, learning, and collaborating. Jill teaches and researches utopian studies and science fiction, and she serves on the Steering Committee and as the web developer for the Society for Utopian Studies. She is currently working on a book about happiness and well-being in education.

Julie Bradford designed the symposium’s Frankenstein-themed poster. She is a BFA in Communication Design Management student at City Tech who has a strong background in illustration. When she is not distracted by cute and shiny things or busy drawing up comic adventures with her Pokemon Go buddies, she is focused on her schoolwork and catching up on her shows. While completing her BFA, she is working as a graphic design intern for City Tech’s Faculty Commons. Her online portfolio is available here: www.behance.net/
juliebradf2a85.

Jason W. Ellis is an Assistant Professor of English at the New York City College of Technology, CUNY. 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. Recently, he co-edited a special issue of New American Notes Online (NANO) on Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Leigh Dara Gold received her doctorate in German Literature in 2011 from New York University. She teaches Introduction to Poetry and English 1121 at New York City College of Technology, and Ancient Literature and Composition at Borough of Manhattan Community College. Her current research interests include science fiction’s role in the classroom, research on Ursula K. Le Guin, and connections between dance, literature, and philosophy.

Anastasia Klimchynskaya is a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. She is currently working on a dissertation on the emergence of science fiction in the 19th century, which she situates in the context of earlier genres as well as the period’s discourses around scientific and technological novelty. Her other intellectual interests include the mechanisms through which science fiction becomes science fact, literature as political engagement, and the cultural history of AI. She is also on the organizing committee of the Philadelphia Science Fiction Conference (Philcon), and a peer reviewer for the Journal of Science Fiction.

Lucas Kwong is an assistant professor of English at New York City College of Technology, where he has recently served as the coordinator for the Literary Arts Festival Writing Competitions. His scholarship includes the article “Dracula’s Apologetics of Progress,” published in a 2016 issue of Victorian Literature and Culture, as well as a forthcoming article on H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu” for Journal of Narrative Theory. His current research project examines how late Victorian fantastic fiction reimagined the era’s fascination with religious difference. He also serves as the assistant editor for New American Notes Online (www.nanocrit.com) and City Tech Writer (openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/citytechwriter), a journal of student writing.

Robert Lestón’s research includes studies in the avant garde arts of sound, image, film, and continental philosophy as they apply to expanding the scope of rhetorical invention. His work has appeared in Itineration, Kairos, Configurations, Enculturation, Atlantic Journal of Communication, and other venues. He is also coauthor of Beyond the Blogosphere: Information and Its Children (2012) with Aaron Barlow.

Paul Levinson, PhD, is Professor of Communication & Media Studies at Fordham University in NYC. His science fiction novels include The Silk Code (winner of Locus Award for Best First Science Fiction Novel of 1999), Borrowed Tides (2001), The Consciousness Plague (2002), The Pixel Eye (2003), The Plot To Save Socrates (2006), Unburning Alexandria (2013), and Chronica (2014). His stories and novels have been nominated for Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, Edgar, Prometheus, and Audie Awards. His novelette “The Chronology Protection Case” was made into short movie, now on Amazon Prime. His nonfiction books, including The Soft Edge (1997), Digital McLuhan (1999), Realspace (2003), Cellphone (2004), New New Media (2009; 2nd edition, 2012), McLuhan in an Age of Social Media (2015), and Fake News in Real Context (2016), have been translated into twelve languages. He co-edited Touching the Face of the Cosmos: On the Intersection of Space Travel and Religion in 2016. He appears on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, the History Channel, NPR, and numerous TV and radio programs. His 1972 LP, Twice Upon a Rhyme, was re-issued in 2010. He was President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, 1998-2001. He reviews television in his InfiniteRegress.tv blog, and was listed in The Chronicle of Higher Education’s “Top 10 Academic Twitterers” in 2009.

Robert MacDougall is an Assistant Professor in Philosophy at City Tech.

Sharon Packer, MD is a physician and psychiatrist who is in private practice and is Assistant Clinical Professor at Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai. She is the author of several books that link science, psychiatry and the humanities, including Neuroscience in Science Fiction Film, Cinema’s Sinister Psychiatrists, Movies and the Modern Psyche, Superheroes & Superegos: the Minds behind the Masks; Dreams in Myth, Medicine & Movies. She edited two multi-volume books on Evil in American Popular Culture and Mental Illness in Popular Culture. She writes regular articles on “Why Psychiatrists are Physicians First” for Psychiatric Times.

