UIS Speaker Series explores "Transformative Social Justice through Radical Science Fiction"

WHAT: The University of Illinois Springfield Engaged Citizenship Common Experience (ECCE) Speaker Series will explore “Transformative Social Justice through Radical Science Fiction” with writer, organizer, activist and strategist Adrienne Maree Brown.

WHEN: Wednesday, February 3, 2016 at 6:00 p.m.

WHERE: UIS Brookens Auditorium, located on the lower level of Brookens Library

DETAILS: Radical science fiction creates space for us to envision socially just worlds filled with alien identities, intersectionalities, and power relations, and also to inspire, organize, and think strategically about social movements in our own world, especially when the stories speak to racism and other oppressions in our society. Thus construed, science fiction becomes a transformative tool, which Walidah Imarisha and Adrienne Maree Brown, co-editors and activists, understood when they brought to fruition Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, a collection inspired by Octavia Butler’s work.

Adrienne Maree Brown, currently a Kresge Literary Arts Fellow, has written for Africana (now Black AOL), Wiretapmag.org, Alternet.org, HuffingtonPost.com, Feministing.com, WashingtonPost.com, Racewire.org, Left Turn; Race, Poverty and Ecology; Yes; and her own blog. Through these and other venues, she has been working to demonstrate the relevance of Octavia Butler’s revolutionary work on social justice through workshops and strategic readers for the past several years.

This event is co-sponsored by the UIS New Voices on Racial Justice Series, the UIS College of Arts and Sciences, the UIS Diversity Center and the UIS Student Activities Committee.

For a list of other upcoming ECCE Speaker Series events and more information, visit www.uis.edu/speakerseries/. All events are free and open to the public.