Justice-Oriented Writing and Composing Through the Speculative

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Scholarship in critical imagination and writing studies has recently demonstrated the potential of youth writing in speculative genres (e.g., fantasy, horror, science fiction) as a way to engage youth in imagining and designing more socially just worlds. This session contributes to this line of inquiry by bringing together six scholars whose ethnographic and design-based research catalogs youth practices in justice-oriented speculative writing and multimodal composing. Drawing on local, national, and internationally collected data-sets of youth composing in speculative genres, the authors trace the critical practices that youth use as they construct critical storytelling experiences that work toward social justice, particularly with regards to intersectional issues of race, gender, and sexuality.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Writing and Literacies

Chair

• Scott Storm, University at Albany - SUNY

Papers

• Haunting as Method: Convoking Spectral Histories and Ideologies in Speculative Research - Alex Corbitt, Syracuse University; Ankhi Guha Thakurta, Boston College

• Dancing with Bboy: Tracing Embodied and Emergent Speculative Storytelling - Beth Krone, Kennesaw State University; Patricia Enciso, The Ohio State University

• The queer aesthetic imagination in youth speculative composing - Scott Storm, University at Albany - SUNY

Discussant

• Jon M. Wargo, University of Michigan