Instructor: Joanne Woiak. Title: Redesigning Humanity: Science Fiction & the Future of the Body. Fall 2018, DIS ST/CHID/LSJ 332 B, Disability & Society
Course information
Title: Redesigning Humanity: Science Fiction & the Future of the Body
Course: DIS ST/CHID/LSJ 332 B, Disability & Society, Fall 2018, 5 credits
Time: MW 10:30am - 12:20pm
Instructor: Joanne Woiak, Disability Studies
Contact info: jwoiak@uw.edu
Description
Redesigning Humanity: Science Fiction & the Future of the Body. From Frankenstein to Brave New World to Gattaca and beyond, science fiction (SF) has speculated about the artificial creation, manipulation, and enhancement of human life. This course will analyze SF texts that use futuristic and unreal settings to comment on contemporary society and bioethical debates. We’ll critique how SF has often reflected mainstream attitudes about disability, gender, and race, and read more recent work in which minoritized communities are intervening in the SF genre to "write ourselves into the future," as novelist Octavia Butler puts it. By focusing on the connection between SF and the field of disability studies, the course will consider representations of disability and neurodiversity in which authors and readers create new meanings of accessibility, identity, community, family, justice, normal, and human.