Resistance in Speculative Fiction and Beyond

In this workshop, our speakers will use speculative thinking, literary criticism, and fiction writing to explore what resistance looks like in both our real world and in the imagined worlds that reflect our reality. They will introduce new modes of resistance thinking—including what Jenna Hanchey terms "liquid resistance" in African speculative fiction—as well as trouble the word "resistance" itself: Who is doing the resisting in our world, and what and who is their resistance aimed at? How and when do we choose to flex our individual and collective power to make the world better for ourselves and for others—and when and why do we sometimes choose to "resist" seeing the plights of others, despite the moral imperative to fight against oppression, genocide, and other forms of mass suffering?

Hosted by the Humanities Institute, the ASU Worldbuilding Initiative invites all members of our community—at ASU and beyond it—to come together in mutual inspiration, communal thinking, and imaginative play. In each of our workshops, audience members will be encouraged to engage in worldbuilding alongside our guest presenters, inventing new ways of imagining and interacting with the world around us.  

This hybrid event is free and open to the public, in addition to the ASU community. It will be held at the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing on the Tempe Campus and simultaneously livestreamed via ASU Live. 

Our lecturers for this event will be ASU's Tanvir Akhtar Ahmed and Jenna Hanchey.  

Tanvir Ahmed is an Assistant Professor of History at Arizona State University. He works on rebellion, thaumaturgy, and historiography among Muslims, with expertise in Afghan and Mongol history. In this capacity, he has authored various scholarly articles, public-facing essays, and translations. As a storyteller, he has written several works of short fiction, with pieces included in Locus magazine’s Recommending Reading list (2022) and The Year’s Best Fantasy (2023). His essay on orientalism in the Anglophone fantasy market was longlisted for the British Science Fiction Association's annual award (2024) and included in the Ancillary Review of Books’ list of Notable Criticism (2024). His debut novella, The Night Sweeps the Mountains Away, is scheduled for publication in February 2026 by Dancing Star Press.

Jenna Hanchey is Assistant Professor of Rhetoric & Critical/Cultural Studies at Arizona State University. Her first book, The Center Cannot Hold: Decolonial Possibility in the Collapse of a Tanzanian NGO, is published with Duke University Press. Her current book project, Decolonial Dreamwork: Africanfuturism and Imagination Beyond Development, looks at how speculative fiction can imagine decolonization and bring it into being. Her own fiction has been shortlisted for the British Science Fiction Association Awards, and tries to support this project of creating better futures for us all. Her stories have appeared in Nature, Radon, and Little Blue Marble, among other venues. She cohosts the podcast Griots & Galaxies on African speculative fiction. Follow her adventures at www.jennahanchey.com.

For a full listing of all the Humanities Institute events visit https://humanitiesinstitute.asu.edu/events