Sublime Cognition: Science Fiction & Metaphysics Friday 14th – Saturday 15th September 2018 School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square The Centre for Contemporary Literature is glad to be supporting the London Science Fiction Research Community’s Sublime Cognition conference, taking place 14–15 September at 43 Gordon Square, London. The conference will explore science fiction’s lost history of engagement with the mythical, magical and mystical, via papers and discussion panels featuring nearly 40 speakers. There will be keynote addresses from Roger Luckhurst and Helen De Cruz, and a roundtable discussion featuring SF authors Jeff Noon, Justina Robson and Fiona Moore. The programme is now available for viewing here. Please go here to register. What follows is a fuller description of the conference theme and programme. * Many SF critics have understood science fiction to be specifically guided by a rational empiricist epistemology, and have thus disregarded the important presence of magical, religious, spiritual and metaphysical phenomena in science fiction. Deploying the broad catch-all of ‘metaphysics’, this conference will explore SF’s lost history of engagement with the mythical and mystical. Central areas of focus will include an assessment of what role (if any) metaphysical phenomena have played in science fiction, and to what degree SF can be distanced from the spiritual, supernatural and numinous concerns of other literatures of the fantastic. Assessing SF’s complex relationship with the metaphysical opens into many other productive areas of inquiry as well: How can science fictional texts help us understand broader cultural processes of knowledge formation and paradigm shift? To what degree does SF act as a protected space for ideas that have been proposed within empiricist frameworks, but disproved and/or rejected by established scientific networks? In what way have references to religious cultures and institutions been used to reinforce or undermine normative gender roles in SF texts? How do treatments of metaphysical phenomena in Western SF differ from those which originate in other areas of the globe? How important are the symbols, tropes and imagery of an array of global religious traditions to the quality of enchantment that is as vital to SF as any other fantastic genre? The conference will feature keynote addresses by Roger Luckhurst (Birkbeck) and Helen de Cruz (Oxford Brookes), as well as a roundtable with authors Justina Robson, Jeff Noon and Fiona Moore (Royal Holloway), moderated by Jim Clarke (Coventry) Conference Organisers: Rhodri Davies (PhD, Birkbeck), Aren Roukema (PhD, Birkbeck), Francis Gene-Rowe (PhD, Royal Holloway) Schedule: Friday 14th September 9.30 – 10.00 Registration 10.00 – 10.15 Conference Introduction 10.15 – 11.15 Keynote 1 (Roger Luckhurst) 11.15 – 11.30 Break 11.30 – 12.30 Parallel Panels 1 12.30 – 13.30 Lunch 13.30 – 14.30 Parallel Panels 2 14.30 – 15.30 Parallel Panels 3 15.30 – 15.45 Break 15.45 – 16.45 Parallel Panels 4 16.45 – 17.00 Break 17.00 – 18.00 Discussion: ‘Cognition’ and the Sublime Saturday 15th September 9.30 – 10.00 Registration 10.00 – 11.00 Keynote 2 (Helen de Cruz) 11.00 – 11.15 Break 11.15 – 12.45 Parallel Panels 5 12.45 – 13.45 Lunch 13.45 – 15.15 Parallel Panels 6 15.15 – 15.30 Break 15.30 – 16.30 Parallel Panels 7 16.30 – 16.45 Break 16.45 – 18.00 Conference Roundtable (Justina Robson, Jeff Noon, Fiona Moore) Panel Compositions: A: James Burton (Goldsmiths, University of London), “Magical Rationality: Science Fiction as Gnostic Myth” & Serena Volpi (Lorenzo de Medici Institute), “Wild Seeds and the Phoenix: Octavia Butler, Nnedi Okorafor, and Myths of Africa in Twentieth-Century Western Anthropology” B: Sasha Myerson (Birkbeck, University of London), “The Sublime in non-Cartesian Space” & Gwilym Eades (Royal Holloway, University of London), “Cyberpunctum: Metaphysics of Cyberpunk” A: Kerry Dodd (Lancaster University), “‘A Singularity without an Event Horizon’: The Cosmic Sublime and Deconstruction of Empirical Boundaries” & Evert Jan van Leeuwen (Leiden University), “Transcendental Ecstasy...