ScienceFictionHistoricalContext

Science Fiction and Historical Context

Spring, 2006

Professor Robert Martello

Welcome to the Science Fiction and Historical Context WIKI! As with all WIKIs, this one will change over the course of the semester, particularly if you take ownership of it and add your questions, thoughts, and ideas.

Science fiction is a blast. Two-headed time-traveling alien robots are not just the subjects of serious scholarly analysis, but are also inherently fun entities to study and engage in deep conversations.

If I had to distill this course's learning objectives to the utter core, they might be:

Learn to analyze sci-fi. This is really the important skill of textual analysis -- how do we read a "text" (defined broadly) for entertainment while also understanding it on different levels? We will learn to evaluate the author's goals, lay out her techniques, and determine the possible impacts of each technique.
Learn to relate sci-fi to its context. One form of contextual study pertains to the creation of the work -- what is the author's background, what were the societal questions and values of the time, etc. How is the work a product of its time period? A second form of contextual study involves the reception and impact of the work -- how was it disseminated, how does it allow different readers to inject their own messages into it, etc.

OK, that is enough. Let's get to the good stuff!

The syllabus for our course is at: http://projects.olin.edu/ahs/scifi/SciFiSyllabus2006.pdf

The assignments description is at: http://projects.olin.edu/ahs/scifi/SciFiAssignments2006.pdf

Are you interested in ContextualPresentations? If so, visit that page!

Have outside of class ReadingRecommendations? Peruse or leave your own short stories and novels we didn't get to, but you think might be interesting for people to read on their own.

Post your AwesomeStories here and achieve some well-deserved recognition.

This class will be offered again, so ScifiStudentFeedback would be very helpful in making it even better!

To fly to the AHS WIKI where you can read about other courses, AHS policies, and more, please click merrily on http://ahs.olin.edu/ahswiki/

Random Link Of The Day: http://www.trekpassions.com , the "100% Free Dating & Personals Service for Singles into Sci-Fi"

WIKI TECHNICAL INFORMATION:

What is this wiki about?

Interesting starting points:

RecentChanges: see where people are currently working
WikiSandBox: feel free to change this page and experiment with editing
FindPage: search or browse the database in various ways
SyntaxReference: quick access to wiki syntax
SiteNavigation: get an overview over this site and what it contains

How to use this site

A Wiki is a collaborative site, anyone can contribute and share:

Edit any page by pressing Edit at the top or the bottom of the page
Create a link to another page with joined capitalized words (like WikiSandBox) or with ["quoted words in brackets"]
Search for page titles or text within pages using the search box at the top of any page
See HelpForBeginners to get you going, HelpContents for all help pages.

To learn more about what a WikiWikiWeb is, read about WhyWikiWorks and the WikiNature. Also, consult the WikiWikiWebFaq.