Update: My apologies to those looking forward to hearing this paper. Unfortunately I had to cancel due to illness.
As I write, the big yellow thing has returned to the skies above Glasgow, and people are turning into lobsters. But before we welcome our new crustacean overlords, I’ll be appearing at the Once and Future Fantasies conference at the University of Glasgow.
On Thursday 14th July, I’ll be appearing at 11:30am on the Mixed Registers and Ecology panel, speaking about how the gameplay and narrative of Final Fantasy VII: Remake explores the complications of climate change. Long-time followers will recognize this as a development of the paper Darshana Jayemanne and I gave at ICFA last year.
Panel 4E: Mixed Registers and Ecology (Glasgow Union Reading Room)
Chair: Rhys Williams
– Jeffrey Palms (University of Glasgow) – ‘Sky-filling, soul-battering, ear-splitting’: Sound as a Vector for Environmentalism in Iain M. Banks’s The Hydrogen Sonata
– Ruth Booth (University of Strathclyde) and Darshana Jayemanne (Abertay University) – Negotiating the ‘Arbiters of Fate’: Ludographical Metafiction and the Ecocritical Discourse of the Whispers in Final Fantasy VII: Remake (2020).
– Kevan Manwaring (Arts University Bournemouth) – Fantastic Ecologies: Researching Environmental Aspects of Fantasy and Saving the World with Ursula K. Le Guin
This is the first conference sponsored by IAFA (the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts) to be held outside the US. With the current COVID levels and family health issues, I won’t be there for the full five-day event, but I’m looking forward to hearing keynotes from Marina Warner and Nalo Hopkinson in particular.
You can find out more about Once and Future Fantasies by clicking here.