Dynamic Subspace

Tag: literature

  • Science Fiction, LMC3214: Final Paper Topics Were On a Broad Spectrum of SF Media

    I just finished grading my students’ final paper projects. Their task was to use several definitions of SF from a list that I had prepared for them (or others that they found on their own and properly cited) to evaluate whether a work that we had not discussed in class was SF or not. Through this analysis, they would come up with their own definition/litmus test for SF.

    I was very happy to read papers on a variety of SFnal works, including:

    • Joseph Kosinski’s film, TRON: Legacy (which I had reviewed for the SFRA Review before)
    • AMC’s production of The Walking Dead
    • H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness
    • Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game
    • Tommaso Landolfi’s Cancerqueen (Cancroregina)
    • Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower
    • Halo: Combat Evolved (and its supplementary material in print)
    • David Brin’s Startide Rising
    • Marc Forster’s film, World War Z
    • Ridley Scott’s film, Blade Runner
    • Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World
    • Richard Schenkman’s film, The Man from Earth
    • X-COM: UFO Defense

    This list reveals that my students were interested in SF across a spectrum of media. There were papers on six literary works, four films, one television series, and two video games (this is further blurred by the video game/print crossover material).

    For those students who talked with me about their papers, I am particularly happy with the way their papers turned out. Having had those conversations, I can see a snapshot along their paper’s developmental process, which gives me better insight into the work that they likely did to push their arguments further than what we had discussed in class. Reflecting on this, I will add conference time to my future SF classes that meet over a full semester, but I will do more to have these smaller conversations with students–perhaps before class or during our daily break time–to get a better sense of their research and developing argument.

  • Science Fiction, LMC 3214 at Georgia Tech, Summer 2013 Begins (Syllabus Attached)

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    SF vs Sci-Fi Brainstorming.

    Today, I began teaching my first Science Fiction class at Georgia Tech (LMC 3214 SS2). It is a short-session class, so my students and I will explore the history of SF in only five weeks on a grueling 4 days per week, 2 hours per day schedule.

    During our first class today, we introduced ourselves, discussed the syllabus and schedule [available here: ellis-jason-syllabus-lmc3214-summer2013], and discussed the difference between SF and Sci-Fi.

    Following a short break after reading the syllabus, I conducted an interactive exercise where I wrote “Science Fiction (SF)” on the left side of the chalkboard and “Sci-Fi” on the right side. I sketched out the differences between the two terms and how we might use them to identify different types of SF. Then, I handed the chalk to a student who I asked to go to the board and write a type of SF that she liked in the spot that she felt best represented it in the SF/Sci-Fi continuum. As a class, we would discuss these examples. The other students and I would help point out how we might view these examples in different ways along the SF/Sci-Fi axis. Each student would hand off the chalk to the next student. We completed two rounds of this before running out of time in class.

    I think that I have an excellent group of students. Most are SF fans invested in the genre in one media form or another. Some students are there for pragmatic reasons. I believe that as the class unfolds all of my students will find interesting and significant connections to their thinking, life, and work.

    Tomorrow, we begin discussing Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

  • Reading List for PhD Major Exam on 20th Century American Literature

    In June 2010, I will take my three PhD exams in the Kent State University English Literature PhD program.  For these exams, I convened a committee of trusted professors, each administering one exam. I choose to take my exams in these areas: 20th Century American Literature (administered by Kevin Floyd), Postmodern Theory (administered by Tammy Clewell), and the Philip K. Dick Canon (administered by Donald “Mack” Hassler). Below, I have included my 20th Century American Literature reading list. Go here to read my Postmodern Theory exam list, and here to read my Philip K. Dick exam list.

    PhD Major Exam Area:  Twentieth-Century American Literature

    Director:  Kevin Floyd

    Texts:

