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Ian MacDonald

Ian MacDonald is Assistant Professor of English at ����ý where he teaches science fiction and Africana literature. His sf sf courses at ����ý have included the LIT3313 survey course in science fiction, LIT6932 courses in Afrofuturism and utopia/dystopia, and LIT4930 courses in post-Apocalyptic fiction and Afrofuturism. He also regularly teaches critical theory at the graduate- and undergraduate level and plans to incorporate a course in SFF theory soon. His work primarily deals with sf by African authors and has appeared in Research in African Literatures, The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, and Literary Geographies as well as in The Routledge Companion to African Literature (eds. Adejunmobi & Coetzee, Routledge, 2019) and the forthcoming Lingua Cosmica II (Knickerbocker & Chattopadhyay, U. of Illinois Press). Work in progress includes a collected edition co-edited with Kate Polak which investigates the intersections of historical fiction and sf tentatively entitled Days of Future Pasts: Memorializing the Archive Days of Future Pasts: Memorializing the Archive (Liverpool UP ).

Select Publications

MacDonald, Ian P. "'May the Guest Come': African Azimuths of Alien Planetfall," Literary Geographies 8 (2). 190-207. 2022.

MacDonald, Ian. “‘I Can’t Seem to Go Forward, Therefore I Must Go Back’: Ben Okri’s (P)anachronistic Utopias.” The Routledge Handbook of African Literature. Edited by Moradewun Adejunmobi and Carli Coetzee. Oxford: Routledge, 2019: 186-200. Refereed.

MacDonald, Ian. “‘Let Us All Mutate Together’: Cracking the Code in Kojo Laing’s Big Bishop Roko and the Altar Gangsters.” The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry 3.3 (2016): 313-328.

MacDonald, Ian. “The Cybogre Manifesto: Time, Utopia, and Globality in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Wizard of the Crow.” Research in African Literatures 47.1 (2016): 57-75.

Select Conference Participation

“African Speculative Landscapes.” Chair and Organizer. Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Convention, Toronto, Canada. 2021

“Being (Super)Human: Afrofuturism after Black Panther.” Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Convention, Seattle, Washington. Convention Presidential Theme Panel. 2020.

“Provincializing the Pulps: On the Extrapolative Speculation of African Mythopoesi(sf).” African Literature Association (ALA) Annual Convention, Columbus, Ohio. Chair: Moradewun Adejunmobi. 2019.

“Mumbo Jumbo: The Magic of Science and the Science of Myth in the Fiction of Nnedi Okorafor and Dilman Dila.” Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Convention, Chicago, Illinois. Chair: J. Andrew Brown. 2018

“Artificial Intelligence: A Literary History.” Chair and Organizer. Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Conference, New York, NY. E. Efe Khayyat, co-chair. Convention Presidential Theme Panel. 2018.

“Decolonizing the Mind(ship): Re-culturating AI in Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber.” Presenter. Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Conference, New York, NY. 2018.

Chair, Executive Committee of the Modern Language Association (MLA) Forum on Speculative Fiction. Austin, TX. 2016.