A. Lavelle Porter is an Assistant Professor of English at New York City College of Technology. He holds a B.A. in history from Morehouse College and a Ph.D. in English from the CUNY Graduate Center. His writing has appeared in venues such as The GC Advocate, Callaloo, The New Inquiry, Poetry Foundation, and the African American Intellectual History Society. He is currently working on a book about representations of black higher education in popular culture.

Joy Sanchez-Taylor is an Associate Professor of English at LaGuardia Community College whose research specialty is science fiction and fantasy literature by authors of color. She has published articles in Science Fiction Studies, Extrapolation and The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. Currently, she is working on a book project titled Diverse Futures: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Writers of Color.

Jeremy Seto is an Assistant Professor in Biological Sciences at City Tech.

Justin Vazquez-Poritz is the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at City Tech.


Special Thanks

Complementary magazines donated by Analog Science Fiction and Fact. For more information about the magazine and subscriptions, visit www.analogsf.com.

Complementary passes donated by The Morgan Library & Museum. Enjoy the exhibition It’s Alive! Frankenstein at 200 through January 27, 2019. For more information, visit www.themorgan.org.

Invaluable support from Dean Justin Vazquez-Poritz and Office Assistant Iva Williams.

Tremendous assistance from the Faculty Commons: Director Julia Jordan, Design Intern Julie Bradford, and the rest of the team.

CFP, 200 Years of Interdisciplinarity Beginning with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: The Third Annual City Tech Symposium on Science Fiction

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, 1831 edition.

I’m pleased to announce the call for papers for the Third Annual City Tech Symposium on Science Fiction!

Details about this year’s theme, the date of the symposium, and the deadline for paper proposals (Oct. 31, 2018) are all below.

200 Years of Interdisciplinarity Beginning with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: The Third Annual City Tech Symposium on Science Fiction

 

Date and Time: Tuesday, November 27, 2018. 9:00am-5:00pm

Location: New York City College of Technology, 300 Jay St., Namm N119, Brooklyn, NY

 

“So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein—more, far more, will I achieve; treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.”

–Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1831 edition)

“Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

–Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), Jurassic Park (1993)

Ian Malcolm’s admonition above is as much a rebuke to the lasting echo of Victor Frankenstein’s ambition to accomplish “more, far more” as it is to park owner John Hammond’s explaining, “Our scientists have done things no one could ever do before.” Films like Jurassic Park and the kind of literature that came to be known as Science Fiction (SF) owe a tremendous debt to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818). In addition to being an (if not the) inaugural work of SF, Mary Shelley builds her cautionary tale around interdisciplinary approaches to science, and she takes this innovation further by applying the humanities to question the nature of being in the world, the effects of science on society, and the ethical responsibilities of scientists. These are only some of Frankenstein’s groundbreaking insights, which as Brian Aldiss and David Wingrove observe in Trillion Year Spree (1986), “is marvellously good and inexhaustible in its interest” (20). The many dimensions of interdisciplinarity in Frankenstein and the SF that followed are the focus of the Third Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium.

In this special anniversary year of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, join us for a one-day symposium discussing interdisciplinarity and SF. Continuing conversations began in the earlier symposia, we seek to investigate SF’s power as an extrapolating art form with interdisciplinarity at its core, including interdisciplinarity within STEM fields and the interdisciplinary synergy of STEM and the humanities.

We invite presentations of 15-20 minutes on SF and interdisciplinarity. Papers on or connected to Frankenstein are particularly encouraged. Possible presentation topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and interdisciplinarity (focusing on research questions or teaching approaches)
  • Explorations of interdisciplinary ideas, approaches, and themes in SF (or what disciplinary boundaries does SF bridge)
  • SF as an interdisciplinary teaching tool (or what SF have you used or want to use in your classes to achieve interdisciplinary outcomes)
  • SF’s interdisciplinary imaginative functions (or Gedankenexperiment, considering ethical issues, unintended consequences, or unexpected breakthroughs)
  • Studying SF through an interdisciplinary lens (or combining otherwise discipline-bound approaches to uncover new meanings)
  • Bridging STEM and the humanities via SF (or SF as an interdisciplinary cultural work that embraces STEAM—Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Mathematics)
  • SF and identity (or how interdisciplinarity in SF reveals, supports, or explores issues of identity, culture, sex, gender, and race)
  • SF and place (or how SF’s settings are interdisciplinary, or where it is written fosters its interdisciplinarity)
  • Interdisciplinarity and archival work in SF collections (or making the City Tech Science Fiction Collection work for faculty, students, and researchers across disciplines)

Please send your abstract (no more than 250 words), brief bio, and contact information to Jason Ellis (jellis@citytech.cuny.edu) by Oct. 31, 2018.

