Ian P. MacDonald is 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 sf and African literature. He teaches courses on sf, fantasy, Afrofuturism and Afrofantasy, Africanfuturism, African literature, and literary-critical theory. His co-edited collection,  Science Fiction and the Historical Novel: Days of Future Pasts   (w/ Kate Polak, Liverpool UP, 2024) follows up on work by Fredric Jameson who charted a chronological and intellectual affinity between the historical novel and science fiction. The contributors to this edition look at the ways contemporary works straddle this divide and, in so doing, reflect upon sf as historical fiction of the future. His work 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), and is forthcoming in  Utopian Studies,  Science Fiction Studies, and elsewhere. Selected Publications Science Fiction and the Historical Novel: Days of Future Pasts   . 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. “‘May the Guest Come’: African Azimuths of Alien Planetfall.”   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

Ian MacDonald is Assistant Professor of English at Florida Atlantic University where he teaches science fiction and Africana literature. His sf courses at FAU 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.