Senior Seminar: Science Fiction

ENG 495-002, Fall 2008
Senior Seminar: Science Fiction
TR 2:00-3:15, MO 202

Dr. Nicholas Laudadio, Morton 138
Office Hours, W 2-5
laudadion@uncw.edu
http://people.uncw.edu/laudadion/

Week One
R 8.23: Introduction, First Day

Week Two
Introduction:
T 8.26: "Part I" from the Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction (CC 1-63)
R 8.28: "Part I" continued (CC 64-112), Georges Melies,Voyage Dans La Lune (Parts 1 and 2)

Secondary Readings: Telotte, "The World of the Science Fiction Film", filmsite.org's History of SF Film, Chronological Bibiography of Science Fiction History, Theory, and Criticism

Week Three
Part One: Time & Space
T 9.2: HG Wells' The Time Machine (Chapters I-IV), "Time Travel" from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Alfred Bester, "The Men Who Murdered Mohammed", David Lewis "The Paradoxes of Time Travel"
R 9.4: Michel Gondry, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Week Four
T 9.9: Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle, Duncan "Alternate history" (CC 209)
R 9.11: Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle, Kim Stanley Robinson, "Remaking History"

Week Five
T 9.16: Samuel R. Delaney "Driftglass," Arthur C. Clarke "The Sentinel", "Hard Science Fiction" (CC 186)
R 9.18: Tarkovsky Solaris (1972), Tarkovsky "Imprinted Time"

F 9.19: First Essay Due

Secondary Readings: Sontag, "The Imagination of Disaster", Suvin, "Estrangement and Cognition", Chris Marker's La Jettee (1962), Shane Carruth, Primer (2004)

Week Six
Part Two: Humans/PostHumans
T 9.23: Haraway "The Cyborg Manifesto", Scott, Blade Runner (1982) , Clark "Cyborgs Unplugged"
R 9.25: Letson "Portraits of Machine Consciousness", Slonczewski "Science fiction and the life sciences" (CC 174)

Week Seven
T 9.30: Ellison "I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream", Joy "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us", Oshii Ghost in the Shell (1995),Thacker "Data Made Flesh"
R 10.2: Midterm

Secondary Readings: Baudrillard "The Precession of Simulacra", Telotte "Introduction: Human Artifice", Clark, "Natural Born Cyborgs"

Week Eight
T 10.7: No Class, Fall Break

Week Nine
Part Three: Race/Gender
T 10.14: Octavia Butler Kindred, Elisabeth Anne Leonard, "Race and ethnicity in science fiction" (CC 253), Potts "We Keep Playing the Same Record"
R 10.16: Octavia Butler Kindred, Angelyn Mitchell, "Not Enough of the Past: Feminist Revisions of Slavery in Octavia E. Butler's Kindred"; Lisa Yaszek, "A Grim Fantasy: Remaking History in Octavia Butler's Kindred"

Week Ten
T 10.21: Ursula K. LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness, Veronica Hollinger "Feminist theory and science fiction" (CC 125)
R 10.23: Ursula K. LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness, Helen Merrick "Gender in Science Fiction" (CC 241)

Secondary Readings: Roberts "SF and Gender", Roberts "SF and Race", Angelyn Mitchell, "Not Enough of the Past: Feminist Revisions of Slavery in Octavia E. Butler's Kindred"; Lisa Yaszek, "A Grim Fantasy: Remaking History in Octavia Butler's Kindred"; Robert Plank, "Ursula K. Le Guin and the Decline of Romantic Love"; Lewis Call, "Postmodern Anarchism in the Novels of Ursula K. Le Guin"; Lisa Hammond Rashley "Revisioning Gender: Inventing Women in Ursula K. Le Guin's Nonfiction"

Part Four: Ideology/Power
Week Eleven
T 10.28: Gilliam Brazil (1985),Max Weber "The Monocratic Type of Bureaucratic Administration", Marcuse "The New Forms of Control"
R 10.30: Foucault "Panopticism", Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, "Marxist Theory and Science Fiction" (CC 113)

Week Twelve
T 11.4: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Bradbury "It Came From Outer Space"
R 11.6: Body Snatchers (1993), Invasion (2007), Anderson "Versions: Invasion of the Body Snatchers",

Week Thirteen
T 11.11: Mike Judge, Idiocracy (2004), Edward James "Utopias and anti-utopias" (CC 219),
R 11.13: Pixar's Wall-E (2008)
Prospectus Due

Secondary Readings: Ken Macleod "Politics and science fiction" (CC 230), HG Wells "Utopias"

Part Five: Over/Outward
Week Fourteen
T 11.18: SF and Television, Research Presentations
R 11.20: SF and Video Games, Research Presentations
Annotated Bibliography Due

Week Fifteen
T 11.25: SF and Music, Essays
R 11.27: Discussion of Final Projects

Week Sixteen
T 12.2: Final Project Due.