Figure 1 By its nature, the imaginative and limitless opportunities offered by speculative fiction (SF) are designed to “interrogate identity positions and analyze oppressive hierarchies in the world” (Toliver & Miller, 2019, p. 58). However, speculative fiction in all of its forms has historically done the opposite, using classical depictions of power, agency, heroism, and villainy to perpetuate the dominance of hegemonic powers. So, when Kelli encouraged the preservice ELA teachers in her Literature and Other Media for Adolescents at course at Miami University to consider speculative fiction as a powerful educational tool, she asked us to consider the influence these tropes have had on shaping or reinforcing harmful worldviews, and the radical empowerment that could come from their subversion.
Kelli framed this interrogation of speculative fiction through the work of Toliver (2019; 2020), Toliver & Miller (2019), and Thomas (2018; 2020). I (Bryce), a graduate student enrolled in her course, have been an avid reader within the speculative fiction umbrella genre since my own early adolescence. However, it was not until I engaged with the aforementioned scholarship for this module that I understood the potential that SF has to encourage a reimagining of our world in which agency and heroism are given to traditionally marginalized identities, and oppressive forces are recognized as antagonists.
In the course, Kelli has us - all preservice ELA teachers - sign up to plan and execute peer teaching of a weekly application activity that affords the rest of the students a chance to engage with synthesizing and applying the knowledge of the scholarship for the module as well as meaning gleaned from the text choices for that week. For the two-week module of “Representation and Reimagination of Worlds: Who Gets to Be Fantastical?” portion of the course, we engaged in the aforementioned scholarship and chose between seven emerging adolescence and young adult speculative fiction novels: Older’s (2015) Shadowshaper, Adeyemi’s (2018) Children of Blood and Bone, Alston’s (2021) Amari and the Night Brothers, Schusterman’s (2016) Scythe, Okorafor’s (2011) Akata Witch, Arnold’s (2018) Damsel, and Young’s (2019) Girls with Sharp Sticks (see Figure 1). As the application activity leader for this module, I knew I wanted to highlight the concept that the genre of SF could be a literacy tool, or entrypoint, that gives them and their future ELA students agency and opens space for them to imagine themselves as people on a mission for justice against opposing forces. Or as Toliver and Miller (2019) state it, “a way for students to express their ideas about the changes they [wish] to see in the world they inhabit'' ( p. 58).
During the application activity, I activated my peers’ prior knowledge and built new schema (see Figures 2-5) by presenting examples of certain popular speculative fiction that have reinforced discriminatory hegemonic views, such as the anti-Semitic caricature of Bram Stoker’s title character in his 1897 novel Dracula and the popular perception of alien species as racial stereotypes in the Star Wars film series (Halberstam, 1993). While the monsters in these stories are not direct or literal representations of marginalized identities in our world, scholar Judith Halberstam’s observation that “othering in Gothic fiction scavenges from many discursive fields” and “transform[s] fragments of otherness into one body” applies broadly to the construction of many archetypal villains in SF (Halberstam 1993, p. 337). The Other’s body, Halberstam argues, “is not female, not Jewish, not homosexual, but it bears the marks of the constructions of femininity, race, and sexuality” (Halberstam 1993, p. 337).
Kelli framed this interrogation of speculative fiction through the work of Toliver (2019; 2020), Toliver & Miller (2019), and Thomas (2018; 2020). I (Bryce), a graduate student enrolled in her course, have been an avid reader within the speculative fiction umbrella genre since my own early adolescence. However, it was not until I engaged with the aforementioned scholarship for this module that I understood the potential that SF has to encourage a reimagining of our world in which agency and heroism are given to traditionally marginalized identities, and oppressive forces are recognized as antagonists.
In the course, Kelli has us - all preservice ELA teachers - sign up to plan and execute peer teaching of a weekly application activity that affords the rest of the students a chance to engage with synthesizing and applying the knowledge of the scholarship for the module as well as meaning gleaned from the text choices for that week. For the two-week module of “Representation and Reimagination of Worlds: Who Gets to Be Fantastical?” portion of the course, we engaged in the aforementioned scholarship and chose between seven emerging adolescence and young adult speculative fiction novels: Older’s (2015) Shadowshaper, Adeyemi’s (2018) Children of Blood and Bone, Alston’s (2021) Amari and the Night Brothers, Schusterman’s (2016) Scythe, Okorafor’s (2011) Akata Witch, Arnold’s (2018) Damsel, and Young’s (2019) Girls with Sharp Sticks (see Figure 1). As the application activity leader for this module, I knew I wanted to highlight the concept that the genre of SF could be a literacy tool, or entrypoint, that gives them and their future ELA students agency and opens space for them to imagine themselves as people on a mission for justice against opposing forces. Or as Toliver and Miller (2019) state it, “a way for students to express their ideas about the changes they [wish] to see in the world they inhabit'' ( p. 58).
