Why Science Fiction? Why do feminists write it? Why do they read it? We call it SF and that stands also for
Speculative Fiction, for Speculative Feminisms, for Speculative Fabulation. What does feminism have to do with it all? How does science in SF matter to feminisms and feminist theory? How is feminist theory indebted to science fiction feminisms?
Worlding is at stake in SF feminisms.
World crafting is a special skill that we will explore in this class, learning how feminist SF shares it across
intertextualities in forms of
transmedia storytelling. And worlding and human flourishing are elements in new material feminisms emerging today and interconnected with forms of science fiction feminisms. [Be sure to click pics as well as links!]
Individuals and groups will be able to practice
immersion in specific and favorite SF possibilities. You will get to choose about half of your reading and share your discoveries with the rest of us. We will have some core class texts though, ones we will hold in common. Three talk about the worlds of fans, writers, histories, and practices that matter in SF and media communities and to feminisms: sf ecologies. The other three give us some feminist SF to know in common: a multi-author story collection, a single-author story collection, and one of the great "classic" texts of feminist SF: sf textualities.
To create our own community of theorists and activists, we want to all get to know each other and work with each other. Ours here is an active and ambitious learning community. We will not be using Blackboard in this class, but rather working with Blogger, a public online site, using it for class multimedia presentations, for class preparation and review, and maybe for other possibilities! Please bookmark our class site:
http://sffem.blogspot.com/
All students please do come to office hours to just talk. I want to get to know each of you personally! I am excited to see again students I already know and very much looking forward to meeting those of you I don't know yet! This should be a very fun class, demanding I hope in the most satisfying ways, and full of comradeship and excitement. I want to know how the class is working for you, what touches and excites you, how your projects are going. So please make a point of coming to office hours and opening up conversations!
Let me know in office hours or after class when you need help, or any special accommodations, the sooner the better. Folks with disabilities or who need time from class to observe religious holidays, please contact Katie ASAP to make any arrangements necessary.
===
• sf ecologies:
Merrick. 2009.
The Secret Feminist Cabal.
Aqueduct. 9781933500331.
"
The Secret Feminist Cabal is an extended answer to the question
Helen Merrick asks in her introduction: ''why do I read feminist sf?''
In this wide-ranging cultural history we are introduced to a
multiplicity of sf feminisms as Merrick takes readers on a tour of the
early days of sf fandom, tracks the upheavals of the 1950s and 1960s and
the explosions of feminist sf in the 1970s, and contextualizes
subsequent developments in feminist sf scholarship. Her history is
expansive and inclusive: it ranges from North America to the UK to
Australia; it tells us about readers, fans, and academics as well as
about writers, editors, and publishers; and it examines the often uneasy
intersections of feminist theory and popular culture. Merrick brings
things up to date with considerations of feminist cyberfiction and
feminist science and technology studies, and she concludes with an
intriguing review of the
Tiptree Award as it illuminates current debates
in the feminist sf community. Broadly informed, theoretically astute,
and often revisionary,
The Secret Feminist Cabal is an
indispensable social and cultural history of the girls who have been
plugged into science fiction. --Vernoica Hollinger, ed.
Edging into the Future"
Phillips. 2007.
James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon. Picador. 9780312426941.
"
James Tiptree, Jr., burst onto the science fiction scene in the late
1960s with a series of hard-edged, provocative stories. He redefined the
genre with such classics as Houston, Houston, Do You Read? and The
Women Men Don't See. For nearly ten years he wrote and carried on
intimate correspondences with other writers--
Philip K. Dick,
Harlan Ellison, and
Ursula K. Le Guin, though none of them knew his true
identity. Then the cover was blown on his alter ego: "he" was actually a
sixty-one-year-old woman named Alice Bradley Sheldon. A feminist, she
took a male name as a joke--and found the voice to write her stories.
Based on extensive research, exclusive interviews, and full access to
Alice Sheldon's papers, Julie Phillips has penned a biography of a
profoundly original writer and a woman far ahead of her time. --
Google books"
Johnson. 2006.
Everything Bad is Good for You.
Riverhead. 978-1594481949. Also available on the
Kindle, as a
Google eBook, and as an
audiobook.
