Eng592: Women in Science Fiction
Dr. Sharon Collingwood
In this course you will come across aliens, amazons, cyborgs and avatars. You will visit fantastic planets, witness frightening visions of the future, and study bizarre societies. It's all good fun, but underlying the fantasy is a serious unease about our own world, and an anxiety about what is to come in the future.
The texts for this course are written by women, and they deal with issues of gender, race and sexual orientation, as well as with the moral difficulties women face in an increasingly technological society. Many of these writers are also concerned over the threat that technology poses to the natural world, and they point out the ties between the destruction of nature and the oppression of women. Other writers put forward the idea of technology as the ultimate liberator of women, and still others see a new kind of humanity emerging from our technological age.
In her groundbreaking essay "A Cyborg Manifesto," Donna Haraway says that she would rather be a cyborg than a goddess. She argues that we can be responsible for machines and not allow them undue power over us, choosing instead to use them to enhance our social connectivity and to live better lives. But what is lost in becoming a cyborg? This is the ultimate question brought forward by this course, one that demands a personal response from each student.
In this course you will:
*Improve your skills in critical analysis
*Use social media in collaborative learning
*Learn to apply feminist criticism to literary texts
*Gain an understanding of feminist approaches to science and science fiction
Marking scheme:
Participation (20%) - Our class will be divided into sections of lecture, class discussion, and collective work in smaller groups. Participation is very important; more than three unexcused absences will automatically drop your participation mark by a full letter grade. Participation assignments are quite simple; if, for example, we are discussing parthenogenesis, you might be asked to do some basic research to explain an aspect of this term to others in the class.
Note: coming to class without having completed the reading is not only impolite, it is an inconvenience to your fellow students. Please be prepared for class. Repeated lapses in preparation will have dire consequences for your participation mark.
Blog (20%) - You will create a personal blog, where each week you will post well-crafted responses to one of the readings for that week. Responses should be 300-400 words in length, and should show a concern for style as well as for content. You will be given the option of (1) responding to my questions on the reading or (2) creating your own question as a springbord to a commentary on the structure or style of readings, the motivations of characters, or relationships between the work and other readings you have seen in our class. Your blog may also contain open questions for other students to answer, or you may bring new material into your discussion of the text. Your blog may be used as a starting point for group discussion in class.
You will be expected to write eight blog posts during the term, as indicated in the course outline. You are also expected to read and comment on the blogs of other students, and you may revise your own blog posts in response to these comments. Please do not use your real name when creating blogs; if you are uncomfortable with publishing your work on the internet, please see me and we will set up a private space for your postings.
Blog response (10%) - Each week you will post a response of 100-200 words on a classmate's blog. Your comment should be a critical analysis demonstrating that you have understood your classmate's point of view, and that you are attempting to enlarge or enrich their work in a friendly and supportive way. You may not comment more than twice on the same blog.
Blog analysis (10%) - You will write a private analysis of the entire blog of one of your classmates, sending a copy to the student and one to me. You will assign a mark for their work, giving a careful listing of your justification for the mark, and recommendations for improvement. If the student chooses to follow your recommendations and succeeds in improving their work, their mark will be upgraded.
Midterm (20%) - Essay (60%) and short answer (40%). One week before the midterm I will post six essay questions to our website. Two of these questions will be on the exam; you will choose one of these. Short answer questions will be taken from class readings and discussion, as well as student blogs.
Final (20%) - Same format as midterm
Required texts:
Woman on the Edge of Time, Marge Piercy (Fawcett 0449210820)
The Female Man, Joanna Russ (Beacon 0807062995)
Lilith's Brood , Octavia Butler (Grand Central Publishing 0446676101)
The Stone Gods, Jeanette Winterson (Houghton Mifflin, 9780156035729)
The Telling, Ursula Le Guin (Ace, 9780441008636)
Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century
(ed. Justine Larbalestier. (Wesleyan University Press 0819566764)
(additional short fiction and theory will be made available on our class website)
Plagiarism is a serious academice offense. Plagiarizing an assignment will result in the loss of your mark for that assignment. Severe cases of plagiarism may result in the loss of your course mark. Here are some useful links to help you avoid plagiarism.
http://marionlibrary.osu.edu/Plagiarism.html
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/589/01/