Description
LIT 200 Fantasy, Horror, and Sci-Fi—Oh My!: Introduction to Speculative Fiction - This course introduces students to speculative fiction, a category of literature that includes the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Students will explore a variety of texts—including short stories, novels, comics, and film—that are linked by their shared acts of speculation. Attending to the specific social and historical contexts of these textsstudents will consider the ways speculative fictions so often offer social commentary about the time and place in which they are written as they imagine alternate worlds and
envision potential futures. On the one hand, speculative fiction has thus been used to reinforce assumptions about nation, class, race, gender, sexuality, and ability. On the other hand, historical and contemporary BIPOC and queer authors and artists create within and reimagine the generic conventions of speculative fiction in order to challenge those assumptions. As a class, w