Call for papers: Speculative Futurities – Queer and Crip Interventions
Narratives and technologies generally associated with popular genres like science fiction and speculative fiction – such as AI, robotics, virtual reality, biometrics, genetic engineering and reproductive and biomedical interventions – are increasingly becoming part of everyday life. This special issue of lambda nordica aims to explore queer and/or crip interventions in this nexus of technologies and narratives, which currently saturate the present with notions of futurity, weaving in and out of the speculative imagination. As shown and theorized by queer and crip scholarship, the future is a contested site: at worst, the future and its technologies are exclusionary or even lethal for queer and crip ways of being; at best, it is a site for radical possibility and change (Edelman 2004; Halberstam 2005; Muñoz 2009; Freeman 2010; Kafer 2013; Garland-Thomson 2017; Schalk 2018; Lothian 2018; Obourn 2020). It thus remains imperative to challenge or (re)imagine these speculative futurities from queer and crip perspectives.
For this special issue, we invite scholars to consider how queer and/or crip ways of being and queer/crip theories (including adjacent theoretical approaches such as critical disability studies, neuroqueer and trans studies) can critique and (re)imagine science fictional narratives and technologies. In other words, we seek queer and crip challenges to, or (re)imaginings of, speculative futurity.
The special issue aims to explore questions such as: What implications do these technologies and narratives have for the future of queer and/or crip subjects or for queer and crip ways of being? Where and in what ways do queer and crip perspectives intersect with the ambiguous and varied imaginaries of speculative futurity? How can queer and crip theories contribute to other ways of worlding or challenge binary understandings of the imagined future and related technologies? Where and in what ways do queer and crip perspectives intersect with the ambiguous and varied imaginaries of speculative futurity?
Suggested topics for articles are for example, but not limited to:
- Queer and/or crip readings of science fiction, fantasy, the fantastic and speculative fiction in literature, film, television, gaming, art and other media
- Queer and/or crip speculative future imaginaries across cultural contexts
- Queering and/or cripping AI
- Queer and/or crip perspectives on technologies such as somatechnics, reproductive technology and biotechnologies
- Embodiment, sexuality, desire, care, kinship and/or pleasure in relation to futurity and/or technology
- Queer and crip futures in relation to climate futurities and catastrophes, the Anthropocene, the more-than-human, and posthumanism
- Afrofuturism
- Queer and crip temporality, or other alternative temporalities
- Progress, betterment, development, linearity
- Utopia, dystopia, and critical future studies
Deadline for abstracts (300–500 words): 20 December 2024
Deadline for articles: 1 June 2025
Expected publication date: Mid to late 2026
Articles should be between 6,000 and 8,000 words (including references and notes), in English, and not previously published. They will be subject to lambda nordica’s regular review process. See further submission guidelines on the website. Please send queries and submissions to special issue editors (see below). Welcome with your submission!
Contact details for special issue editors:
Anna Bark Persson: anna.bark@umu.se
Josefine Wälivaara: josefine.walivaara@umu.se
