SFF at FAU

This course focuses on Latinx Futurisms in science fiction and fantasy (sf/f). Latinx Futurisms is a subgenre of speculative fiction that is part of the larger CoFuturisms movement which includes Afrofuturisms and Indigenous Futurisms. This semester we will delve into a thread of Latinx Futurisms that I call Ancestral Latinx Futurisms—speculative works that draw on non-Western mythologies as central elements of their world-building. Authors such as Daniel José Older, Sabrina Vourvoulias, Isabel Ibañez, Aiden Thomas, Rebecca Roanhorse, and Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez draw on a wide-range of non-Western cosmologies, both pre-Columbian and syncretized, such as santería, Mesoamerican cosmologies, brujería, Andean cosmologies, and Taíno cosmology. In so doing, these authors create a more inclusive mythopoetics of Anglophone sf/f, which has been dominated by works influenced by European cosmologies. In addition to reading phenomenal works of sf/f, we will discuss central elements and theories in science fiction and fantasy studies. In addition to appealing to those working in genre studies, Mythologies in Latinx SF/F will be of particular interest to those working in gender and ethnic studies as the course texts engage with Latinx feminist and/or queer perspectives.

This course will employ the figure of the cyborg as a metaphor to think through (and beyond) the boundaries (and binaries) of mind/body, material/virtual, self/other, and human/machine. We will explore the implications of postmodern, posthuman, and feminist theories on our evolving understandings of identity, subjectivity, epistemology, embodiment, ethics, and agency.

We will draw on scholarship from Neil Badmington, Donna Haraway, Katherine Hayles, Allucquére Rosanne Stone, and Sherry Turkle (among others) to examine the cyborg subject and posthuman subjectivity at various “life” stages—from production to termination—and all points in between and beyond.

Ultimately, this course will attempt to place “human,” into historical, critical, and technocultural context/s, and encourage us to ask questions about what it means to be human, about the distinctions between human and machine, and about the consequences of hybridity.

Conventional wisdom dates the birth of the superhero to 1938, with the publication of Action Comics #1, and the introduction of the character of Superman. In fact, the archetype of the superhero predates Superman in a variety of iterations. One can turn to mythic figures like Heracles and/or Gilgamesh, to historical figures like Napoleon Bonaporte, to the Byronic Hero in drama or fiction, to the early science-fiction heroes of Wells and Verne, or to characters with dual identities like Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde. Most predictive of superheroes, perhaps, were "masked men" like Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel, Johnson McCulley's Zorro, and the less well-remembered folkloric Spring-Heeled Jack. Heroes of Penny-Dreadfuls, Dime novels, and pulp magazines all contained heroes that we might retrospectively call superheroes (The Shadow, Tarzan, John Carter of Mars, Doc Savage, etc.). The idea of the "superman" even arises in serious philosophical and political discourse in the work of Friedrick Wilhelm Nietzsche and George Bernard Shaw (among others). Nevertheless, the appearance of Superman spawned an explosion of imitators, particularly in comics, but later in television, film, and prose, of characters with super powers, dual identities, and the strange propensity to wear their underwear on the outside of their clothes. Recently, superheroes have all but taken over the summer blockbusters released by the Hollywood movie-machine. This course will cover this history and explore a variety of related questions? What is the mass attraction of superheroes? Why are they so popular, particularly in America, and why have they had such staying power? How are they, inexorably, "queer"? What kinds of ideological problems do they present? What are their gender and racial politics? What do they tell us about ourselves and our society? In what ways are they a symptom of modernity? These issues and more will direct our discussion and our reading over the course of the semester. Though a class in superheroes should, by definition, be fun, it will also be rigorous, and include substantial reading of history and theory, in addition to primary "texts" (comics, films, television clips, and prose fiction).

Readings will include many, though probably not all, of the below: Baroness Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Johnson McCulley, "The Curse of Capistrano," Siegel and Shuster, Superman, Bob Kane, Batman, William Moulton Marston, Wonder Woman, Will Eisner, The Spirit, Jack Cole, Plastic Man, Greg Sadowski's Supermen! collection of Golden Age comic strips, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, Spider-Man, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, The Fantastic Four, Frank Miller, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, Watchmen, Kurt Busiek, Astro City, Greg Rucka and J. H. Williams Batwoman, Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli, Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man, Richard Donner, Superman (film), Tim Burton, Batman (film), Sam Raimi Spider-Man (film), Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight (film, maybe), Pixar, The Incredibles (film, maybe), Jon Favreau's Iron Man (film, maybe), Harvey Kurtzman and Wallace Wood, "Superduperman," Grant Morrison, Chas Truog, et. al., Animal Man, clips from a variety of superhero TV-shows, and theoretical essays by Nietzsche, Fredric Wertham, Umberto Eco, Trina Robbins, Scott Bukatman, Geoff Klock, Charles Hatfield, Ben Saunders, Alex Buchet, Richard Reynolds, and Gloria Steinem.

