Argues that constructive imagination, practiced through creating magic rituals, improves with practice and fosters greater understanding of course content and more fluid writing engagement.
Abstract
Constructive imagination is a pedagogical method where students, in a structured manner, generate mental experiences by imagining course contents—magic rituals in the course I describe here—and these mental experiences are then used in creative non-fiction writing. Treated in this chapter are two writing prompts accompanied by summaries of and quotes from student writing and feedback: “Write a Rite!,” where students create a magic ritual based on South Asian sources, and “Chaos Magick,” where students create a novel magic ritual invoking personally relevant or pop figures. Constructive imagination improves with practice, and a spirit of playful creativity fosters greater understanding of course contents and more fluid engagement in writing practices.