17411

SoSe 13: Postcol. Lit.a.Variet. of Engl.:Critical Theory, Utopian Studies and Science Fiction

Andrew John Milner

Comments

This course will explore various theoretical approaches to the study of utopia, dystopia and science fiction. Like many other literary sub-fields, utopian studies and science fiction studies have been exposed to a wide variety of contemporary critical theories. So, for example, there are postcolonial treatments of the genres, feminist and post-feminist, Marxist and post-Marxist, postmodernist, psychoanalytic and ecocritical. Each of these provides very real insights, but each is also essentially the application to utopia or science fiction of a more general theory derived elsewhere. By contrast, the core critical approach specific to these genres, against which almost everything else has been obliged to define itself, remains that established by Darko Suvin in his influential 1979 monograph, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction. The fundamental novelty of Suvin's argument was to insist on a very close connection between science fiction and utopia. This course will be a sustained engagement with Suvin, but also with Jean Baudrillard, Ernst Bloch, Carl Freedman, Fredric Jameson, Tom Moylan, Lyman Tower Sargent, Raymond Williams and others. The grounds of the engagement will be provided by contemporary Australian utopian and dystopian science fictions. close

12 Class schedule

Regular appointments

Mon, 14:00 - 16:00 12 Class schedule

Mon, 2013-04-15 14:00 - 16:00

Lecturers:
Prof. Dr. Andrew Milner