Writing Elsewhere Geographies
a collective study and generative writing space serving as a container for grief praxis | rigorous imaginings | brave breathing towards and for liberatory present-futures
Course Overview
Writing Elsewhere Geographies intends to be a space where we gather to learn, curate, and imagine other methods and modes of being and belonging in the here and now. Though we will discuss ways in which we can radically transform ourselves in service of collective liberation, we will be clear and defiant in our analysis to indict, divest from, and abolish the various systems of domination and extraction. Adopting a transdisciplinary approach, the readings and session themes draw from across neuroscience and psychology, liberatory writing, and literary craft, and are rooted in anti-imperial, anti-colonial, anti-patriarchal principles. This course is an invitation to reflect, to sandbox, and to write in community towards rigorous, brave, and honest imaginations of the ways our world can be.
Edward Said wrote: “In the history of colonial invasion maps are always first drawn by the victors, since maps are instruments of conquest. Geography is therefore the art of war but can also be the art of resistance if there is a counter-map and a counter-strategy.” Elsewhere geographies, then, are these counter-maps. The cartographies and architectures and maps we imagine, experiment with, and cultivate towards worlding the worlds we inhabit. These are the blueprints we make towards abolitionist and relational futures.
Who Is This Course For?
• Writers and educators seeking a space to ground their learning and writing in a liberatory praxis
• Activists and community-engaged organizers seeking different frameworks for imagination and writing to strengthen practices of cultural and political resistance
• Anyone wanting to invest in collective study and writing as a mode of liberatory praxis, and methods on how to carry this practice into their daily lives and livings.
• Folx within institutions (higher ed, nonprofits, corporate) that want to push against currents of reformism and co-optation and kowtowing to capital
What You'll Learn
- (I hope) You will leave this space gaining confidence and comfort in skepticism, asking the simple questions, challenging assumptions, engaging in refusal and saying "no" to the ways we are coerced into present-day systems of domination.
- Through the frameworks of geography and levels of analysis, you will be able to think more cohesively and thoroughly about the various systems and instances of oppression and domination. This will help avoid the traps of reductionist understanding that make the status quo feel inevitable, undefeatable.
- The framework of Elsewhere Geographies, maps, counter maps, diverse intelligences, will offer different ways to experiment with building and practicing other ways of breathing, living, co-existing, in our shared spacetimes.
- Engage in transdisciplinary study and writing rooted as an important aspect of liberatory praxis
- Some ideas and tools of literary craft and form to aid imaginative explorations
What's Included
Live Sessions
Interactive classes with your instructor
Session Recordings
Lifetime access to all recordings
Community Access
Connect with fellow learners
Certificate
Proof of course completion
Course Modules
Week 1. Diverse Intelligences as Elsewhere Geographies
Week 2. Kinships as Elsewhere Geographies
Week 3. Autonomous Zones as Elsewhere Geographies
Week 4. Counter-mapping an Elsewhere
Real-World Project
Participants will be encouraged to work on a speculative reimagining of any mode of being from within their lives—a zine, op-ed or a narrative essay, or informal teaching guide or manifesto—towards reimagining either a personal trait, challenging an institutional framework, or questioning broader structures of oppression. Choose a medium (literary | investigative | educational) and scale (micro- | meso- | macro-) to create a counter-map, an elsewhere geography, to take back to your communities.
whether that's a personal radical transformation of a habit or thought
whether that's a rally call against a procedure or institution
whether that's learning to recontextualize and reimagine an entire structure
Your offering will begin and add to a repository of "Experiments in Elsewhere Geographies" curated from the present and future iterations of this course, hopefully towards creating a gift we can share freely with our larger worlds.
Session Schedule
About the Instructor
Neuroscientist | Writer
Shraddha is a neuroscientist and writer, concerned with questions of trauma, diverse intelligences, complicities of the academy, and tries to embody anti-imperial and anti-colonial liberatory modes of being. Faith, skepticism, rebellion, and curiosity fuel her writing, research, organizing, and all the quotidian existences in between. As an organizer, she co-founded and runs ZinesforFalastin and Gaza Writers Series, to amplify voices of indigenous Palestinian artists through creating and promoting zines of their work. Her writing - including poems, essays, and op-eds on academia, heathcare ethics, and academia - has appeared in We The Soil, Revolute, Houston Chronicle, Mondoweiss, and Querencia Press, with forthcoming work in Writing Women. She also has editorial experience across Healthcare workers for Palestine, Science for the People, and ZinesforFalastin.
1 Course Credit
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Need financial support?
We believe learning should be accessible. A limited number of partial scholarships are available for those who would not otherwise be able to join.
If cost is the only barrier, we invite you to apply thoughtfully below.
Apply for a ScholarshipHaving issues or questions? Contact us
August 6
25 students max
4 sessions
90 min each
