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EXTRA sci-fi festival Verona, taking place from 13 to 29 March 2025, is calling for papers in response to “Invention of the Ultrabodies: Speculative Others in English Literature”, a study day organised in collaboration with the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Verona, taking place on Thursday 20 March.
Open to academic researchers, students (who can obtain credits) and members of the public, the conference will explore constructions of the body, both human and nonhuman, within anglophone speculative fiction, analysing how bodies can become manifestations of particular aesthetics, morals, languages and ideologies.
From its very beginnings, science fiction has imagined endless forms of artificial bodies, blurring the boundaries between human invention and nature. From hybrids to clones, the genre has offered numerous reflections on bodies, both those worthy of protection and those liable to exploitation. Science fiction is populated with alien, mutant and more-than-human bodies, through which the inexpressible otherness of the unknown is conveyed. These extraordinary bodies, in the literal sense of non-ordinary, are often flanked by apparently ‘normal’ human bodies, be they victims or perpetrators of dystopian speculations.
The presentations (to be carried out in Italian, 15 minutes each) may adopt an interdisciplinary approach and draw from research areas such as gender studies, posthumanism, ecocriticism, post/decolonial theory and disability studies.
Click here for the complete call and details of how to apply.
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