What futures can South Asia imagine for itself—and in whose languages, forms, and cosmologies are they written? This seminar takes up South Asian Futurisms, a concept that remains under-theorized within literary studies, as a lens for reading how South Asian literatures of the past and present, across regional and vernacular traditions, have envisioned the future. Amid the region's rapidly shifting economic, social, and geopolitical landscape, we ask: can there be a South Asian Futurism, and if so, what does it look like?

Rather than confining futurity to the postcolonial, the seminar moves toward a decolonial imagination—one in which the distinction between the two frameworks is acknowledged, but a relationship between them is what drives the inquiry. The seminar also cross-interfaces with genre: must these imaginations of the future reside only in science fiction and speculative fiction, or do folklore, myth, and magic realism constitute equally vital archives of futurity? What cultural and religious inheritances exist for futures yet to come? Nor is the assumption that futurism is inherently emancipatory: is South Asian Futurism inclusive, or are there retellings in which exclusivity is championed—as in the growing subgenre of Hindutva science fiction in India? Is propaganda embedded in how each nation projects what lies ahead, and can we imagine a pluriversal futurity that exceeds national borders altogether?

South Asian Futurisms must also be read in dialogue with adjacent international movements such as Afrofuturism and Sinofuturism, as well as formations emerging from within: Dalit Futurism, Sufi Futurism, and others still taking shape. We are curious about the relationships, borrowings, and solidarities built across these movements, and wonder if they can exist symbiotically rather than derivatively.

Engaging postcolonial and decolonial thinkers such as Spivak, Quijano, and Mignolo alongside scholars of South Asian speculative fiction including Sami Ahmad Khan and E. Dawson Varughese, the seminar seeks to push South Asian Futurisms beyond an India-centric horizon. We invite papers that situate these futures within global systems and urgent contemporary concerns—health, climate change, migration, and marginalization across caste, gender, religion, and beyond—making the conversation intersectional and holding space to collectively envision what the future means for the region.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to: vernacular and regional speculative traditions; futurity in folk and mythological forms; caste, gender, and the body in imagined futures; climate fiction and ecological futures of the subcontinent; diasporic and borderland futurisms; and the politics of translation in circulating South Asian futures. Beyond literary analysis, we also welcome practitioner perspectives—writers, translators, and artists reflecting on how literature is used to build these futures.