Tag: Ursula K. Le Guin

The Word for World is Forest Symposium Program

Here is the program for the “The Word for World for Forest” Symposium on October 14, 2022 starting at 9am (Pacific Time).

Keynote Speaker:  Christian Matheis, Guilford College, 9am (Pacific Time)

“Devious as Nerves:  Teaching the Fine Balance of Reason and Dream”

Presenters:

10am (Pacific Time)

Sheryl Medlicott, Just Utopias, Bristol Utopian Book Collective

“The Word for World is Forest as Ecofeminist and Utopian Text”

Christopher Loughlin, Manchester University

“What You Fail to See: Exploring Visibility and the Politics of Solidarity Through Le Guin”

11 am (Pacific Time)

Ben Nadler, Hostos Community College, CUNY

“Dreaming as a Radical Act”

Sean MacCracken, Program Coordinator, CIIS Anthropology and Social Change Program

“Fake News by the Ansible: Dream and Delusion in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Word for World is Forest”

The Symposium is free and open to the public. To recieve login information to attend the Symposium via Zoom, please fill out the registration below:

CFP: The Word for World is Forest Symposium, October 2022.

(Photo Credit: Maksim Isotomin, Unsplash)

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the first publication of Ursula K. Le Guin’s anti-war novella The Word for World is Forest.

Written during the Vietnam conflict, The Word for World is Forest depicts a distant world invaded by human beings who are desperate for natural resources. It tells the tale of an alien culture that resists the invasion, but is forever changed by the decision.

The Anarres Project for Alternative Futures calls for abstracts for a multidisciplinary virtual symposium that aims to bring together activists, organizers, and scholars to consider the ways in which Le Guin’s tale can help us to diagnose social injustices in the present moment, and to imagine the ways we can catalyze solidarities to achieve more just futures.

Rather than strictly academic discussions or literary critiques, we are looking for presentations that take Le Guin’s novella as a basis for understanding themes such as oppression, patriarchy and toxic masculinity, racial justice, resistance, colonialism/imperialism, nonviolence and armed struggle, environmental justice, intersectional solidarity in the world today.  We are especially interested in how the tale might help us develop strategies for mutual aid and community organizing against injustice today.

The symposium will be held on-line over Zoom on Friday, October 14, 2022.

Please send an abstract of no more than 300 words by midnight (Pacific Time) Friday, September 9, 2022 using the submission form below.

Dreaming New Futures: Walidah Imarisha @ Radical Imagination Conference

Walidah Imarisha was one of the keynote speakers at the first Opening Space for the Radical Imagination Conference at Oregon State from April 6-8, 2018. Walidah Imarisha is co-editor of the Institute for Anarchist Studies (IAS) book, co-published with AK Press, Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements and author of IAS/AK Press book Angels with Dirty Faces: Three Stories of Crime, Prison, and Redemption.

Her talk was entitled:  Dreaming New Futures:  Science Fiction and Social Change.

Should Anarchists Vote?

 

Chris Dixon ends his recent book Another Politics:  Talking Across Today’s Transformative Movements with a series of questions that are meant to confront and guide the direction of future organizing projects.  Some of these questions have to do with electoral politics:  How should people dedicated to anti-authoritarian politics relate to this sphere? Continue reading “Should Anarchists Vote?”

Walking Away From Paradise: Teaching Ursula K. Le Guin and Social Justice

The Anarres Project for Alternative Futures takes its inspiration, in part, from the imaginative work of Ursula K. Le Guin.  For decades, her speculative fiction has woven together fantastic worlds with reflections on the nature of human life and the meaning of a socially just world. Continue reading “Walking Away From Paradise: Teaching Ursula K. Le Guin and Social Justice”

What We Broke the First Time

 

Pressing the Restart Button on Liberatory Movements

By Christian Matheis

 

Recently, I posted the following question on a social media site:

 

If feminism hit the reset button and we got to fix what we broke the first time, what would the do-over look like? Continue reading “What We Broke the First Time”

William James and Social Justice Science Fiction

 

By Joseph Orosco

 

By now, it’s well known that William James was the inspiration behind Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.”  But he seems to have made a big impact on another writer of social justice science fiction:  Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins. Continue reading “William James and Social Justice Science Fiction”

Transformation without Apocalypse – Episode #11: Ursula K. Le Guin and Kim Stanley Robinson

On February 14th and 15th, the Spring Creek Project sponsored a symposium entitled “Transformation Without Apocalypse:  How to Live Well on an Altered Planet”

The final event focused on the power of stories and featured award winning writers Ursula K. Le Guin and Kim Stanley Robinson, in their first ever joint appearance, reading from their own and from each others work.

Continue reading “Transformation without Apocalypse – Episode #11: Ursula K. Le Guin and Kim Stanley Robinson”