Speculative fiction is important for critical pedagogy.

Speculative fiction has an important place in critical pedagogy and in the pursuit of healing and building hope in the field of education. The term “speculative fiction” has many conflicting definitions that have changed over time, but for the purpose of this project, one of the most expansive definitions fits best. Marek Oziewicz, in his 2017 article for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, discusses the difficult task of defining speculative fiction, calling it a “fuzzy super-set category that houses all non-mimetic-genres—genres that in one way or another depart from imitating conscious reality” (p.2). Genres typically housed under the speculative fiction umbrella include science fiction, fantasy, dystopian/utopian fiction, and horror. These genres, in contrast to other forms of fiction, “construct models of reality” rather than transcribe it directly and can also be understood as a “thought experiment that embraces an open-ended vision of the real” (Marek, 2017, p.3). Because it is such an expansive category, I have chosen to include scholarship that analyses the use of speculative fiction works that have specific connections to themes of justice and liberation. These works are most often written by people of color, women, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, [dis]abled authors, and authors that experience life at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities and many of these works of speculative fiction serve as critiques and responses to oppression.

A recent surge in justice oriented speculative fiction has also given birth to new terms and definitions. For example, the authors of Octavia’s. Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements developed the term “visionary fiction” to distinguish science fiction that has “relevance toward building new, freer worlds from the mainstream strain of science fiction, which most often reinforces dominant narratives of power” (Imarisha, 2015, p.4). This constant process of challenging and creating new definitions speaks to the ways that speculative fiction has evolved and the ways that it has gained increasing acceptance and legitimacy in both academic and popular culture, making space for new and emerging storytellers to join in conversation with seminal voices in the tradition. Speculative fiction usually deals with imaginary or fantastical worlds, but many subjects and themes are rooted in the writers’ lived experiences, often incorporating thoughts and feelings about the worlds they live in, the worlds that they desire living in, as well as the worlds that they fear living in. The reflective, analytical, critical and constructive qualities of speculative fiction are what make the genre a useful tool for critical pedagogy. Engaging with the genre through reading, writing and performance can uplift the voices people from marginalized communities, facilitate generative conversations about systems of oppression and how they manifest in our daily lives, and provide a space for experimentation with ideas about the future, all of which have the power to aid in the cultivation of critical hope in the classroom. Studies by S.R Toliver (2020, Sarah E. Truman (2019), Julie Doyle (2020), and Leigh Anne Howard (2019), have shown that students of all ages are capable of creative, critical, and self-reflective thinking through the lens of speculative fiction and the practice has potential to aid in the healing of collective and individual trauma by moving beyond critique and imagining more just worlds. These studies also show how speculative fiction can be an effective tool in engaging students in various, often difficult topics such as police violence, white supremacy, climate crisis, gender binary, and other topics related to identity and oppression. Because we know that the persistent attack on hope affects teachers as well as students, it follows that teachers would also benefit from the opportunity to engage with speculative fiction in the classroom. Through exposure to speculative fiction centered curriculum, teachers can practice cultivating critical hope through self-reflection and experimentation with ideas about the future. This process has the potential to inspire teachers to incorporate speculative fiction into their curriculum by building teachers’ confidence in working with the genre and themes and focusing on strengthening their ability to create safe spaces of reflection and experimentation for their students. Using speculative fiction in the classroom is a form of arts integrated pedagogy that many teachers may not be familiar with, which is why learning guide should offer background on the genre and support teachers’ understanding as well as student understanding.

