SCIFI CLASS--wait no--SCIFI PARTY

Whale frequency themed moon circle
Carl Sagan's Cosmos projected under the
Geminon full moon

Think about:
What do sunset BBQs in City Park at GRODAT on Friday have to do with feminist scifi?
What can we lean about ourselves as we look into the night skies? What questions will arise?
Why do we celebrate Birthdays? Why care about the position of stars at the moment we're born? Shouldn't we be more concerned about the doctor that pulled us out? Or the political environment at that time?

SCIFI SUMMER

YO! 

Here’s the summer reading list. I selected those top three because I wanted us to have a range in authorship, time period, and topic. Some of these books are at the New Orleans Library, others you could get on inter-library loan. Check at some of the used bookstores in town too. If you can’t find em, Amazon.com also sells them for pretty cheap. If none of these options work for you, let me know and we can work something out.

Gender in Science Fiction summer reading:

1) Handmaids Tale (1985) - Margaret Atwood
2) Stars in My Pocket like Grains of Sand (1984) – Samuel Delaney
3) Solitaire (2011) – Kelley Eskridge

Other recommendations for summer reading:

Up the Walls of the World (1984) – James Tiptree Jr.
The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) – Ursula LeGuin
Imago (1989) – Octavia Butler
Midnight Robber (2000) – Nalo Hopkinson
Wraeththu Chronicles (1987-2004) – Storm Constantine

Just a reminder, we will not be meeting in the summer but we will reconvene and start discussions about our summer readings this fall. Take notes, make questions, and interact with the world while you read! If anyone is into having an online discussion they can set that up. I'm just not that techy yet.

SCIFI CLASS 14: Reconvene and Reinvent

"Science fiction and fantasy serve as important vehicles for feminist thought, particularly as bridges between theory and practice. No other genres so actively invite representations of the ultimate goals of feminism: worlds free of sexism, worlds in which women's contributions (to science) are recognized and valued, worlds in which the diversity of women's desire and sexuality, and worlds that move beyond gender."*

For next class (Friday May 17^th), come prepared to discuss at least one the following writing prompts. These questions just serve as a guide to aid your thinking. If you have a topic/idea that you wish to write about, please feel free to do so. You are also welcome to share your “world builder”. The essay is informal but I would encourage you to reflect back on your experiences in this class and your thoughts in some way prior to next week’s class.

Essay Ideas:

·       Why are feminist science fiction, fantasy, speculative fiction, magical realism, surrealism, myth, and other supernatural genres so important?

·       What is the role of story telling in our culture? How do these stories shape and reinforce our existing paradigm(s)?

·       In order to envision a different future, we need stories that feed our imagination, our psyches and our hearts with a different paradigm. Explain how these genres break up the mold. Use the readings to illustrate your argument.

·       Feminism cannot exist if we didn't have new myths and stories that reinvent and explore all the possibilities of our world — both as dystopias to warn, and utopias to dream. In this day and age, what is the role(s) of feminist scifi? How can it be used as a tool to further the feminist cause(s)?

·       If we had societies that were not built on unequal relations between the sexes (and races) what would they look like? How would they function? Would science and technology be done differently?

·       What is the role of “thought experiments” in science fiction? Have these experiments exaggerated or reversed sexual orders? Have the writers been successful in dismantling the existing relations between the sexes? How/how not? Use the texts to illustrate your argument.

·       One of the major challenges of modern feminism has been to the idea that gender roles and relations are in some way permanent, arising from a universal Truth, natural Laws and Biology. Has feminist scifi successfully challenged these ideas? How/how not?

Science Fiction Story Ideas:

Gender Roles

·       In a society where women are in charge, the men are taught from infancy that having opinions or trying to make your own decisions is “effeminate” and “girly”

·       In the future, humans are born neuter but pick their gender in college, like a major.

·       A medical research company genetically engineers a group of children who are both sexes. How will they behave? How will the children dress? How will they interact with “one-sex” people?

·       After the invention of the artificial womb, newlywed couples begin to have arguments about which one of them will carry the baby.

