[Due to COVID-19, this event has been moved to a digital conferencing platform. For more information about participation, contact IRH at info@irh.wisc.edu.]
Monday Seminar:
Keren Omry
Honorary Fellow (2018-2020)
American Studies; English Language and Literature, University of Haifa
“Slipping Sideways” proposes alternativity as a key to redefining the individual as subject and citizen within the contemporary in literature. The project attempts to theorize the contemporary by concentrating on slipstream literature and other forms of speculative fiction, examining how they disrupt teleologies of the Novel form and thus offer alternatives to idealized narratives of justice. In particular, this project reflects on literature that seeks alternatives to the painfully familiar dilemmas of race within this US, to the default of conflict within Israeli-Palestinian discourse, and to the clash of fundamentalisms around the world, framing the analysis within a critical vocabulary that includes notions of futurity, historicity, contemporaneity, and utopia.
Keren Omry is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Haifa, Israel. Her book on jazz and African-American Literature came out with Continuum in 2008, and her recent projects include being co-editor of a book series, redefining the canon of science fiction (Palgrave); co-editing The Routledge Companion to Gender and Science Fiction, as well as publications on posthumanism, sympathy, and the new Bladerunner.