Alison Sperling | Florida State University (original) (raw)
Papers by Alison Sperling
To be extra-terrestrial, or extra-earth, might imply excess or spillover from the earthly, being ... more To be extra-terrestrial, or extra-earth, might imply excess or spillover from the earthly, being expelled from Terra, or the desire to leave the Earth altogether. It might invoke fears or excitement of greeting an alien other to Earth, or perhaps instead reveal fantasies of being able to leave a damaged Earth behind and become oneself extra-terrestrial. Alongside these fantasies that imagining the ET might harbor, it also reckons with loss and grief; the theme inherently interrogates the possibility of extinction, climate change, toxic ecologies, and the Anthropocene. It reconsiders questions of identity and belonging, what it might mean to be more-than terra or to have certain qualities considered as 'alien' in terms of nation or citizenship, as well as 'extra' or un-usable, not-valued (by whom or by what?), or in the recent popular sense, 'extra' as excess, the dramatic over-the-top. Many of these provocations of the extra-terrestrial will draw on feminist ...
Studies in the fantastic, 2020
The MIT Press eBooks, Dec 20, 2022
Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, 2022
Ecological Science Fiction in the year 1972 for the 50th anniversary issue of Foundation: Interna... more Ecological Science Fiction in the year 1972 for the 50th anniversary issue of Foundation: International Review of Science Fiction
Situiertes Wissen und regionale Epistemologie, 2021
Situiertes Wissen und regionale Epistemologie, 2020
Routledge Handbook to Star Trek, 2022
SIRENOMELIA, 2021
Contribution to Emilija Škarnulytė first monograph SIRENOMELIA published with Sternberg Press.
Weathering is atmospheric, geological, temporal, transformative. It implies exposure to the eleme... more Weathering is atmospheric, geological, temporal, transformative. It implies exposure to the elements and processes of wearing down, disintegration, or accrued patina. Weathering can also denote the ways in which subjects and objects resist and pass through storms and adversity. This volume contemplates weathering across many fields and disciplines; its contributions examine various surfaces, environments, scales, temporalities, and vulnerabilities. What does it mean to weather or withstand? Who or […]
Surreal Entanglements: Essays on the Work of Jeff VanderMeer, 2021
and Jeff, mid-morning, at his Tallahassee, Florida home. Our conversation speaks to the concepts ... more and Jeff, mid-morning, at his Tallahassee, Florida home. Our conversation speaks to the concepts raised in the essays collected here in Surreal Entanglements, especially in the context of his book Dead Astronauts (published in December 2019). 1 We've edited the text slightly for readability and points of clarification, but have otherwise left it conversational. Thanks to Jeff VanderMeer for his time and thoughts, and to the editors Laura Shackelford and Louise Economides for inviting us to contribute in this way to the book.
Studies in the Fantastic, 2020
Paradoxa World Studies in Literary Genres, 2019
Speculative Vegetation: Plants in Science Fiction, 2020
Science Fiction Research Association Review, 2019
Curated cluster of five reflections on Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy five years later.
COLLATERAL – Online Journal for Cross-Cultural Close Reading, 2019
This short think piece was published in a cluster on Jeff VanderMeer's work and the Anthropocene:... more This short think piece was published in a cluster on Jeff VanderMeer's work and the Anthropocene: http://collateral-journal.com/index.php?cluster=16
kundstlicht, 2019
POST ATOMIC: A CONVERSATION BETWEEN ALISON SPERLING AND ANNA VOLKMAR WITH A VISUAL RESPONSE BY DO... more POST ATOMIC: A CONVERSATION BETWEEN ALISON SPERLING AND ANNA VOLKMAR WITH A VISUAL RESPONSE BY DONALD WEBER / Kyveli Mavrokordopoulou & Ruby de Vos
Bloomsbury Handbook of 21st Century Feminist Theory, 2019
Chapter 22: "Anthropocene"
In this essay, I read Jeff VanderMeer’s acclaimed The SouThern reach Trilogy (2014) as a dramatic... more In this essay, I read Jeff VanderMeer’s acclaimed The SouThern reach Trilogy (2014) as a dramatic reimagining of the body and health in the context of the global ecological crisis. I propose that a particularly “weird” ecology is one explicitly linked to modes of embodiment specific to the environmental conditions of the twenty-first century; the novels stage environmental crisis not only in the marshes and coastlines of a strange fictional ecosystem but in the body itself. As a primary organizing theme of the series, sickness inhabits human and nonhuman bodies, imbricating them in complex relations that reveal their co-constitution. In this essay, I examine the intersection of eco-criticism, feminist science studies, and disability studies, which together illuminate in the Trilogy the ways in which the body is embroiled in climate change as a set of relations imagined as a form of ecosickness.