• After being denied a job, a young man sues a fertility clinic for his right to become the first male surrogate “mother.” A liberal judge’s ruling forces the fertility clinic to implant him with an artificial womb.
• In the distant future, evolution dramatically changes the meaning of gender. When humans gather in groups, individuals change gender until there is an even mix of males and females. Cocktail parties become an unpredictable mass of shifting relationships.
• After World War III, the female survivors decide that, as men caused the war and did most of the fighting, it is simply too dangerous to allow them to be in control of the governments any longer. Men are banned from government and military service and, after a few years, banned from voting, having an education or having a job outside the home. A young boy, depressed by his limited prospects at home, decides to pose as a girl so he can join the navy.
• Variation – After World War III, the female survivors decide that, as men caused the war and did most of the fighting, it is simply too dangerous to allow them to be in control of the governments any longer. In fact, it’s too dangerous to allow men to continue living. They offer the few remaining males a choice: become women or die.

Polygamy

• Earth sends a spaceship full of colonists to populate a new planet. In order to populate the new planet as quickly as possible, they send ten women for every man. Some women adjust, adapt to the new culture, accepting their role as one wife of many. Other women rebel, and have to fend for themselves on the new planet.
• Aliens attack the earth and take the majority of the women back to their planet to be part of their interspecies breeding program. (The alien women are infertile.) So, the remaining women are left with their pick of mates. Some become incredibly choosy, dating one perfect male. Some women marry multiple husbands, so many that they can live in luxury, waited on hand and foot.
• An epidemic outbreak of a new virus makes all men “shoot blanks.” The men must come to the doctor for fertility treatments to fix the problem. The treatments solve the problem, but create two kinds of males: “A” and “B.” Women must sleep with both an “A” male and a “B” male to get pregnant.
• Variation – A disease makes women unable to carry an infant for a whole nine months. So one woman carries the baby for four, and then has the baby moved into another woman’s womb, who then carries it until birth.

Sexuality and procreation

• A disease renders all the women infertile. Scientists genetically engineer women who are super-fertile, like human insect queens.
• After the invention of artificial sperm, women start to view men as unnecessary
• A medical research firm invents an artificial womb. Soon procreation is outlawed. Instead of sexual reproduction, corporations grow genetically engineered “perfect” babies and sell them on the open market.
• An outbreak of disease kills everyone under twenty years old. Doctors discover that the only way to keep babies from dying is if they extend the length of the gestation period from nine months to twelve years
• A bachelor is discovered to have a rare mutation that would make all of his offspring geniuses, physically beautiful, and nearly immortal. His sperm becomes the most valuable substance on earth.
• Wanting to destroy the US economy, a terrorist group designs a “baby bomb,” a device that will keep women continuously pregnant
• On a distant world, the land is filled with men. Once a year, the men journey to the beach, where they encounter the only females on the planet: mermaids.
• On a distant planet, the corner bar is the most stressful place a man can be. Men approach women knowing that, if their pickup lines fail, the robot guards will drag them outside and beat them to death.
• A race of aliens takes control of planet after planet, not through warfare, but through breeding. The aliens have airborne spores which can get any females pregnant with an alien baby. The babies are so adorable that any female would feel compelled to raise them as one of her own. The aliens fill the earth’s atmosphere with their spores, and simply wait for their offspring to grow up and overwhelm humanity through sheer numbers.
• After researching reincarnation, a man discovers a way to be reborn but retain his memory of his old life. After a particularly passionate night of lovemaking, he has a heart attack and dies. A few months later, the man is reincarnated… as his own infant son. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  *Elyce Rae Helford, in Westfahl, Gary. The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Greenwood Press, 2005: 289-290
  http://www.writepop.com/category/1001-story-ideas
  http://www.writepop.com/science-fiction-story-ideas/1001-story-ideas-part-13-sex http://www.femspec.org/books/index.html
  Science Fiction Story Ideas – Part 13: SEX
  http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/feminism

SCIFI CLASS 13: "When It Changed" by Joanna Russ and "Mountain Ways" by Ursula K. LeGuin

For this Friday's class (5/10) we will read and discuss Mountain Ways (1996) by Ursula K. Le Guin and When It Changed (1972) by Joanna Russ.


Joanna Russ states in the afterward of When It Changed that the story was written to challenge ideas in science fiction that had not, at the time of writing, been addressed. These ideas were related to the way women - and societies consisting solely of women - were handled by writers who are male.

I have read SF stories about manless worlds before; they are either full of busty girls in wisps of chiffon who slink about writhing with lust (Keith Laumer wrote a charming, funny one called "The War with the Yukks"), or the women have set up a static, beelike society in imitation of some presumed primitive matriarchy. These stories are written by men. Why women who have been alone for generations should "instinctively" turn their sexual desires toward persons of whom they have only intellectual knowledge, or why female people are presumed to have an innate preference for Byzantine rigidity, I don't know.

