[As of next week
my
sabbatical is officially done and I’m back to full-time teaching. So this
week I’ll share some previews for my Spring 2020 classes, focusing on new
readings I’m adding this semester and leading up to some updates on book talks
and projects. I’d love to hear what you’re up to as well!]
On a
long-overdue step toward diversifying my sci fi/fantasy canon.
I created and first
taught my Introduction
to Science Fiction and Fantasy course in Fall 2007 (in response to student
demand for such a class at Fitchburg State), and have had the chance to teach
it three times since. And of course I’ve been reading
and loving those genres for far, far longer than that. But I’m ashamed to
admit that in both the classes and my personal reading experiences, I haven’t
read much at all into the long and evolving tradition of African and African
American sci fi and fantasy. I love Octavia Butler and taught her time travel
historical novel
of slavery Kindred in that 2007
course, but that was unfortunately an exception to the general lack of racial/ethnic
diversity on the syllabus (which, again, is due at least in part to my own lack
of knowledge of these authors and traditions). Given the existence of such vital
scholarly books as André
Carrington’s Speculative Blackness: The
Future of Race in Science Fiction
(2016), as well as my proximity to sci fi grandmaster
Samuel Delany during my time as a grad student at Temple (where he was for
many years a
professor), I didn’t really have much of an excuse for that continued
ignorance, other than the constraints of time under which we all operate of
course.
I can’t change
those personal and pedagogical pasts, but there’s no time like the present to
redress such gaps and failures. So while much of this Spring’s Sci Fi/Fantasy
syllabus will look very similar to the last couple iterations, I have subbed
out my longstanding 21st century fantasy novel (Robin
Hobb’s wonderful Assassin’s Apprentice)
for a new text: Kai
Ashante Wilson’s The
Sorcerer of the Wildeeps (2015). I hardly ever assign and teach a text
that I haven’t had a chance to read prior to the class, but again my reading
experience of African American fantasy fiction is painfully limited, so that
was likely to be the case regardless of what I chose (and is indeed the case
with Wilson’s book). There were of course many other good
options for this slot as well, including books by African-born authors such
as Nnedi Okorafor and Tomi Adeyemi; I’m determined to read
them and others soon, for personal but also pedagogical reasons. But you’ve got
to start somewhere, and I’m excited both to read Wilson’s book myself and
especially to teach it and hear student responses to this exciting contemporary
African American fantasy author and novel.
Next preview
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What’s on
your Spring 2020 horizon?
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