Peer-Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters

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Peer-Reviewed Articles Underway & Forthcoming

“Anthropocene Sublimes: Introduction,” with Pieter Vermuelen and David Lombard. “Anthropocene Sublimes,” a special issue of Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and the Environment, forthcoming 2025.

Link to CFP: https://ecozona.eu/announcement/view/336

Co-authored with Jack Halberstam, “The Weird and the Wild,” Cultural Politics, Duke University Press, forthcoming 2025.

“Nonbinary/Natures.” Symplokē, Special Issue on Critical Ecologies, ed. Robin Goodman and Aaron Jaffe, forthcoming 2024.

“1972 and Ecological Science Fiction.” Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, issue 142, pp. 48-54, 2022.

“Climate Fictions: An Introduction.” Paradoxa: Studies in World Literary Genres, Issue 31, pp. 1-17, 2020.

Read here: https://paradoxa.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/1-Climate-Fictions-Introduction-Alison-Sperling-pp-7-22.pdf

“Weird Temporalities,” co-authored with Jordan S. Carroll. Studies in the Fantastic, Issue 9, pp. 1-22, Summer/Fall 2020.

“H.P. Lovecraft’s Weird Body,” Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, Issue 31, 2017. Online.

“Second Skins: A Body Ecology of Sickness in The Southern Reach Trilogy.” Paradoxa, Vol. 28, December 2016.

"Freak Temporality: Female Adolescence in the Novels of Carson McCullers," Girlhood Studies, Vol. 9, Issue 1: “Disability and Girlhood: Transnational Perspectives,” pp. 88-103, March 2016.

“Weird Temporalities,” co-authored with Jordan S. Carroll. Studies in the Fantastic, Issue 9, pp. 1-22, Summer/Fall 2020.

“H.P. Lovecraft’s Weird Body,” Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, Issue 31, 2017. Online. 

Read here: http://www.rhizomes.net/issue31/sperling.html

“Second Skins: A Body Ecology of Sickness in The Southern Reach Trilogy.” Paradoxa, Vol. 28, December 2016.

"Freak Temporality: Female Adolescence in the Novels of Carson McCullers," Girlhood Studies, Vol. 9, Issue 1: “Disability and Girlhood: Transnational Perspectives,” pp. 88-103, March 2016.

Book Chapters

“Black Hole Black.: Disco Ball Lightning” Spectral Futures, ed. Bernd Herzogenrath, Bloomsbury Publishing, forthcoming 2024.

“Weird Queer Ecology.” A Weird Companion, ed. Michael Woofter and Carl Sederholm. Peter Lang Oxford Publishers, forthcoming 2024.

“Science Fiction and New Materialism,” The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction, ed. Mark Bould, Andrew M. Butler, Adam Roberts, and Sherryl Vint, Routledge Publishers, 2024.

Link to Book: https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Mark-Bould/dp/0367690535/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3HXETHJOLY0UK&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.OOrEBY6_X-mpQNobscq2KAm2Lzuh78bmmzKSgSbd9pc0okvgsYZv_pP--HLg9WDEdcJwv4smwRSuY-J-5J6MU_3tBOrXyup1BcTibap2aSg.7X-8Ixi1kfULvsEBdL73nyaSvHOCCLg3vhrpbPitXrE&dib_tag=se&keywords=new+routledge+companion+to+science+fiction&qid=1722428657&sprefix=new+routledge+companion+to+science+fiction%2Caps%2C109&sr=8-1

“Hanna Cormick’s ‘The Mermaid’: Environmental Disability and Aquatic Climate Crises.” The Deep: A Companion, ed. Simon Bacon, Peter Lang Publishers, 2023.

“Nonhuman Futurity and Multispecies Coalition-Building.” Uneven Futures, ed. Gerry Canavan, Sean Guynes, and Ida Yoshinaga, NYU Press, December 2022. 

“Star Trek and Ecology.” Routledge Companion to Star Trek. Ed. Leimar Garcia-Siino, Sabrina Mittermeier, and Stefan Rabitsch. Routledge Press, 2022. 

“Love in the Time of the Anthropocene: A Conversation Between Alison Sperling and Jeff VanderMeer.” Surreal Entanglements: Essays on Jeff VanderMeer’s Fiction. Routledge Press, 2021.

“Feminism and New Materialism.” Materialism and Politics, ed. Bernardo Bianchi, Émilie Filion-Donato, Marlon Miguel, and Ayse Yuva. ICI Berlin Press, 2021.

“Radiating Exposures.” Weathering, ed. Arnd Wedemeyer and Christoph Holzhey, Cultural Inquiry Series, ICI Berlin Press, p. 41-62, 2020.

“Queer Ingestions: Weird and Vegetative Bodies in Jeff VanderMeer’s Fiction.” Speculative Vegetation: Plants in Science Fiction. Wales University Press, pp. 194-213, 2020.

“Anthropocene.” Bloomsbury Handbook of 21st Century Feminist Theory, ed. Robin Goodman. Bloomsbury Press, February 2019.

“H.P. Lovecraft’s Weird Body.” Lovecraft Annual, no. 10, ed. S. T. Joshi, pp. 81-103, Hippocampus Press, 2016. (Reprinted journal article).

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