Russ also mentions Ursula K. Leguin's novel The Left Hand of Darkness as an influence on the story.

If you think of any supplementary readings that are relevant let us know so we can discuss them in class.

Hope to see you all Friday, Sycamore, 6pm.

Future of SCIFI+Gender

We are approaching the end of our class together. Only a few more weeks! I want to remind you all that I am open to having additional facilitators in class. This means YOU! If you have a story in mind (fiction or non-fiction), or an author we haven't read, or you want to come give a talk on anything scifi or gender related, or you want to teach a writing workshop, STEP RIGHT UP!

I'd love to have a a range of teaching/teachers/facilitators/ideas. If you have any ideas for a class before we go on summer break at the end of May, please let me know.

On another note, I would like to keep the class going as we split off into our summer ways. We discussed reading a few novels over the course of about three months. I have some suggestions for summer reading, but I would like people to add to the list. Then we can narrow it down to two or three novels and an additional summer reading list. E-mail me what you think about my summer reading list and if you want to add or take anything out. Also, if you want to buy a book and do not have funding, please contact me. Otherwise, I will expect you all to get books on your own.

My summer reading suggestions:
(1) Up The Walls of The World by James Tiptree Jr.
(2) Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood
(3) Imago by Octavia Butler
(4) Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel Delaney

Readings are now uploaded to blog:

Daughter by Tananarive Due (2000)
A Birthday by Esther M. Friesner (1996)
That Only a Mother by Judith Merril (1948)

We will discuss these readings Friday May 3rd at 6pm at Sycamore 3111 Palmyra Street.

Did you know? There is a Feminist Sci Fi conference in Madison Wisconsin every year.   It is called WisCon and its happening May 24-27th.

Check it out:

http://www.wiscon.info/

SCIFI CLASS 12: Readings on Motherhood

I have selected three readings that will be discussed in two weeks (not this Friday but the next 5/3).

Daughter by Tananarive Due (2000)
A Birthday by Esther M. Friesner (1996)
That Only a Mother by Judith Merril (1948)

What is motherhood? How do we define it? How does it define us? Think about the nature of motherhood and how it relates to feminism and science fiction.

I do not have anymore sever space to upload pdfs online. If you can help me post these stories here, please let me know. Also please notify me if you would like to receive a copy of these stories. I can add you to the class e-mail list if I hadn't added you already. E-mail me at: abruser@uno.edu

See you in two weeks,
Ally

check it:

Sophia Stewart, The Real Creator of ‘The Matrix,’ Wins Billion Dollar Copyright Case

http://www.africanglobe.net/headlines/sophia-stewart-real-creator-matrix-wins-billion-dollar-case/

AFRICANGLOBE – This little known story has met a just conclusion, as Sophia Stewart, African American author of The Matrix will finally receive her just due from the copyright infringement of her original work!!!
A six-year dispute has ended involving Sophia Stewart, the Wachowski Brothers, Joel Silver and Warner Brothers. Stewart’s allegations, involving copyright infringement and racketeering, were received and acknowledged by the Central District of California, Judge Margaret Morrow presiding.
Stewart, a New Yorker who has resided in Salt Lake City for the past five years, will recover damages from the films, The Matrix I, II and III, as well as The Terminator and its sequels. She will soon receive one of the biggest payoffs in the history of Hollywood , as the gross receipts of both films and their sequels total over 2.5 billion dollars.
Stewart filed her case in 1999, after viewing the Matrix, which she felt had been based on her manuscript, ‘The Third Eye,’ copyrighted in 1981. In the mid-eighties Stewart had submitted her manuscript to an ad placed by the Wachowski Brothers, requesting new sci-fi works..
According to court documentation, an FBI investigation discovered that more than thirty minutes had been edited from the original film, in an attempt to avoid penalties for copyright infringement.
The investigation also stated that ‘credible witnesses employed at Warner Brothers came forward, claiming that the executives and lawyers had full knowledge that the work in question did not belong to the Wachowski Brothers.’ These witnesses claimed to have seen Stewart’s original work and that it had been ‘often used during preparation of the motion pictures.’ The defendants tried, on several occasions, to have Stewart’s case dismissed, without success.
Stewart has confronted skepticism on all sides, much of which comes from Matrix fans, who are strangely loyal to the Wachowski Brothers. One on-line forum, entitled Matrix Explained has an entire section devoted to Stewart. Some who have researched her history and writings are open to her story.
Others are suspicious and mocking. ‘It doesn’t bother me,’ said Stewart in a phone interview last week, ‘I always knew what was true.’
Some fans, are unaware of the case or they question its legitimacy, due to the fact that it has received little to no media coverage. Though the case was not made public until October of 2003, Stewart has her own explanation, as quoted at aghettotymz.com:
‘The reason you have not seen any of this in the media is because Warner Brothers parent company is AOL-Time Warner…. this GIANT owns 95 percent of the media… let me give you a clue as to what they own in the media business… New York Times papers/magazines, LA Times papers/magazines, People Magazine, CNN news, Extra, Celebrity Justice, Entertainment Tonight, HBO, New Line Cinema, DreamWorks, Newsweek, Village Roadshow and many, many more! They are not going to report on themselves. They have been suppressing my case for years.’

