Two academic talks:
Bradford Lyau: Robert A. Heinlein: Radical Moderate and the Enlightenment
Analyzing Robert A. Heinlein in light of recent revisions of the Enlightenment and studies analyzing Heinlein works. The different, often conflicting ideological slants used to describe Heinlein’s politics could be explained in part by this analysis. I will use Jonathan Israel’s recent studies of the Enlightenment as the basis of this era’s recent revisions.
Annie Sheng: Taste and Longing in Asian SF
Humans transform identities and histories through relationships with food in imagined futures. I draw from anthropological analysis and Asian SF stories to examine how people make meaning of their lives through food. An example is machinery, corporeality, and the desire for taste present in futures featuring humanity and the synthetic in Xia Jia, Indrapramit Das and Isabel Yap’s works. From noodle stalls to fruits of the homeland, sensory-rich scenes of food are layered with analytical meaning.