Auburn University's "Science Fiction as Intellectual History" course challenges students to critically examine how past visions of the future shape our present.
Here’s what students learn:
https://theconversation.com/a-college-course-thats-a-history-of-the-future-237094
#SciFi@bookstodon@a.gup.pe
A college course that’s a history of the future
Science fiction can be thought of as a film negative of history – a back door into what used to worry people and what gave them hope.The Conversation
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in reply to The Conversation U.S. • • •Guitarsophist
in reply to The Conversation U.S. • • •That sounds like a wonderful course. I taught a G.E. science fiction course for many years. A lot of my students were engineers trying to fulfill a literature requirement. I used to say to my engineering colleagues that I had the very best engineers in that course, the ones who not only had technical skills but who also wanted to read and write. My focus was more on story craft and big ideas than a coherent history. I always started with Asimov's robot stories, then a Golden Age novel, often Alfred Bester's _The Stars My Destination_, followed by newer stuff. I gave students a choice between submitting a critical paper or a short story at the end. Almost all chose to write stories. Some of them were quite good.
The in-class sessions were almost always like dorm room bull sessions about big ideas. It was a lot of fun.