The Matrix is arguably the most successful science sci-fi movie

Fans who have taken Stewart’s allegations seriously, have found eerie mythological parallels, which seem significant in a case that revolves around the highly metaphorical and symbolic Matrix series. Sophia, the Greek goddess of wisdom has been referenced many times in speculation about Stewart. In one book about the Goddess Sophia, it reads, ‘The black goddess is the mistress of web creation spun in her divine matrix.’
Although there have been outside implications as to racial injustice (Stewart is African American), she does not feel that this is the case. ‘This is all about the Benjamins,’ said Stewart. ‘It’s not about money with me. It’s about justice.’
Stewart’s future plans involve a record label, entitled Popsilk Records, and a motion picture production company, All Eyez On Me, in reference to God. ‘I wrote The Third Eye to wake people up, to remind them why God put them here. There’s more to life than money,’ said Stewart. ‘My whole to the world is about God and good and about choice, about spirituality over ‘technocracy’.’
If Stewart represents spirituality, then she truly has prevailed over the ‘technocracy’ represented in both the Terminator and the Matrix, and now, ironically, by their supposed creators.
Stewart is currently having discussions with CBS about a possible exclusive story and has several media engagements in the near future to nationally publicize her victory.
June 13th 2004. Sophia Stewart’s press release read: ‘The Matrix & Terminator movie franchises have made world history and have ultimately changed the way people view movies and how Hollywood does business, yet the real truth about the creator and creation of these films continue to elude the masses because the hidden secret of the matter is that these films were created and written by a Black woman…a Black woman named Sophia Stewart. But Hollywood does not want you to know this fact simply because it would change history. Also it would encourage our Black children to realize a dream and that is…nothing is impossible for them to achieve!

SCIFI CLASS 11: "Immaculate" by Storm Constantine

For next week's class (Friday 4/19) we will be discussing Immaculate (1991) by Storm Constantine.


"Women are not ashamed of feelings or emotions. It’s a reflection of the way our society operates. To men it’s seen as weakness to show emotion, or to feel emotionally vulnerable. So they feel uncomfortable exploring that part of their sexuality. This sounds terribly patronizing, and I know it’s generalizing too. I’m sure there are many men who don’t feel that way. But in general – it’s true! And as a writer you have to get into your characters in order to write about them. That includes the weakness that you’d experience there. That weakness is something male writers feel uncomfortable with when they’re exploring that kind of situation..."

--Storm Constantine

bioimmaculate

 

SCIFI CLASS 10: Octavia Butler's "Bloodchild" (1995)

Last week we discussed "The Glass Bottle Trick" by Nalo Hopkinson. Some themes we pulled from the text included: the physical body, the metaphysical body, the projected/perceived body, gender issues, race issues, the physics of pressure and volume, and the roles of superstition and magic in interpersonal situations.

Staying with these themes, we will discuss "Bloodchild" by Octavia Butler (1995) for next week's class (Friday at 6pm at Sycamore). This novelette won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. It has received acclaim from a widespread audience ranging from literary critics, scifi fans, feminists, and writers.

"The things that make “Bloodchild,” not to mention her [Octavia Butler's] other works, important are the unique views, situations, and experiences it creates for the reader. This novelette challenges every reader to reconsider some of the most basic assumptions about human life, from gender, race, and species identity to the value of freedom and the meaning of life. It is this ability to make readers reconsider everything that makes Butler and “Bloodchild” significant." -- M Brauer
 

This quote may guide you in critical reading. I would recommend reading this story slowly, give yourself time let it sink in, think it over, and analyze what you think Butler is trying to communicate. Maybe her message isn't obvious or clear but it's well worth the extra time and attention.

Octavia E. Butler

SCIFI CLASS 9: Glass Bottle Trick by Nalo Hopkinson

We have been in and out of this world. Now we are making our way back home. Let's re-center ourselves.