During the application activity, I activated my peers’ prior knowledge and built new schema (see Figures 2-5) by presenting examples of certain popular speculative fiction that have reinforced discriminatory hegemonic views, such as the anti-Semitic caricature of Bram Stoker’s title character in his 1897 novel Dracula and the popular perception of alien species as racial stereotypes in the Star Wars film series (Halberstam, 1993). While the monsters in these stories are not direct or literal representations of marginalized identities in our world, scholar Judith Halberstam’s observation that “othering in Gothic fiction scavenges from many discursive fields” and “transform[s] fragments of otherness into one body” applies broadly to the construction of many archetypal villains in SF (Halberstam 1993, p. 337). The Other’s body, Halberstam argues, “is not female, not Jewish, not homosexual, but it bears the marks of the constructions of femininity, race, and sexuality” (Halberstam 1993, p. 337).
Figure 6 Toliver’s argument that SF tropes can be used to subvert this kind of othering is reinforced by Worlds and Miller (2019), who cite Jason Reynolds’ Miles Morales: Spider-Man as an example of a text where “the presence of Black superheroes destroys illusions of who commits crime (Black males) and the heroes who save society from them (White police officers)(p. 45)”. I discussed other examples of this kind of subversion in contemporary media, such as P Djèli Clark’s novel Ring Shout (2020), but the character Miles Morales has played a key role in contemporary popular culture, and is a much more resonant way to make these connections, especially at the intersection of adolescence.
The superhero genre has been the dominating mode of SF for just about all of my and my classmates’ lifetimes, and we are all familiar with what is often a black-and-white portrayal of good vs. evil. For these reasons, it stood out to me as a perfect way to get my classmates thinking about themselves as heroes on a mission to defend good or stop evil, disrupting the tradition of using fictionalized Othering to reinforce harmful stereotypes, in the development of the students’ Alter Egos (see Figure 6). Unbeknownst to me, Kelli had presented on a similar idea at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) conference in 2022 with her friend and colleague, Chicago-based teacher Melissa Hughes, who had harnessed the (re)imaginative power of the super hero origin story as a way to spark joy, healing, and center her students’ stories in 2019 (those presentation slides are linked here). We were going to try it out with our class of preservice ELA teachers, a group of eager students relatively diverse in identity markers such as race, enthnicity, sexual orientation, and gender expression.
The activity was as follows: after the schema-building, I passed out a two-sided sheet of paper. First, they were to create their alter-egos (see Figure 7). They wrote their Secret Identities, or they could imagine themselves with a fantastical name that was rooted in whatever their mission would be, such as ‘Social Justice Simone’, or Kelli’s personal favorite, the ‘Censorship Crusher’. When describing their origin stories of their alter ego, I encouraged them to pull from their own identities or experiences to discuss what motivated them to fight for justice, which would inform their ‘Noble Mission.’ Since I introduced this activity through the lens of fighting for good, I encouraged my classmates to consider how what they did in their everyday lives could be considered disruptive to hegemony, highlighting a model I had my partner create as I tested out the lesson to them (see Figure 8).
Returning to the scholarship, I emphasized that empowerment comes in many forms for many people. It may be someone who “interrogate[s] identity positions and analyze[s] oppressive hierarchies” (Toliver and Miller, 2019, p. 58). However, for those whose identities are considered inherently transgressive by institutional powers, Toliver argues that it is an inherently rebellious act to “exist and thrive in a world that is constructed for them to fail,” which does not “require a superhuman feat” (Toliver, 2019). I asked them to consider these ideas as they created their Alter Egos, and also their sidekicks.
Then, they got to create their Arch-Nemeses (see Figures 8 and 9), or whatever they were fighting against, whether that be a person/group of people, an ideology, an institution, etc. Since this assignment is meant to be subversive, it was important that my classmates understood that they should be punching up, not down. A villain was sure to have their own motivation to either keep things how they were or push back against the progress that our heroes were trying to make. Such goes for the henchman they created, or the side-kick to their arch-nemesis.
The superhero genre has been the dominating mode of SF for just about all of my and my classmates’ lifetimes, and we are all familiar with what is often a black-and-white portrayal of good vs. evil. For these reasons, it stood out to me as a perfect way to get my classmates thinking about themselves as heroes on a mission to defend good or stop evil, disrupting the tradition of using fictionalized Othering to reinforce harmful stereotypes, in the development of the students’ Alter Egos (see Figure 6). Unbeknownst to me, Kelli had presented on a similar idea at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) conference in 2022 with her friend and colleague, Chicago-based teacher Melissa Hughes, who had harnessed the (re)imaginative power of the super hero origin story as a way to spark joy, healing, and center her students’ stories in 2019 (those presentation slides are linked here). We were going to try it out with our class of preservice ELA teachers, a group of eager students relatively diverse in identity markers such as race, enthnicity, sexual orientation, and gender expression.
