(no subject)

[ann_leckie]

Oh oh oh, you guys, I forgot one of the coolest things! In my defense, there were a lot of incredibly cool things this year!

Anyway. So, last year I know that a couple of college professors/instructors assigned Ancillary Justice as part of a course. That was a definite achievement unlocked thing, right?

But this year, Professor Richard Fry at SIUE taught Introduction to Philosophy, which–here, I’ll give you the course description:

By reading speculative fiction, we come to see more clearly both how our lives are and how they should be. Philosophy, as a discipline, pursues closely related questions and lines of thought. In this course, we will use a novel to jump-start our thinking about our selves and the wider world around us. It will serve as a starting point for conversations about language, minds, gender, emotion, politics, civilization, surveillance and individuality, among other issues. We will read our novel in tandem with scholarly philosophical work both historical and contemporary. You will be assessed primarily through written papers. No antecedent familiarity with speculative fiction is required or expected.

Three guesses what that novel was. The first two guesses may or may not count.

Right? Right???

So, while I don’t live in Edwardsville, it’s really not that long of a drive from St. Louis. So in early December I visited the class. Or, the classes, since there were two sections. They were a great bunch of students, and had great questions for me, some of them ones I’d answered before, and some that were entirely new to me. But I was really impressed with the way they were engaged with the class, and with the book. I had a great time! I’m really glad I was able to do that.

Also, I mean. Seriously. Right?

Now, I didn’t ever at any time have the ambition to have my book taught in philosophy class. In fact, one student asked me that–did I start out with a message or a list of philosophical ideas? And no, I did not. I started out wanting to tell a cool story, the kind of book that would make me go “Oooh this is exactly the sort of thing I like” if I found it at the bookstore. But, you know. I can’t say I mind the book being used for class, and I absolutely do not mind that the result was these students were definitely interested and thinking about philosophy. How did I forget that in my year summary post yesterday? Because that is just so utterly awesome.

Mirrored from Ann Leckie.

Comments

[robin_anne_reid]

That is completely cool (the philosophers who are incorporating contemporary texts and popular culture into their classes have been doing amazing stuff).

I'll be teaching AJ in a class too: a graduate course in a Department of Literature and Languages, in the English program, with a focus on Marginalized Literatures!

My students will be in an online course (and I'm in Texas, sigh), but I'm going to be using my academic Dreamwidth journal a bit more actively in relation to the course. So if you'd be interested in an *online* discussion over there, I'd love to set one up.

Here's the course information:

English 503 is a graduate course with a focus on Marginalized Literatures. Marginalized literatures are bodies of work that have historically been or are currently not considered of major canoncal importance in literary studies, often because of the class, race, nationality or sexuality of the authors, or because of the type of imaginative work they are. This course is one in which the emphasis changes depending on the faculty member teaching it, and because the emphasis changes, it may be taken twice for credit.

The focus in the online course offered in Spring 2016 is on women speculative fiction writers. The course is scheduled for the flex term: it runs from February 4 through May 13, 2016.

The course will take a cultural studies approach, starting with a an intellectual history of feminisms in the science fiction community and reading six novels reflecting major debates in the sf community concerning gender, race, and sexuality.

Assigned Books (roughly in order of reading)
They Say, I Say Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein

The Secret Feminist Cabal Helen Merrick (selected chapters will be read in conjunction with each assigned novel below).

Novels (chronologically and in order of reading):

The Left Hand of Darkness Ursula K. LeGuin
The Female Man Joanna Russ
Ammonite Nicola Griffith
Ancillary Justice Ann Leckie
Sister Mine Nalo Hopkinson
The Fifth Season N. K. Jemisin

[ann_leckie]

Oh, I would definitely be interested in participating in discussion, if you think that would be helpful and your students would like it! My email is ann at annleckie dot com, if that's helpful to you.

(Also I'm just kind of amazed to see my book in that list. That looks like a fabulous course!)