The program will be announced by Nov. 12, 2018 on the Science Fiction at City Tech website here: https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/sciencefictionatcitytech/.

Hosted 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 located 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/.

Videos of 2nd Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium

Below are videos of the presentations made at the 2nd Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium on Extrapolation, Interdisciplinarity, and Learning held on Dec. 6, 2017. They are included in the order from the program with the last video being the very special keynote address by Samuel R. Delany. If you’d like to watch all these as a playlist on YouTube, follow this link.

Program for the 2nd Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium, Wednesday, Dec 6, 2017, 9:00am-6:00pm

Poster for Second City Tech Science Fiction Symposium.

Event poster by Marlon Palmer.

 

Extrapolation, Interdisciplinarity, and Learning

 

The Second Annual City Tech Symposium on Science Fiction

 

Wednesday, December 6, 2017

New York City College of Technology, CUNY

Keynote Speaker: Samuel R. Delany

Organizing Committee: Jason W. Ellis and A. Lavelle Porter.

Hosted by the School of Arts and Sciences at the New York City College of Technology, CUNY.

 

Knowledge is indivisible. When people grow wise in one direction, they are sure to make it easier for themselves to grow wise in other directions as well. On the other hand, when they split up knowledge, concentrate on their own field, and scorn and ignore other fields, they grow less wise—even in their own field. How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection. . . . That is all wrong. . . . If we go through the history of human advance, we find that there are many places where art and science intermingled and where an advance in one was impossible without an advance in the other.

–Isaac Asimov, A Roving Mind (1983)

Over twenty years after C. P. Snow published The Two Cultures, the unparalleled writer, scientist, and educator Isaac Asimov defends the “interconnection” between the sciences and the arts. In fact, he demonstrates the importance of interdisciplinarity—both within STEM fields as well as between STEM and the humanities—through his unsurpassed 500+ books ranging from Biblical scholarship to biochemistry, and science to science fiction. He shows how disciplines inform and strengthen one another to create greater knowledge and wisdom, which in turn leads to greater understanding and new insights. While significant strides have been made in promoting interdisciplinarity, Asimov’s defense continues to echo today.

This symposium explores SF in the spirit of Asimov’s defense by exploring interdisciplinarity through the lens of science fiction—a mediating ‘third culture’ (borrowing Snow’s term) that combines the sciences and the humanities to extrapolate new worlds while reflecting on our own. Together, we aim to uncover science fiction’s interdisciplinary roots as a literary form, lens for research, and pedagogical approach.

 


Schedule

 

9:00AM-9:15AM

Opening Remarks

Location: Namm 119

Justin Vazquez-Poritz, Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, New York City College of Technology

Jason W. Ellis, New York City College of Technology

 

9:15AM-10:50AM

Session 1: Knowledge, Language, and Computing

Location: Namm 119

Moderator: Lucas Kwong

Aaron Barlow, “Crashing Discipline: How Philip K. Dick Expanded Conversation”

Jill Belli, “Composing Resistance: Writing and Revision in Science Fiction Texts”

Johannah Rodgers, “The Genealogy of an Image, or, What Does Literature (Not) Have To Do With the History of Computing?: Tracing the Sources and Reception of Gulliver’s ‘Knowledge Engine’”

Jessica Roman, “‘Any direction might as well be forward’: An examination of the Science, Technology, Linguistics and Philosophy of Ted Chiang’s The Story of Your Life”

 

10:50AM-11:00AM

Break

 

11:00AM-12:20PM

Session 2: Exploring Boundaries and Possibilities

Location: Namm 119

Moderator: Sean Scanlan

Leigh Dara Gold, “Ursula K Le Guin’s ‘SchrĂśdinger’s Cat’ as Interdisciplinary Gedankenexperiment”

Adam Heidebrink-Bruno, “Structural Violence of Late Capitalism and the Limiting of Radical Imagination”

