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Ian P. MacDonald is Assistant Professor of English at �鶹��Ʒ��Ƶ and a member of the core science fiction and fantasy faculty in the English Department. He received his doctorate in African literature and postcolonial theory from Columbia University and focuses his scholarship on the intersection of science fiction and African literature. He teaches courses on science fiction, fantasy, Afrofuturism and Afrofantasy, Africanfuturism, African literature, and literary-critical theory at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. His courses at �鶹��Ʒ��Ƶhave included the LIT3313 survey of science fiction, LIT6932 seminars in Afrofuturism and utopia/dystopia, and LIT4930 courses in post-apocalyptic fiction and Afrofuturism. He also regularly teaches critical theory and plans to incorporate a course in science fiction and fantasy theory.

His co-edited collection, (with Kate Polak, Liverpool University Press, 2024), follows up on work by Fredric Jameson, who charted a chronological and intellectual affinity between the historical novel and science fiction. The contributors examine the ways contemporary works straddle this divide and, in so doing, reflect upon science fiction as historical fiction of the future.

His research primarily examines science fiction 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 and Coetzee, Routledge, 2019). His work is also forthcoming in Utopian Studies, Science Fiction Studies, Lingua Cosmica II (eds. Knickerbocker and Chattopadhyay, University of Illinois Press), and elsewhere.

Selected Publications

Liverpool UP, 2024.

Refereed Chapters within Edition

--MacDonald, Ian and Kate Polak. “Introduction: Speculative Histories and Past Futures, Rethinking Memory in the Twenty-first Century.” Science Fiction and the Historical Novel: Days of Future Pasts, edited by Ian MacDonald and Kate Polak, Liverpool UP, 2024, pp. 1-13.

--“‘A Poor Sort of Memory’: Jamais Vu and the Historian as Archive in Tade Thompson’s Wormwood Trilogy.” Science Fiction and the Historical Novel: Days of Future Pasts, edited by Ian MacDonald and Kate Polak, Liverpool UP, 2024, pp. 109-128.

“‘Beyond the Present and the Future’: Technophilic Dreams and Technophobic Nightmares in Osiris Rising.” Utopian Studies, vol. 36, no. 2. In Press. 

“‘Do You Know Where Home Is?’: Cosmospolitanism and the Earth as Exile in Deji Bryce Olukotun’s Brain Gain Novels.” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 52, no. 2. In Press.

Literary Geographies, vol. 8, no. 2, 2022, pp. 190-207.

Specialization Areas

Speculative Fiction and Fantasy

African and Diasporic Literature

Postcolonial Literature and Theory

Utopian Literature

Globalization and Cosmopolitanism

CV

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.