Introductory description

This module aims to orient students within the field of alternative lifeworld literature, film, and culture, providing them with a working knowledge of the entwined history and development of the related genres of sf, science fiction, fantasy and the weird. In addition to gaining a broad overview, the module will introduce students to the genres' relation to specific social, political and intellectual issues such as Labour, Technology, the Environment, Rationality, Utopia, Apocalypse, and Futurity.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Term 1: Shapiro
Week 1 - Introduction
Week 2: HG Wells, The Island of Dr Moreau
Week 3 -"The Poetics and Politics of Exhibiting Other Cultures" in Representation. Please read from I Introduction to the end of section 4.6 Summary. You can bypass the selected readings in the text. Think about how our texts can function museumologically and technographically.
Octavia Butler, Dawn [1st book in the Xenogenesis/ Lilith's Brood trilogy]. All three can be purchased here.
Week 4: tentatively - "Spectacle of the Other" in Representation
Week 5: Nalo Hopkinson, Midnight Robber
Reading Week
Week 7: Joe Haldeman, The Forever War
Week 8: Westworld, Season 1 (2016); "Genre and Gender: The Case of Soap Opera" in Representation
Week 9: Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
Week 10: E. L. Konigsberg, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
Macdonald
Week 1 - Strugatsky Brothers, Roadside Picnic
Week 2 - Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Week 3 - China Mièville, The City and the City
Week 4 - Stanislaw Lem, Solaris
Week 5 - SF Short Films: Chris Marker's La Jetée and others (shown in class with discussion).
Reading Week
Week 7 - Michel Faber, Under the Skin Under the Skin Handout
Week 8 - Nnedi Okorafor, Lagoon
Week 9 - Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake Oryx and Crake critical excerpts
Week 10 - Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation (The Southern Reach Trilogy Vol. 1)

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Acquire knowledge of key theoretical and literary concepts and cultural and critical contexts within which to situate the set texts;
• Formulate analytical and critical skills through close reading/viewing of the set texts;
• Adjust to scholarly standards and protocols of presentation;
• Employ a main method for reading texts within the context of alternative lifeworld cultures;
• Demonstrate a broad knowledge of selected texts and concepts relating to alternative lifeworld cultural production;
• Indicate a broad understanding of critical, analytic, and creative approaches to produce knowledge;
• Exhibit an effective command of written English together with a wide-ranging and accurate vocabulary;
• Display textual analysis and critical argument;
• Conduct independent research through self-formulated questions.

Indicative reading list

All primary texts are available for easy purchase with selected texts to be provided in electronic copy. Copies of required theoretical reading will be provided as a module reading pack. Bibliography includes aforementioned primary texts and these indicative readings:

M. Keith Booker and Anne-Marie Thomas, The Science Fiction Handbook, (Blackwell, 2009)
Mark Bould, Andrew M. Butler, Adam Roberts and Sherryl Vint, The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction, (Routledge, 2009)
Mark Bould and Sherryl Vint, The Routledge Concise History of Science Fiction, (Routledge, 2011)
Mark Bould and China Miéville, Red Planets: Marxism and Science Fiction, (Pluto: 2009)
Gerry Canavan and Eric Carl Link, The Cambridge Companion to American Science Fiction, (CUP, 2015)
Gerry Canavan and Kim Stanley Robinson, Green Planets: ecology and science fiction, (Wesleyan UP, 2014)
Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr., The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction, (Wesleyan UP, 2008)
Carl Freedman, Critical Theory & Science Fiction, (Univ. New England, 2000)
Nick Hubble and Aris Mousoutzanis, The Science Fiction Handbook, (Bloomsbury, 2013)
Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn, The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, (CUP, 2003)
Fredric Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called the Future and Other Science Fictions, (Verso, 2005)
Rob Latham, The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction, (OUP, 2014)
Roger Luckhurst, Science Fiction, (Polity, 2005).
Andrew Milner, Locating Science Fiction, (LUP, 2012)
Tom Moylan, Scraps of the Untainted Sky: Science Fiction,Utopia, Dystopia, (Westview, 2000)
David Seed, A Companion to Science Fiction, (Blackwell, 2005)
– – Science Fiction: A Very Short Introduction, (Oxford, 2011)
Sherryl Vint, Science Fiction: A Guide for the Perplexed, (Routledge: 2014)
– – Science Fiction and Cultural Theory: A Reader, (Routledge, 2016)
M. Keith Booker (ed) Dystopia, (Salem, 2013)
– – (ed) Contemporary Speculative Fiction, (Salem, 2013)
Sherryl Vint, Animal Alterity: Science Fiction and the question of the animal, (Liverpool University Press, 2010)

Subject specific skills

Demonstrate coherent and detailed knowledge of selected texts and concepts relating to the U.S. horror/gothic cultures
Display on appreciation of the uncertainty, ambiguity, and contradictions within alternative lifeworld cultural productions

Transferable skills

Deploy advanced analytical and critical skills through close reading/viewing of the set texts
Demonstrate a conceptual understanding that enables the development and sustaining of a critical argument
Describe and comment on recent research and/or scholarship in subject
Make appropriate use of scholarly reviews and primary sources
Exhibit an advanced command of written English together with a wide-ranging and accurate vocabulary
Apply confident textual analysis and fluent critical argument to initiate and carry out an extended essay
Conduct independent research through self-formulated questions
Produce work that displays the qualities and transferable skills necessary for employment requiring the exercise of personal responsibility and decision-making, along with collective engagement
Deploy the expression and communication of ideas across media forms.