Digitizing Higher Education: Speculative Fiction and Curricular Imaginings
Abstract
In 2019, the Journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies published a special section on speculative fictions/science fiction in curriculum studies. Appelbaum (2019) asserted that speculative writing is a necessary act toward imagining, understanding, and thinking through problems of the future. Additionally, speculative writing affords spaces for building new futures. Tomin (2019) argued that today’s educational spaces – with their technocratic, rote approaches to learning, leave little space for hopeful futures. The future itself is actually not often discussed. Drawing on the work of Noel Gough, N. Katherine Hayles, Sarah Truman, and Boni Wozolek, John Weaver discusses the necessity of speculative fiction in our present approaches to education. Polyvocality, in particular – the centering of voices not often heard in imaginings of the future – is an important aim of speculative writing for Weaver and others. We are in a space-time where speculative writing, thinking, and creating in the public imagination and conversation is not only strong, but I would argue central. Writers such as N.K. Jemisin, Ken Liu, and Samanta Schweblin are frequently on the top of best seller lists. Octavia Butler is a household name. Musicians such as Lil Nas X and Janelle Monae are taking up the mantle of their predecessors like Sun Ra. We want to imagine the future – with all its possibilities, limitations, hopes, and potentials. In this paper, I take up the call of curriculum theorists above, and others, such as Toby Daspit, Morna McDermott McNulty, and critical sociologists like Ruha Benjamin and Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer to build more speculative fiction into the space of teaching and learning. Specifically, I examine a speculative fiction writing project I developed for a Master’s Level Seminar on Digitizing Higher Education in Autumn 2021. The aim of this seminar was not only to address the many issues impacting an increasingly digitized higher education system – everything from teaching and learning to student services and surveillance capitalism – but to also help students orient toward the future. The speculative fiction writing project opened space for student imagining of a future higher education. I will examine the range of utopian and dystopian stories, poems, and plays written by scholars in this course. What do these speculative writings tell us? How can they prepare us for a future yet unseen?
Presentation Description
.
Location
Room 106
Publication Type and Release Option
Presentation (Open Access)
Recommended Citation
Eaton, Paul W., "Digitizing Higher Education: Speculative Fiction and Curricular Imaginings" (2022). Curriculum Studies Summer Collaborative. 38.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/cssc/2022/2022/38
Digitizing Higher Education: Speculative Fiction and Curricular Imaginings
Room 106
In 2019, the Journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies published a special section on speculative fictions/science fiction in curriculum studies. Appelbaum (2019) asserted that speculative writing is a necessary act toward imagining, understanding, and thinking through problems of the future. Additionally, speculative writing affords spaces for building new futures. Tomin (2019) argued that today’s educational spaces – with their technocratic, rote approaches to learning, leave little space for hopeful futures. The future itself is actually not often discussed. Drawing on the work of Noel Gough, N. Katherine Hayles, Sarah Truman, and Boni Wozolek, John Weaver discusses the necessity of speculative fiction in our present approaches to education. Polyvocality, in particular – the centering of voices not often heard in imaginings of the future – is an important aim of speculative writing for Weaver and others. We are in a space-time where speculative writing, thinking, and creating in the public imagination and conversation is not only strong, but I would argue central. Writers such as N.K. Jemisin, Ken Liu, and Samanta Schweblin are frequently on the top of best seller lists. Octavia Butler is a household name. Musicians such as Lil Nas X and Janelle Monae are taking up the mantle of their predecessors like Sun Ra. We want to imagine the future – with all its possibilities, limitations, hopes, and potentials. In this paper, I take up the call of curriculum theorists above, and others, such as Toby Daspit, Morna McDermott McNulty, and critical sociologists like Ruha Benjamin and Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer to build more speculative fiction into the space of teaching and learning. Specifically, I examine a speculative fiction writing project I developed for a Master’s Level Seminar on Digitizing Higher Education in Autumn 2021. The aim of this seminar was not only to address the many issues impacting an increasingly digitized higher education system – everything from teaching and learning to student services and surveillance capitalism – but to also help students orient toward the future. The speculative fiction writing project opened space for student imagining of a future higher education. I will examine the range of utopian and dystopian stories, poems, and plays written by scholars in this course. What do these speculative writings tell us? How can they prepare us for a future yet unseen?
