HNAR-202: Speculative Writing Lab

How do the stories that surround us-the stories we are always breathing without always noticing-inspire us, define us, limit us? Is it even possible to access or create speculative pasts, presents, futures by naming and showing them with our current vocabulary, aesthetics, iconography? In this writing laboratory, we will work to create stories that are both deeply human/humane and deeply skeptical of the assumption that OUR world is THE world. Students will write every week, first outlining a world they begin to imagine week 1, then being prompted to specify and complicate during the term. Through reading and viewing fiction, non-fiction, film and other art and media, we will challenge ourselves to see, and then see past, the largely Western colonial constructs we take for granted-so that we can get at sometime/place other meaningful, compelling worlds are waiting to be shared.