Race & Science Fiction

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

How has science fiction blurred the boundaries of human existence and identity? Prominent Sci-fi author Octavia Butler once stated, "I was attracted to Science Fiction because it was so wide open I was able to do anything and there were no walls to hem you in and there was no human condition that you were stopped from examining." What about the genre makes it free of these "walls" Butler speaks of? This course will seek to answer this question through exploration of 20th and 21st century speculative works like Tracy Smith's Life on Mars, Octavia Butler's Bloodchild, famous essays like Sam Delany's "Racism and Science Fiction", and Marvel's 2018 Black Panther film. Students will develop an understanding of how various writers have redefined Science Fiction by way of aesthetic movements like Afrofuturism, tourge readers to develop nuanced understandings of identity and futures of endless possibility.