The activity was as follows: after the schema-building, I passed out a two-sided sheet of paper. First, they were to create their alter-egos (see Figure 7). They wrote their Secret Identities, or they could imagine themselves with a fantastical name that was rooted in whatever their mission would be, such as ‘Social Justice Simone’, or Kelli’s personal favorite, the ‘Censorship Crusher’. When describing their origin stories of their alter ego, I encouraged them to pull from their own identities or experiences to discuss what motivated them to fight for justice, which would inform their ‘Noble Mission.’ Since I introduced this activity through the lens of fighting for good, I encouraged my classmates to consider how what they did in their everyday lives could be considered disruptive to hegemony, highlighting a model I had my partner create as I tested out the lesson to them (see Figure 8).
Returning to the scholarship, I emphasized that empowerment comes in many forms for many people. It may be someone who “interrogate[s] identity positions and analyze[s] oppressive hierarchies” (Toliver and Miller, 2019, p. 58). However, for those whose identities are considered inherently transgressive by institutional powers, Toliver argues that it is an inherently rebellious act to “exist and thrive in a world that is constructed for them to fail,” which does not “require a superhuman feat” (Toliver, 2019). I asked them to consider these ideas as they created their Alter Egos, and also their sidekicks.
Then, they got to create their Arch-Nemeses (see Figures 8 and 9), or whatever they were fighting against, whether that be a person/group of people, an ideology, an institution, etc. Since this assignment is meant to be subversive, it was important that my classmates understood that they should be punching up, not down. A villain was sure to have their own motivation to either keep things how they were or push back against the progress that our heroes were trying to make. Such goes for the henchman they created, or the side-kick to their arch-nemesis.
When my peers shared their alter-egos with the class, it was clear that they understood the purpose of the assignment. Since we are a class of teacher candidates, some spoke to their mission of inclusive and diverse teaching material in the face of institutional challenges. For example, one student, or should we say the “Censorship Crusher,” along with her trusty sidekick “Rabid Rushek”, were on a Noble Mission to show all the benefits of freedom of speech, expression, and representation. Others followed Toliver’s lead in expressing that simply embracing their identity was a rebellious act that fought effectively against the powers-that-be that worked against them, such as our colleague, a Black woman’s Alter Ego that was her nickname, fighting against anti-Blackness and racial oppression.
As a class, we explored genre conventions and their functions, we explored genre history and its modern implications, we synthesized research into self-reflection, and granted ourselves agency and heroism in the face of adversity. In any educational environment, we hope that a similar activity helps to promote critical literacy, self-efficacy, and a healthier classroom community.
References:
Halberstam, J. (1993). Technologies of monstrosity: Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.” Victorian Studies, 36(3), 333–352.
Hughes, M.M., Rushek, K.A. (November 2022) “When I get my superpowers”: How a multimodal origin story unit can
spark joy, healing, and center Black students’ stories. Paper presented at the National Council of Teachers of English
annual conference. Anaheim, CA.
Thomas, E. E. (2018). Toward a theory of the dark fantastic: The role of racial difference in young adult speculative fiction and media. Journal of Language and Literacy Education, 14(1), 1–10.
Thomas, E. E. (2020). The dark fantastic: Race and the imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games. New York University Press.
Toliver, S. R. (2019). Breaking binaries: #BlackGirlMagic and the Black Ratchet Imagination. Journal of Language & Literacy Education, 15(1). http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1212593.pdf
Toliver, S. R. (2020). Can I get a witness? Speculative fiction as testimony and counterstory. Journal of Literacy Research: JLR, 52(4), 507–529.
Toliver, S. R., & Miller, K. (2019). (Re)writing reality. The English Journal, 108(3), 51–59.
As a class, we explored genre conventions and their functions, we explored genre history and its modern implications, we synthesized research into self-reflection, and granted ourselves agency and heroism in the face of adversity. In any educational environment, we hope that a similar activity helps to promote critical literacy, self-efficacy, and a healthier classroom community.
References:
Halberstam, J. (1993). Technologies of monstrosity: Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.” Victorian Studies, 36(3), 333–352.
Hughes, M.M., Rushek, K.A. (November 2022) “When I get my superpowers”: How a multimodal origin story unit can
spark joy, healing, and center Black students’ stories. Paper presented at the National Council of Teachers of English
annual conference. Anaheim, CA.
Thomas, E. E. (2018). Toward a theory of the dark fantastic: The role of racial difference in young adult speculative fiction and media. Journal of Language and Literacy Education, 14(1), 1–10.
Thomas, E. E. (2020). The dark fantastic: Race and the imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games. New York University Press.
Toliver, S. R. (2019). Breaking binaries: #BlackGirlMagic and the Black Ratchet Imagination. Journal of Language & Literacy Education, 15(1). http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1212593.pdf
Toliver, S. R. (2020). Can I get a witness? Speculative fiction as testimony and counterstory. Journal of Literacy Research: JLR, 52(4), 507–529.
Toliver, S. R., & Miller, K. (2019). (Re)writing reality. The English Journal, 108(3), 51–59.
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