This course will investigate the history, texts, and philosophies behind the concept of “utopia.” We will cover enormous ground—from Plato, to Thomas More’s eponymous island and his immediate successors, through to the nineteenth-century utopian renaissance, to the move toward anti-utopianism in the first half of the twentieth century, to the critical utopias of the second half—culminating in questions of what value the utopia has for our current historical moment especially in ecocritical terms. In addition to attending to the utopian program, comprising those imagined perfect societies or “intentional communities” aimed at constructing political, social, cultural, and religious movements—encompassing even such everyday spaces as shopping malls, suburban housing developments, and the Internet—we will also consider the variety of practices that challenge the conditions of the present, what Lyman Tower Sargent calls the “utopian impulse,” which includes the way such horizons of hope intersect popular culture, advertising, literature, architecture, art, and music. Primary readings that may include texts by Plato, Thomas More, Francis Bacon, Margaret Cavendish, Edward Bellamy, William Morris, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Aldous Huxley, Ursula Le Guin, Joanna Russ, and Ben Okri will be supplemented by theoretical readings from the likes of Frederic Jameson, Ernst Bloch, Raymond Williams, Gyan Prakash, Lyman Tower Sargent, Darko Suvin, Brian Stableford, Friedrich Engels. Naomi Jacobs, Tom Moylan, and M. Keith Booker.

The course will focus on the encounter with alterity, one of science fiction's essential tropes which opens the field for discussions of racial, sexual, cultural, and biological difference. The primary texts will include short stories, novels, and films. The theoretical readings will include cyborg theory, gender theory, race theory as well as text-specific critical articles. Readings will include texts such as: Stanislav Lem’s Solaris, Justina Robinson’s Natural History, Peter Watt’s Blindsight and other novels as well as short stories by Octavia Butler and Paul Di Filippo and some films including: Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, Splice, and District 9. Assignments will include in-class presentations, midterm and final papers, and weekly responses on the course blog (due the day before class).

Fredric Jameson's Archaeology of the Future: the Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (2007) articulates the central concern of this graduate seminar: "In an age of globalization characterized by the dizzying technologies of the First World, and the social disintegration of the Third, is the concept of utopia still meaningful?" The short answer to this question is "yes." The longer one will require us to take an unconventional critical approach to the form. While recent scholarship about dys/u/eu/topoi has tended to focus on the manner in which utopian literature forms a response to the political events of its time—e.g., Plato's commentary upon the Athenian polis in the Republic, Thomas More's response to the Reformation in Utopia, Jonathan Swift's commentary upon the contentious political climate in post-Civil War England in Gulliver's Travels, Ernst Bloch's visions within the context of early Marxism and Fredric Jameson's in the context of advanced capitalism—in this graduate seminar we will consider of equal importance the expression of place. The words "utopia" and "dystopia," after all, are directly traceable to the Greek term topos, or "place"—a skewed place in the case of the dystopia, and a non-existent (but good) one in the case of the utopia. Our particular emphasis will be upon the remarkable fact that utopian works create places and spaces within fictional worlds that help open up new frontiers in our own. By examining the adjacency between fictive and real-world spaces and places, we shall be able to assess the continued relevance of this important literary form.

We will follow a rough chronology of the form. Each week we will consider one utopian/dystopian work-space in light of its critical, historical, and cultural contexts. Early readings will include the following or excerpts from them: Plato's Republic; Lucian's True History and Icaromenippus; the book of Revelation; Christine de Pizan's the Book of the City of the Ladies; Francis Bacon's New Atlantis; Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World; and Edward Bulwer-Lytton's The Coming Race. Contemporary readings (i.e., 20th and 21st century) will be determined collectively.

This course surveys science fiction by black authors from the Americas (including Canada, the United States, and the Caribbean) and Africa: a quickly expanding field of immense scholarly- and creative production. Addressing the intersections and distinctive ruptures between Afrofuturist—typically anchored in the U.S. and Europe—and African SF, the readings highlight the manner by which black techno-futures confront the context of race and conceive of the role of Africa as symbol and source in speculative landscapes. In addition to reading key theorists of black SF including Dewitt Douglas Kilgore, Isaiah Lavender, Sheryl Vint, Mark Dery, Andre Carrington, and Adilifu Nama, possible primary texts may include works by George Schuyler, Ishmael Reed, Nalo Hopkinson, Nnendi Okorafor, Buchi Emecheta, Kojo Laing, Octavia Butler, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Emmanuel Dongala, Karen Lord, Samuel Delaney, Malcolm Azania, Walter Mosley, N.K. Jemisin, and Deji Bryce Olukotun.