Purpose of the Project

The purpose of this field project was to create a learning guide and sample lesson plan for teachers to explore and practice with the genre of speculative fiction through reading, writing, and performance-based storytelling with their students. The learning guide features speculative fiction texts written by and for people of marginalized communities as well as texts about speculative fiction as a tool of social and political change. The learning guide incudes discussion questions, creative writing prompts, and performance exercises as well as sources for further reading and additional recommendations. The aim of this project is to introduce teachers to the genre of speculative fiction and create generative conversations about how to use texts and activities as pedagogical tools in the pursuit of creating liberatory classroom environments and fostering critical hope. This field project may be of interest to students and teachers in secondary education, higher education, and teacher education, but the themes and activities can be scaled up or down to meet the needs of all age groups. It may also be of interest to activists, parents, artists and writers, as well as anyone interested in being transported to new worlds, where they are also invited to create their own. This project is a result of my lived experience as an undergraduate student studying Women and Gender Studies and as a graduate student studying Human Rights Education and critical pedagogy. I saw first-hand how privileging critique and de-centering art and storytelling limited students’ ability to foster critical hope and move beyond exposing unjust systems of power. This project was inspired by educators who went out of their way to showcase narratives of underrepresented people and write joy into their curriculum through arts integrated critical pedagogy. This project would not be possible without the artistic, literary, and intellectual contributions of people of color and of LGBTQIA+ experience, especially Black women and their contributions to critical pedagogy, critical race theory, feminism, and AfroFuturism, movements which have created the conditions that allow the classroom the potential to be a space of transformation and liberation despite the ever-presence of White supremacy, cisheteropatriarchy, and capitalism. I acknowledge how my privileged identities as a white, able-bodied, graduate student intersect with and inform my experiences as a trans-masculine, queer person, especially in the context of education as it exists as an institution of both oppression and liberation.

Theoretical Framework

Critical pedagogy and utopian pedagogy will be used as a theoretical framework for this field project. Critical pedagogy applies aspects of critical theory to the field of education and emphasizes making “visible the connections between power and knowledge and provide[ing] the conditions for extending democratic rights, values, and identities” while maintaining a critical understanding of history and lived experience (Giroux, 2007, p. 28). Critical pedagogy will be used due to its reliance on the belief that education can be liberatory and the centrality of hope within the theory, which speaks to the potential of tools such as speculative fiction to reinvigorate hope, and aid in the practice of critique and self-reflection. Foundational authors in the field of critical pedagogy include Brazilian philosopher and educator Paulo Freire and American author and educator bell hooks. Freire, in his most famous work Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968) outlines a critique of the traditional “banking model” of education and proposes instead a “problem-posing” pedagogy that posits the learner as a co-creator of knowledge in the classroom. Freire (2004), in his later work, Pedagogy of Indignation writes about utopia, stating

If I am not in the world simply to adapt to it, but rather transform it, and if it is not possible to change the world without a certain dream or vision for it, I must make use of every possibility there is not only to speak about my utopia, but also to engage in practices consistent with it. (p. 7)

which speaks to the value of pursuing a balance between critique and imagination in critical pedagogy, as well as understanding hope as praxis. bell hooks in her book Teaching Community emphasizes the importance of approaching social issues on a community level in the field of education and centers hope as an important aspect of healing and moving beyond critique (hooks, 2003). Taken together these authors represent the way that critical pedagogy has grown and expanded throughout the years and has responded to contemporary social and political issues while maintaining the belief in the potential of schools as sites for transformation and liberation.

Utopian pedagogy is a philosophy of education that is related to critical pedagogy and the two inform each other in various ways. Utopian pedagogy speaks specifically to the importance of maintaining “critical attitude towards the present and a political commitment to experiment in transfiguring the coordinates of our historical moment” meaning that critique must also include an investment in the process of imagining different ways of being and knowing in education (Coté, Day, Peuter, 2007, p. 13). Utopian Pedagogy is used in this field project because using speculative fiction as method is an example of putting utopian pedagogy into practice as it encourages creating space for both critique and creation through the exploration of new worlds in literature and art. Some foundational authors who have contributed to utopian pedagogy are Mark Coté, Richard J.T. Day, Greig De Peuter, Rhiannon Firth, and Henry Armond Giroux. Coté, Day, Peuter and Giroux among others, contributed to 2007 book Utopian Pedagogy: Radical Experiments Against Neoliberal Globalization which traces the history of the utopian impulse in philosophy and education and posits utopian pedagogy as a direct response to questions about the role of education in the current neoliberal landscape and the potential for not only survival, but moving beyond the struggles that people are facing (Coté, Day, Peuter, 2007). Firth expands on utopian pedagogy by looking at the ways that the ideas inform research methodologies within the education and social movements by providing a critique of existing practices (Firth, 2003). Taken together these authors provide a rationale for the project of experimenting with tools such as speculative fiction in the classroom as a way of employing utopian pedagogies and settling into the balance of critique and creation.