Kimon Keramidas, “Science Fiction: Humanity, Technology, the Present, the Future”

 

12:20AM-1:30PM

Lunch

 

1:30PM-2:20PM

Session 3: An Epic Entanglement in the Glorious World of Science Fiction: Panel Discussion About NEH-Funded “Cultural History of Digital Technology”

Location: Namm 119

Moderator: Jill Belli

Sandra Cheng, Anne Leonhardt, Satyanand Singh, and Peter Spillane

 

2:20PM-2:30PM

Break

 

2:30PM-3:50PM

Session 4: Science, Fiction, and Ethics

Location: Namm 119

Moderator: Aaron Barlow

Marleen S. Barr, “‘You Never Would Believe Where the Keebler Cookies
Come From . . . They’re Baked In Magic Ovens, and There’s No
Factory’: Ecological Plant-Based Urban Planning Makes Eleanor Cameron’s The Wonderful Flight To The Mushroom Planet Real”

Anastasia Klimchynskaya, “Imaginative Possibility, Virtual Laboratories, and Communal Spaces: Science Fiction and the History of Experimental Science”

Sharon Packer, “Luke Cage Comics and Race-Based Unethical Medical Experiments”

 

3:50PM-4:00PM

Break

 

4:00PM-5:00PM

Keynote Address by Samuel R. Delany

Location: Namm 119

Introduction: Syed Ahmed

 

5:00PM-5:15PM

Break

 

5:15PM-6:00PM

Oral History of the City Tech Science Fiction Collection, and Book Signing with Samuel R. Delany

Location: Atrium 543C, Library Archives, Enter the library on the fourth floor of the Atrium Building, walk up to the fifth floor inside the library, walk to the left past the stacks, and turn left again.

Keith Muchowski, College Archivist, New York City College of Technology

Jason W. Ellis, New York City College of Technology


 

Symposium Speakers

Syed Ahmed is an Associate in Science (AS) in Liberal Arts and Sciences student at New York City College of Technology. He is currently enrolled in Professor A. Lavelle Porter’s ENG 3403, One Major Writer: Samuel R. Delany class.

Aaron Barlow teaches English at New York City College of Technology and has written often on Philip K. Dick.

Marleen S. Barr is known for her pioneering work in feminist science fiction and teaches English at the City University of New York. She has won the Science Fiction Research Association Pilgrim Award for lifetime achievement in science fiction criticism. Barr is the author of Alien to Femininity: Speculative Fiction and Feminist Theory, Lost in Space: Probing Feminist Science Fiction and Beyond, Feminist Fabulation: Space/Postmodern Fiction, and Genre Fission: A New Discourse Practice for Cultural Studies. Barr has edited many anthologies and co-edited the science fiction issue of PMLA. She is the author of the novels Oy Pioneer! and Oy Feminist Planets: A Fake Memoir.

Jill Belli, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of English and Co-Director of the OpenLab, the college’s open-source digital platform for teaching, learning, and collaborating. Jill teaches and researches utopian studies and science fiction, collaborates on a digital science fiction project, the Futures Past Archive, and serves on the Steering Committee and as the web developer for the Society for Utopian Studies. She is currently working on a book about happiness and well-being in education.

Sandra Cheng is an Assistant Professor of Art History at New York City College of Technology. Her research interests include seventeenth-century art and theory; the history of collecting, drawing and studio practice; history of monstrosity in the Renaissance and Baroque; comics and caricature; and women photographers of the early twentieth century. She is a Project Co-Director of the NEH-funded “Cultural History of Digital Technology” project.

Samuel R. Delany is an influential SF writer, recognized literary critic, and retired professor. Born in 1942 and raised in Harlem, he published his first novel, The Jewels of Aptor, at the age of 20. His SF has won many of the field’s highest accolades, including: Hugo for Best Short Story (“Aye, and Gomorrah…”, 1967), Hugo and Nebula Awards (“Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones,” 1968), and Nebula Award for Best Novel (Babel-17, 1966; and The Einstein Intersection, 1967). Delany’s critical studies of SF, such as The Jewel-Hinged Jaw and Starboard Wine continue to fuel debate. For The Motion of Light in Water, he won the Hugo for Best Nonfiction. Delany is also a retired professor. He has taught as a professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, of English at SUNY Buffalo, and of English and Creative Writing at Temple University. Delany’s considerable contributions to the SF field have been recognized by the Science Fiction Research Association’s Pilgrim Award in 1985 and the J. Lloyd Eaton Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010. In 2013 he was named the 31st Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master of Science Fiction by the Science Fiction Writers of America. For his lifetime contributions to LGBTQ studies he received the Kessler Award in 1997 from the CLAGS Center for LGBTQ Studies, housed at the CUNY Graduate Center.   

