2023-2026
Speculative Play and Just Futurities establishes eight residencies per year, for three years, for a diverse group of emerging scholars and creators who are imagining new futures focused on social justice.
The residencies, based at IUPUI, are open to all scholars and creators who have a track record of work focused on addressing social justice issues facing historically marginalized groups—including Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ communities as well as Persons with Disabilities (ideally with an emphasis on recognizing intersectional identities and experiences within these communities).
Residents may include writers, game designers, poets, dramaturges, filmmakers, VR/AR storytellers, ludologists, critical theorists, and more—essentially individuals who are engaged in constructing (or creating frameworks for others to construct) alternative humanistic narratives that expand our understanding of what literature can be and the ways that it can help us imagine and enact just futures.
Speculative Play and Just Futurities is a collaboration between the IUPUI Arts & Humanities Institute, the Center for Africana Studies and Culture, and the Ray Bradbury Center. It is made possible by the support of the Mellon Foundation.
About The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the nation’s largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom that can be found there. Through our grants, we seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive. Learn more at mellon.org.