HENB01392U English - Elective 2, topic 2: Science Fiction, Postcolonial Theory and Gender Theory

The course will read contemporary science fiction (and possibly a little fantasy literature) through postcolonial theory and gender theory. Science fiction is not really about the future; it is about the present. So how does contemporary science fiction imagine other races, other sentient species, and other genders? How does it reflect ourselves? Reading novels by Octavia Butler, Michel Faber, Ursula Le Guin, and N.K. Jemisin, the course asks how we might theorise science fiction as a genre about conservatism and innovation, not primarily in technology, but in human relations.