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Sci Fi Collective Liberation

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Full Course Title: 
Science Fiction For Collective Liberation

We often look at science fiction or speculative fiction as a genre that allows us to envision other possible pasts, presents, and futures, with current trends tending toward darker futures, or dystopias. This course will ask what the political role of science fiction has as a literary genre. Is it simply escapism, or a form of critique? Or does it have the possibility of effecting change through artistic and imaginative means? We will specifically be reading from a queer/transfeminist lens, as well as a critical race/decolonial perspective to see how science fiction novels imagine other worlds of liberation. Black and Indigenous queer/trans writers use science fiction to imagine the (im)possible worlds of survival and thriving that are exempted by racial capitalism, colonialism, and the state. We will read a selection of stories and novels from the history of science fiction along with theoretical texts to understand science fiction as a genre that has provided a key space for theorizing resistance and liberation and a place where artistic and political imagination combine.

Course Details
Prefix: 
UCO
Course Number: 
1200
Section Number(s) and Day/Times Taught: 
183: MW 2:00 - 3:15 pm Online
Term: 
Spring 2022
Categories: 
The Arts
Global Issues
Well-Being
Instructor(s)

Scott Branson

Scott Branson (they/them) has a PhD in Comparative Literature from Emory University. Their teaching and research interests are queer/feminist movements and theory, prison abolition, transformative justice, anarchism, the Black radical tradition, decolonial movements, punk, and experimental literature. Their translation of Jacques Lesage De la Haye’s The Abolition of Prison was published by AK Press in July 2021. Their translation of Guy Hocquenghem’s second book, Gay Liberation After May 68, with theoretical introduction, will be published by Duke University Press's Theory Q series in April 2022. They edited a volume of abolitionist queer writings based on two iterations of the UNC Asheville queer studies conference, due out with PM Press next year. They just finished a book about anarchism as a daily practice for Pluto Press and have begun researching a book on the institutionalization of queerness in the academy. They also make books of poems, paintings, and play music.