Bogi Takács Perelmutter (e/em/eir/emself or they pronouns) is an author, editor, critic and scholar of speculative fiction. E has won the Lambda and Hugo awards for eir editorial work and criticism. As a writer, critic, and editor, Dr. Takács Perelmutter has been a finalist for many SFF awards including the Locus award, the Ignyte award, and the Hexa award. Born in Győr, Hungary, Dr. Takács Perelmutter immigrated to the US and received eir PhD from the University of Kansas. Dr. Takács Perelmutter works as an Assistant Teaching Professor of Slavic, German and Eurasian Studies & Jewish Studies at the University of Kansas, and is also affiliated with the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction. E is an interdisciplinary scholar with a background in both quantitative and qualitative research, ranging from the humanities to the health sciences. In SFF Studies, Dr. Takács Perelmutter’s research focuses on the history of Hungarian speculative fiction (especially in the 1956-1989 time period), translation studies, Jewish authors, and authors who belong to marginalized genders. Dr. Takács Perelmutter’s articles have recently appeared in the SFRA Review, Science Fiction in Translation, and Uneven Futures: Lessons for Community Survival from Speculative Fiction. They are also an author of a long-running LGBTQIA+ Speculative Classics series of essays at Tor.com.  In 2022, Dr. Takács Perelmutter was awarded the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute Jewish Gender Studies Research Award for studying the work of Hungarian Jewish woman author Zsuzsa Kántor. E is currently working on a book manuscript about Kántor’s controversial oeuvre, including her speculative novella series about Young Pioneers in space; and another scholarly manuscript focusing on gendered imaginaries of magical power in speculative fiction in a cross-cultural comparison. Eir second short story collection Power to Yield is forthcoming from Broken Eye Books, and an anthology e edited, Rosalind’s Siblings, focusing on speculative stories featuring scientists of marginalized genders, recently came out from Atthis Arts Books. Dr. Takács Perelmutter currently resides in Lawrence, Kansas with eir spouse, fellow KU professor and SFF author Dr. R.B. Lemberg Perelmutter, their teenager Mati, and their collective book accumulation.

Bogi Takács Perelmutter’s keynote talk abstract:

“In this keynote talk I examine early and overlooked queer and trans speculative narratives in Hungary and the US to argue that locating and studying such texts yields insights into the formation of queer and trans literary canons. Authors’ positionality, political affinities, and reputation might all contribute to their works being excluded from canons and scholarship. I will use theories of censorship and canon-building to account for why we might or might not read – or even know about – specific works.

I will begin by discussing A kétnemüek (‘The Two-Sexed,’ 1922) by Nándor Ujhelyi (1888-1933), a speculative body swap novel with erotic elements. This novel is one of the first works of fiction to engage with transgender themes in Hungarian. I will take a look at how it relates to Ujhelyi’s other speculative explorations of body and identity, like the pacifist alternate-history novel Jack Fun császársága (‘The Imperial Reign of Jack Fun,’ 1920). I will talk about how studying the science fiction novels of Zsuzsa Kántor (1916-2011) for young audiences – in particular her Space Pioneers trilogy (1973-1980), which highlights political conflict but does not overtly focus on gender – has led me to discover her coterminous non-speculative work with a gender-nonconforming protagonist, Szerelmem, Csikó (‘My Beloved, Csikó,’ 1973). The themes shared by both have enabled me to reevaluate Kántor’s relationship to the Communist regime. I will also investigate why both Ujhelyi’s and Kántor’s works have received less discussion than Triszex (‘Trisex,’ 1974) by Gyula Fekete, a speculative novella notable for presenting nonbinary gender concepts in an anti-feminist context.

I will also discuss American English-language works to compare dynamics and enable a broader theorization of the phenomena we notice. I will take a look at American author William Sleator’s (1945-2011) young adult novel House of Stairs (1974), a richly allusive work depicting same-sex attraction without naming it. I will likewise explore the “Winter’s King” (1969) by Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018) which the author revised after publication to add content about gender nonconformity. I will conclude with James Tiptree Jr. (1915-1987)’s Up the Walls of the World (1978), whose pronoun exploration went largely unnoticed by critics.

Using these examples, I investigate factors that can lead to a work dropping out of a canon or not entering it – often relating to author identity and positionality. The queerness and transness of earlier authors is often not possible to determine, but we do know that many of them belonged also to other marginalized groups. Ujhelyi, Kántor and Sleator were from Jewish backgrounds; Ujhelyi and Tiptree Jr. were disabled. Authors’ controversial actions might also result in erasure, like Tiptree Jr.’s murder-suicide, Kántor’s defense of the Soviet occupation of Hungary, or Ujhelyi being best known in his era as a controversial erotic author. I will conclude by suggesting directions of future research in other languages and in areas of speculative fiction stereotyped as less prestigious, like children’s literature.

Parts of this research were funded by the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute Jewish Gender Studies Research Award.”