Assign speculative theory-fiction writing to build students' capacity for ecologically just futurity¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

This performative writing assignment tasks students with composing speculative theory-fiction, fusing the speculative imagining of science fiction with theorizing as practical application of existing theories and deductive reasoning to communication situations. Students may organize their piece as science fiction, ecopoetry, or a political manifesto, but must employ self-reflexivity about the politics of the future readers are placed within, asking in what ways the world is more just and for whom, and whether solutions create new problems. Through this writing, students learn to think against contemporary structures of oppression while articulating steps to dismantling them.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Self-reflexivity about the author's positionality informing the politics of the speculative future, narrative perspective, and implications

Constraints¶

• The author reports a political ideal resonant with ecofascism occasionally emerges in student responses and should be addressed through dialogue demystifying colonial, imperialist, or fascistic assumptions

Target Learners¶

• undergraduate communication studies students

Target Learning Goals¶

• speculative imagination of ecologically just futures
• reflexive political judgment about future-making

Related Strategies¶

• Creative Writing

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Rife, T. S. (2025). Critical Communication Pedagogy at the End of the World. Journal of Communication Pedagogy. https://doi.org/10.31446/JCP.2025.1.07