Class Schedule for Winter 2017

Sheree Thomas, editor of the collection Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora, said, "The science fiction and fantasy genres have always offered readers, bold, extraordinary ways by which to examine society. The results have often been visionary, with writers acting as unflinching voyeurs who deliver engaging, sometimes scathing critiques of our traditions, values, nightmares, and dreams." Similarly, Betsy Huang argues in Contesting Genres in Contemporary Asian American Literature that "science fiction affords Asian American writers a unique way to engage in subversive political and ideological critique not by contravening genre conventions, but by using them to rewrite the rules of the genre.” Our course will engage speculative and science fictions of color as political and vernacular theory, as strategies for thinking critically about the past, present, and future in order to imagine what this world (and beyond) would be like under different conditions and configurations of race, gender, sexuality, ability, and other formations. We will survey and explore the intersections of literature, genre, bodies, media, and technology with particular attention to African American, Asian American, and other writers.