State of the Art: Swancon 2008 is collaborating with Curtin University of Technology to deliver the best academic programme ever delivered at an Australian SF convention. State of the Art: Science Fiction Histories is a two-day academic conference, on 22-23 March 2008, that is contained within the broader programme of Swancon itself.

In his recent history of the genre, Roger Luckhurst argues that the marginalisation of Science Fiction (SF) from the literary establishment helped readers and writers to identify its conventions. Fandom blossomed from this liminal space, its culture providing a unique history of the relations between texts and their readers. While fans were the first historians of SF, other communities have since established their own versions of the genre. The rise of national SF in countries such as Brazil and the old Soviet Union, China and Japan de-centre its Anglo-American bias. Feminist and queer writers work to unravel its phallocentrism and heterosexism.

Histories of black and Aboriginalist fiction point out the political uses of the form. The genre has itself been shaped by its reception by these communities. In Anglo-American SF, the genre's intimacy with fandom has transformed the way its fiction (and history) has been written. It is with a view to thinking through such developments that this symposium seeks work on what SF has been to different audiences at different times, on rewriting generic history to arrive at a better understanding of the state of the art today.

The schedule of papers presented is listed below. Please note that this schedule remains subject to change.

SATURDAY 22 MARCH

SUNDAY 23 MARCH