Content,
Goals, Requirements:
This
is a course focused on a historical approach to genre and genre theory. In the
opening weeks of the semester we will cover developments in genre theory over
the last couple of decades, emphasizing the way an historical approach to genre
has displaced an earlier theorization of genre that assumed it was an
ahistorical, formal phenomenon. Within the context of the historical approach
to genres, we will then ask questions about what constitutes a genre and a
genre system; about the relations between and among different contemporary
genre systems (e.g. the ones operating in commercial publishing and the book
trade, in the film industry, in television, and in academic practice); and
about the various types of agency and motives exercised by those who construct
and maintain genre categories while writing, adapting, editing, publishing,
reading, collecting, and criticizing fiction. During the rest of the semester
we will test and explore the historical approach to genre theory using a series
of texts from an exemplary modern genre, science fiction. We will explore the
shifting definitions and boundaries of the genre as it emerges and develops,
and we will also pay attention to its “neighborliness” with other popular or
mass genres, like adventure, the fairy tale, fantasy, horror, and the Western,
as well as with literary realism, utopian fiction, critical theory, philosophy,
and science.
Student
Learning Outcomes:
- advanced knowledge of the
contemporary state of genre theory - advanced knowledge of
debates about genre definitions and boundaries within the field of science
fiction studies - a sense of the ongoing
intersections and tensions between mass culture and literary tradition
Assignments:
Students
will write a short critical essay on a problem in genre theory early in the
semester; do a teaching exercise leading discussion on a fictional text; and
write a well-researched critical essay due at the end of the course.
Reading list:
genre theory:
John Frow, Genre
excerpts from: Vladimir
Propp, The Morphology of the Folk-Tale;
Claude Levi-Strauss, “The Structural Study of Myth”; Hans-Robert Jauss, Toward
an Aesthetic of Reception; Alistair Fowler, Kinds of Literature; Rick
Altman, Film/Genre; Jason Mittel, Genre
and Television
genre theory essays
on science fiction:
Brien Attebery, “Science
Fiction Parabolas: Jazz, Geometry, and Generation Starships”
Mark Bould and Sherryl
Vint, “Problems of Definition”
Samuel R. Delany, “About
5,750 Words”
Grace L. Dillon
(Anishinaabe), “Imagining Indigenous Futurisms”
Fredric Jameson, “Progress
vs. Utopia, or Can We Imagine the Future?”
Rob Latham, “American
Slipstream: Science Fiction and Literary Respectability”
Roger Luckhurst, “The Many
Deaths of Science Fiction: A Polemic”
Andrew Milner, “Science
Fiction and the Cultural Field”
John Rieder, “On
Defining SF, or Not: Science Fiction, Genre Theory, and History”
Kathleen Spencer, “‘The Red Sun is High, the Blue Low’: Towards a Stylistic Description
of Science Fiction”
Darko Suvin, “On the
Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre.”
Phil Wegner, “The
Modernisms of Science Fiction”
science fiction texts:
to
be determined; some texts will be chosen by the class
Samples
from my usual pedagogical canon:
novels:
H.
G. Wells, The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds
Philip
K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle, Ubik
Ursula
K. LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness
Marge
Piercy, He, She, and It
William
Gibson, Neuromancer
China
Miéville, The City & The City
short
stories:
H.
G. Wells, “The Star”
Stanley
Weinbaum, “A Martian Odyssey,”
Henry
Kuttner and Catherine L Moore, “Vintage Season”
Pamela
Zoline, “The Heat Death of the Universe”
William
Gibson, “Burning Chrome”
Ted
Chiang, “Story of Your Life,” “Liking What You See”
films:
Invasion of
the Body Snatchers
Night of the
Living Dead
2001: A Space
Odyssey
Space is the
Place
Alien
Blade Runner
Sleep Dealer
District 9