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ERIC Number: EJ1406000
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2023
Pages: 14
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0309-8265
EISSN: EISSN-1466-1845
Playing with "Star Trek" in the Critical Geography Classroom: STEM Education and Otherwise Possibilities
David K. Seitz
Journal of Geography in Higher Education, v47 n5 p825-838 2023
This paper reflects on the classroom use of the "Star Trek" American science fiction television franchise to teach critical and emotional geographies to undergraduates specializing in science, technology, education, and mathematics (STEM). Both science fiction and STEM education are ambivalent and contradictory scenes of social reproduction, extending a promise of social transformation, but often maintaining complicity in heteropatriarchy, racial capitalism, and empire. Enlivening students to what Ashon T. Crawley calls the "otherwise possibilities" immanent to both science fiction and STEM education is necessarily difficult emotional work. Reflecting on teacher shame and anxiety and student resistance to course material, I turn to psychoanalysis, particularly the work of Donald W. Winnicott, to argue that "Star Trek" offers a richly contradictory "transitional object" for students to play with otherwise possibilities.
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A