The affordances of speculative fiction to provide not only specific examples, but also schemas, for alternate ways of knowing and being are well known. Suvin identified the novum as the central feature of science fiction, a feature which made it possible to consider humanity not generally nor as "fixed and supernaturally determined", but rather in terms of "which [human]? in what kind of world?: and why such a [human] in such a kind of world? (10). Ruben Mendoza argues that Patrick Parrinder’s “science-fictional ‘mode of thinking’” is the central pedagogical element of science fiction (116), asserting that the mode of thinking which Parrinder means, and its relevance to a sophist pedagogy, is that immersion “in sf’s paradoxically alien yet analogical storytelling” results in a disturbance to “audiences’ normalized perceptual and cognitive habits” (117).

To engage with speculative fiction – as creator, consumer, or curator – is to engage with the potential of having one’s worldview eroded and extended. This is especially true of speculative fiction which deliberately subverts common concepts of biological determinism, and which invites its audience to identify with characters whose differences across space and time leave them striving for solidarity, establishing safe spaces for others who exist on the margins, though identification with the other is still elusive. Even in the texts which only partially decry limiting and harmful essentialist concepts, the potential remains; the process of interrogating commonly held worldviews through speculative fiction tropes which enable new forms of otherness provides a model for an extended mode of questioning.

This panel invites presentations which focus on practical pedagogical applications of the affordances of speculative fiction to alternate ways of knowing and being. Presentations in the form of mini-workshops or lessons, in which participants act as learners and/or during which learning objectives, materials, activities, and assessments are thoroughly discussed, are especially welcome.