"The heart of Johnson's argument is something called the Sleeper Curve--a
universe of popular entertainment that trends, intellectually speaking,
ever upward, so that today's pop-culture consumer has to do more
"cognitive work"--making snap decisions and coming up with long-term
strategies in role-playing video games, for example, or mastering new
virtual environments on the Internet-- than ever before. Johnson makes a
compelling case that even today's least nutritional TV junk food–the
Joe Millionaires and
Survivors
so commonly derided as evidence of America's cultural decline--is more
complex and stimulating, in terms of plot complexity and the amount of
external information viewers need to understand them, than the
Love Boats and
I Love Lucys
that preceded it. When it comes to television, even (perhaps
especially) crappy television, Johnson argues, "the content is less
interesting than the cognitive work the show elicits from your mind." Johnson's work has been controversial, as befits a writer willing to
challenge wisdom so conventional it has ossified into accepted truth.
But even the most skeptical readers should be captivated by the
intriguing questions Johnson raises, whether or not they choose to
accept his answers.
--Erica C. Barnett"
• sf textualities:
Hopkinson. 2004.
So Long Been Dreaming.
Arsenal Pulp. 781551521589.
Also available on the
Kindle.
"
So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy is an
anthology of original new stories by leading African, Asian, South
Asian, and Aboriginal authors, as well as North American and British
writers of colour. Stories of imagined futures abound in Western writing.
Writer and editor
Nalo Hopkinson notes that the science fiction/fantasy
genre "speaks so much about the experience of being alienated, but
contains so little writing by alienated people themselves." It's an
oversight that Hopkinson and Mehan aim to correct with this
anthology. The wealth of postcolonial literature has included many who
have written insightfully about their pasts and presents. With
So Long
Been Dreaming they creatively address their futures. With an introduction
by Hugo and Nebula Award-winner
Samuel R. Delany. Contributors to
So
Long Been Dreaming are
Opal Palmer Adisa, Celu Amberstone,
Ven Begamudre,
Tobias S. Buckell,
Wayde Compton,
Andrea Hairston, Maya
Khankhoje, Tamai Kobayashi,
Larissa Lai,
Karin Lowachee, devorah major,
Suzette Mayr, Carole McDonnell,
Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu,
Eden Robinson,
Nisi Shawl,
Vandana Singh, Sheree R. Thomas, and
Greg van Eekhout. --
Google books."
Butler. 1996.
Bloodchild and other stories.
Seven Stories. 9781583226988.
Also available on the
Kindle.
"A perfect introduction for new readers and a must-have for avid fans,
this New York Times Notable Book includes “Bloodchild,” winner of both
the
Hugo and the
Nebula awards and “Speech Sounds,” winner of the Hugo
Award. Appearing in print for the first time, “Amnesty” is a story of a
woman aptly named Noah who works to negotiate the tense and co-dependent
relationship between humans and a species of invaders. Also new to this
collection is “The Book of Martha” which asks: What would you do if God
granted you the ability—and responsibility—to save humanity from
itself? --
Seven Stories Press."
Russ. 1975.
The Female Man.
Beacon. 9780807062999.
"Living in an altered past that never saw the end of the Great
Depression, Jeannine, a librarian, is waiting to be married. Joanna
lives in a different version of reality: she's a 1970s feminist trying
to succeed in a man's world. Janet is from Whileaway, a utopian earth
where only women exist. And Jael is a warrior with steel teeth and
catlike retractable claws, from an earth with separate-and
warring-female and male societies. When these four women meet, the
results are startling, outrageous, and subversive. --
Beacon."
• recommended for more ecologies:
Davidson. 2011.
Now You See It. Viking Adult. 9780670022823. Also available on the
Kindle and as an
audiobook.
"Davidson (The Future of Thinking) offers a stunning new vision for the
future, showing how the latest advances in brain research could
revolutionize education and workplace management, ...begins with the
concept of 'attention blindness,' a basic principle of neuroscience
stating that individuals only see a portion of the world in front of
them. Davidson asks how, whether working alone or collaboratively, we
might overcome this deficit and gain a broader perspective on our mental
and physical surroundings. She interviews pioneers who have
demonstrated amazing success in accomplishing this goal." --
Publishers Weekly.
