Jenna Hanchey
Scholar | Writer | Performer
imagining and enacting better futures
all photography copyright Jenna Hanchey
About Me
“badass fairy”
🖤🐘🤍💜
she/her
I’m continually searching for radical futures, reflecting over the racial and colonial legacies of our pasts, and laboring to enact justice in the present. My academic work critically examines aid, development, and volunteer work in Africa. My creative work aims to open imaginative possibilities. I hail from Southwest Michigan, and am starting as Assistant Professor of Rhetoric & Critical/Cultural Studies in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication at Arizona State University in Fall 2022.
A graduate student once called me a “badass fairy.” I attempt to live up to the title.
Research
Aid Media
I’ve written articles about aid campaign media, particularly viral videos, and how even the organizations that attempt to portray African agency often do so in ways that are Westerncentric and reinforce coloniality.
NGOs in Tanzania
My first book, The Center Cannot Hold: Decolonial Possibility in the Collapse of a Tanzanian NGO, is forthcoming in 2023 from Duke University Press. It examines how decolonial possibility emerges from the collapse of normative aid operations and subjectivities.
Africanfuturism
I am currently writing a second book on Africanfuturism, examining how Africanfuturist fiction and film imagines liberatory African futures that challenge, reinvent, and eschew Western logics of development. I have been awarded a 2022 NEH Summer Stipend for this work.
Fiction
I’m a member of Codex and Associate Member of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA).
Hello, This is Automatic Antigrief: What Problem Can I Solve for you Today?
What happens when we don’t allow ourselves to grieve?
Nature, April 2022
Up the River, Over Mountains, Across the Sea
Cozy fantasy flash about searching for a place in a world that draws unforgiving lines around identity.
Wyngraf Magazine, April 2022
And more…
Teaching
Courses
I teach graduate and undergraduate courses focused on racism, colonialism, difference, gender, and culture in communication.
Media Appearances
I have appeared in podcasts and video panels about African Communication Studies, dystopia and alternative futurisms, race and campus climate, and the futures of feminism.
Performance
Audiobook Narration
I am an audiobook narrator and voice actor. Listen to my samples or hire me to narrate at ACX.com.
Acting and Directing
I am a singer, actor, and director. Links to my virtual performances can be found here.
For Further Information
See my academic profiles at Academia or ResearchGate.
All of the photography on this website is my own, copyright Jenna Hanchey. Here I’ve collected the featured images.
Jenna Hanchey 