LITR 4632 Homepage / Syllabus Summer 2009: 1st 5-weeks M,T, & Th 9am-noon, Bayou Instructor:Craig White Office: 2529-8 Bayou Phone: 281 283 3380 E-mail: whitec@uhcl.edu

Office Hours: Mondays & Thursdays, 12-1, 6-6:30, and by appointment

Caveat: Data in  syllabus may change with minimal notice in fair hearings at class meetings.

Course Texts

Scriptural texts of Creation and Apocalypse

H. G. Wells, The Time Machine (1895)

William Gibson, Burning Chrome (1986)

Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower (1993)

Future Primitive: The New Ecotopias, ed. K. S. Robinson (1994)

Virtually Now: Stories of Science, Technology and the Future, ed. J. Schinto (1996)

Graded Work (briefly listed here; details below)

• Reading quizzes (app. 10%, or more if results are far below average.)

• Midterm (In-class or email,  June; 30-40%)

• Final exam ( July, in-class or email; 40-50%)
  
  Class Presentations, participation, and attendance (app. 10-20%, graded silently)

• Future-Vision Presentation

• Informal presentations: Discussion-Starter & Web-Highlighter

• Class preparation and participation

• Attendance: You are allowed one free cut without comment or penalty. Two or more absences or partial absences, even with good excuses, will cause final grade to fall, sometimes drastically.

Percentages indicate assignments' approximate relative weight only. Grades are not computed mathematically.  Only letter grades are given. Pluses and minuses may appear on component and final grades.

Final grade report

Email submission of presentation(s), test(s) for web posting

Course policies

Primary Course Objectives

(Objectives 1-5 are the central concepts for the midterm and final exams. For course outcomes, you are expected to identify these terms or concepts in relation to each other and to course texts. The remaining objectives are spice—themes of interest that recur throughout the semester’s discussions, lectures, and readings.)

Objective 1—Narratives of the Future

1.     To identify, describe, and criticize three standard narratives or stories humans tell about the future:

a.      Apocalyptic

b.     Evolutionary

c.      Alternative

(see also objective 9 regarding narratives or stories)

Objective 2—Visions / Scenarios of the Future

2.     To identify, describe, and criticize typical visions or scenarios of the future (seen from 2009).

a.      high tech; virtual reality—slick, cool, unreal, easy with power (+ cyberpunk style)

b.     low tech; actual reality—rough, intimate, messy, hungry, warm, real

c.    utopia / dystopia / ecotopia—perfectly planned worlds / dysfunctional world / + ecology

d.     off-planet / alien contact—exploring and being explored

Objective 3—Narrative & Symbol

3. To comprehend basic theories of narrative, plot, or story + narrative's relation to symbol.

• Humans are story-telling creatures. We react, decide, and act in terms of people-centered stories that express our symbolic fears and desires, even if reality (God, nature, etc.) is greater and more complicated.
• Narratives are both individual and collective; literary and cultural--very inclusive concept.
• Four traditional "narrative genres": comedy, romance, satire, tragedy
• The dominant popular narrative for literature of the future and especially science fiction is "romance."
• In popular use, "romance" means women's stories of true love. Academically, "romance" includes love stories but is not limited to them: adventures, action, and cowboy stories are also usually romances.
• Romance attracts a reader or individual audience member with transcendent meaning and escape from day-to-day reality, but the cost of this attraction can be a sacrifice of reality and a blindness to larger complexities beyond the individual self. 
• The Sublime
• Narratives operate or signify with symbols, which may take the form of characters or objects in a story.

Objective 4—Genres

4. To identify genres of future literature

• prophecy
• science fiction, sf, speculative fiction, sci-fi, fantasy; hard & soft sf
• cyberpunk (virtual reality plus real-world actuality)
• utopias, dystopias, ecotopias
• Also, from obj. 3, attention to the narrative genre of romance

Objective 5—Teaching, Learning, Testing

5. To articulate teaching, learning, & evaluation methods for special course content

• Instructor and students exchange standard knowledge and new contexts or applications; students offer reactions to first-time readings and to critical and classic backgrounds of history and genre, while instructor looks for fresh extensions of accomplished knowledge.
• Webpage revision as mediator /
• Exams require comprehension and expression based on instructional contents, but excellence is achieved by students extending or refreshing what they learn with new examples, insights, and expression.
• Can new sections of courses build on previous sections' accomplishments?
• Model Assignments

Secondary Course Objectives

(Recurrent themes or issues you may develop in exams and presentations)

6. Is the future "written" (i. e., set, fixed, programmed, and usually apocalyptic) or "being written" ("open-ended" and usually evolutionary)?

7. To interpret literature of the future as reflections of the present in which it is written.

8. To note literary strategies and problems such as how to make the future both familiar and exotic. (Or “comforting / challenging”; “friendly / unfriendly”; “warm / cold”).

• How do you end a story about the future?