Some of the first artificial beings in literary history appear as early as ancient Greek epic: in Homer’s Iliad, golden automata assist the god of the forge in his work. This course will explore and interrogate the enduring human fascination with artificial intelligence beginning with early works of fiction such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Karel Capek’s 1920 play R.U.R., the latter of which gives us the word “robot.” We will then proceed to the so-called “Golden Age” of science fiction in the early to mid-20th century, where we will encounter autonomous androids aplenty, but also massive supercomputers making decisions and predictions using what we would now call “big data.” The latter portion of the semester will take up more recent SF texts and films from the past decade that ponder the implications of cutting-edge research in machine learning and neural networks, including Ted Chiang’s 2010 novella The Lifecycle of Software Objects and Annalee Newitz’s 2017 novel Autonomous. For instance, Isaac Asimov’s classic robot stories—featuring his famous “Three Laws of Robotics”—will show us an early framework for ethics in artificial intelligence research, but more contemporary works such as Jennifer Phang’s 2015 film Advantageous can imagine, without an android in sight, many wider cultural and societal consequences of adopting technological solutions based in AI: hidden artificial intelligence technologies have shaped the world and the narrative situation in which the protagonist finds herself, and have also produced differential impacts on women and people of color. We will meet many antagonistic AIs in these stories and films—robots in revolt and homicidal computers—but, as we will see, the question of just what artificial intelligence means for our future and in deed our present is a much more complex one, and requires imaginative answers from thinkers, writers, and readers across disciplines and genres.

Science fiction studies boasts a long tradition of engaging with and contributing to contemporary literary theory. Fantasy studies, by contrast, has seen comparative neglect within the same range of theoretical approaches, despite the potentially broader remit of the fantastic itself. This course will introduce you to some of the major works of fantasy theory from the second half of the 20th century and the early 21st, as we interrogate this history of neglect and begin to pursue our own theorizations of the fantastic. Is fantasy really “under-theorized”? Do certain bodies of critical theory work with fantasy particularly well, or especially reward expansion of their own traditional scope to include more fantastic texts? What can fantasy studies learn from theory, and theory learn from fantasy studies? Fantasy novelists to be considered include Ursula K. Le Guin, J.R.R. Tolkien, Octavia Butler, China Miéville, and Nnedi Okorafor.

Science fiction requires agile readers, able to follow a skewed or indirect story-logic and immerse themselves in speculation about alternative (sometimes wildly alternative) societies. Focusing on stories and novels from 1909 to the present, we will discuss the genre’s dissonant visions of the future. At every meeting, we will discuss a work of science fiction in terms of a theoretical reading: the theorists this Fall will be Plato, Jean Baudrillard, Jean-François Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Hélène Cixous, Donna Haraway, Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Gayatri Spivak, and N. Katherine Hayles. In their papers, students will use theoretical approaches to analyze classics of speculative fiction by authors ranging from E.M. Forster and Stanislaw Lem to Philip K. Dick, “James Tiptree, Jr” (Alice Sheldon), and William Gibson.

The class is open to all graduate students but will be of special interest to those in the MA concentration in science fiction. The readings trace science fiction's representations of technology from 1945 (when the first atomic bombs were deployed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ending World War II), through the Cold War era and the arms race, ending with the genre's millennial shift, beginning in the late 1970s, from holocaust narratives to plots based on cybernetics, artificial intelligence, and posthumanism.

Analysis of this group of writers will provide historical grounding for those preparing conference papers or MA theses on more recent sf. For students with an interest in the development of the sf genre, the class will introduce key authors, stories and novels. MFA students will find that sf's storytelling techniques, especially in world-building and unusual characterizations, are often innovative.

Readings will include Heinlein's The Puppet Masters, Dick's The Man in the High Castle, Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, Hoban's Riddley Walker, and Gibson's Neuromancer.

This class considers a diverse selection of science fiction, from the inception of the genre to the present day, and pays special attention to how each work participates in the construction of the environmental movement, writ broad. Although tracing connections betweem science fiction, nature, and eco-critical discourse will be the primary research focus, the overarching objective of this course will be to familiarize students with the historical development of science fiction in a way that will inform their own research projects. Theoretical and philosophical texts will include readings of work by Martin Heidegger, Bruno Latour, and Ursula Heise, among others. Fictional works will include Frank Herbert's Dune, Ursula K. Le Guin's Word for the World Is Forest, and Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, among others.