Speculative Histories: Lost Archives and Alternative Realities

"History is written by the victors," the cliché goes, and so often this feels true: it's the "winners," whoever they might be, who most often have the platform and the megaphone necessary to amplify their narrative of both historical and recent events. Even without deliberate damage to archives and other accounts of events, there is sometimes a loss of narrative by those who've been oppressed, repressed, or simply forgotten by history. How can we—as writers, historians, and other kinds of humanists—reclaim what is missing from the record? When is it necessary to invent or to imagine in pursuit of a lost truth or to expand and refine the bigger picture?

In this workshop, our speakers will discuss the role of imagination and creative thinking in their own work with speculative nonfiction, archival research, oral histories, and other forms of unearthing the obscured or damaged past. As the novelist Gina Apostol says, "We need to make an effort not to take on the power lens that does not read us right." What possibilities exist in such a refusal, on the page and in our lived experiences? 

Hosted by the Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics, 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 Zoom, with full participation in the night's activities possible online or in-person.

Elizabeth Grumbach (she/her) is the Director of Digital Humanities and Research at Arizona State University's Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics. She currently serves as the Co-Vice-President (2024-2026)/Co-President Elect (2026-2028) of the Association for the Computers and the Humanities (ACH). Her current research focuses on design justice and critical tech interventions that incorporate care practices and community-driven research. She currently directs the Digital Reparative Archives working group at ASU. Her most recent published work can be found in Digital Humanities Quarterly, the Journal for Electronic Publishing, and the Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage, as well as the Routledge Companion to Libraries, Archives, and the Digital Humanities.

Emad Jabini is an Iranian-American writer and educator based in Phoenix, AZ.  He earned his MA in Literary and Cultural Studies from the University of Utah and is currently an MFA candidate in Fiction at Arizona State University.  His work has appeared in Brevity, The Texas Review, and the Goliad Review, among others.  He has received support from the Vermont Studio Center, The Kenyon Review, the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands, and the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing.  He is the current Nonfiction Editor for Hayden’s Ferry Review.