The history of science fiction and speculative fiction is leftist – it creates a space for imagining radical futures of utopia Lothian 19 [Alexis Lothian is Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies and Core Faculty in the Design Cultures & Creativity Program at the University of Maryland, College Park. “Old Futures Speculative Fiction and Queer Possibility.” Book. NYU Scholarship Online. New York: New York University Press, 2019. Accessed July 11 2023.]

As a literary and media genre, science fiction has entered the ar- chive of critical cultural theory in some well-defined ways. Politically engaged science fiction, utopia, and dystopia have often provided fic- tional evidence for Marxist theoretical models, as in Jameson’s use of the left-leaning speculative tradition to develop his theory of capital- ism, utopia, and social change, or Carl Freedman’s assertion that “of all genres, science fiction is . . . the one most devoted to the historical con- creteness and historical self-reflectiveness of critical theory.”45 Since the 1980s, feminist theorists have drawn on the well-developed, intertextual literature and culture of feminist science fiction to help them demon- strate the cross-fertilization between fiction and social movements.46 Feminist science and technology studies has also long seen speculative and science fiction as a vital theoretical force, viewing it as creating fic- tional worlds where feminist ideologies can play out in greater com- plexity than theoretical writing will allow, or opening literary and visual spaces within which new formations of gendered technological embodiment can be imagined. Donna Haraway’s 1991 “Cyborg Mani- festo,” whose influential theory of technocultural subjectivity is built in part from analyses of Anne McCaffrey’s 1961 “The Ship Who Sang” and Joanna Russ’s 1975 The Female Man, is a powerful example of how speculative fiction and speculative theory can converge.47 While femi- nist science fiction studies has been centered more on literature than on media, it has also had much to say about the sensuous elaborations of gendered embodiment that science fiction films invoke, uncovering the possibilities for reconfiguring gender and sexuality in the reproductive weirdness of the Alien movies or in the technological performances of The Matrix.48 This book does not engage in great depth with the texts and contexts most discussed by feminist science fiction studies scholars, but it stands on their shoulders as it reaches for less well-trodden sites of speculative gender and sexuality. Sustained scholarly engagement with the interrelationships between queer theory and science fiction studies has been surprisingly rare, given the speculative force of queer theory and activism and the highly active queer world-making that takes place both in science fiction and fantasy writing and in its active fan cultures (the latter of which I discuss in the second wormhole and chapter 6). Literary science fiction’s tendency to concern itself with changing societies’ effects on subjectivities reso- nates strongly with queer critics’ articulations of nonheteronormative time and space, as Wendy Pearson’s important 1999 article “Alien Cryp- tographies: The View From Queer” demonstrates. The 2008 anthology Queer Universes: Sexualities in Science Fiction showcases the predomi- nant conversations between queer studies and science fiction that have shaped queer science fiction studies as a small disciplinary subfield. In these essays, science fiction is articulated as a form of utopian writing that makes the queer future imaginable;49 as a signifier of sexual sub- jectification through technology;50 and as a politicized co-producer of queer realities.51 If queer theory deconstructs binary logics of identity and imagines how the world might be changed by their subversion or destruction in collaboration with activist political and sexual practice, here it naturally seems to converge with science fiction’s imaginative production of sometimes-utopian futurities. This queer science fiction theory occupies the temporality of a promise, in which science fic- tion will offer an endpoint to queer theory’s anticipatory trajectories. But the relationship between queerness, science fiction, and futurity is far from self-evident, for one of the things that both queer theory and fictional speculation can do is question the structures around which we base our valuations of what progress signifies, who benefits from which forms of demand for social change, and what it means to “have” a future or be denied one. The convergence of queerness and science fiction re- quires that neither one be defined in advance. The expansive, emergent language of the speculative fosters such radical openness.