[Commlist] ICFA 2026: (Meta)Cognition CFP

CFP: The 47th International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts

*(Meta)Cognition

*

Guests of Honor: Ted Chiang and Ann Leckie

Guest Scholar: Sherryl Vint

**

March 18–21, 2026 | Marriott Orlando Airport Lakeside | Orlando, Florida

Submission deadline: Friday, October 31, 2025

If cognition is the process of acquiring knowledge and understanding 
through thought, experience, and sensation, metacognition is a thinker’s 
awareness of their own processes of thought. Thinking /about/ thinking 
is a task of profound urgency in the present moment, as technologies 
labeled as “artificial intelligence” provoke us to ask whether machines 
can think and whether algorithmic pattern outputs are something similar 
to, or different than, what we usually think of as thought.

The metacognitive artist, writer, or critic is not only immersed in 
thinking but also in reflecting upon the act of thinking itself, 
generating forms of awareness that exceed statistical prediction. This 
doubled perspective makes possible new kinds of art, new theories of 
mind, and new critiques of power. Where algorithms identify patterns, 
metacognition cultivates reflection, questioning, and transformation. 
Through cognition and metacognition, thought is refined, 
authoritarianism is challenged, and hegemony unsettled. Reality is 
shaped by thinking—and then reshaped by thinking about thinking.

For ICFA 47, we invite proposals that engage with the theme of 
*(Meta)Cognition* in literature, media, and culture. We particularly 
welcome work that approaches cognition and metacognition through the 
lens of the fantastic, broadly defined, across literature, film, 
television, comics, games, art, design, and other media. Papers and 
panels may focus on the conference theme or on any topic concerning the 
fantastic. We especially encourage innovative, interdisciplinary, and 
cross-cultural approaches, as well as proposals from scholars, creators, 
and graduate students at all career stages.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

  * (Meta)cognition in fiction; fiction as (meta)cognition
  * (Meta)cognition and artificial intelligence, animal intelligence, or
    plant intelligence
  * Social (meta)cognition and the fantastic
  * Sentience and speculative media
  * Teaching methodologies and learning patterns
  * (Meta)cognition in/and the bildungsroman or the hero’s journey
  * Social and personal philosophies; ethics and morality
  * The nature of reality and metamemory in/and fiction
  * Minds, bodies, and prosthetic intelligence
  * Language and (meta)cognition
  * The avatar’s destiny in games and intermedia experiences
  * Thought and eco-crises
  * Second-order cybernetics and communication systems
  * Utopias, dystopias, and philosophies as guiding principles
  * Care structures and awareness
  * (Meta)cognition and the creative process

We also welcome open-topic proposals in any area of the fantastic.

**

*Submission Guidelines*

We invite proposals for individual papers, paper sessions, creative 
presentations, and roundtables.


Submit your proposal here: https://iaftfita.wildapricot.org/Proposal 
<https://iaftfita.wildapricot.org/Proposal>

The deadline for submissions is *October 31, 2025*.

More information and submission details can be found at www.iafa.org 
<http://www.iafa.org?utm_source=chatgpt.com>.

**

*Special Guests*

**

*Ted Chiang*

Winner of the 2024 PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in the art of the 
short story, Ted Chiang is one of the most respected and admired science 
fiction authors alive. His best-known work is probably “Story of Your 
Life,” which was the basis of Denis Villeneuve’s award-winning film 
/Arrival/ (2016), but Chiang’s short fiction has won praise and prizes 
for more than 20 years, including multiple Nebula, Hugo, and Locus 
awards. Recognized in 2023 as one of /Time/ magazine’s 100 most 
influential people in artificial intelligence and awarded the American 
Humanist Association’s Inquiry and Innovation Award in 2024, Chiang has 
been celebrated as one of the world’s most original and innovative 
thinkers, especially in the areas of AI and metacognition. His fiction 
has been collected in /Stories of Your Life and Others/ (2002) and 
/Exhalation/ (2019).**

**

*Ann Leckie*

Ann Leckie is a celebrated American novelist and short-story writer 
whose debut work /Ancillary Justice/ (2013) became the first and only 
novel in history to win science fiction’s “triple crown”: the Hugo, 
Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke Awards. Her other novels—including 
/Ancillary Sword/, /Ancillary Mercy/, /Provenance/, /The Raven Tower/, 
and /Translation State/—explore issues of consciousness, gender 
identity, and imperial power. Most recently, she published /Lake of 
Souls: The Collected Short Fiction/ (2024), a wide-ranging anthology 
that gathers her best short fiction (including a brand-new, 
Hugo-nominated novelette, “Lake of Souls”) and won the 2025 Locus Award 
for Best Collection. Lauded for her imaginative reinventions of 
language, perspective, and the nature of self, Leckie stands among the 
most influential voices shaping contemporary speculative fiction.

**

*Sherryl Vint *

Former IAFA President Sherryl Vint is Professor of Science Fiction Media 
Studies at the University of California, Riverside. She is the author of 
/Bodies of Tomorrow/ (2007), /Animal Alterity/ (2010), /Science Fiction: 
A Guide for the Perplexed/ (2014), /Science Fiction/ (2021), and 
/Biopolitical Futures in Twenty-First Century Speculative Fiction/ 
(2021). Founding editor of /Science Fiction Film and Television/ and 
Director of the Speculative Fiction and Cultures of Science Program at 
UCR, she received the Science Fiction Research Association’s Award for 
Lifetime Contributions to SF Scholarship in 2020.

**


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