All readings are also on reserve at McKeldin Library. Several are new though and await library purchase. All will be on 24 hr. reserve. Links to descriptions of these books and their places of availability were the first things up on our class site. Notice how many of the books are available on the Kindle, an ebook reader. You do not need the Kindle device to read these, but can download an app for your computer/laptop or smart phone or iPad to read them without one:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=sa_menu_karl3?ie=UTF8&docId=1000493771 Some are available as Google eBooks. To learn how to read these on your computer, look at:
http://books.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=185545&hl=en Usually the price is a bit lower for each of these, many available for less than $10, although you cannot resell such books. Please ensure access to as many of our course books as you can, bring those you have obtained or notes about them to the first class.
You are required to read these books, not to buy them, or even to own them. All are on reserve at McKeldin and many are available at other libraries. Share them, rent them, borrow them, xerox them, scan them. Fair use means producing copies for your own private research use. Of course you can help others in obtaining originals for such fair use copying. Always be sure to locate your books long before you need to read them, even if one or more turn out to be just coming out or even out of print. Find what you can and read them anyway! ISBN numbers are included to make ordering them easier if you wish to buy them.
===
how the class will be organized
This will be a media and technology intensive course. So-called
constructionist learning and collaboration open up our analysis of interconnections among SF and feminist media worlds and the cognitive structures and ecologies they alter and interact with. Bring your own laptop, netbook or iPad if you can, to connect across media, to become increasingly savvy about web resources, and to use data visualizations and virtual environments for cognition and collaboration. Throughout the course we will share resources for all these.
The course will involve both taking things in, absorbing them and learning to put them in context; and also actively using what we come to know, sharing it others, thinking on one's feet, brainstorming and speculating, figuring out how it all fits together. Both require careful preparation before class and keeping up with the reading. Some educators call these forms passive and active learning. One can take in and absorb more complicated stuff than one can work with and work out, at least at first. We do both in the class, but we also
realize that active learning requires patience and imagination, a bit of courage to try things out without knowing something for sure yet, and a willingness to play around with being right and wrong, guessing and a lot of redoing.
The blog for our entire class is located at:
http://sffem.blogspot.com/ This is where graphics, mini-lecture materials and notes, communications and assignment help, and other vital class information and presentations are displayed. You can complete your assignments properly only if you stay very familiar with this website. Bookmark it immediately! Plan on visiting our blog site and reading email every couple of days, and not just a few minutes before class. These are class requirements. If you have any difficulties getting access to these resources come and talk to me as soon as possible. Any announcements about cancellations due to weather or other considerations, and general class requirements will be sent out on coursemail and you need to see them quickly. To get help go to OIT's Help Desk at the Computer and Space Sciences Building, Rm. 1400, or checkout the help desk webpage at:
http://www.helpdesk.umd.edu/
Get to know everyone in the class, share contact information, and support each other if in emergencies anyone must be absent with class notes and discussion. Everyone should also have several class buddies too. We will introduce ourselves early in the semester, and buddies can help each other brainstorm projects, edit each others’ work, provide feedback before assignments are due, and help each other work in drafts, starting projects early and completing them in good time.
We will create our own SF cons twice during the semester. Those who have been to cons will help us out here, although these class cons will be a hybrid version of course. During part of each con paper and poster assignments will be presented poster conference style. That means that some people will be presenting their work in various parts of the room, all at the same time, while other class members wander around the room, interacting with them as they discuss their projects. Katie will also wander around, giving folks immediate feedback on their work. After we spend time doing this, we will move into collective discussion and engagement all together. For more on SF fan cons, see the Wikipedia (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_convention ) and online materials on WisCon, the yearly international feminist SF con (
http://wiscon.info).
Katie is planning on attending WisCon this year in May, and you may wish to consider attending yourself!
===
graded assignments: paper, poster, learning analysis, logbook
Four kinds of assignments are required in this class: • a paper (and a handout), • a poster (with digital picture), • a final learning analysis, and • a logbook.
The first three allow you to position the work for the class in various frameworks or knowledge worlds. In each of these you will work on research, analysis, and critical thinking. Some of this will be in traditional academic forms, some in emerging scholarly practices, but it is possible to combine these also with the techno-crafty delights cons have always shown off as well. And papers and poster projects maybe be done with partners or individually, as you choose.
