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Lisa Yaszek
Regents’ Professor
Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts School of Literature, Media, and Communication
Lisa Yaszek is a leading scholar and commentator in the field of science fiction literature, particularly its history, cultural implications, and underrepresented voices in the genre, including women and people of color.
Lisa Yaszek researches and teaches science fiction as a global language crossing centuries, continents, and cultures. Yaszek’s books include The Future is Female! Volumes 1 and 2 (Library of America, 2018 and 2022);Literary Afrofuturism in the Twenty-First Century (OSUP, 2020); Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction (Wesleyan, 2016); The Self-Wired: Technology and Subjectivity in Contemporary American Narrative (Routledge 2002/2014); and Galactic Suburbia: Recovering Women’s Science Fiction (Ohio State, 2008). Her ideas about science fiction as the premier story form of modernity have been featured in The Washington Post, Food and Wine Magazine, and USA Today and on the AMC miniseries, James Cameron's Story of Science Fiction. A past president of the Science Fiction Research Association, Yaszek currently serves as an editor for the Library of America and as a juror for the Phillip K. Dick, John W. Campbell, and Eugie Foster Science Fiction Awards.
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News and Recent Appearances
Afrofuturism and the role of women in the new Blank Panther film, "Wakanda Forever" / The Sloomoo Institute
WABE
Georgia Tech professors Dr. Susana Morris and Dr. Lisa Yaszek discuss Afrofuturism and the role of women in the new Blank Panther film, “Wakanda Forever.”
https://www.wabe.org/podcasts/city-lights/afrofuturism-and-the-role-of-women-in…
Black History Month: How Octavia Butler's legacy was born out of a bad science-fiction movie
USA Today
Butler also paved the way for more science fiction female writers, like Shawl, N.K. Jemisin and Nnedi Okorafor, to flourish in the genre. "She was literally one of the first, if not the first, Black woman to publish in modern science fiction magazines under own name," Lisa Yaszek, regents professor of science fiction studies in the School of Literature, Media and Communication at Georgia Tech told USA TODAY last year.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/books/2022/02/23/octavia-butler-wh…
An unofficial list of the most influential science fiction works ever
Washington Post
“Crashing big things into celestial objects goes all the way back to the 1930s stories of Edmond ‘World Wrecker’ Hamilton,” Lisa Yaszek, regents professor of science fiction studies at Georgia Tech, wrote in a text message. “In ‘Thundering Worlds,’ we throw Mercury at an invading alien army to save the rest of the solar system.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/01/11/science-fiction-space-trav…
To the Moon, Back, and Beyond
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