Jason W. Ellis is an Assistant Professor of English at New York City College of Technology, and a former Marion L. Brittain Fellow of Georgia Tech. He coedited The Postnational Fantasy: Postcolonialism, Cosmopolitics and Science Fiction (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011). His research interests include science fiction, digital technology, and LEGO. Read about his work at dynamicsubspace.net.

Leigh Dara Gold received her doctorate in German Literature in 2011 from New York University. She teaches Introduction to Poetry and English 1121 at New York City College of Technology, and Ancient Literature and Composition at Borough of Manhattan Community College. Her current research interests include science fiction’s role in the classroom, research on Ursula K. Le Guin, and connections between dance, literature, and philosophy.

Adam Heidebrink-Bruno is a graduate student in Lehigh University’s Literature and Social Justice program. He is particularly interested in how storytelling, broadly conceived, is used to mediate and influence real world events, including culture and politics. Adam’s scholarship focuses on contemporary American fiction with an emphasis on science fiction.

Kimon Keramidas is associate director and clinical assistant professor in the Center for Experimental Humanities in New York University’s Graduate School for Arts and Sciences. Kimon is a cultural historian whose research focuses on the study of media and technology through the lenses of political economy and sociology of culture. His most recent project was the exhibition The Interface Experience: Forty Years of Personal Computing which presented some of the most ubiquitous objects in the history of personal computing in tactile and interactive displays. Kimon’s research and teaching considers digital tools not only as objects of study, but also as a means for performing research and scholarship. Kimon is active in the fields of digital humanities and interactive technology and pedagogy, and has helped found and is on the editorial collective of The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, and founded and is on the steering committee of New York City Digital Humanities. Read about his work at kimonkeramidas.com.

Anastasia Klimchynskaya is a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania, where she’s working on a dissertation on the emergence of science fiction in the 19th century. In particular, she situates the rise of the genre within the history of science, focusing on the way new scientific paradigms, modes of thought, and forms of knowledge gave rise to it, and on creating a theory of the genre based in that history. She has taught several courses on science fiction and the history of science, including “Living in a Science Fiction World,” which used sci-fi to tackle contemporary sociopolitical, legal, and technological issues. Her other intellectual interests include exploring the mechanisms through which science fiction becomes science fact, the way science fiction can be used as a tool to develop law, policy, and research agendas, and the semiotics of science fiction.

Lucas Kwong is an assistant professor of English at New York City College of Technology, where he has recently served as the coordinator for the 2016 and 2017 Literary Arts Festival Writing Competitions.  His scholarship on religion, the novel, and the fantastic includes the article “Dracula’s Apologetics of Progress,” published in a 2016 issue of Victorian Literature and Culture.  His current research project examines how, through the fantastic fiction of the late Victorian period, authors such as Bram Stoker and Rudyard Kipling reimagined their era’s fascination with religious difference.

Anne Leonhardt is an Associate Professor of Architecture at New York City College of Technology, and she is a registered architect in the State of New York. Her research, teaching, and design practice focus on the material and environmental interfaces between architectural design, form, and tectonics. Areas of expertise include associative computational design, building performance analysis, information modeling systems, fabrication, and sustainable materials and energy. She is the Project Director of the NEH-funded “Cultural History of Digital Technology” project.

Keith Muchowski is a librarian and professor at New York City College of Technology (CUNY). His areas of interest include nineteenth and twentieth century military history, the politics and culture of the Cold War, and the Roosevelt family.

Sharon Packer, MD is a physician and psychiatrist who is in private practice and is Assistant Clinical Professor at Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai. She is the author of several books that link science, psychiatry and the humanities, including Neuroscience in Science Fiction Film, Cinema’s Sinister Psychiatrists, Movies and the Modern Psyche, Superheroes & Superegos: the Minds behind the Masks; Dreams in Myth, Medicine & Movies. She edited two multi-volume books on Evil in American Popular Culture and Mental Illness in Popular Culture. She writes regular articles on “Why Psychiatrists are Physicians First” for Psychiatric Times.

