DECODINGS
Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts Newsletter
May 2026, Vol. 32, No. 3
*SLSA 2026 RATIO ETHICA: University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
*SLSA/4S 2026 Toronto, Canada
*SLSA Membership: Join/Renew
*Elections: 2nd VP, Member-at-large
*New Book Series: Proximities: Experiments in Nearness
*Social Media/Website Redesign, Policies:Respectful Behavior and Freedom of Speech
*Configurations Book Reviews
*SLSA Europe
SLSA 2026, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil, August 25-29, 2026
RATIO ETHICA: Toward Epistemic Justice
https://www.brasilafrica.fflch.usp.br/en/about-ratio-ethica-event
Venues: University of São Paulo (USP), Butantã Campus (FFLCH–USP, Milton Santos Auditorium, Brasiliana Library, Japanese Culture House, among other places)
USP Organizers: Prof. Dr. Paulo Farah, Prof. Dr. Artur Matuck, Prof. Rosane Borges
With the support of the Graduate Program in Humanities, Rights, and Other Legitimacies (PPGHDL–FFLCH–USP) and SLSA.
Conference website: https://www.brasilafrica.fflch.usp.br/en/about-ratio-ethica-event
Updated deadline for abstracts of proposals: June 10, 2026
Submission site:https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=reslsausp2026
Contact Information: For questions regarding submissions, registration, accessibility, or institutional partnerships, contact jusepisteme@gmail.com OR ratioethica@usp.br
Conference Theme
The international conference RATIO ETHICA: Toward Epistemic Justice invites scholars, artists, writers, scientists, and practitioners from across disciplines to critically engage with questions of epistemic justice and the emergence of Alterscience. At a moment when climatic, social, and political crises destabilize established structures of knowledge, the conference seeks to reimagine what counts as valid knowledge and to amplify epistemologies historically marginalized or excluded.
Epistemic justice is proposed here not only as a corrective to inequalities in knowledge production but also as a generative framework for constructing new, plural, and inclusive intellectual futures. This paradigm calls for encounters across the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, arts, and emerging technologies. It requires us to rethink how knowledge is produced, legitimized, and transmitted, while also examining its ethical, political, and ecological consequences.
The event continues USP’s long tradition of interdisciplinary and critical inquiry while deepening the international collaboration with the SLSA. Together, we aim to cultivate an intellectual environment open to experimentation, dialogue, and transformative practices.
See the conference website for proposed areas of interest. The conference also welcomes proposals that, while not explicitly listed, critically engage with the broader theme of epistemic justice and alterscience.
Submission Guidelines
Submissions should include title, name, affiliation, and contact details.
Submission link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=reslsausp2026
SLSA 2026, University of São Paulo–Important Dates [subject to revision].
Deadline for abstract submission: June 10, 2026
Notification of acceptance: Beginning March 1
Early registration deadline: May 15
Final registration deadline: August 20
Conference 25–29 August 2026
TRAVEL AWARDS for Ratio Ethica: SLSA provides a limited number of travel awards for underfunded members presenting at the annual conference. Members of SLSA who present at the annual conference in Brazil may apply for travel subventions by emailing their name, title of their SLSA presentation, an indication of how long one has been a member of SLSA, a postal address, and any information about their funding for the conference to the Executive Director carol.colatrella@lmc.gatech.edu by August 1, 2026; put SLSA USP Travel Grant in the subject line of the email. Please provide estimated travel expenses and the amount of support (if any) anticipated from other sources. If you have received travel support from SLSA in the past, please include information about that support (when and how much). SLSA officers will review applications and approve funds for as many as our budget permits; preference will be given to student members and those members most in need. Each person awarded funds will receive a US check after the conference. SLSA funds can be used to defray hotel, registration, transportation, or other travel expenses. Information about Essay and Book Prizes and SLSA Travel Awards is posted on the society’s Awards website. https://litsciarts.org/awards/
SLSA/4S 2026 TORONTO
October 8 – 10, 2026
Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel
123 Queen St W, Toronto, ON M5H 2M9
From co-organizers Marcel O’Gorman and David Cecchetto: SLSA is pleased to host a series of integrated streams with the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada from October 8 to 10, 2026. https://www.4sonline.org/about_the_conference_toronto.php This partnership with 4S, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary in Toronto, is designed to generate new synergies, collaborations, and solidarity.
The 4S conference theme is Technopower • Technoscientific Futures; SLSA invites members to submit abstracts and panel proposals to one of four broad SLSA-organized streams. The extended deadline for proposals to the one of the four streams (Technics, Ecologies, Play, Art & Literature) was May 11, 2026. For full details, including SLSA/4S guidelines, topics and organizers of streams, and other information, see the Call for Papers https://litsciarts.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/SLSA-CFP-2026-Toronto.pdf
All accepted presenters must be SLSA Members in good standing by August 31, 2026, to be included in the SLSA/4S conference program. Additional deadlines for SLSA Streams will follow the same schedule as the 4S 2026 Key Dates included in the Call for Papers. Renew SLSA membership here: https://litsciarts.org/join-renew-membership/.