The logbook will help you organize your projects: when you started them, how many drafts you completed, who you worked with, where you are in what you have done, and what still needs to be done. It will be turned in four times during the semester (the first one in time for early warning grades), and you won’t get credit for any assignments until the final version is turned in on the last day of class with the final version of the learning analysis.
The paper and poster each count for 1/3 of your grade, and the learning analysis and logbook together count for the final 1/3.
Posters and papers (with handouts) are shared in one or the other of two class workshops.
For each con you will do either a paper or a poster. Which one you will do when will be determined by lot. You cannot get full credit for either assignment until after you also present them in the con sessions, and participate in follow-ups. In other words, just the written paper or the poster does not in itself complete the assignment. If an emergency or illness kept you from participation either or both days that week, to get full credit you will have to meet with three other students to share your work and their work outside class, and write up the experience and what you learned from it to complete the participation portion of that grade.
SO DO NOT MAKE OTHER PLANS FOR THOSE DAYS: BUILD THEM CAREFULLY INTO YOUR SCHEDULE FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE TERM! Put them into your logbook from the beginning so that attending them will always be at the forefront of your term plans. This is also true of the final day of class, when you discuss your learning analysis with everyone else. Full credit for the learning analysis also requires attendance and participation on that last day.
Cons and themes
• FemCriticon: SF Media ecologies, feminisms and cognitions
For FemCriticon you will create either a paper (with enough handouts for each member of the class) or poster (which one determined by lot) in order to explore the political, intellectual, creative, and cognitive ecologies that interconnect transmedia storytelling in science fiction feminisms.
You will choose at least one of the three texts on sf ecologies, one from our sf textualities list, and any one or more other books you might choose with an eye to a smart intertexual “bundle” or set. (We will be experimenting with this idea of intertextual bundles starting out on the first day of class!)
You will come up with your own topic that explores how sf feminisms help us think about ecologies of cognition – how play, learning, and the kind of thinking media science fictions entail are interconnected in ways feminists might care about. NOTICE that you may need to do some additional reading and research.
Always make a point of connecting projects to class readings and lectures.
• Whileaway: Worlding and feminist SF
For
Whileaway you will create either a paper or poster (which determined by lot earlier, whichever one you did not do for FemCriticon) in order to explore feminist processes of
worlding.
You will do some research on the concept of worlding, and choose a bundle of at least five SF texts to explore for their abilities to address feminist concerns through worlding practices.
You may want to use the web to follow-up or look in greater detail at the kinds of
worldings feminisms explore today and ways all of these are promoted in popular and scholarly media.
Always make a point of connecting projects to class readings and lectures.
Remix additions: flip cameras at WMST: Papers and posters may include a range of media creativities, in addition to their analytic aspects. Media fandoms are known for creative work: drawing,
mashups, remix, vids,
machinima, and more. Any of these may be ADDED to a project if you like. Women’s Studies now has a library of flip cameras for video projects, and you can check one out for a week at a time on a first come, first served basis. Notice that these techno-crafty things are
enhancements to the basic project, not a substitute for one, or the only platform! They must be accompanied by a paper or poster no matter what. This is an opportunity to enjoy media learning in alternative forms, but these additions are entirely at your own discretion and pleasure!
Exploring these topics and themes as if at a con means that by attending and listening we will all benefit from the hard work of everyone. Notice that both sorts of projects in both cons should be begun several weeks ahead of their due dates. Not only do you need this time to do any additional research or reading, but to get good grades you need to • write papers in at least three drafts, and • plan out posters carefully to demonstrate both the results of your research and also how you got to those results.
Obviously attending class faithfully and taking good notes will make all this work a lot easier. Lecture materials are displayed on the class website, to be reviewed at any time.
In college courses ALWAYS use your projects to demonstrate how you uniquely put together, or synthesize, class readings, mini-lectures and discussion. Make a point of displaying that you are doing all the reading and attending all the classes. Doing this clearly and carefully will demonstrate that this is your own work, and ensure your credit for honesty and for real engagement with the course.
Wondering how grades are determined? What they mean?