A. Lavelle Porter is an Assistant Professor of English at New York City College of Technology. He holds a B.A. in history from Morehouse College and a Ph.D. in English from the CUNY Graduate Center. His writing has appeared in venues such as The GC Advocate, Callaloo, The New Inquiry, Poetry Foundation, and the African American Intellectual History Society. He is currently working on a book about representations of black higher education in popular culture.

Johannah Rodgers is a writer, visual artist, and educator whose work explores issues related to representation and communication practices across media. She is the author of 52worddrawings (mimeograph, 2017), Technology: A Reader for Writers (Oxford University Press, 2014),  the digital fiction project, DNA (The Brooklyn Rail, 2014), and sentences (Red Dust, 2007).  Her visual works include the Excel Drawing Series and The How Much Project, which explores the intersection of aesthetics, civic literacy, and social action in relation to income inequality in the United States via digital and analog visualization tools. She teaches writing and literature courses at The City University of New York, where she is an associate professor in English at the New York City College of Technology. Read about her work at johannahrodgers.net or on Twitter @what_is_writing.

Jessica Roman is a Bachelor of Science in Applied Chemistry student at New York City College of Technology.

Sean Scanlan is an Associate Professor of English at New York City College of Technology, where he specializes in literary technologies and American and global literature. He is the founder and editor of the peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal NANO: New American Notes Online. And he recently published an article titled “Global Homesickness in William Gibson’s Blue Ant Trilogy” in a 2016 collection titled The City after 9/11.

Satyanand Singh is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at New York City College of Technology. His research interests include Number Theory, Cryptography, Probability, and Algebra. His research appears in The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, The International Journal of Number Theory, CMJ, and the International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology. He is a Project Co-Director of the NEH-funded “Cultural History of Digital Technology” project.

Peter Spellane, Ph. D., is an associate professor and member of the Chemistry department at New York City College of Technology. Recent work with City Tech colleagues includes the design and launch of new courses in environmental science (NSF support) and of three NEH-funded projects that integrate humanities with education in science and technology, “Water and Work: The Ecology of Downtown Brooklyn,” “Along the Shore, Changing and Preserving the Landmarks of the Brooklyn’s Industrial Waterfront,” and “A Cultural History of Digital Technology.” His current work concerns the history and environmental legacy of chemicals production and petroleum refining in New York City in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

 

Event Poster Designer

Marlon Palmer is a senior at New York City College of Technology where he is studying Graphic Design. He’s been a design intern at NYCCT’s Faculty Commons since 2014 where he has worked on many projects including, Scholars Exchange, Nucleus, The Brooklyn Waterfront Research Center (BWRC) Annual Conference, and City Tech’s Science Fiction Symposium. View his portfolio here: https://www.behance.net/palmerjr.

Call for Papers: Extrapolation, Interdisciplinarity, and Learning: The Second Annual City Tech Symposium on Science Fiction [Updated: Keynote Speaker, Samuel R. Delany]

Extrapolation, Interdisciplinarity, and Learning: The Second Annual City Tech Symposium on Science Fiction

 

Date:               Wednesday, December 6, 2017

 

Location:         New York City College of Technology, 300 Jay St., Namm N119,

Brooklyn, NY

 

Keynote Speaker: Samuel R. Delany

 

            Knowledge is indivisible. When people grow wise in one direction, they are sure to make it easier for themselves to grow wise in other directions as well. On the other hand, when they split up knowledge, concentrate on their own field, and scorn and ignore other fields, they grow less wise—even in their own field.

How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection. . . . That is all wrong. . . . If we go through the history of human advance, we find that there are many places where art and science intermingled and where an advance in one was impossible without an advance in the other.

–Isaac Asimov, A Roving Mind (1983)

 

Over twenty years after C. P. Snow published The Two Cultures, the unparalleled writer, scientist, and educator Isaac Asimov defends the “interconnection” between the sciences and the arts. In fact, he demonstrates the importance of interdisciplinarity—both within STEM fields as well as between STEM and the humanities—through his unsurpassed 500+ books ranging from Biblical scholarship to biochemistry, and science to science fiction. He shows how disciplines inform and strengthen one another to create greater knowledge and wisdom, which in turn leads to greater understanding and new insights. While significant strides have been made in promoting interdisciplinarity, Asimov’s defense continues to echo today.

