Feminist Workshop on Writing and Alien Encounters

Feminist Reconfigurings of Alien Encounters

Feminist Reconfigurings of Alien Encounters reclaims the notion of alien encounters together with strange but queerly loved companions: Vulgar slugs, diatoms (micro-algae), and familiars (spirit guides of witches). This playfully crafted mixed-genre book is informed by feminist posthumanisms and co-created with a spectral community of more-than-humans who are respectfully summoned to contribute with their perspectives. The focus of the artistic-philosophical-poetic investigations are questions of ethics, aesthetics, and methodologies to co-exist response-ably in more-than-human worlds.

During the conversation, two of the authors – Nina Lykke and Line Henriksen – will read from the poetic texts that together with philosophical reflections run through the book. Participants will also be invited to try out creative writing prompts, perhaps leading to a lovingly queer encounter with your own aliens.

The book Feminist Reconfigurings of Alien Encounters – Ethical Co-Existence in More-than-Human Worlds is published by Routledge, London/New York, as part of the series ’More-Than-Human Humanities’ edited by Marietta Radomska and Cecilia Åsberg.

The event presents work done in the Academy of Finland-funded profiling area “Artistic Thinking-Driven Artist Pedagogy” (Profi 7). The language of the event is English.

Presenters

Line Henriksen, PhD, is Senior Lecturer in Literature and Creative Writing at Malmö University. She is co-author of Feminist Reconfigurings of Alien Encounters: Ethical Co-Existence in More-than-Human Worlds (2024) together with Nina Lykke and Katja Aglert and author of the monograph In the Company of Ghosts: Hauntology, Ethics, Digital Monsters (2016). She is the director of the research group The Monster Lab at Malmö University, and her research interests include monster theory, hauntology and creative writing as method.

Nina Lykke, Professor Emerita, Gender Studies, Linköping University, Sweden, and Aarhus University, Denmark, is a queerfemme-inist philosopher-poet. Current research:  queer death studies, intersectionality, feminist posthumanism, queerfemme theory, queer ecologies; poetic writing. Author of numerous articles, and edited volumes as well as monographs such as Cosmodolphins (2000), Feminist Studies (2010), Vibrant Death (2022) and Feminist Reconfigurings of Alien Encounters (2024, with K. Aglert and L. Henriksen).