• Contact: academic@wiscon.net
• Deadline for proposals: midnight US Central Time on January 15, 2027
• WisCon 2027 will take place May 27-31, 2027

2027 Call for Papers

WisCon has a track of academic programming, framed by the convention’s Statement of Principles, that encourages submissions from scholars in all fields. We invite proposals from anyone with a scholarly interest in the intersections of gender, gender identity, sexuality, race, class, and disability with science and/or speculative fiction—broadly defined—in literature, media, and culture. WisCon 2027 will take place online and at the Concourse Hotel (Madison, Wisconsin, US) from May 27 to May 31, 2027.

Given our current political moment, we invite papers and panels that engage with ongoing systems of targeted oppression such as fascism, authoritarianism, and imperialism from Palestine and the genocide in Gaza to ICE disappearances and privatized brownshirts in the US to militarized violence and the continuing genocide and severe underdevelopment in Darfur, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. These events target primarily BIPOC populations in the Global North and Global South, and therefore we wish to create space at WisCon for papers and panels that center Global Majority, migrant, and colonized voices.

How can feminist speculative fiction contribute to discussions of settler colonialism, fascism, and climate crisis, here and now, especially in relation to Indigeneity, trans life, and collective futurities? We are interested in papers that deal specifically with sociocultural questions about the radical politics of futures as they relate to feminist speculative fiction and for work on the histories and dream-making of freedom-oriented fan communities. We encourage proposals to consider science and/or speculative fiction as a site of resistance, connection, survival, and solidarity.

Desired topics include but are not limited to concepts that help us all fight for a more just world.For example: What lessons can be learned from Indigenous, Black, POC, disabled, and diasporic speculative fiction, to advance decolonial and anti-racist change? How can we use speculative fiction genres to respond to the threats of white supremacy, settler colonialism, dispossession, militarization, and extractive capitalism? How can we create a future in which it’s possible to survive fascism, climate change, genocide, and pandemics and to bring about liberation? Beyond surviving and responding to threats, how might feminist speculative fiction bring about desirable futures?

An incomplete list of possible subjects:

• Gender, gender identity, sexuality, race, class, and disability in individual works of science fiction and fantasy, especially in the works of 2027’s Guests of Honor (Annalee Newitz, Micaiah Johnson, Sami Schalk and Nicola Griffith).
• Explorations of different iterations of love, erotics, pleasure, care, family abolition, mutual aid, and solidarity.
• Speculative aspects of feminist, queer, critical race, critical disability and social justice movements, especially reproductive rights (or the lack of) in classrooms, the media and in the streets.
• Critiques and reimaginations of class in speculative fiction, especially in the context of intersectionality.
• Race, colonialism, and speculative fiction; Indigenous Futurisms, Afrofuturisms, Latinx Futurisms, Africanfuturisms, techno-Orientalisms, Arab Futurisms, Muslim Futurisms, and related cultural movements.
• Asexuality, demisexuality and the fluidity of desires and the space between.
• Embracing disability justice, anti-ableism, collective liberation, and disabled wisdom.

An incomplete list of possible formats:

• 15-minute academic paper presentations, with or without visual accompaniment.
• Groups of presentations submitted together as panels
• Presentation of scholarly creative works, including digital scholarship.
• Discussion-based panels and roundtables on scholarly research, teaching, or service.
• Screenings and discussions of short films or videos.

The deadline for submitting an abstract for WisCon 2027 is midnight US Central Time on January 15, 2027.

This year, WisCon will take place in person in Madison, WI and also will offer presentations online. As such, proposals are welcome from anywhere in the world, as long as you would be available for at least some time during US Central Time during WisCon.

Please submit your proposal here: Academic Call for Proposals Submission Form You will be asked to provide: full name, pronouns, email address, proposal type, main theme(s), a title, and an abstract of 150-250 words.

If you have questions, feel free to email: academic@wiscon.net