 

Join us for a one-day symposium in the spirit of Asimov’s defense by exploring interdisciplinarity through the lens of science fiction—a mediating ‘third culture’ (borrowing Snow’s term) that combines the sciences and the humanities to extrapolate new worlds while reflecting on our own. This symposium aims to explore science fiction as an interdisciplinary literary form, a tool for teaching interdisciplinarity, and a cultural art form benefiting from interdisciplinary research approaches.

 

We invite presentations of 15-20 minutes on SF and interdisciplinarity. Possible presentation topics include, but are not limited to:

 

  • Explorations of interdisciplinary ideas, approaches, and themes in SF (or what disciplinary boundaries does SF bridge)
  • SF as an interdisciplinary teaching tool (or what SF have you used or want to use in your classes to achieve interdisciplinary outcomes)
  • SF’s interdisciplinary imaginative functions (or Gedankenexperiment, considering ethical issues, unintended consequences, or unexpected breakthroughs)
  • Studying SF through an interdisciplinary lens (or combining otherwise discipline-bound approaches to uncover new meanings)
  • Bridging STEM and the humanities via SF (or SF as an interdisciplinary cultural work that embraces STEAM—Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Mathematics)
  • SF and place (or how SF’s settings are interdisciplinary, or where it is written fosters its interdisciplinarity)
  • Interdisciplinarity and archival work in SF collections (or making the City Tech Science Fiction Collection work for faculty, students, and researchers across disciplines)

 

Please send your abstract (no more than 250 words), brief bio, and contact information to Jason Ellis (jellis@citytech.cuny.edu) by Oct. 31, 2017.

 

The program will be announced by Nov. 15, 2017 on the Science Fiction at City Tech website here: https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/sciencefictionatcitytech/.

 

Hosted by the School of Arts and Sciences at the New York City College of Technology, CUNY.

 

The annual 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 located in the Archives and Special Collections of the Ursula C. Schwerin Library (Atrium Building, A543C, 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/.

Symposium on Amazing Stories was a Great Success!

Student Roundtable Session. Photo by Jason Ellis.

Student Roundtable Session. Photo by Jason Ellis.

On Tuesday, November 29, over 70 attendees and presenters gathered at City Tech to celebrate the new City Tech Science Fiction Collection and discuss the importance of science fiction as a method for understanding the effect of science and technology on humanity, a pedagogical tool in writing, history, and interdisciplinary learning environments, and a medium for understanding our place in the world, imagining different possible worlds, and conceptualizing new paths forward–including career paths. In addition to presenters from City Tech, there were speakers from City University of New York, Columbia University, Winthrop Group, Yale University, and York College. Very importantly, the City Tech Science Fiction Collection’s initiator and former City Tech professor, Alan Lovegreen flew out from California where he now teaches at Orange Coast College. A roundtable of City Tech students closed out the presentation portion of the symposium, and we ended the day with a presentation on the acquisition of the City Tech Science Fiction Collection and a tour of the archives. It was a full day of conversation, learning, and sharing. Its success points the way toward the next symposium to be held next year. Last but not least, the Symposium on Amazing Stories Organizing Committee–Profs. Jason W. Ellis (chair), Aaron Barlow, Jill Belli, and Mary Nilles wish to thank everyone who took part in the symposium and the many people–administrators, colleagues, and students–who made the event such an enjoyable and meaningful event!

Prof. Jason Ellis welcoming everyone. Photo by Sean Scanlan.

Prof. Jason Ellis welcoming everyone. Photo by Sean Scanlan.

Dean of School of Arts and Sciences Justin Vazquez-Poritz opening the symposium. Photo by Sean Scanlan.

Dean of School of Arts and Sciences Justin Vazquez-Poritz opening the symposium. Photo by Sean Scanlan.

Alan Lovegreen presenting on Hugo Gernsback and air wonder stories. Photo by Sean Scanlan.

Alan Lovegreen presenting on Hugo Gernsback and air wonder stories. Photo by Sean Scanlan.

Grant Wythoff presenting. Photo by Sean Scanlan.

Grant Wythoff presenting. Photo by Sean Scanlan.

Sean Scanlan presenting on William Gibson, Pattern Recognition, and Collecting to a full audience. Photo by Jason Ellis.

