• Phillips on Tiptree: read as much as possible: at least half! which half did you choose? first, last, in betweens? Tell us about it! Reading Tiptree's bio is a history of feminism, a history of colonialism, a history of science fiction.... How so?
• (optional) Davidson, Now You See It [Available as ebook or on Kindle.] Her blog.
• 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 for our cons, the first one, femcriticon, which will take place the week of 11 October! Both papers and posters will be presented poster session style!
Thursday 29 Sept – NO CLASS: ROSH HASHANAH
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“Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before."
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So, what is Postcolonial about So Long Been Dreaming? as a set of stories? as a book roaming around among the objects of SF? as a collective project by a particular set of people? as a feminist intervention into the themes and assumptions of SF?
From the Introduction: "The book depicts imagined futures from the perspectives of writers associated with what might loosely be termed the 'third world.' In its five sections -- The Body, Future Earth, Allegory, Encounters with the Alien, and Re-imagining the Past -- are stories that are bold, imaginative, edgy; stories that are centred in the worlds of the 'developing' nations; stories that dare to dream what we might develop into."
From Nalo Hopkinson's website: "My friend Uppinder Mehan was the one who decided he wanted to edit an anthology of postcolonial SF & F. He asked me whether I would co-edit it with him, and I said something along the lines of, 'Sure. What's "postcolonial?"' I knew the word because I would hear it being used. It's easy to figure out the general area to which it's pointing, but that's very different than feeling conversant with the concept. Over the next few months, Uppinder would give me a crash course, while I was giving him a crash course in getting writers paid. (Academe and popular fiction work very differently. But that's a topic for another time.) I also got to introduce him to the phenomenon of having people ask you to sign their copy of your book. That was a treat to watch."
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• FemCriticon: SF Media ecologies, feminisms and cognitions
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.
Sherryl Vint, SF scholar at Brock University, author Bodies of Tomorrow: Technology, Subjectivity, and Science Fiction. University of Toronto Press, 2007.
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