Annual meeting Kassel 2024

University of Kassel, September 05th - 07.09.2024th, XNUMX

“Be worried. Be very worried.” That was the headline Time Magazine already in 2006 in a special issue on the far-reaching consequences of climate change: melting ice caps and rising sea levels, droughts, diseases, mass extinctions and global refugee movements - a list that could be continued. Every year, not only scientists and environmental activists, but also new extreme weather events and environmental disasters remind us of the potentially apocalyptic consequences of our careless influence on planetary ecosystems. Anthropogenic climate change is probably the most existentially threatening crisis of our time and has been shaping socio-political discourse for decades. Nevertheless, social awareness does not seem to be sufficient for extensive changes to the lifestyle habits that have so far made us as a society unable to respond to the complex problem situation.

This vicious circle of excessive demands, apathy and resignation seems to be caused not least by the inability to understand the climate crisis in its entirety as a multi-causal and multi-factorial process, the complexity of which eludes the human horizon of experience. As a so-called “hyperobject”[1] The environmental crisis exceeds temporally and spatially imaginable dimensions and also requires alternative strategies of representation in literary processing. In this context, areas such as fantasy, horror and science or speculative fiction prove to be ideal for addressing the (yet) intangible consequences of our actions, imagining future or alternative worlds and using fantastic placeholders to make the unimaginable imaginable make.

We invite contributions on all forms and genres of fantasy and their engagement with climate change in a narrower and broader sense - regardless of whether they deal with literature, comics, film, television, music, video and board games or (live) role-playing games . Lectures can be held in German or English. In the Open Track, any contributions on fantastic topics outside of the conference topic can be submitted. We particularly welcome contributions from the following areas:

• Ecocriticism
• Cli-Fi
• Environmental destruction/scarcity of resources/energy crisis in fantasy/SF/horror
• Fantasy/SF/Horror as a form of activism
• Climate change in utopias, dystopias and (post-)apocalypses
• (Eco)Gothic/ (Eco)Horror
• Plant and animal studies, non-/more-than-human nature, biodiversity
• Climate crisis/activism in children's and young adult literature
• Anthropocene
• Trans and posthumanism
• Gender/ Race/ Class/ Sexuality/ Disability and Ecology
• Colonialism and extractivism
• Ludology and Game Studies

Abstracts for individual lectures or panels can be written in German or English. For an individual presentation, please submit an abstract (300 words) and a short biography (150 words). For panels, we ask for a summary of the panel topic (300 words) as well as abstracts of the individual presentations (300 words each) and short biographies of the speakers (150 words each). Please send your contribution suggestions by 29.02.2024 an gff2024@uni-kassel.de. Further information about the conference can be found at: https://www.uni-kassel.de/tagung-konferenz/gff2024/fantastic-climates. Conference program: Program – CONFERENCE – University of Kassel

The Society for Fantasy Research is awarding five scholarships of 200 euros each to students, doctoral candidates and temporary employees to cover the travel costs of attending the conference. Membership in the Society for Fantasy Research is not required for this. If you would like to apply for one, please let us know as part of your submission.

[1] Timothy Morton, Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013.