Sean Scanlan presenting on William Gibson, Pattern Recognition, and Collecting to a full audience. Photo by Jason Ellis.

R to L: Jason Ellis, Leigh Dara Gold, Johannah Rodgers, and Daniel Phelps. Photo by Sean Scanlan.

R to L: Jason Ellis, Leigh Dara Gold, Johannah Rodgers, and Daniel Phelps. Photo by Sean Scanlan.

L to R: A. Lavelle Porter, Stephen Chambers, and Jill Belli. Photo by Jason W. Ellis.

L to R: A. Lavelle Porter, Stephen Chambers, and Jill Belli. Photo by Jason W. Ellis.

Jill Belli (2nd from left) moderates the student roundtable. Photo by Jason Ellis.

Jill Belli (2nd from left) moderates the student roundtable. Photo by Jason Ellis.

Touring the City Tech Science Fiction Collection. Photo by Jason Ellis.

Touring the City Tech Science Fiction Collection. Photo by Jason Ellis.

Prof. Jason Ellis describing the collection. Photo by Sean Scanlan.

Prof. Jason Ellis describing the collection. Photo by Sean Scanlan.

Profs. Barlow, Ellis, and Noonan Present at James Madison University’s First Pulp Studies Symposium

jmu-pulp-studies

On Oct. 7, 2016, Professors Aaron Barlow (in absentia, read by Jason Ellis), Mark Noonan, and Jason Ellis led a full paper session devoted to the City Tech Science Fiction Collection. Prof. Barlow presented on the collection’s acquisition, its original collector, and its importance to the materiality of education that we do at City Tech. Prof. Noonan presented on pulp publishing history in New York City and how it relates to the magazine holdings in the collection. Finally, Prof. Ellis presented on how he has used the collection pedagogically for students (removing readings from the abstraction of anthologization) and for faculty (using SF as a bridge between the humanities and STEM fields). Below are photos taken by Prof. Caroline Hellman of the session.

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CFP: Symposium on Amazing Stories: Inspiration, Learning, and Adventure in Science Fiction (Date Updated)

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Symposium on Amazing Stories: Inspiration, Learning, and Adventure in Science Fiction

Date: Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2016, 9:00AM-5:00PM Wednesday, November 30, 2016, 9:00AM-5:00PM

Location: New York City College of Technology, 300 Jay St., Namm N119

“By ‘scientifiction’ I mean the Jules Verne, H. G. Wells and Edgar Allan Poe type of story—a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision … Not only do these amazing tales make tremendously interesting reading—they are always instructive.”
-Hugo Gernsback, 1926.

When the widely recognized “Father of Science Fiction,” Hugo Gernsback first coined the term that captured the essence of the genre we now call science fiction (SF), he envisioned SF as a new form of literature that inspired with prophecy, taught with scientific and technical facts, and engaged with adventure. These traits unique to SF have launched many of its readers on trajectories into the STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) fields.

Join us for a one-day symposium exploring SF as a medium for engaging imagination, a means for exploring STEM/STEAM fields, and an instrument for discovering interdisciplinary connections, and also celebrating the new City Tech Science Fiction Collection held in the Archives and Special Collections of the Ursula C. Schwerin Library.

We invite presentations of 10-15 minutes on SF and how it fulfills learning, inspiration, and fun in STEAM-focused environments. Possible presentation topics include, but are not limited to:

• SF inspired STEM careers (or what SF inspired you to enter your field?)
• SF as a teaching tool (or what SF have you used or want to use in your classes?)
• SF’s imaginative functions (or Gedankenexperiment, considering ethical issues and unintended consequences, visualizing the influence of science and technology on society)
• Bridging STEM and the humanities via SF (or SF as an interdisciplinary cultural work that embraces STEAM)
• SF and place (or SF’s deep roots in Brooklyn and New York City)
• The fun and learning in archival work in SF collections (or making the City Tech Science Fiction Collection work for faculty, students, and researchers)

Please send a 100-word abstract, brief bio, and contact information to Jason Ellis (jellis at citytech.cuny.edu) by Oct. 31, 2016. Schedule will be announced Nov.15, 2016.

Organizing Committee: Jason Ellis (Chair), Aaron Barlow, Jill Belli, and Mary Nilles.

Hosted by the School of Arts and Sciences at the New York City College of Technology, CUNY.