Texts

Here are some of the readings I am considering. Most of the reading will be in the first 2/3 of the semester and in the last third of the course, we will cut way down if not entirely on reading so that you can focus on creative and/or scholarly projects.

This is an interdisciplinary course. Readings will be mostly fiction, but there will also be theoretical and historic texts to ground these movements in literature, art and cinema as well as gender studies and Africana studies.

Book-length novels -2 or 3

• Butler,Octavia. Dawn (resistance/gender/family/identity)
• Octavia Butler, Adulthood Rites (resistance/gender/family/identity)
• Octavia Butler, Kindred (resistance/gender/family/identity)
• Ursula LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness (governance/gender/family/identity)
• Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower (apocalypse/resistance/gender/family/identity/class)

Novella

• Ursula LeGuin, Vaster than empires and more slow (labor/post apocalypse/environment/aliens)
• Octavia Butler, Blood Child (scifi/other bodies/encounters/aliens) (make optional?)

• Atwood, Margaret Happy Endings  (experimental)
• Barnes and Due. The Danger Word
• Barnhill, Kelly The Men who live in trees (gender/fantasy/environment)
• Betts, Tara. Runway Blackout (identity/withholding labor/shapeshifting/corporate cultures)
• brown, adrienne maree. The River (urban refugee/refuge/anarchism/resistance/gentrification)
• Butler, Octavia. Speech Sounds (apocalypse/resistance)
• Butler, Octavia. The Evening and the Morning and The Night (social surrealism/post-apocalypse) LINK
• Desleal, Alvaro Menen. A cord made of nylon and gold 
• Garcia, Alixa, In Spite of Darkness
• Hopkinson, Nalo The Glass Bottle Trick LINK
• Le Guin, Ursula. Sur (identity/withholding labor/feminist) LINK
• Le Guin, Ursula. The ones who walk away from Omelas (social surrealism/commentary) LINK
• Mieville, China. Covehithe (family/ environment/apocaylpse)
• Mieville, China. Polynia (environment/apocaylpse)
• Nnedi Okorafor. Afrofuturist 419 
• Okorafor, Nnedi The Palm Tree Bandit LINK
•  Phi, Bao Revolution Shuffle (resistance/gender/identity)
• Phillips, Morrigan The Long Memory (identity/resistance/violent conflict/slavery/education)
• Richter, Anne The Sleep of Plants 
• Rojo, Pepe, Gray Noise
• Russ, Johanna When it Changed (gender/survival/post-apocalypse) LINK
• Singh, Vandana. The Woman who thought she was a planet (family/ environment/apocaylpse)
• Thompson, Tade. Notes from Gethsemane 
• Tiptree Jr, James. The Screwfly Solution 
• Ya Salaam, Kaluma Manhunters (resistance/utopia/anarchy)
• 
  

Red titles: from Sisters of the Revolution: A feminist speculative fiction anthology 

Purple titles from: Octavia's Brood: Science fiction stories from social justice movements

Listening

• Samuel Delaney, Aye and Gomorrah
• Nnedi Okorafor. Afrofuturist 419 

Essays and non-fiction texts - still in motion----- needs cutting down

• Awiakta Marilu, corn story -- look up
• Butler, Octavia,. Lost Races of Science Fiction (1980) 
• Delany, On Triton and other matters LINK
• Haraway Donna, SF: Science Fiction, Speculative Fabulation, String Figures, So Far  (SF)
• Haraway Donna, Cyborg Manifesto LINK
• Hopkinson, Nalo. Making the Impossible Possible
• Kodwo Eshun, Mixadelic Universe (on Parliament and Sun Ra)
• Kodwo Eshun, Inner Spatializing the song (on Lee Scratch Perry)
• Saidiya Hartman, Introduction, Lose your mother (slavery/lostness/alienness) LINK
• Douglass, Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, excerpt (slavery)
• Reading with and against the grain
• Sun-Ra, The Wisdom of Sun Ra, excerpts
• Landecker, Biofallibility Today, From Antibiotic Resistance to Epigenetic Dysregulation (biology)
• Ursula Le Guin, excerpts from The Language of the Night
• Moten, Fred, Black Optimism/Black Operation 
• Nelson, Alondra. Future Texts LINK
• Phillips, Rasheedah, ed. Black Quantum Futurism (excerpts) LINK
• -- Do Glaciers Listen (alien/home/indigenous/anth)
• Savoy, Alien Land Ethic (blackness/alien/home)
• something affect theory
• White, Historical Roots of Climate Change
• Rose, http://www.carbonfarm.us/555/Rose_EP9.1.pdf
• Syms. Martine, Mundane Afrofuturist Manifesto
• Morton, Queer Ecology
• Womack, Ytasha. Afrofuturism. selections tbd 
• Tsing, Anna, Testimony of a Spore  LINK (sex/aliens/bodies of others/home)

Media texts and films
Mundane Afrofuturist Manifesto

Book Reviews and essays about some of the works

• Bloodchild and other stories by Octavia Butler
• Why Time Travel?  Chris Marker's La Jetee is timeless. Article here
• Black Quantum Futurisms- interview