This week we will be discussing Glass Bottle Trick (2000) by Nalo Hopkinson.

Nalo Hopkinson "was born in Jamaica and grew up in Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad, and Canada, where she lived since age sixteen...Hopkinson has gained universal acclaim as one of the most impressively original authors to emerge in years...Now she presents Skin Folk, a richly vibrant collection of short fiction that ranges from Trinidad to Toronto from fantastic folklore to frightening futures, from houses of deadly humans to realms of dark sexuality. Powerful and sensual, disturbing and triumphant, these tales explore the surface of modern existence...and delve under the skin of eternal legends".
                                                                                        -- From Skin Folk (2001)

The Glass Bottle Trick is a short story in the collection Skin Folk. The story confronts issues of race, class, gender, reproductive issues, superstition, and magic.

SCIFI CLASS 8: Daybreak by Italo Calvino

Okay, okay, I know what you're thinking... What does Italo Calvino have to do with scifi and gender?

Last meeting we discussed our "World Builder" worksheets. We all had very different, very brilliant ideas for other worlds/stories/characters/settings/dilemmas/etc.

Our "stories" transcended many cultural norms and values. Not only did we negate the concept of gender entirely in many of our stories, by we also negated culturally constructed concepts of time and space. We seemed to be interested in the concept of the "unknown" or the "invisible" or the "shadow"--those factors in life that are so often unexplainable or unattainable through our human means. We have unlocked the prison of our minds and imagined a world anew.

The story we have selected for next week comes from a collection of short stories called Cosmicomics (1965) by Italo Calvino. At Daybreak is a short story about life before matter condenses into forms that we are more familiar with today. What can we learn from our subatomic ancestors and the origins of matter itself?

Please come prepared to discuss this reading and continue working on your "World Builder". We will meet this Friday March 29th at 6pm at Sycamore.

Remember that this class is looking at gender images through science fiction. Can you analyze this reading from a feminist/gender perspective? Why/why not?

“A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called "leaves") imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time ― proof that humans can work magic.” ----Carl Sagan

SCIFI CLASS 7: Freedom to Imagine

Can you imagine a world without prisons? A world without gender? A world with a completely different time structure? It's difficult, isn't it?

Angela Davis states in the first chapter of her book Are Prisons Obsolete?: "Even the staunchest advocates of capital punishment acknowledge the fact that the death penalty faces serious challenges. Few people find life without the death penalty difficult to imagine" (Davis 2003).

> Why is it so difficult to imagine other ways of being?

> How can we change society without first imagining a social system anew?

> Why are our imaginations deeply controlled? And by whom? Or what?

For this next class, we will rewrite the world. I have attached a link to a worksheet I found on a website for beginner writers called "The Scriptorium". "The World Builder" is an aid to your imagination. The worksheet outlines different sections from society, government, time, space, and ontology.

Take a look at the "World Builder" and fill out sections to your heart's desire. Or feel free to come to class with your own writing and ideas! This week is all about creating.

See you this coming Friday March 22nd, the usual place and time.

SCIFI CLASS 6: Looking Through Lace by Ruth Nestvold (2003)

For this upcoming class, Friday March 15th, we will be discussing Looking Through Lace by Ruth Nestvold (2003).

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Excerpt from The James Tiptree Jr. Award Anthology I

Donna Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto" (additional reading: not required)

I find this reading to be extremely relevant to our class and our place and society as a whole. I am trudging through it's ambiguous academia, struggling to understand. If you would like to take a look at it, there are versions to be found online. I am going to read it, and possibly form a smaller subgroup of the class that focuses on this reading alone.

Let me know if you would like to form a discussion group relating to this particular essay:

Donna Haraway's
"A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York; Routledge, 1991), pp.149-181.

An ironic dream of a common language for women in the integrated circuit...

What I Didn't See

Hello Gender and SciFi Readers,

This week we will be reading "What I Didn't See" by Karen Joy Fowler.
On Friday, March 8, come discuss this story with us!  It's an interesting follow-up to "The Women Men Don't See" by James Tiptree Jr, which we read last week.

I will also be referring you all to a piece by Donna Haraway about primates which I think will add something to the experience of thinking about this story. 

This week your homework is to dwell on the word "species..." so.... keep dwellin'

and in the meantime:
silverback eating
gorilla kick!
humanzee
chimp vs cop

I will email both the PDF of the story and the Haraway reading when I get all of your emails from Ally.

see ya friday!
fondly,
your week's facilitator,
Saiya

The Women Men Don't See Part Deux

Because last week's class was cancelled, we will be reading The Women Men Don't See (1979) by James Tiptree Jr for this coming class, Friday March 1st.

