The University of California, Riverside hosted the Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA) 2017 conference from Wednesday, June 28 to Saturday, July 1.

This year's conference theme was "Unknown Pasts / Unseen Futures."

Home to the Eaton Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy, UCR also runs the Speculative Fictions and Cultures of Science graduate program, and has a robust research community focused on speculative fiction across media.

UC Riverside’s collaboration with SFRA was due to the backing of UCR Library and the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (CHASS), with a significant amount of funding and staff support made available by CHASS Dean Milagros Peña. “Without Dean Peña’s support, we wouldn’t even have started down the path of having a conference,” said Dr. Sherryl Vint, Director, Speculative Fiction and Cultures of Science.

“We are absolutely delighted that UCR hosted the SFRA 2017 conference,” said Alison Scott, Associate University Librarian for Collections & Scholarly Communication. “Bringing scholars, students, and creative artists to campus was such a great opportunity for shared learning and engagement. We’re thrilled!”

JJ Jacobson, UCR Library’s inaugural Jay Kay and Doris Klein Librarian for Science Fiction, was one of the panelists at the SFRA conference. Her discussion was about the dialogue between researchers and curators.

“We talked with a UCR graduate student who has done research in the Eaton Collection,” Jacobson explained. “We talked about her experience and how researchers and librarians can work together, what constitutes librarians’ work and what constitutes researchers’ work."

According to SFRA, the “Unknown Pasts / Unseen Future” theme grew out of their 2016 conference, which was centered on the history of science fiction that has yet to be sufficiently addressed in scholarship, including marginalized or otherwise neglected bodies of work. The conference theme also reflected UCR’s commitment to science fiction scholarship that is focused on imagining and creating sustainable and inclusive futures. The focus was equally on new voices in the field and the new kinds of futures that emerge from this broader sense of the field’s membership.

Founded in 1970, SFRA is the oldest professional association dedicated to the scholarly inquiry into science fiction. The association works to improve classroom teaching; encourage and assist scholarship; and to evaluate and publicize new books and magazines dealing with fantastic literature and film, teaching methods and materials, and allied media performances.

"One of the reasons I started having our graduate students co-curate exhibits was to give them another modality through which to speak," Jacobson explained. "They’re really good with words because they’re writing all the time – articles, talks, dissertations – but an exhibit is a very different thing. It’s not just words, it’s not just words and images. An exhibit is a display of works that already exist, so they’re already part of the public conversation, which are put together to tell a story about some aspect of speculative fiction, science fiction, or fantasy. It’s important to me because here are these inquisitive, caring, extremely hard-working young people who are actively committed to using speculative fiction to encourage the world to change. It was important that the Eaton Collection help them find a new kind of voice, to expand how they contribute to the world in terms of public goods.”

As an additional perk, the Eaton Collection granted access to conference attendees only from June 26 to 28, between the hours of 10:00 am and 4:00 pm. The 2017 SFRA conference was held at the Marriott Riverside located at 3400 Market Street, 92501. For the full conference program, panel list, and more, please visit the SFRA conference website.