Tuesday, May 21, 2013

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?




Wednesday, May 15, 2013

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.


Monday, May 13, 2013

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 17th), 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/science-fiction-story-ideas/1001-story-ideas-part-13-sex http://www.femspec.org/books/index.html

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

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.

Monday, May 6, 2013

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

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

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/