- A work is excellent, unusually creative and/or analytically striking
- B is fine work of high quality, though not as skilled, ambitious, or carefully presented as A
- C is average work fulfilling the assignment; should not be hasty, or insufficiently collaborated
- D work is below average or incomplete; shows many difficulties or cannot follow instructions
- F work is not sufficient to pass; unwillingness to do the work, or so many difficulties unable to complete
See this
handout on google docs for more discussion of each grade. Remember, you can always talk to Katie about grades and your evaluation concerns during office hours anytime. And notice how many different kinds of feedback have been built into the course that go beyond and better than grades!
Remember: don't eat the menu (grades) instead of the meal (learning) !!!
===
what to do when you must unavoidably miss class, perhaps for illness:
• TALK TO AT LEAST TWO CLASS BUDDIES IMMEDIATELY. Before you even come back to class, call them up or email them and find out if any thing you need to plan for is happening the day you return, and make sure that you know about any changes in the syllabus. Try to have done the reading and be as prepared as possible to participate in class and with your projects when you return.
• MAKE A DATE TO MEET WITH CLASS BUDDY TO GET NOTES AND DISCUSS WHAT WENT ON IN CLASS WHILE YOU WERE GONE. You are responsible for what happened in class while you were gone. As soon as possible, get caught up with notes, with discussions with buddies and finally with all the readings and assignments. Always talk with class buddies first. This is the most important way to know what went on when you were gone and what you should do.
• AFTER YOU HAVE GOTTEN CLASS NOTES AND TALKED ABOUT WHAT WENT ON IN CLASS WITH BUDDIES, THEN MAKE APPOINTMENT TO SEE KATIE. If you just miss one class, getting the notes and such should be enough. But if you've been absent for more than a week, be sure you make an appointment with Katie, and come in and discuss what is going on. She wants to know how you are doing and how she can help. Or, while you are out, if it's as long as a week, send Katie email at katking@umd.edu and let her know what is happening with you, so she can figure out what sort of help is needed. You may need to contact team member as well.
• IF YOU ARE OUT FOR ANY EXTENDED TIME be sure you contact Katie. Keep her up to date on what is happening, so that any arrangements necessary can be made. If you miss too much class you will have to retake the course at another time. But if you keep in contact, depending on the situation, perhaps accommodations can be made. Since attendance is crucial for the process of this special course and thus for your final grade LET KATIE KNOW WHAT IS HAPPENING so that she can help as much and as soon as possible.
• THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN EXCUSED ABSENCE AND ANYTHING ELSE: generally speaking you are only allowed to make up work you missed if you have an excused absence. That the absence is excused does not mean you are excused from doing the work you missed, but that you allowed to make it up. I usually permit people to make up any work they miss, and do not generally require documentation for absences. Be sure to give explanations in your logbook and do make up all work you have missed.
===
FIRST WEEKS:
Thursday 1 Sept – Worlds, worlds, and more worlds! SFs of all kinds!
• SF inventories: bring in yours from email to share results (
KK’s FB list &
NPR’s)
•
Le Guin (1988), “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” (
on website & handed out)
•
Elgin (1988), “Láadan Update”
from Hot Wire & other
Láadan materials to inspect
Layers of Worlds, layers of writings, layers of companionships: entering sf as speculative fiction, speculative feminisms, feminist fabulations, as well as science fictions or knowledge fictions offers many openings to worlding! We begin our class with folk taxonomies, fen and filk creativities, transmedia storytellings, and transdisciplinary feminisms! Jump on! We are off! Today and next week we will comb through sfs, boxes of books and stuff, friends of the class, con creativities, and share experiences, hopes, assumptions, and passions! Bundles....
Tuesday 6 Sept – Sharing as constitutive of SF worldings
•
Merrick, Chap 1: The Genre Feminism Doesn’t See
• find/read something “sf” connected to arguments of this chapter, bring in, be ready to discuss connections
How many forms of “sharing” are possible, necessary, created in sf feminisms? Has anything you have read so far surprised you? If so, what and why? We will continue to go through boxes of books and stuff, trading stories and more. Making bundles....
Thursday 8 Sept – Ecologies, systems, infrastructures, webs
• the Web? “I broke it!” – jokes and realities about research on the web, and web sfs – bring us something to share that demonstrates uses of the web for sf feminisms
•
transmedia platforms – bring in examples of storytelling across platforms
• find/read something “sf” connected here, be ready to discuss
How do sf feminisms live on the web today? what is the history of this? what happens when fictions are real? whose real are we talking about? inventory fandoms in terms of our bundles....
