Stories Propel us to Space

Communication faculty are committed to life-long learning and community engagement. We teach, lead, and learn in local, national, and global communities. Dr. James Herrick has been hard at work helping us think about how the stories we tell ourselves results in technological advances–like space exploration.

This semester, Dr. Herrick led the conversation at Grand Valley State University’s Roger That! Conference, tracing the “the modern mythology of space from the late nineteenth-century Russian Cosmists, through twentieth-century science fiction writers, to the Transhumanists of our own day.” In this presentation, Dr. Herrick explained how these “narratives of space shape space policy, inform public discourse, and profoundly influence our expectations of the human future.”