I’m teaching a seminar on science fiction and politics next semester, which I am really, really looking forward to. PTJ’s been teaching a similar course for years, but this is the first time I’ve had the opportunity offer it. Given the discussions of the SF genre in general, and steampunk in particular (e.g.), that have been making the rounds, I thought it might be interesting to see get feedback on the syllabus from our readers.
I’ve designed the syllabus to capture a number of major (inter-related themes), including: shifting imaginaries of apocalypse/post-apocalypse, states of exception, encountering the other, liberalism and empire, and games/society/subjectivity.
But one of the things I’m most looking forward to is seeing what unpredictable routes the students take the class.
Warning: I’ve cribbed a lot from PTJ, including the major blogging assignment(s)
As the embed doesn’t work so well, try this alternative.
Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.
He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.
He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.
Apart from misspelling his surname (really, Dan!), I like the use of Tzvetan Todorov's 'Conquest' in a course on SF. it is of course precisely about the meetings (and subjugation) of Alien worlds. It would be fun if you could do something about the significance (pun intended) of systems of signification – alien languages – in SF. For example, as you may know, a business school prof at USC (my alma mater) with Ph.D. in linguistics created the Na'vi language for Avatar. All based on a set of words created by James Cameron that apparently had a “Polynesian flavor.” Maybe Avatar is just too obvious, but I think there are interesting layers – the obvious environmentalist theme, but also the 'orientalism' (Alientalism?).
I am giving a couple of IR lectures in a course on Politics and Popular Culture in February, and we are using your and Neumann's “Harry Potter” book as well as Cynthia Weber's IR Theory textbook. This semester, we are not using Weldes though. One book not on your reading list is Hassler & Wilcox, “New Boundaries in Political Science Fiction”. I would be curious to hear your thoughts on it if you have read it.
PS, hope you don't mind if I shamelessly plug my brand new blog – the TurkEU Blog – where I post news and commentary on Turkey-EU relations from a historical perspective and with a focus on collective identity issues.
OK, since I apparently can't tell surname from given name, perhaps I should keep my mouth shut.
Very curious to see how they deal with Vinge — not only is it a long (long!) novel, but it's not exactly easy going for people not already immersed in and committed to the genre. Hopefully buy that point in the semester you will have shaken off the wavering folks and only be left with hard-core participants!
And, of course, hooray for Look to Windward, where the Culture seriss should have ended. Hopefully as a bonus you'll also produce some serious Iain Banks fans ;)
Thanks all around, and for catching my typo.
1) I do allude to Clyde's co-edited volumes earlier in the syllabus, and I intend to put them on reserve;
2) An excellent point about language–we get a little into this in the course (e.g., the assignment on language games paired with THE PLAYER OF GAMES, in which the protagonist's failure to speak Mairan for much of the game has implications for how he plays), but it would be good to pursue this further, such as in the context of Conquest of America;
3) Do you have copies of those lectures/lecture materials?
This looks great — though I agree with PTJ on Vinge. But, I'm more curious on your pedagogical approach and how you plan to manage the flow of the course and maintain some level of control. You write in the course description that the course is “an opportunity for ontological displacement and a landscape of the imaginary that allows us to contemplate key contemporary socio-political concerns.” I think that's a great objective, but there are multiple (and complex) themes moving around in most of these selections. I'd love to hear how you plan to structure things.
Do Dune instead of Vinge. Long, yes, but also allows you to wrap back to the neo-medieval thing from Canticle. And the Kwisatz Haderach sets up a very nice discussion of manufactured heavens/messiahs, a perfect set-up for LtW. And — though this is probably less important — Herbert is a better writer than Vinge, and the world is more comprehensively built.
I like that. What would be your order suggestion?
Sorry, I missed the earlier mention of Wilcox.
I don't have my lecture note ready yet but certainly don't mind sharing when they're done (sometime late Jan, early Feb).
Btw, good seeing you in Stockholm in Sep, albeit short.
Having not read Julian Comstock yet — downloaded it to the iPad but no time to read this semester — I'm not sure where it does. That said, I'd put Dune and LtW together and the end of the class, but that's also because I'm fond of closing the semester with LtW. To me the odd one out here is Snow Crash, which is a great book but I wonder about what function it plays in this sequence. Maybe a technological neo-medievalism? Have it precede Dune, then. Plus, Stephenson's anarcho-libertarianism/hacker ethic makes a nice contrast with Herbert's vision.
Okay, I've now read _Julian Comstock_ — I had to read something engaging while marooned in airports and hotels on my way back from UMass last week! — and I think I'd end the class with the sequence Dune -> _Comstock_ -> LtW. In all three you have religious authority vs. secular/rational authority; Dune and _Comstock_ reprise and remix things from _Canticle_, and set up LtW nicely. Still unsure that _Snow Crash_ works in this sequencing, or where to put it. And if you're doing these, you need some Weber “Vocation” and/or “charismatic authority” in there someplace ;)