    CANONICAL

    1. Chopin, Kate. The Awakening (1899).
    2. Cather, Willa. O Pioneers! (1913).
    3. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper”
    4. TS Eliot: “The Waste Land,” “The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock”
    5. Anderson, Sherwood. Winesburg, Ohio (1919).
    6. William, Carlos Williams. Spring and All (1923).
    7. Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby (1925).
    8. Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury (1929).
    9. Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying (1930).
    10. Langston Hughes: “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”; “Epilogue”; “Harlem”; “Same in Blues”; “Theme for English B”; “Mother to Son”; “Song for a Dark Girl.”
    11. Countee Cullen: “Yet Do I Marvel”; “Heritage”; “Incident.”
    12. Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms (1929).
    13. Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937).
    14. Dos Passos, John. The Big Money (1936).
    15. Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath (1939).
    16. Hemingway, Ernest. For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940).
    17. Wright, Richard. Native Son (1940).
    18. Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire (1947).
    19. Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman (1949).
    20. Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye (1951).
    21. Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man (1952).
    22. Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time.
    23. Edward Albee, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
    24. Eugene O’Neill, Long Days Journey Into Night
    25. Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
    26. Ginsberg, Allen. “Howl” and “Kaddish.”
    27. Kerouac, Jack. On the Road (1957)
    28. Burroughs, William S. Naked Lunch (1959).
    29. Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun (1959).
    30. Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962).
    31. Plath, Sylvia. Ariel.
    32. Pynchon, Thomas. V. (1963).
    33. Sam Shepard, True West
    34. LeRoi Jones, Dutchman (1964)
    35. O’Connor, Flannery. “A good man is hard to find”; “everything that rises must converge”; “revelation”; “good country people”
    36. Le Guin, Ursula K. The Left Hand of Darkness (1969).
    37. Reed, Ishmael. Mumbo Jumbo (1972).
    38. Delany, Samuel R. Dhalgren (1975).
    39. Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony (1977).
    40. Gibson, William. Neuromancer (1984)
    41. DeLillo, Don. White Noise (1985).
    42. Morrison, Toni. Beloved (1987).
    43. Gloria Naylor, Linden Hills
    44. Roth, Philip. American Pastoral (1997).
    45. Updike, John.  Rabbit, Run
    46. Butler, Octavia. Kindred (1979).
    47. Eugenides, Jeffrey. Middlesex (2002).
    48. Vonnegut, Jr., Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five (1969).

    NON-CANONICAL

    1. Asimov, Isaac. I, Robot (1950).
    2. Bradbury, Ray. The Martian Chronicles (1950).
    3. Kornbluth, Cyril M. and Fredrick Pohl. The Space Merchants (1953).
    4. Ellison, Harlan.  “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” (1967).
    5. Tiptree, James Jr. (Alice B. Sheldon), “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” (1973).
    6. Delany, Samuel R. Tales of Nevèrÿon (1979)
    7. Sterling, Bruce ed. Mirrorshades:  The Cyberpunk Anthology (1986).
    8. Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash (1992).
    9. Powers, Richard. Galatea 2.2 (1995).
    10. Di Filippo, Paul. Ribofunk (1996).
    11. Cunningham, Michael. Specimen Days (2005).

  • SCI FICTION Archive Closing 15 June 2007

    I’ve linked to several stories available online at the SciFi Channel’s SCI FICTION archive.  Unfortunately, you should make your way there posthaste and download any stories you might like to read later on, because they are closing the doors on 15 June 2007 according to this notice on the archive’s homepage:

    As of Friday, June 15, 2007, SCI FICTION will no longer be available on SCIFI.COM. SCIFI.COM would like to thank all those who contributed and those who read the short stories over the past few years.

    It sucks that they can’t continue hosting such a small selection of stories that can’t possibly be a hindrance to their bandwidth!

    Update 7/19/2024: Changed link above to the cached version on the Internet Wayback Machine.

  • Sonya Dorman Hess’ “When I Was Miss Dow”

    Sonya Dorman Hess’ 1966 short story, “When I Was Miss Dow,” is another gender bending story that is the same category as Pamela Zoline’s “The Heat Death of the Universe.” Thinking about great openings, I like the way Hess begins this story:

    These hungry, mother-haunted people come and find us living in what they like to call crystal palaces, though really we live in glass places, some of them highly ornamented and others plain as paper.

    It’s about humans, the “hungry, mother-haunted people,” exploring a planet inhabited by “Protean” or shape shifting aliens. The narrator describes itself and others like it as “he,” but “he” transforms into a “she” with the directive to obtain money from the predominantly male human explorers in return for “her” services. Unlike the others, the narrator is given the special task of emulating human brains by forming two lobes instead of just one as is customary for his people to do, and in so doing, transforms into Miss Dow, a thirty-something lab assistant. As Miss Dow, the narrator falls in love with the much older scientist she works with and she experiences attraction, dejection, and longing as the story progresses.

    This is a great example of early Second Wave Feminist SF, and I recommend it. You can read it online here, but I read it in The Norton Book of Science Fiction.

    Updated 7/19/2024: I updated the links above to ones cached on the Internet Wayback Machine.