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Spring 2012
ESPM 98/198
1 Unit(s)

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About the Course:

Sci-fi dreams up and depicts future chances and cultural paradigms; juxtaposes fantastical ecologies against alien politics; assembles prescient and implausible technologies; collages urban patterns, space and time, and surprise. At least, it can. Sci-fi troubles clean-cut hierarchies of assumptions, and tends both to stain and to stir up many a status quo—literary, moral, aesthetic, national, imperial. Anyway, sometimes it does. Sci-fi can also be as difficult to pin down, define, or theorize as it is control. Or to defend. Or to create. What is it? Why call it that? Who gets to say where it starts or stops?

So, during a time (like all times? unlike any other?) of upheaval and collapse, the two of us (July Cole, MS Environmental Studies/MFA Poetry, and Cleo Woelfle-Erskine, ERG PhD student) seek collaborators in an interdisciplinary exploration of science fiction as it intersects science, politics, and culture. We will read feminist, postcolonial, new wave, and other subaltern strands in the sci- and speculative-fi genre, along with scientific, literary, and critical texts that illuminate themes some of our favorite books tackle. This syllabus invites and introduces you to a class wherein we will all undertake, collectively, to read, write, criticize, and enact sci-fi.
In this class we will all, together, learn how to sci-fi.

Yes: Really?

Like, science fiction, SF, speculative fiction, fantasy –
You mean utopia, dystopia? Clones, robots? Wormholes, ALIENS?!
Mind / body, human / other, the future, even . . . the PRESENT!

Each week in this room, humans will conduct solo and team explorations of contemporary texts from scientific, speculative, and/or critical literature, engage in laboratory experiments and explorations into the science and aesthetics informing weekly readings, and participate in multiple impromptu writing activities, to generate material for two projects. Outside the room, human messmates will read short texts, blog brief responses, and compile two 2-3 page writing projects, one sci-fi and one critical.

Apart from presence, only two other requirements pertain to ImmersaTechne messmates: 1) Each human will lead one discursive team exploration over the course of ImmersaTechne. 2) Each human will submit two written projects of 2-3 pages over the course of ImmersaTechne.

How to Enroll:

if you show up to the first three classes, we will make every effort to enroll you in the course. Because this is the first ImmersaTechne expedition, we expect room for all interested participants.

Because almost all work for this class will be done in the room designated for ImmersaTechne, each human must inhabit the room with messmates regularly and reliably.

The shock-lag caused by absence will be difficult (but sometimes possible) to repair. Repeated absences from the collaborative space endanger the collaborative undertaking. Failing your human messmates by means of repeated absences is almost the only way to fail this course.