BLST 31968 M[56639]
Black to the Future(s): Race in Science/Speculative Fictions
Instructor: Fania Noel
Spring 2023
The City College of New York
Black Studies Program
Course Description
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 [anti]Blackness, racialization and race in contemporary US screenplays. To do so, we will analyze a vision of the future as the grounds for the untold racial archetypes and stereotypes. Building upon Black feminist and 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.
[Week 1: January 26]. Introduction: What Is and Is Not SF?**
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Vol. 1. Open Road Media, 2012. Chapters 1 and 2
Suvin, Darko. “On What Is and Is Not an SF Narration; with a List of 101 Victorian Books That Should Be Excluded from SF Bibliographies.” Science Fiction Studies, 1978, 45–57.
Recommended:
Roberts, Adam. The history of science fiction. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016
[Week 2: January 30th & February 2nd]. Disembodiment and office wife **
Film: Her
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Vol. 1. Open Road Media, 2012 – Chapters 3
Ashley Bardhan, Men Are Creating AI Girlfriends and Then Verbally Abusing Them, Futurism.com, https://futurism.com/chatbot-abuse
Winifred R. Poster, “Racialized Surveillance in the Digital Service Economy,” in Captivating Technology: Race, Carceral Technoscience, and Liberatory Imagination in Everyday Life, ed. Ruha Benjamin (Duke University Press, 2019)
Eva Gustavsson, “Virtual Servants: Stereotyping Female Front-Office Employees on the Internet,” Gender, Work & Organization 12, no. 5 (September 1, 2005): 400–419.
Recommended:
Benjamin, Ruha. Captivating Technology: Race, Carceral Technoscience, and Liberatory Imagination in Everyday Life (Duke University Press, 2019. Introduction p.1-25
[Week 3: February 7 & 9]. Silent and revolutionary dolls
Film: Ex-Machina
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Vol. 1. Open Road Media, 2012 – Chapter 4
De Witt Douglas Kilgore, ‘Difference Engine: Aliens, Robots, and Other Racial Matters in the History of Science Fiction, Science Fiction Studies, 37.1 (2010), 16–22.
Trevor Richardson, “Objectification and Abjectification in Ex Machina and Ghost in the Shell,” Medium (blog), December 19, 2017, https://medium.com/science-technoculture-in-film/objectification-and-abjectification-in-ex-machina-and-ghost-in-the-shell-b126b8832a1d.
Recommended:
Sumi K. Cho, “Converging Stereotypes in Racialized Sexual Harassment: Where the Model Minority Meets Suzie Wong,” J. Gender Race & Just. 1 (1997)
[Week 4: February 14 & 16] – The meaning of freedom
Film: Hunger Games 1
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Vol. 1. Open Road Media, 2012 – Chapters 5 and 6
Newton, Huey P. Revolutionary Suicide:(Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition). Penguin, 2009. p.11-44
Suggested:
Shakur, Assata. Assata: The Autobiography of a Revolutionary. Chicago, Illinois: Lawrence Hill (2001). Chapter 1
[Week 5: February 21st & 23rd]. Monsters are Ugly; Ugliness is the monster
Film: I am Legend
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Vol. 1. Open Road Media, 2012 – Chapters 7 and 8
Da’Shaun, L. Harrison. “Pretty Ugly: The Politics of Desire.” Belly of the beast: The politics of anti-fatness as anti-blackness. North Atlantic Books, 2021, pp. 11-32
Recommended:
Du Bois, W.E.B. The Philadelphia Negro. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. Chapter 1
[Week 6: February 28 & March 2nd]. The Belly of the World
Film: Children of Men
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Vol. 1. Open Road Media, 2012 – Chapters 9 and 10
hooks, bell. “The oppositional gaze: Black female spectators.” Black American Cinema. Routledge, 2012. 288-302
Hartman, Saidiya. “The belly of the world: A note on Black women’s labors.” Souls 18.1 (2016): 166-173
Suggested
Sharpe, Christina. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, Chapter 1
[Week 7: March 7 & 9] Robot’s babies, Papa Maybe
Film: Blade Runner 2042
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Vol. 1. Open Road Media, 2012 – Chapters 10 and 11
Spillers, Hortense J. “Mama’s baby, papa’s maybe: An American grammar book.” The Transgender Studies Reader Remix. Routledge, 1987. 93-104
Snorton, C. Riley. Black on both sides: A racial history of trans identity. U of Minnesota Press, 2019
Suggested:
Butler, Judith. Gender trouble. Routledge, 2002
[Week 8: March 14 & 16]
Film: Mad Max: Fury Road
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Vol. 1. Open Road Media, 2012 – Chapters 12 and 13
Said, Edward. “Introduction,” from Orientalism. ARC, Amsterdam University Press, 2018.
