English 243-001
Introduction to Literature by Women: Women in Science Fiction
Instr: Ogburn, Cara
Office: CRT 529; 229-2972
e-mail: ceogburn@uwm.edu
Office hours: TBA
Course Information: TR; 12:30-1:45pm; PHY 143
Course Description
Science Fiction has often been denigrated (particularly by feminist critics) as a masculinist literary form. To an extent this seems logical. I'm sure we can all think of science fiction films, television series and books that do not take into account the experiences of women—how many women were on the Starship Enterprise or the Death Star? However, as Pamela Sargent points out in the introduction to her anthology Women of Wonder, this absence is not due to science fiction's essential nature. Indeed, she asks, "why a literature that prides itself on exploring alternatives or assumptions counter to what we normally believe has not been more concerned with the roles of women in the future" (xv). Taking this question as our starting point, this class will explore how women have used this literature to imagine futures by and for women.
The course centers on two core questions. First, we will ask what is (or might be) science fiction—a set of aesthetic principles, content, themes or ideologies? And, second, we will also ask what role(s) do women play in science fiction (as authors and as represented)—what is/might be "feminist" science fiction, what feminisms do women writing science fiction invoke or represent? These questions will serve as guides through which to read these texts and to help us think about the range of women's science fiction. Thus, the subtitle of this class is somewhat ambiguous: we could read it as "women in the field of science fiction," as writing science fiction, or as "women in science fiction texts," as represented in/by science fiction. In this class we will consider both of these kinds of "being in" science fiction as we explore our two core questions. The texts we will read this term all raise questions of women's roles and goals in "the real world" through the presentation of (science) fictional worlds that often are quite different from the "real" world on which the author is commenting. Hence we will read these texts not only to think about what science fiction is or how women intervene in it but also to think about the possibilities of science fiction for women as a vehicle for feminist or social critique.
Texts will include fiction and theory by such authors as: Ursula K. LeGuin, Marge Piercy, Joanna Russ, Pamela Sargent, Octavia Butler, Jane Donawerth, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Pat Cadigan, Donna Haraway, James Tiptree Jr. and Margaret Atwood.
