Insurgencies: Speculative Fiction, Cultural Organizing, and Utopian Thought

Each seminar in this public series Larissa Lai addresses a term of interest to her recent thinking on speculative fiction, cultural organizing and utopian thought. Emerging from a lifetime of reading and writing, in addition to organizing to make cultural space for others, these seminars will offer a set of field notes aimed addressing the question: What does our cultural moment require, and how can we get where we need to go from where we are?  How can literature, especially speculative fiction literature, help us get from here to there?

Topics addressed: Insurgent utopias, po-ethics, relation, un/settler, asiancy

Bio:

Larissa Lai is the author of nine books, most recently a novel about Hong Kong in the 1940s entitled The Lost Century. Through the 1980s and 1990s, Larissa was involved in the organizing of numerous events including Yellow Peril: Reconsidered and Writing Thru Race. Recipient of the Jim Duggins Novelist's Prize, the Lambda Literary Award, the Astraea Award, and the Otherwise Honor Book and finalist for seven more, she is currently a Maria Zambrano Fellow at the University of Huelva in Spain, and holds a Canada Research Chair at the University of Calgary where she directs The Insurgent Architects' House for Creative Writing.