Designing Critical Futures
- Clayton Colmon
- The College of Liberal and Professional Studies (LPS)
In her Nebula award-winning novel Parable of the Talents, Octavia Butler writes that “[w]e can, each of us, do the impossible as long as we can convince ourselves that it has been done before.” But what if this “before” is located somewhere in speculative futures? Why should these futures matter to people who are concerned with practicable strategies for building a more just world? The proposed course invites folks to imagine how “each of us” can reframe the possible through: (1) creative labor that engages with projects from sonic, literary, and visual artists; (2) critical labor that reflects on work from scholars, media experts, and non-profit professionals; and (3) social movement labor that contributes to efforts from activists, journalists, and other civic participants. Along the way, students will design visions of critical futures that speak to communities they hope to serve outside of the course. The class will take place entirely online in an accessible format that provides students with flexibility, agency, and freedom to participate in individual and collective creative knowledge work from wherever they access the internet. Our efforts together will revolve around a set of goals that involve helping students:
- Identify real-world applications for critical possibility through materials that
center speculative futures - Design, build, and share projects in technologically mediated environments
- Engage with design justice efforts that honor and affirm agency for
historically marginalized folks - Study within a mutualistic community that interrogates the ways we delimit
sociocultural change - Examine creative worldbuilding practices that combat systemic oppression
and affirm Black feminist praxis - Locate queer space(s) and time(s) within work the embraces liberatory
imagination