Alison Sperling

Assistant Professor

Alison Sperling

Contact Information

asperling@fsu.edu
WMS 427

About

Alison Sperling's research focuses on 20th- and 21st-century American literature, culture, and the visual and performance arts with a focus on the science-fictional and the weird, and with critical emphases on ecocriticism and ecotheory, queer and feminist theory, and Black studies. She has published widely in scholarly academic journals and edited collections at the intersections of these fields, and writes regularly for artist monographs, online publications and cultural reviews, and contemporary art exhibitions. Dr. Sperling is currently serving as a co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal Science Fiction Film and Television, published three times a year with Liverpool University Press.

Previous positions include postdoctoral fellowships at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICI) Berlin, Technische Universität Berlin, and Technische Universität Dresden and she continues to spend a part of each year as a freelance artistic researcher in Berlin, Germany. She is currently at work on her first book manuscript, tentatively titled Weird Modernism.

Dr. Sperling is also the President of the Sunshine State Biodiversity Group in Tallahassee, Florida.

Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; M.A., San Francisco State University; B.A., University of Miami
Literature, Media, and Culture

20th and 21st century U.S. literature and culture, ecocriticism, feminist and queer theory, science fiction, the weird

Select Publications

  • “Weird Geographies,” co-written with Jonathan Turnbull, Adam Searle, and Ben Platt. Introduction to “Weird Geographies,” a special issue of Cultural Politics (co-editors, forthcoming 2027).
  • “Science Fictional Ecologies and Contemporary Art,” co-written with Emiliano Guaraldo, in a special issue of Extrapolation (co-editors, forthcoming 2026).
  • “Anthropocene Sublimes,” co-written with Pieter Vermeulen and David Lombard. Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture, and the Environment, (co-editors, June 2025).
  • “Nonbinary/Natures.” symplokē, vol. 32, no. 1-2, 2024, pp. 115-28.
  • “Black Hole Black.” Spectral Futures, edited by Brendt Herzogenrath. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2025.
  • “Weird Queer Ecology.” The Weird: A Companion, edited by Kristopher Woofter and Carl Sederholm. Peter Lang Oxford Publishers, 2025.
  • "Science Fiction and New Materialism," New Routledge Companion to Science Fiction, (2024.
  • Special Issue Co-Editor, with Jordan Carroll, "Weird Temporalities." Studies in the Fantastic, 2020.
  • Special Issue Editor, "Climate Fictions." Paradoxa: Studies in World Literary Genres, 2020.
  • "Anthropocene." Bloomsbury Handbook of 21st Century Feminist Theory, 2019.
  • "Second Skins: A Body-Ecology of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy." Paradoxa: Studies in World Literary Genres, 2017.
  • "H.P. Lovecraft's Weird Body." Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, issue 31, 2016.
Faculty