Jack Leong, York University’s associate dean of libraries, research and open scholarship, was elected vice-president of the Canadian Comparative Literature Association/Association Canadienne de Littérature Comparée (CCLA – ACLC) during its 2021 annual conference. Leong will serve in this role from 2021-23.

The CCLA – ACLC is a leading academic organization in the studies of comparative literature in Canada. In this leadership role, Leong will Chair and organize the CCLA – ACLC annual conferences over the next two years.

“In addition to advancing the studies of comparative literature, digital humanities, and the preservation and open dissemination of the research and scholarship in this field, I will promote diversity and multiplicity, which are the core values of comparative literature as well as parts of the mandate of York University, to provide a platform to critically interrogate equity, inclusion and anti-racism in Canadian and global context,” said Leong.

During the CCLA – ACLC Annual Conference this year, Leong delivered a research paper titled “Ascending to the Starts: Ideology and Transcendence in Science Fiction.” He discussed the concept of technological utopia in the works of Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris (1961), Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and Cixin Liu’s The Wandering Earth (2000).

“In unravelling the ideological realities that are being replaced by the cosmic visions depicted in these works, I argue that the functions of both ideology and ‘cosmic’ transcendence complement each other and contribute to the forming of a symbolic spiral movement of humanity’s progression in technology and society,” he said.

Leong will further his research to discuss the significant of diversity and multiplicity in the technological utopia in science fiction from different languages and cultures.

Courtesy of YFile.