Academic

  • Contact: academic@wiscon.net
  • Deadline for proposals: February 14, 2026
  • WisCONline 2026 will take place May 21-25, 2026

WisCon’s Land Acknowledgement.

2026 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 speculative fiction—broadly defined—in literature, media, and culture. 

Given our current political moment, we invite papers and panels that engage with 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 in Darfur. These events target primarily BIPOC populations, and therefore we welcome in particular papers and panels that center Global Majority, migrant, and colonized voices.

What is feminist speculative fiction’s contribution to thinking about 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 social and cultural 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 fiction as a site of resistance, connection, survival, and solidarity. 

For example, how can feminist speculative fiction help us fight for a more just world? 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?

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 2026’s Guests of Honor (Darcie Little Badger and Premee Mohamed). 
  • Explorations of different iterations of love, erotics, 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 WisCONline 2026 is  midnight US Central Time on February 14, 2026. 

This year, the Con will be online and the sessions will be synchronous and live. 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), and an abstract of 150-250 words.

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