SLSA/4S Travel Awards: SLSA will provide a limited number of travel awards for underfunded members presenting in SLSA streams at the 4S conference. Members of SLSA who present at the Toronto conference may apply for travel subventions by emailing their name, title of their SLSA presentation, an indication of how long one has been a member of SLSA, a postal address, and any information about their funding for the conference to the Executive Director carol.colatrella@lmc.gatech.edu by September 1, 2026; put SLSA/4S Travel in subject line of the email. Please provide estimated travel expenses and the amount of support (if any) anticipated from other sources. If you have received travel support from SLSA in the past, please include information about that support (when and how much). SLSA officers will review applications and approve funds for as many as our budget permits; preference will be given to student members and those members most in need. Each person awarded funds will receive a US check after the conference. SLSA funds can be used to defray hotel, registration, transportation, or other travel expenses. Information about Essay and Book Prizes and SLSA Travel Awards is posted on the society’s Awards website. https://litsciarts.org/awards/
SLSA MEMBERSHIP: Join or renew your membership for 2026
Membership in the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts (SLSA) connects you with a worldwide community of approximately 600 scholars, researchers, and artists interested in the multi-disciplinary study of the relations among literature and language, the arts, science, medicine, and technology. Each year the annual SLSA conference attracts hundreds of participants from many different disciplines, including the history, sociology, anthropology, rhetoric, and philosophy of science, technology, and medicine; literary history and criticism; art; art history; media studies; cognitive science, and a wide variety of fields in science, technology, engineering, and medicine. Members receive three issues of Configurations, the SLSA journal; four issues of Decodings, the online newsletter; and access to the LITSCI-L, a moderated email list that reaches over 1800 subscribers.
ELECTION RESULTS AND APPOINTMENTS
Congratulations to the newest members of the Executive Committee:
2nd Vice President (to serve subsequent terms as 1st Vice President and President):
Paula Leverage, Associate Professor of French, Purdue University, leverage@purdue.edu
Member-at-Large (two-year term): Steven Denison, Professor of Biology, Eckerd College, denisosh@eckerd.edu
Graduate student liaisons (2026-2027):
Chase Bucklew, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, cbucklew@uwm.edu
Mehulkumar Desai, Indian Institute of Technology, mehulmd1106@gmail.com
Paris Weber, Texas A& M University, paris_316@tamu.edu
Zach Yost, University of Chicago, zyost@uchicago.edu
[A graduate student liaison is appointed for one year during which they participate in executive committee meetings and serve on committees, Each liaison can receive reimbursement for one conference registration fee.]
SLSA Book Series Proximities: Experiments in Nearness, from University of Minnesota Press
We are thrilled that the first volume of the Proximities Series—Microbial Resolution, by Gloria Chan-Sook Kim—is now published and available! Adjacencies abound. We are past the moment of merely thinking in terms of how opposites attract and nodes network. Today, disciplines and fields move consciously proximate to one another, in conversation and growing together. Further, the future is no longer sometime in the distance, but appears near to us, often grasped as an impending horizon of political, social, economic, and environmental catastrophe. Now more than ever, so much is so close. See the Call for Proposals (https://litsciarts.org/proximitiesflyer.pdf) for more information.Books in the Proximities series think proximately, that is, in disciplinary tandem, about the relationships within and between the arts, literature, and science, as well as how scholarship can best be in active dialogue with communities and the world around us today, and in the future. Published in association with the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts, this series not only thinks across disciplines, but thinks about the continuities and crossings themselves, interrogating how and why their disciplinary proximities matter. Proximities publishes work that is crafted with nearness in mind: human nearness to one another and the world around us; nearness to one another’s thoughts; to our written and unwritten pasts; to critical trends and crises; to our futures ahead. This kind of scholarship powerfully catalyzes awareness of what it means to work interdisciplinarily by challenging assumptions about disciplinary thinking from the outside in, and the inside out. If interested in submitting a proposal, please contact the editors with a short description of your book project. Series Editors: David Cecchetto—York University (Toronto, Canada) dcecchet@yorku.ca and Arielle Saiber—Johns Hopkins University asaiber@jhu.edu
For more information about SLSA book series and publications, see https://litsciarts.org/publications/
SOCIAL MEDIA AND WEBSITE REDESIGN: Wayne Miller, Electronic Resources Coordinator (wayne.miller@gmail.com), asks for new images for the SLSA website homepage (litsciarts.org). Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal and Ed Chang are developing SLSA social media. SLSA members interested in contributing to social media on behalf of the society are encouraged to email Ed (change@ohio.edu) and Ranjodh (ranjodhsingh.dhaliwal@unibas.ch). Adam Nocek, Wayne, Ranjodh, and Ed are working with a graphic professional to redesign the SLSA website.
