Edited by Wendy Roy, University of Saskatchewan
Deadline: February 1, 2022
During a global pandemic, the ways that speculative fiction, film, and television comment on the present as well as the future have become acutely evident. These genres ask readers to consider environmental, health, technological, and political events and developments in the world today, and the impacts these may have on the world of the future. They are often used by their creators to represent and speculate on key societal issues, such as relations of class, gender, and race, as well as issues of health safety, environmental destruction, and political conflict. In Canada, speculative writing has become a tool to interrogate colonial systems and histories, and to open up spaces for members of often marginalized groups, including women, Indigenous peoples, members of LGBTQ2S+ communities, and others whose lives are inflected by cultural difference. A variety of speculative worlds have achieved popularity through films and television/internet series, some of which are adapted from other genres.
We invite submission of academic papers and creative works that explore or put into practice the re-envisioning/revision of futures and societies in or relating to Canada. What do speculative texts tell us? Which visions of “Canada” do we find in speculative texts? How do these visions reflect our own perceptions of the world? Does this kind of literary and/or visual imagination offer space for grief, resilience, and hope? Does it help us respond constructively to crises or achieve social change?
Contributions can take a range of approaches related to speculative writing in Canada, including:
- Speculations on global pandemics and other health crises
- Indigenous and decolonizing speculations
- Environmental and/or technological changes and developments in speculative writing
- Speculations on language and power
- Gender and sexuality in speculative writing
- Disability in speculative writing
- Geographical speculations in the real or virtual world
- Speculative writing for children
- Speculative poetry
- Speculation and interdisciplinarity
- Dystopian, utopian, and anti-utopian worlds
- Apocalyptic scenarios and post-apocalyptic futures
- Speculations on the screen: movies, documentaries, television and internet series, video
- games Speculative adaptations
- Speculative creations, including short works of speculative fiction or poetry
Submissions should be original and previously unpublished, and should include the following:
- A maximum 8,000-word essay or creative work, double-spaced. (Note that expanded and revised versions of presentations at the 20/21 Vision: Speculating in Literature and Film in Canada conference in August 2021 may be part of the collection.) 9th
- Academic essays should be 6,000-8,000 words, in MLA Handbook edition style, with the word-count including endnotes and works cited.
- Your name, contact information (including mailing address, email address, and telephone number), and institutional or other affiliation.
- A 50-word biographical statement.
Please e-mail your proposal in a Word document to Wendy Roy of the Department of English at the University of Saskatchewan, 2021vision@usask.ca, by February 1, 2022. Contact Dr. Roy if you have questions.