[Commlist] CFP The (Post)human Condition in Times of Crisis (Electricdreams: Between Fiction and Society II)

CFP: Electricdreams - Between fiction and society II
"The (Post)human Condition in Times of Crisis: The Interplay between 
Artificial Intelligence, Otherness, and Environmentalism"

Call for papers for an international in-person conference on speculative 
fiction, science fiction and fantasy fiction to be held in Milan, Italy, 
October 18-20, 2023. The conference is organized and hosted by IULM 
University of Milan, in collaboration with Complutense University of 
Madrid and the HISTOPIA research group.

Fields of interest: literature, cinema, TV series, comics, 
games/videogames, new media, cultural studies, media studies, visual 
studies.

The international conference Electricdreams - Between Fiction and 
Society II invites a discussion on speculative fiction, science fiction 
and fantasy fiction across different media to examine the link between 
human, posthuman and transhuman within contexts of crisis. The call aims 
at investigating how our society looks toward the future and thematizes 
utopian or dystopian "multiple horizons." Literature, film, TV series, 
comics, video games, and new narrative media have always imagined the 
relationship between 'naturalia' and 'artificialia' and told the world 
through the lens, often twisted, of several embodiments of one of the 
most beloved and feared posthuman archetypes in history: the 
Frankenstein monster. Robots, androids, cyborgs, sentient computers, and 
other products endowed with human-like intelligence have crowded and 
still crowd popular culture. The advent of a new digital understanding, 
achieved by the development of forms of artificial intelligence, has 
rapidly transformed human society, becoming an increasingly widespread 
everyday presence. Where AI can be seen and conceived as an opportunity 
to improve human life, such as in the medical or technological fields, 
concern persists that it may replace human values and undermine our 
independence and our ability to make choices. The new relationship 
between humans, machines, and algorithms has raised important ethical 
issues related to: data collection and privacy control, impact on 
employment, human responsibility, cognitive bias, moral automation, 
environmental impact, biological evolution, and international crises. 
Popular culture has always played a key role in helping people 
understand these and other complex situations: it provides tools for 
resistance, as even the darkest narrative can invoke awareness, 
mobilization, challenge to the status quo, and imagination of a utopian 
future. In this sense, popular culture can be seen as a means of 
emancipation and building a better world. As Stuart Hall states, 
"popular culture is an arena in which ideologies, power relations and 
social identities are negotiated and contested: it is able to give voice 
to minorities, offering alternative representations and challenging 
dominant discourses, contributing to the construction of a new reality."
Therein, the posthuman represents a dream and a nightmare, a possibility 
of progress and a sentence, a medium of freedom or an act of 
exploitation. It embodies both an otherness to be embraced and an enemy 
to be feared. Rosi Braidotti envisions "the posthuman turn as an 
incredible opportunity to decide together what and who we are capable of 
becoming and a unique opportunity for humanity to reinvent itself 
affirmatively, through creativity and strengthening ethical 
relationships, and not just negatively, through vulnerability and fear. 
It is an opportunity to identify new possibilities for resistance and 
empowerment on a global scale." The posthuman could become, therefore, a 
game, more or less material and more or less philosophical, to reflect 
upon diversity, to study the heterogeneity of the world and open up new 
paths of integration, fusion, empathy and respect, as in the works of 
Isaac Asimov (The Bicentennial Man, I, Robot, ....) and Greg Egan 
(Teranesia, Schild's Ladder, ...), in the films of Neill Blomkamp 
(Chappie), in video games such as Detroit: Become Human. At the same 
time, however, going beyond the human could imply dangers and new 
problems and even lay the groundwork for unprecedented social upheavals. 
As many dark fantasies have shown us, from Metropolis to Westworld, via 
Blade Runner and Deus Ex, oppressive, hypermechanized and dehumanized 
realities could also await us, in which the Homo Sapiens and the Machina 
Sapiens could blur into one another or find themselves opposites, in 
serious conflict. How do novels, short stories, films, television 
series, comic books, video games, and other hybrid narrative forms 
depict the relationship between humans and artificial intelligence and 
what solutions do they propose in this regard? How do the concepts of 
posthuman and transhuman shape culture and the collective imagination? 
How have speculative fiction, science fiction, and fantasy changed 
during and after the advent of machines and algorithms in our everyday 
lives and what impact have they generated on the world around us? These 
are just some of the questions that the international conference will 
try to address. Proposals may cover the following topics, although they 
are not limited to them:

- Co-evolution of AI, science fiction, and humanity: how the 
relationships between these entities are addressed within the collective 
imagination;
- Posthuman and transhuman imaginaries;
- Machines and algorithms: histories, fears, and solutions;
- Posthuman postcolonial and neocolonial: critiques of dominant/Western 
canons;
- Artificial intelligence as a tool for environmental problem solving;
- Climate justice, technologies, and migration;
- Bio-technological hybridizations and the role of the cyborg;
- Solar punk narratives: sustainability, terraforming and geoengineering;
- The posthuman and transhuman as embodiments of otherness: politics of 
gender, queerness, ethnicity, disability, nationality, religion, 
migration, ...;
- The interface between AI and virtual reality in art and entertainment;
- Popular culture as a means of social transformation.


The conference will be held in English and in-person. We will be happy 
to consider proposals from researchers and scholars at any level of 
career advancement. You may send proposals containing an abstract 
(maximum 300 words) for a 20-minute presentation, a brief biographical 
note (maximum 100 words), and affiliation and contact information to 
(electricdreams.conference /at/ gmail.com) 
<mailto:(electricdreams.conference /at/ gmail.com)> by June 18, 2023. Whole 
panel proposals consisting of three/four talks are also welcome: please 
include a brief introduction about the theme of the proposed panel, 
along with abstract and brief biography of each participant. At the end 
of the conference, an award will be given to the three most original 
presentations.

Important dates:
Abstract submission deadline: June 18, 2023
Notification of acceptance: July 2023
The international conference will be held in-person on October 18-20, 
2023 at IULM University in Milan, as part of the 
"Sognielettrici"/Electricdreams International Film Festival (October 
16-21, 2023).

Conference registration: 40 €
Social dinner (optional): 20 €

Criteria for the award for the most original research:
Contextualization of the subject of study
Novelty of the proposed topic
Research objectives.
Well-designed and scientifically structured argumentation
Active participation in the conference sessions

Scientific committee:
Gianni Canova
Elisabetta Di Minico
Gemma Fantacci
Stefano Locati
Francisco José Martínez Mesa
Riccardo Retez
Juan Pro Ruiz


Contact information: Stefano Locati ((stefano.locati /at/ iulm.it)), Elisabetta 
Di Minico ((elidimin /at/ ucm.es)), Gemma Fantacci ((gemma.fantacci /at/ gmail.com)), 
and Riccardo Retez ((riccardoretez /at/ gmail.com)).
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