Tuesday 13 Sept – Everything Bad is Good for You: double consciousness & play
•
Johnson, Part One: Games, Television, Internet, Film
• (optional):
Davidson,
Now You See It
•
Johnson vocabulary & tools for cognition (handed out)
• find/read something “sf” connected here, be ready to discuss
Come prepared to give examples from one’s own experiences and fandoms. What assumptions is Johnson deliberately violating and why? why might this matter to feminists and how? Games and theories of play and learning….
Thursday 15 Sept – SF feminisms, theories, fictions, sciences, fans, cyborgs
• Merrick, Chapters 4, 5, and 6
• find/read something “sf” connected here, be ready to discuss
What surprised you in these chapters of Merrick’s book? What felt especially confirming, of what, and why? Were any assumptions you held changed, or challenged? Did you discover assumptions you did not know you held? What changes about feminism when you read this? What changes about sf when you read this?
Tuesday 20 Sept – Colonial and PostColonial – sf imaginations, histories, peoplings
•
Dreaming: pick two stories to read
•
Phillips on Tiptree: read as much as possible
Whose aliens are these? What lives are implicated and how? Which intersections intersect where and when? a geopolitics of sf and more….
Thursday 22 Sept – Tiptree-ing around
•
Dreaming: pick two more stories to read
• Merrick, Chap 8, and look up WisCon and Tiptree Award on the web
What ironies and complexities might “tiptree-ing around” suggest? What feminist politics? Which intersectionalities? Which sf possibilities?
Tuesday 27 Sept – On Seeing and Not Seeing
• Phillips on Tiptree: read as much as possible
• (optional) Davidson,
Now You See It
• LOGBOOK 1 DUE
Bring in a discussion of the most interesting assumption you held before this class concerning anything we have covered that has been changed as we have gone along here…. We will make plans for reading, groups, and projects
Thursday 29 Sept – NO CLASS: ROSH HASHANAH
Tuesday 4 Oct – Cognitive Labor as Play
• finish Johnson, all of Part II
• look through all of Butler and read the preface, using How to Read handout to give ideas for thinking of the book itself as an SF object. Pick one story and one followup essay to read too.
• What can you find out about Butler on the Web? Bring all that in to class.
How does this book travel through SF feminisms? How can you tell? What connections can you make between what Johnson has to say in Part II and what you have learned about Butler, and what you surmise yourself after reading in the book?
Thursday 6 Oct – Positive Obsessions
• read two more Butler stories and their followups. If you didn’t read “Bloodchild” before, make that one of the stories now.
You are prepared and preparing for femcriticon. What does Butler have to say to inspire you?
Tuesday 11 Oct & Thursday 13 Oct
- FemCriticon: SF Media ecologies, feminisms and cognitions
For FemCriticon you will create either a paper (with enough handouts for each member of the class) or poster (which one determined by lot) in order to explore the political, intellectual, creative, and cognitive ecologies that interconnect transmedia storytelling in science fiction feminisms.
You will choose at least one of the three texts on sf ecologies, one from our sf textualities list, and any one or more other books you might choose with an eye to a smart intertexual “bundle” or set. (We will be experimenting with this idea of intertextual bundles starting out on the first day of class!) You will come up your own topic that explores how sf feminisms help us think about ecologies of cognition – how play, learning, and the kind of thinking media science fictions entail are interconnected in ways feminists might care about. NOTICE that you may need to do some additional reading and research. Always make a point of connecting projects to class readings and lectures.
Tuesday 18 Oct – What is a Female Man?
• Read all of Russ,
The Female Man
• We will create class groups for whileaway worldings with attention to intertextual bundles
We come to Russ’ book with a sense already of its stature in SF feminisms. What does the book say that is surprising? What is difficult about this book now? What do you imagine was difficult about this book in the mid seventies? What is the important thing about this book as you see it?
Thursday 20 Oct – The Female Man, continued….
• Read everything about this book you can find on the Web. Bring stuff in to share.
Why is this book such a icon for SF feminisms? Why should we care about it? What other books does it open doors to? How do you know?