Farris, Sara R. In the name of women’s rights. Duke University Press, 2017.
IntroductionSuggested:
Farris, Sara R. In the name of women’s rights. Duke University Press, 2017. Chapter 1
[Week 9: March 21st & 23rd] [Anti]Colonial Fantasy
Film: Avatar. The Way of the Water (2022)
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Vol. 1. Open Road Media, 2012 – Chapters 14 and 15
Asenap, Jason. Avatar: The Way of Water or how not to make Indigenous futurism movies, Grist.org, https://grist.org/culture/avatar-2-indigenous-futurist-fantasy-no-indigenous-input/
Césaire, Aimé. Discourse on colonialism. NYU Press, 2001, chapter 1
[Week 10: March 28 & 30] Encoding Love and romance
Tv Show: Black Mirror. San Junipero(season 3, episode 4) and 15 Million Merits
(Season 1, Episode 2)
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Vol. 1. Open Road Media, 2012 – Chapters 16 and 17
hooks, bell. All About Love, chapter 1 https://wtf.tw/ref/hooks.pdf
King, Rosamond S. “This Is You”: “Invisibility,” Community, and Women Who Desire Women” Island bodies: Transgressive sexualities in the Caribbean imagination. University Press of Florida, 2014
Suggested:
Browne, Simone. “Branding Blackness. Biometric Technology and the Surveillance of Blackness” Dark matters: On the surveillance of blackness. Duke University Press, 2015. pp.89-130
[Week 11: April 4]White Womanhood Future(s) 1/2 **
Series: The Handmaid’s Tale, the first half of season 1
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Vol. 1. Open Road Media, 2012 – Chapter 18
James, Joy. “Captive Maternal Love: Octavia Butler and Sci-Fi Family Values.” Literature and the Development of Feminist Theory (2015): 185.
Fuentes, Marisa J. “Agatha: White Women, Slave Owners, and the Dialectic of Racialized Gender.” Dispossessed Lives. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. 70-99
Suggested:
Jones-Rogers, Stephanie E. “They were her property.” They Were Her Property. Yale University Press, 2019. Chapter 1
[Week 12: April 18th & 20] White Womanhood Future(s) 2/2 **
Series: The Handmaid’s Tale, the second half of season 1
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Vol. 1. Open Road Media, 2012 – Chapter 19
Collins, Patricia Hill. Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. routledge, 2002. Chapter the Nanny
[Week 13: April 25th & 27th] The kids gonna be alright
Film: The Girl With All the Gifts
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Vol. 1. Open Road Media, 2012 – Chapters 20, 21 and 22
hooks, bell. All About Love, chapter 2: Childhood Lessons https://wtf.tw/ref/hooks.pdf
Suggested:
Wynter, Sylvia, and Katherine McKittrick. “Unparalleled catastrophe for our species? Or, to give humanness a different future: Conversations.” Sylvia Wynter. Duke University Press, 2015. 9-89
[Week 14:May 2nd & 4th] The Day after the End of the World
Film: Pumzi
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Vol. 1. Open Road Media, 2012 – Chapters 23 and 24
Schalk, Sami. “The Future of Bodyminds, Bodyminds of the Future” Bodyminds reimagined:(Dis) ability, race, and gender in Black women’s speculative fiction. Duke University Press, 2018. Pp.85-112
“What a body can do” Elsa Dorlin https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/what-a-body-can-do
[Week 15: May 9th & 11] AntiBlackness and the end of the World: Afropessimism
Episode: Black Mirror/Black Museum (Seaosn 4, episode 6)
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Vol. 1. Open Road Media, 2012 – Chapter 25
Wilderson III, Frank B. Afropessimism. Liveright Publishing, 2020. Chapter one (pp.1-18)
James, Joy. “The womb of Western theory: Trauma, time theft, and the captive maternal.” Carceral Notebooks 12.1 (2016): 253-296.
Suggested :
- Fanon, Frantz. Black skin, white masks. Grove press, 2008.chapter 1