The second piece of formal work you submit will be an opportunity to flex your creative muscle as you engage with the worldmaking in our course’s title.
In the introduction to Octavia’s Brood, Walidah Imarisha writes “once the imagination is unshackled, liberation is limitless.” We might think about feminist knowledge production as an effort toward intellectual liberation, part and parcel of the visionary imaginative work that the contributors to Octavia’s Brood are developing. This assignment asks you to think about the worldmaking commitments of the theory we have been reading and to think about what it might mean to transform theory into praxis.
There are two options for this assignment. I encourage you to experiment with the second one even if you end up deciding to go with the more conventional first option.
EITHER:
Take one of the stories we’ve read for class and analyze the world it builds, drawing on readings from class in order to think through, critique, and/or expand the interventions it is making.
OR:
Drawing from the guidelines that Imarisha and brown explain in their introduction, write or outline your own original speculative story that would draw from class ideas in order to make a visionary fiction intervention. Explain the story’s relationship to class either in footnotes or in a separate commentary.
Whichever option you choose, you must make reference to at least one text from class. You are welcome to bring in additional research, but this is not a requirement.
Write at least 1000 and no more than 1500 words.
This assignment is due on ELMS on Thursday October 24.
Use .doc, .docx, or .rtf format only unless your creative work cannot be contained by text (in which case you should check in with me about format). Include full citations in the style of your choice.