For Kailey Rocker, former visiting assistant professor of anthropology, science fiction was one of the most natural ways to explore anthropological concepts.
For two of her three years at Lawrence University, she taught the course Anthropology and Sci-Fi—under ANTH 300: Topics in Anthropology—where students explored humanity through an unfamiliar lens: the connection between science fiction and anthropology.
"We have an adage in anthropology: 'to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange,'" said Rocker. “There are a lot of things that we consider normal or that we take for granted that are familiar to us. Students learn to reexamine what they consider familiar and to open themselves up to the diversity of perspectives that exist. Science fiction does the same thing.”
Kailey Rocker
We have an adage in anthropology: 'to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange.' Students learn to reexamine what they consider familiar and to open themselves up to the diversity of perspectives that exist. Science fiction does the same thing.
Kailey Rocker
Mark Jenike, associate professor of anthropology and chair of the department, said elective courses like Anthropology and Sci-Fi provide an opportunity for students to dive deeper into specific aspects of humanity and understand them in new ways.
“Anthropology is the only discipline at Lawrence that seeks to understand humans as a total species, from our origins to the present, in all of our global diversity,” said Jenike. “Dr. Rocker’s Anthropology and Sci-Fi course is the kind of creative application of an anthropological approach to understanding humanity that our topics courses are particularly well-suited for.”
You’ll see humanity’s patterns, practices, and places in new lights through multidisciplinary lenses.
Ethnography & Science Fiction
While they differ in content, writing style, and audience, both anthropological writing and science fiction share a commonality: they are forms of world-building. The course combined creative writing with ethnographic writing through readings, writing, and a world-building project.
Ethnography is a research methodology that cultural anthropologists use. It is a type of immersive fieldwork where anthropologists live with, work with, and interview the people they are studying. It also refers to the written stories anthropologists produce from their fieldwork.
“We collaborate with communities to share their story and their experience of the world around them,” Rocker said. “There is a creative component, though. My field notes are often written down as a story: what I encountered, who I learned from, and some quotes they shared with me. In ethnographic writing, you are trying to the best of your ability to represent the words and the worlds of the people that you work with as truthfully as you can.”
This is where the two genres differ. While ethnographers are responsible for truthfully and honestly representing the people they study, science fiction writers have more creative freedom. This freedom makes science fiction a great avenue for exploring anthropological ideas without having the same constraints.
World-Building and the Power of Sci-Fi
For their world-building project, students worked in small groups to construct a world where specific technology, technological input, or environmental change had occurred. From there, they imagined the logic and cultural systems of that world, exploring beyond the bounds of their own reality.
“They were each responsible for developing some aspect through story and through it an anthropological analysis,” said Rocker. “I asked them to think not only about technology or material but to think more about the human experience. How would this impact what a family structure looks like? How might it influence relationship building or language development?”
As part of this project, students also interviewed each other in a ‘cultural exchange’ to present an analysis of what a long-term cultural encounter between two very different groups would look like.
From this project, the idea of a sci-fi zine was born.
“One student just made a casual remark that they really enjoyed reading the other groups’ material,” Rocker said. “That it was so neat to dive into a different world that wasn’t their own and to see the creativity, imagination, and exploration. I was like, ‘Would anyone be comfortable sharing their stories outside the classroom?’”
The answer was yes. Nine students from the winter 2025 course worked with Rocker through the spring to edit and compile their stories into a science fiction zine. Sci-Fi: An Anthropology Anthology of Other Worlds is now available electronically on Lux. A limited number of copies were also printed by Allegra Appleton.
In the zine, the students used the genre of science fiction to build worlds with their own cultural logics and contemplate anthropological questions.
"We are fortunate to have An Anthropology Anthology of Other Worlds as a lasting reminder of the achievements of Dr. Rocker and her students in the anthropological study of self and other, of the familiar and strange," Jenike said.
Exploring Humanity Through Fiction
Junior Percy Schneider, an anthropology major from Milwaukee, WI, always had an interest in humans and in fiction. They found their passion for anthropology after taking Rocker’s introductory cultural anthropology course.
“I love humans; I love everything we create,” Schneider said. “I took intro to cultural anthropology with Kailey Rocker, and something just kind of clicked: ‘This is my field. This is where I’m meant to be.’”
Schneider studied under Rocker again in the science fiction course. They enjoyed the readings and the challenge of studying humanity through science fiction.
“I think science fiction is a great genre because it’s looking at humanity looking towards the future,” Schneider said. “There are stories where it gets really dystopian, but other times, there are ones that just fill us with this blinding hope.”
Percy Schneider
For their literary exercise, Schneider collaborated with, among others, junior Iris Shykula, a junior creative writing and Russian studies major from Longmont, CO, to create a shared universe for their stories. The effort was entirely collaborative, as they had to decide how their stories fit together, what the timeline was, and the rules of how their world functioned.
Schneider’s story follows a 16-year-old on her ‘descent,’ a rite of passage for people in their culture who are about to start a new job at the bottom of the ocean. The story also explores the theme of kinship in a world without traditional families.
“I was really trying to focus on finding family in a world where you don’t begin with one, because in the world we created, there are no babies or children,” Schneider said. “I focused on that idea of how someone looking like you could be comforting, even if you don’t know them at all. I wanted it to be like coming to a home that you never knew you had.”
The students were also asked to write an anthropological analysis of their own works of fiction. Schneider made the decision to include their analysis in the zine. When analyzing your own work, they said they felt like a professional anthropologist.
“I yielded more out of analyzing the story than writing the story,” Schneider said. “I started looking back at it, and I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I see how this works. I see how this represents some anthropological concept.’”
In addition to their stories, students were tasked with imagining an everyday cultural object from their worlds. They designed and 3D printed these objects with the help of the Lawrence University Makerspace. Pictures of the objects were printed in the zine, and the physical items were used in a cultural encounter workshop. Students were challenged to interpret the objects produced by other groups like archaeologists working within a limited context.
Angela Vanden Elzen, associate professor and reference and learning technologies librarian, said this is one of the many examples of Lawrentians utilizing the Makerspace to get more out of their coursework and their Lawrence experience.
“Our makerspace has given faculty, students, and staff the opportunity to bring a wide range of making technologies into coursework, laboratories, performance spaces, field work, as a creative outlet, and so much more,” Vanden Elzen said. “These kinds of projects help students to see that getting started with 3D design and 3D printing is not as intimidating as they may think. The technology has come so far that it is easier than ever to learn how to use these technologies.”
According to Rocker, the idea was to make students consider how everyday objects can take on new meanings when viewed in a different light. One group, inspired by time travel and historical drama, created a teleportation device within a pocket watch. The device caused severe memory loss when used, which led to a deeper analysis of how this would impact kinship practices, communication, and human agency.
A Collaborative Effort
While Rocker had initially planned for the zine to be a digital-only project, she was encouraged to get it printed.
“I’m very excited with what we were able to achieve. It surpassed my wildest imaginations,” Rocker said.
Physical copies of the zine were disseminated to different departments at Lawrence University and are available to check out at the Seeley G. Mudd Library.
Rocker hopes that readers enjoy the students’ creativity and get to experience what Lawrence professors get to see every day.
“I’m blown away by the creativity and passion, and I hope readers will think about the ways it overlaps with or is very distinct from their own everyday lives and experiences,” Rocker said. “So much collaboration was involved in the creation of this little zine. I’m incredibly proud of the students who took the class and also indulged me in taking on this project.”
Deanna Kolell
Deanna Kolell is the assistant director of social media at Lawrence University.
