Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA) Election

I am currently a candidate for President of the Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA). An election is underway for the President and Secretary positions. Members can vote between October 15 and November 15.

The candidate statements can be found here:

sfrareview.org/2025/08/07/sfra-candidate-statements/

Anyone who wishes to discuss my candidacy with me is encouraged to contact me to engage in dialogue. You can write me an e-mail at: alan.shapiro@gmx.de

In the USA, the would-be dictator and anti-intellectual Trump is waging culture wars against universities, scientific and academic knowledge, and all things progressive. Diversity and everything the far right calls “woke” are under attack. Many young scholars in America who are members of the SFRA face marginalization and danger. Trump’s approach towards university administrations and faculty resembles that of a blackmailer or mafia boss: “Do what I want or I will cut off your funding.”

One crucial way that the SFRA can protect itself against Trump’s neo-fascism is to internationalize further. An essential argument for voting for me as President of the SFRA is that I live outside of America. I am away from the disaster. I am not dependent on any position at any American university for my career and financial survival. I cannot have my funding cut off. I cannot be pressured, blackmailed, or fired.

MY CANDIDATE STATEMENT

As President of the SFRA, I would lead the international scholarly organization in a new and activist direction, engaging intellectually, culturally, and politically with the polycrisis unfolding in the world today. In my major work, Decoding Digital Culture with Science Fiction (Transcript Verlag and Columbia University Press, 2024), I argue that science fiction has become a formidable “reality”-shaping force. To confront the catastrophes of hyper-modernism, the scope of what science fiction studies investigates should expand beyond novels, films, and TV series to the advanced digital media technologies such as AI, VR, robots, and ubiquitous computing as they are designed and implemented within surveillance and algorithmic capitalism. And we must imagine creative, thoughtful, pragmatic utopian alternatives. My earlier book Star Trek: Technologies of Disappearance was praised by editor-in-chief Istvan Csicsery-Ronay in Science Fiction Studies as the leading work of “science fiction theory.” My auto-socio-biography, Venice in Las Vegas, will be published this summer by Peter Lang Publishing House. I hold a Ph.D. in Artistic and Media Research from the University of Oldenburg. I have taught sociology at New York University, transdisciplinary design at Folkwang University of the Arts, future design research at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, and media theory and posthumanism at Bremen University of the Arts. My blog featuring hundreds of short essays is www.alan-shapiro.com. The radically transformative activism that I propose and plan would find embodiment in a series of very different kinds of conferences inspired by the tradition of William Forsythe’s choreography as an organizational practice, and assisted by practitioners such as Duke University dance professor Michael Klien and dramaturg Steve Valk. I have extensive and meaningful international experience. Having lived half my life in the United States and half in Europe, I am deeply familiar with the situations and challenges faced by scholars in literature and media studies in both contexts. In recent years, I have also had many Chinese and South Korean students. I am an active member of the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science. I speak German, French, and Italian, and can read Spanish and Portuguese. As President, I would explore the possibilities of raising new funds for the organization from philanthropic sources. I would prioritize feminist, cyborg, queer, trans, Afrofuturist, and other minority perspectives in science fiction. I would focus on strengthening the protection of scholars, teachers, researchers, writers, and artists in the current neo-fascist repressive climate. We will defend and fight back against Trump and other authoritarians.