Black to the Future(s): Race and Gender in Science-Fictions
Eugene Lang College Lib Arts: Sociology
CRN: 16142
Credits: 4
Radical Black feminist futures construct a politics of the imaginary anchored in liberation politics, amongst them, the works of Octavia Butler, which simultaneously constitute speculative fiction and a social justice handbook. The Parable series, in which the heroine evolves in a post-apocalyptic and dystopian United States, incorporates racial, gender, sexual, and class power dynamics. Butler successfully demonstrates how race, gender, sexuality, and class still frame how power and violence are distributed within communities, families, and interpersonal relationships, even in an almost stateless context. Popular and mainstream screenplays fail to showcase post-racial/non-racial contexts by ignoring the racial historical continuum. This course aims to investigate race, with an emphasis on [anti]Blackness, the racialization of gender and colonialism in contemporary US screenplays. To do so, we will analyze a vision of the future as the grounds for untold race/gender/class archetypes and stereotypes. Building upon Black feminist and critical cultural studies theories, we will interrogate the politics of the imaginary in speculative fiction by using Octavia E. Butler Parable of the Sower. as the guiding thread.
College: Eugene Lang College Lib Arts (LC)
Department: Sociology (LSOC)
Campus: New York City (GV)
Course Format: Seminar (R)
Modality: In-Person
Max Enrollment: 18
Add/Drop Deadline: September 11, 2023 (Monday)
Online Withdrawal Deadline: November 19, 2023 (Sunday)
Seats Available: Yes
Status: Open*
* Status information is updated every few minutes. The status of this course may have changed since the last update. Open seats may have restrictions that will prevent some students from registering. Updated: 6:54pm EDT 5/28/2023