To be extra-terrestrial, or extra-earth, might imply excess or spillover from the earthly, being ... more To be extra-terrestrial, or extra-earth, might imply excess or spillover from the earthly, being expelled from Terra, or the desire to leave the Earth altogether. It might invoke fears or excitement of greeting an alien other to Earth, or perhaps instead reveal fantasies of being able to leave a damaged Earth behind and become oneself extra-terrestrial. Alongside these fantasies that imagining the ET might harbor, it also reckons with loss and grief; the theme inherently interrogates the possibility of extinction, climate change, toxic ecologies, and the Anthropocene. It reconsiders questions of identity and belonging, what it might mean to be more-than terra or to have certain qualities considered as 'alien' in terms of nation or citizenship, as well as 'extra' or un-usable, not-valued (by whom or by what?), or in the recent popular sense, 'extra' as excess, the dramatic over-the-top. Many of these provocations of the extra-terrestrial will draw on feminist ...
Studies in the fantastic, 2020
The MIT Press eBooks, Dec 20, 2022
Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, 2022
Ecological Science Fiction in the year 1972 for the 50th anniversary issue of Foundation: Interna... more Ecological Science Fiction in the year 1972 for the 50th anniversary issue of Foundation: International Review of Science Fiction
Situiertes Wissen und regionale Epistemologie, 2021
Situiertes Wissen und regionale Epistemologie, 2020
Routledge Handbook to Star Trek, 2022
SIRENOMELIA, 2021
Contribution to Emilija Škarnulytė first monograph SIRENOMELIA published with Sternberg Press.
Weathering is atmospheric, geological, temporal, transformative. It implies exposure to the eleme... more Weathering is atmospheric, geological, temporal, transformative. It implies exposure to the elements and processes of wearing down, disintegration, or accrued patina. Weathering can also denote the ways in which subjects and objects resist and pass through storms and adversity. This volume contemplates weathering across many fields and disciplines; its contributions examine various surfaces, environments, scales, temporalities, and vulnerabilities. What does it mean to weather or withstand? Who or […]
Surreal Entanglements: Essays on the Work of Jeff VanderMeer, 2021
and Jeff, mid-morning, at his Tallahassee, Florida home. Our conversation speaks to the concepts ... more and Jeff, mid-morning, at his Tallahassee, Florida home. Our conversation speaks to the concepts raised in the essays collected here in Surreal Entanglements, especially in the context of his book Dead Astronauts (published in December 2019). 1 We've edited the text slightly for readability and points of clarification, but have otherwise left it conversational. Thanks to Jeff VanderMeer for his time and thoughts, and to the editors Laura Shackelford and Louise Economides for inviting us to contribute in this way to the book.
Studies in the Fantastic, 2020
Paradoxa World Studies in Literary Genres, 2019
Speculative Vegetation: Plants in Science Fiction, 2020
Science Fiction Research Association Review, 2019
Curated cluster of five reflections on Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy five years later.
COLLATERAL – Online Journal for Cross-Cultural Close Reading, 2019
This short think piece was published in a cluster on Jeff VanderMeer's work and the Anthropocene:... more This short think piece was published in a cluster on Jeff VanderMeer's work and the Anthropocene: http://collateral-journal.com/index.php?cluster=16
kundstlicht, 2019
POST ATOMIC: A CONVERSATION BETWEEN ALISON SPERLING AND ANNA VOLKMAR WITH A VISUAL RESPONSE BY DO... more POST ATOMIC: A CONVERSATION BETWEEN ALISON SPERLING AND ANNA VOLKMAR WITH A VISUAL RESPONSE BY DONALD WEBER / Kyveli Mavrokordopoulou & Ruby de Vos
Bloomsbury Handbook of 21st Century Feminist Theory, 2019
Chapter 22: "Anthropocene"
In this essay, I read Jeff VanderMeer’s acclaimed The SouThern reach Trilogy (2014) as a dramatic... more In this essay, I read Jeff VanderMeer’s acclaimed The SouThern reach Trilogy (2014) as a dramatic reimagining of the body and health in the context of the global ecological crisis. I propose that a particularly “weird” ecology is one explicitly linked to modes of embodiment specific to the environmental conditions of the twenty-first century; the novels stage environmental crisis not only in the marshes and coastlines of a strange fictional ecosystem but in the body itself. As a primary organizing theme of the series, sickness inhabits human and nonhuman bodies, imbricating them in complex relations that reveal their co-constitution. In this essay, I examine the intersection of eco-criticism, feminist science studies, and disability studies, which together illuminate in the Trilogy the ways in which the body is embroiled in climate change as a set of relations imagined as a form of ecosickness.