Respectful Behavior and Freedom of Speech policies are posted here:
https://www.litsciarts.org/2019/05/29/policies-for-respectful-behavior-and-freedom-of-speech-commitment
SLSA OMBUDSPERSONS: Any member interested in volunteering to serve as ombudsperson, should apply by emailing Carol Colatrella (carol.colatrella@lmc.gatech.edu); include a short statement of why you are interested in serving in this role and what experience you can bring the position. Current officers will review applications to make appointments.Each Ombudsperson is an impartial entity who strives to see that SLSA members and SLSA conference attendees are treated fairly and equitably. Any member/attendee can seek the advice of an Ombudsperson. The Ombudsperson is impartial, neutral, and confidential. The rights and interests of all parties to disputes are considered, with the goal of achieving fair outcomes.
The primary responsibilities of the Ombudsperson are:
Ombudspersons: Marcel O’Gorman marcel@uwaterloo.ca and Kari Nixon mkarinixon@gmail.com
BOOK REVIEWS: Jay Labinger, the Configurations book review editor, will publish around 10 reviews per year, of books–on any topic–that are likely to interest a wide cross-section of SLSA members and Configurations readers. If you wish to propose a book for review, please email Jay (jal@its.caltech.edu) the author/title/publisher, a very brief description and statement of why it merits being reviewed in Configurations, and whether you would like to do the review yourself or, if not, any suggestions you may have for appropriate reviewers. Authors are welcome to propose their own recent book for review, with the same info. Jay will invite reviews via a posting on litsci-l, asking if anyone interested in reviewing one of them to contact him; the list of available books is posted at https://litsciarts.org/publications/ Check an issue of Configurations to see the preferred length and style for reviews. After a reviewer is matched with a book, Jay will ask for submission of the review within four months and will share the estimated date of publication.
The EUROPEAN Society for Literature, Science, and the Art is the sister organization of the international, USA-based Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts. SLSAeu welcomes colleagues in the humanities, the social sciences, the arts, and all fields of science, medicine, engineering, and computer sciences as well as independent scholars, artists, and scientists. https://www.slsa-eu.org/.
SLSA EXECUTIVE BOARD (2025-2026)
President: Rajani Sudan, Southern Methodist University (rsudan@mail.smu.edu)
Executive Director: Carol Colatrella, Georgia Institute of Technology (carol.colatrella@lmc.gatech.edu)
First Vice-President: Adam Nocek, Arizona State University (Adam.Nocek@asu.edu)
Second Vice-President: Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal, University of Basel ranjodhsingh.dhaliwal@unibas.ch
Members-at-Large: Paula Leverage (2023-25), Shane Denson (2023-25), Nat Mengist (2024-26)
Graduate Student Liaisons: Damian Enyaosah, Christina (Ting-Ting) Shiea
Configurations Editors: Melissa Littlefield, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Rajani Sudan,
Southern Methodist University. Configurations Email address: configurations@smu.edu
Configurations Book Review Editor: Jay Labinger, California Institute of Technology (jal@its.caltech.edu)
Publications Committee: Pamela Gossin; Raymond Malewitz; Bruce Clarke
Electronic Resources Coordinator: Wayne Miller (wayne.miller@gmail.com)
Arts Liaison: Dennis Summers (dennis@quantumdanceworks.com)
Social Media Liaisons: Ed Chang (change@ohio.edu); Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal (ranjodhsingh.dhaliwal@unibas.ch)
Ombudspersons: Marcel O’Gorman (marcel@uwaterloo.ca); Kari Nixon (mkarinixon@gmail.com)
Past Presidents: David Cecchetto, York University, Toronto; Marcel O’Gorman, University of Waterloo; Ron Broglio, Arizona State University; Robert Markley, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Laura Otis, Emory University; Richard Nash, Indiana University; Alan Rauch, University of North Carolina-Charlotte; Bruce Clarke, Texas Tech University; Eve Keller, Fordham University; Jay Labinger, California Institute of Technology; T. Hugh Crawford, Georgia Tech; Susan Squier, Penn State; Sidney Perkowitz, Emory University; Stuart Peterfreund, Northeastern University; James J. Bono, SUNY-Buffalo; N. Katherine Hayles, Duke University; Mark Greenberg, Drexel University; Lance Schachterle, Worcester Polytechnic Institute; Stephen J. Weininger, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
The Executive Director can be reached at (404) 894-1241 or carol.colatrella@lmc.gatech.edu.
Postal address: Carol Colatrella, Executive Director, SLSA, School of Literature, Media, and
Communication, Georgia Institute of Technology, 686 Cherry Street, Atlanta, GA 30332-0165
SLSA website: https://www.litsciarts.org