See you then.

(More information below)

SCIFI CLASS 4: The Women That Men Don’t See by James Tiptree Jr.

“Tip’ was a crucial part of modern SF's maturing process (...)‘He’(...) wrote powerful fiction challenging readers' assumptions about everything, especially sex and gender.”—Suzy McKee Charnas, The Women's Review of Books

“Certainly my inner world will never be a peaceful place of bloom; it will have some peace, and occasional riots of bloom, but always a little fight going on too. There is no way I can be peacefully happy in this society and in this skin. I am committed to Uneasy Street. I like it; it is my idea that this street leads to the future, and that I am being true to a way of life which is not here yet, but is more real than what is here.” –James Tiptree Jr.

For our next class we will read and discuss The Women That Men Don’t See (1973) by James Tiptree Jr.

Here is a link to an online version of the text

If you would like a pdf version, search for “the women that men don’t see” in quotes on google. The first option that will come up should be a link to the pdf.

Please let me know if you have any trouble.

SCIFI CLASS 3: Asteroid 2012 DA14's Friday Flyby

This Friday February 15th an asteroid about half the size of a football feild will make a close encounter with Earth, "...the 150-foot-wide (45 meters) asteroid 2012 DA14 will be just 17,200 miles (27,000 kilometers) from Earth — the closest encounter with such a large space rock that researchers have ever known about in advance."

For this Friday's class I am going to try and plan a field trip to the UNO observatory to watch this awesome event. If not we will meet at Sycamore at 6pm and go up to City Park and stargaze. Bring maps, telescopes, clipboards, papers, and pens. A writing workshop may occur on this mysterious night...

What if the asteroid did hit Earth?

SCIFI CLASS 2: Heat Death

 "The stories we tell ourselves are whatever is necessary for going on." (From "Instructions for Exiting a Building in Case of Fire", in Heat Death of the Universe and Other Stories by Pamela Zoline, 1967).

For our next reading we will be discussing The Heat Death of the Universe  (1967) by Pamela Zoline. The text is readily available online in different formats. Click the link above for a pdf version.

The next class will be at Sycamore House at 6pm Friday February 8th.

I look forward to seeing you all then!

"One of the essential functions of sceince fiction, I think, is precisely this kind of question-asking: reversals of a habitual way of thinking, metaphors for what our language has no words for as yet, experiments in imagination." Ursula K. LeGuin

Language of The Night is a compilation of essays on fantasy and sceince fiction by Ursula K. LeGuin.  There are several essays that discuss the nature writing sceince fiction and gender. This particular essay stuck out to me: Is Gender Necessary? (1976) Redux (1988). I have attached a pdf to this post for viewing. If you have trouble accessing it, please let me know and I can do my best to get a hard-copy.

For the first class please come prepared to discuss this essay, the introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness, and your throughts and ideas on science fiction, fantasy, gender, and sexulaity.

Reminder that class will be held Friday February First at 6pm at Sycamore House (3111 Palmyra St.)

Class will be held at Sycamore House (3111 Palmyra) Fridays at 6pm.


And if you would like to contribute or have any questions feel free to contact me abruser@uno.edu


Hope to see you there!

Thought-Experiements

What is science fiction?

Before jumping right in, let's think about what science fiction means to us. How do we relate to science fiction? What can science fiction tell us about ourselves? What does science fiction tell us about our own society's cultural values, norms, and concerns?

In her introduction to The Left Hand Of Darkness, Ursula LeGuin beautifully illustrates the relationships among writer, reader, and society. In addition, LeGuin elaborates on the meaning on science fiction.

Fridays in February

(class time not decided, any suggestions?)

In this class we will explore and expand upon concepts of gender and feminism as seen through a literary lens. We will focus on (but are not limited to) science fiction, speculative fiction, magical realism, and fantasy. Some authors include Karen Joy Fowler, Nalo Hopkinson, Ruth Nestvold, Ursula LeGuin, James Tiptree Jr, and Octavia Butler. We will read and discuss one short(ish) story per week. Although the class is informal, I would strongly recommend reading before each class. (If anyone has trouble accessing the blog or would prefer a hard-copy, please contact me for arrangements).

Upholding the traditions of so many wonderful authors and editors of the James Tipree Jr. Award, home made cookies will be provided each class. 

Looking forward to it!