Science Fiction Studies, 2024
The earth is the ontological framework for decolonization, Anne Stewart asserts in her impressive... more The earth is the ontological framework for decolonization, Anne Stewart asserts in her impressive interdisciplinary, land-based literary study Angry Planet: Decolonial Fiction and the American Third World. The book is groundbreaking as it invests in the study of literary grounds breaking, terrestrial disturbances, and "shattered grounded normativity" (following Glen Sean Coulthard) embedded, etched, indeed terraformed not only onto the earth's surface, but also into what Stewart informally names terrestrial media or terrestrial grammar as decolonizing narrative forces. The book reads "a seismic tremor, a crumbling coastline, or a catastrophic storm" (4) alongside descriptions of infrastructural, social-systemic failures and Black and Indigenous-led activist uprisings that demonstrate an ontologically grounded mode pervading US literary production following the Cold War, crucially predating the current wave of so-called Anthropocene fiction and contemporary ecocritical theory. The book is far-reaching in its important interventions into literary criticism and especially ecocriticism, genre and narrative studies, Indigenous studies, multiethnic studies, and cultural studies more broadly. Angry Planet begins by relaying "Messages from the Angry Planet"-the title of Stewart's introduction-setting out an expansive argument about the chapters' foci on "narrative act[s] of claiming ontological authority" (25); she finds roots largely in texts from the 1970s. Angry Planet is, overall, a project indebted to an enormous wealth of Indigenous, Latinx, Chicanx, and Black studies scholarship from the 1970s to the contemporary moment. Stewart navigates this material adeptly and powerfully, drawing out lineages for reading "angry planet fiction" that have long undergirded current ecocritical and Indigenous ontological frameworks. Claims to land are essential to Indigenous knowledge production, so much so that "By far the largest attack on Indigenous Knowledge systems right now is land dispossession" (Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, qtd. in Stewart 9). The title concept of the "American third world" is used with "deliberate ironic force," and follows in large part from Sylvia Wynter's concept of the "archipelago of Human Otherness" ("Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, its Overrepresentation-an Argument" [2003]) and from George Manuel and Michael Posluns's The Fourth World: An Indian Reality (1974). Stewart calls Wynter's racial-spatial concept "a zone of exile ... made up of slices and pockets of the nations, cities, suburbs ... factories ... borderlands, rural areas, and reservations that share more in common with the struggles of populations around the world dispossessed in modernity's wake than they do with the affluent First World citadels of recognizably American imperial power" (11); she borrows from George Manuel the idea of a "Fourth World" that relies on the establishment of "the priority of land as the basis ... for human knowledge about being-in-the-world" (7).
Los Angeles Review of Books, 2019
ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies of Literature and the Environment, 2019
*Proofs only*
Los Angeles Review of Books, 2017
Speculative imagination and climate fiction provide crucial frameworks for envisioning alternativ... more Speculative imagination and climate fiction provide crucial frameworks for envisioning alternative planetary futures. Literature, visual arts, and other creative forms are vital mediums for discussing massive planetary transformations such as species extinction, climate change, and large-scale environmental violence. The workshop will investigate the potential of climate fiction and speculative methodologies in arts and literature, with the aim to understand how different creative practices contribute to establish shared and inclusive political imaginations for the future.
The workshop will begin with a conversation with artist duo Geissler and Sann, showcasing their installation "How Does the World End (for Others)?" currently on view at Fondazione Prada. Scholars Alison Sperling from Florida State University and Chiara Xausa from the University of Bologna will delve into the connections between climate fiction, speculative arts, and the role of imagination in shaping our perceptions and actions.
How can creative practices contribute to new ways of thinking about climate futures? What do speculative approaches reveal about the variety of possible worlds and futures? And how can narratives in climate fiction orient our collective efforts toward greater social and climate justice?
By bringing together critical thinkers and creative practitioners, this workshop seeks to employ a multidisciplinary approach to speculative imagination, effectively bridging academic and artistic discourse
Extrapolation, 2024
In a moment defined by planetary transformations and crises, speculative and science fictional na... more In a moment defined by planetary transformations and crises, speculative and science fictional narratives have become crucial modes for imagining possible and alternative futures and realities. Across media, these narratives decenter the human perspective within the intersections of technology, the sciences, and social relations, offering critical tools for interrogating the present and speculating on the future states of humanity, technology, and the Earth. As environmental crises reach a planetary scale—with human activities ranging from industrialization and colonialism to various forms of exploitation and extraction fundamentally impacting Earth’s geo-physical systems—science fictions have become increasingly central to imagining possible futures on an altered planet and exploring embodied perspectives of non-human intelligences and more-than-human beings.
In response to (and also co-forming) the crises and the critical debates surrounding the planet’s well-being, visual, performance, and media artists are increasingly in dialogue with scholars and researchers within environmental sciences, humanities, and social sciences interrogating the geo-physical and the socio-ecological dimensions of contemporaneity. By engaging science and climate fiction genres as source material, contemporary artists integrate, challenge, and expand associated conventions and narratives in their work. The prevalence of dystopian, utopian, catastrophic, and regenerative imaginaries—alongside reflections on current socio-ecological conflicts through science fiction tropes—demonstrates how global visual artists across mediums are substantively engaging with future-oriented discourse.
This proposed special issue aims to understand how contemporary artists utilize and transform science fiction elements to address concerns about the present, envision alternate realities, and critique current socio-ecological, technological, and political issues. It will explore the intersection of science fiction with visual arts, examining how this confluence shapes our understanding of the Anthropocene epoch and its associated challenges.
The proposed special issue will ideally host contributions from scholars and researchers working on science fiction studies, visual culture, art theory, visual studies, and adjacent disciplines, as well as research pieces by artist researchers, practitioners, and curators.