Tuesday 25 Oct – "SF: Science Fiction, Speculative Fabulation, String Figures, So Far"
• Merrick, chap 7 on feminisms and science
• find out everything you can on the Web about Donna Haraway. Bring stuff in to share.
• Haraway, Pilgrim Award, watch online and read too: url: http://people.ucsc.edu/~haraway/PilgrimAward.html
Why is Haraway getting this award? What does that mean about SF feminisms? Who is she anyway and why does she matter?
Thursday 27 Oct – No More Nature VERSUS Nurture: Why?
• Haraway, “Sowing Worlds.” To be emailed to you in manuscript.
• Find out everything you can about the nature/nurture debates on the Web. Can you find anything that shows what might be wrong with pitting them against each other? Bring that in to share.
Over and over one hears the opposition nature vs. nurture in popular press, media, even in school. What’s wrong with it? Why would feminists care?
Tuesday 1 Nov & Thursday 3 Nov: Worlding Sciences
- Katie is at the Society for the Social Studies of Science talking about SF feminisms and theory!
While Katie is away participating in professional SF feminisms, the class will continue to meet without her. Two facilitators (to be decided upon) will oversee the class, which will meet in groups, working on science issues for the course, sharing web research on those and worldings, and finishing up the rest of the collection Dreaming
.
Tuesday 8 Nov – Secret Lives and Not So Secret Secrets
• finish up the Tiptree biography and make all the connections you can with worlding practices
What is an “open secret” and what role might such a way of thinking about secrets play in understanding what sort of icon Tiptree becomes to SF feminisms? How many ways and for whom does Tiptree end up mattering? How might Tiptree matter to YOU?
Thursday 10 Nov – Near of Kin
• Finish the rest of the Butler collection, consider connections with science and worldings
Butler was a profound influence on Haraway feminist theory, and on the writers of the collection Dreaming. Why? Check out what else Butler has written and come in with some ideas about further reading.
Tuesday 15 Nov – Crossover
• finish up those first chapters of Merrick (you should have read all of it by now then), and make connections with Butler, her life, and her SF
Butler’s work is about violence in every form. How did SF nurture her? How is her violence a kind of nurturing itself? What sorts of SF does she end up nurturing violently?
Thursday 17 Nov – Women’s Worlds, Whileaways and more….
• bring in SF examples of other “whileaways” or other women’s worlds in SF
What are the intertexualities for women’s worlds in SF, and why do they appear so often? What are contexts for understanding them? We are preparing for our next con….
Tuesday 22 Nov – NO CLASS: THANKSGIVING WEEK
Thursday 24 Nov – NO CLASS: HAPPY THANKSGIVING
Tuesday 29 Nov & Thursday 1 Dec
- Whileaway: Worlding and feminist SF
For Whileaway you will create either a paper or poster (which determined by lot earlier, whichever one you did not do for FemCriticon) in order to explore feminist processes of worlding. You will do some research on the concept of worlding, and choose a bundle of at least five SF texts to explore for their abilities to address feminist concerns through worlding practices.
You nay want to use the web to follow-up or look in greater detail at the kinds of worldings feminisms explore today and ways all of these are promoted in popular and scholarly media. Always make a point of connecting projects to class readings and lectures.
Tuesday 6 Dec – Spacetime Travels in SF Feminisms
• (optional) Weston, Introduction to
Gender in Real Time
Starship Gender and wormholes are necessary for feminist theory according to anthropologist Kath Weston, as we rethink women’s liberation, globalization, colonialisms, and more. SF feminisms are not just about SF. They are about feminist theory, activism, and practices in the so-called “real world”!
Thursday 8 Dec – Learning, Play, Analysis, Cognition, SF
• Whileaway poster people will present their learning analyses today
We will share learning analyses in the class and consider the learning community we have built. You must be present today and Tuesday to get full credit. What was the argument of the course? How do you see your thoughts and ideas changing over the course of the class? What materials meant the most to you? What would you share with others about what you learned?
Tuesday 13 Dec – SF ecologies for Feminist Play
• Whileaway paper people will present their learning analyses today
• Everyone will turn in final logbooks.
We will share learning analyses in the class and celebrate our final day. You must present today to get full credit. You must turn in your final logbook to get credit for the course!!!
