ENG 580-001, Fall 2008
A Critical Introduction to Science Fiction
T 6:30-9:15, MO 102

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

COURSE INFORMATION
COURSE SCHEDULE

Week One
R 8.23: Introduction, First Day

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

Secondary Material: Telotte, "The World of the Science Fiction 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", Michel Gondry, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

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

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

Secondary Material: 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: Scott, Blade Runner (1982), Haraway "The Cyborg Manifesto", Letson "Portraits of Machine Consciousness", Clark "Cyborgs Unplugged", Essays on Blade Runner, Slonczewski "Science fiction and the life sciences" (CC 174)

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

Secondary Readings: Telotte "Introduction: Human Artifice", Baudrillard "The Precession of Simulacra, 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"

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

Secondary Material: 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), Foucault "Panopticism", Max Weber "The Monocratic Type of Bureaucratic Administration", Marcuse "The New Forms of Control", Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, "Marxist Theory and Science Fiction" (CC 113)

Week Twelve
T 11.4: Story Excerpt, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Body Snatchers (1993), Invasion (2007)

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

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

Part Five: Over/Outward
Week Fourteen
T 11.18: SF and Music, Essays

Week Fifteen
T 11.25: SF and Other Media: Video Games; Discussion of Final Projects

Week Sixteen
T 12.2: Conclusion-Last Class.