ENGL 24033 - Women Writing Science Fiction

Course Credit: 1
(WGSS)
Science fiction has frequently been referred to as a “boy’s club,” but groundbreaking works by prominent women writers have shaped the genre toward its current form, from Margaret Cavendish’s protoscience fiction novel The Blazing World to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, to Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. This course considers the following questions: How has sci-fi written by women addressed issues of gender, sexuality, race, and class difference? Why has sci-fi written by women often been overlooked or marginalized? How have women sci-fi writers envisioned dystopia and utopia? Authors studied may include Mary Shelley, Angelic Gorodischer, Margaret Atwood, Madeleine L’Engle, Ursula Le Guin, Octavia Butler, Kelly Link, Angela Carter, and Emily St. John Mandel. [AH]