9. To distinguish distinct temporal dimensions of the future

• Near future; short-term; day-after-tomorrow (often dramatic or apocalyptic change, such as alien contact)

• Deep future, long-term (usually evolutionary change involving natural or artificial adaptations to new or changing environments)

• Alternative depths of future between, beyond, parallel, or skew

Terms:

narrative

narrative genres

apocalyptic, evolutionary, and alternative narratives

apocalypse synonyms

prophecy

romance (narrative)

the sublime

symbol

modernization and tradition (including secularization and fundamentalism)

Reading & Presentation Schedule: LITR 4632, Summer 2009

Initial guide to course anthologies:

BC = Burning Chrome

FP = Future Primitive: The New Ecotopias ed. K. S. Robinson, (1994)

VN = Virtually Now: Stories of Science, Technology and the Future

Monday, 8 June: course introduction

Readings:  Begin Scriptural Texts of Creation & Apocalypse

Tuesday, 9 June: continue Genesis, Revelation, & other scriptural apocalypses

Readings: Continue Scriptural Texts of Creation & Apocalypse

Discussion-starter: Georgina Reed

Web-highlighter: instructor

Thursday, 11 June: conclude scriptural apocalypse > apocalypse as popular sf

Readings: Parable of the Sower (through p. 191, or through chapter 17)

Discussion-starter: Denise Pope

Future-vision presenter: Sarah Ann Turner: The Past Meets the Future in Demolition Man

Future-vision presenter: Tamatha Beasley: Wall-E

Monday, 15 June: apocalypse and evolution

Readings: finish Parable of the Sower (through p. 296)

Discussion-starter: Tyler Carmona

Future-vision presenter: James Larson: Rosemary's Baby

Future-vision presenter: Georgina Reed: Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

Tuesday, 16 June: evolution: human and animal nature

Readings: "Stone Lives" (handout) and "Bears Discover Fire" (FP 17-28)

Discussion-starter: Jackie Baker

Future-vision presenter: Faron Samford (Kurt Vonnegut, "Harrison Bergeron")

Thursday, 18 June: evolution: time and change

Readings: "Somebody up there Likes Me" (VN 208-237); begin The Time Machine (through ch. 5).

Discussion-starter: Danielle Kutowy

Future-vision presenter: Veronica Nadalin, A Boy & His Dog

Future-vision presenter: Samantha Hand, I am Legend

Monday, 22 June: evolution & alternative futures

Readings: conclude The Time Machine (ch. 6 through epilogue); narrative: alternative futures Bruce Sterling & Lewis Shiner, "Mozart in Mirrorshades" (handout)

Discussion-starter: Victoria Cyr

Future-vision presenter: Jackie Baker

Future-vision presenter: Kathy Cutting

Tuesday, 23 June: alternative futures

Readings: "Garden of Forking Paths"; "The Gernsback Continuum" (BC); "Better Be Ready 'bout Half Past Eight" (VN 22-47)

Future-vision presenter: Victoria Cyr

Future-vision presenter: Paul Acevedo, Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Web-highlighter: Danielle Kutowy

Thursday, 25 June: midterm exam

Monday, 29 June: virtual reality: the anti-romance of cyberpunk

Readings: "Johnny Mnemonic" (BC);  "Burning Chrome" (BC 168-191); "The Logical Legend of Heliopause and Cyberfiddle" (VN 159-180).

Discussion-starter: Josh Hughey

Future-vision presenter: Karina Ramos: Max Brooks, World War Z

Tuesday, 30 June: romance of low tech: traces of organic human nature and traditional culture in high tech world

Readings: "The Onion and I," (VN 8-21)."Drapes and Folds," (VN 126-139)."Speech Sounds"(VN 91-108).

Discussion-starter: Karina Ramos

Future-vision presenter: Denise Pope

Web-highlighter: Christi Wood (final exams; focus on texts from 29 or 30 June?)

Thursday, 2 July: utopia / dystopia / ecotopia

Readings: K. S. Robinson, “Introduction” to Future Primitive. "Chocco," (FP 189-214); "House of Bones," (FP 85-110)

Discussion-starter: Paul Acevedo

Future-vision presenter: Josh Hughey, The Wanting Seed by Anthony Burgess

Monday, 6 July: off-planet; alien contact & near-contact

Readings: Ursula K. Le Guin, "Newton's Sleep" (FP, 311-338); "Men on the Moon" (VN 238-247); "Hinterlands" (BC 58-79).

Future-vision presenter: Danielle Kutowy: V for Vendetta

Future-vision presenter: Tyler Carmona, Millennium

Web-highlighter: Denise Pope (final exams)

Tuesday, 7 July: alien contact & near-contact

Readings: "Homelanding," (VN 3-7)."They're Made out of Meat," (VN 69-72)."The Poplar Street Study" (VN 140-148); "The Belonging Kind" (BC 43-57)

Discussion-starter: Veronica Nadalin

Future-vision presenter: Christi Wood, The Island

Web-highlighter: Faron Samford (final exams)

Thursday, 9 July: final exam (in-class or email)