English 541A – MW 11:30-1:20
Topic: Science Fiction, Colonialism, and Problems in Racial Representation
Instructor: Tom Foster

Course Description: This course will focus on the relation between science fiction as a popular genre and histories of colonialism and travel writing. British SF writer Gwyneth Jones has pointed to this interconnection as an explanation for the relative success of feminism within science fiction compared to what she sees as the genre’s still rudimentary progress toward decolonizing itself, as measured by the very small numbers of writers of color within the genre, in contrast to women writers. The course will therefore be divided into two parts: first, historical readings intended to foreground the relation of SF narratives to the colonial tradition of the “marvelous journey”; and, second, readings in an emergent body of SF by writers of color, intended to test Jones’s claims. We may spend some time on earlier historical texts, such as More’s Utopia, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, or captivity narratives (in the American context), but the emphasis in the readings will be on the development of 20th-century science fiction as a mass medium, beginning with Edgar Rice Burroughs. The course will therefore provide both an introduction to science fiction and to the formal mechanisms of what Darko Suvin calls “cognitive estrangement,” and a more specific consideration of the cultural politics of race and colonialism within the genre. We will use Pratt’s Imperial Eyes to contextualize SF in relation to conventions of travel writing and colonial representation, and Gilroy’s Against Race to pose a set of questions about the racial politics of speculative fictions and new technologies. Additional recommended reading would include John Rieder’s Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction. As time permits, we may pay some attention to visual culture, including film (The Matrix, Robot Stories), TV (Battlestar Galactica), or graphic novels (Transmetropolitan). Assignments will probably include one major paper and an oral presentation.

Texts for the course will include selections from this list:
Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, 2nd ed.
Darko Suvin, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a
Literary Genre
Paul Gilroy, Against Race: Imagining Culture Beyond the Color Line
Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars
James Gunn, ed., The Road to Science Fiction, vol. 3
George Schuyler, Black No More
Theodore Sturgeon, More Than Human
Thomas Disch, Camp Concentration
Paul Di Filippo, Ribofunk
Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars
Ian MacDonald, River of Gods
Octavia Butler, Dawn and Bloodchild
Samuel R. Delany, Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand
Nisi Shawl, Filter House
Steven Barnes, Lion’s Blood
Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others
Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid, Rhythm Science (book and CD)
Ernest Hogan, Smoking Mirror Blues
Guillermo Gomez-Pena, The New World Border
Alexandro Morales, The Rag Doll Plagues
Stories (some from the Gunn anthology) by Isaac Asimov, Hal Clement, Arthur C.
Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Clifford Simak, Robert Sheckley, Ray Bradbury, James Blish, Frederik Pohl, Ursula LeGuin, Joanna Russ, Gwyneth Jones, C.L. Moore, Katherine MacLean, R.A. Lafferty, James M. Tiptree, Jr (Alice Sheldon), John Varley, Bruce Sterling, Nalo Hopkinson, Mary Soon Lee, Tobias Buckell, Hiromi Goto, Larissa Lai, Gerald Vizenor, and William Sanders