9:30a-10:45a TR (30) 3 cr.
FINDING NEW WORLDS: COMPLEXITY AND CONTRADICTION IN AMERICAN SCIENCE
FICTION
Over the eighty years of its development American science fiction (sf)
has become a rich
body of texts bridging the cultural divide between literature and
science, and exploring the
connections between individual power and public destiny. The
principle aim of this course
will be to examine sf as a literature which considers the future from
the vantage of
particular historical moments and broad political concerns. We will
attend to how the genre
links developments in science and technology with ongoing concerns
regarding the conflicts
that characterize American society, particularly those around race,
gender, and the
environment. We will investigate how the genre's conventions address
terrestrial
limitations and problems through tropes such as time and space travel,
alien contact,
utopian extrapolation, and human evolution. Authors will include
Delany, Heinlein, Butler,
Le Guin, K.M. Robinson and others.