All Reading and Composition courses must be taken for a letter grade in order to fulfill this requirement for the Bachelor’s Degree. This course satisfies the first half or the “A” portion of the Reading and Composition requirement.

This course fulfills the second part of the Reading and Composition requirement. We will continue to work on writing analytical, argumentative papers but with an added emphasis on research, both doing research – from generating research topics to locating and evaluating sources – and writing research papers which will integrate and correctly cite sources in support of your own original and provocative claims.

Our subject for this fall is science fiction, particularly science fiction television serials (SFTS). Broadly speaking, science fiction allows for the indirect exploration of contemporary concerns by projecting its narratives upon a time and place that does not (yet) exist. Like the Star Trek’s holodeck, SFTS are particularly well suited for the repeated projection of alternate versions of reality, so that we may work out some of our concerns within safe and rebootable parameters. Indeed, the very format of the serial allows for subjects such as posthumanism, colonialism, and biopolitics, to be visited and revisited on a continual basis for an extended period of time. This process of repetition inherent in TV serials not only creates worlds, but also allows the possibility of undermining them, an important quality for a genre that constantly calls attention to its own constructed nature, and continually incorporates elements of other genres in its own world-making process.

In this course, we will be focusing on films and television series that take place in space or have significant elements of space travel: Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Firefly and Farscape. This specific transitional setting invites particular concerns and themes: what are the ethics of exploration? What counts as a “person” in a universe of cyborgs and unknown creatures? How do we face the unknown, and what does that say about our very own humanity? We will be paying close attention to the visual codes SFTS uses to engage with such questions. Of particular interest to us is the influence of opera, and its melodramatic mode, on Battlestar Galactica, as well as the influence of spaghetti westerns on Firefly and Farscape.

Required Text

The Craft of Research, 3^rd edition. Excerpts will be made available through bCourses.

Course Reader from Instant Copying & Laser, at 2138 University Ave. The reader will include articles from Susan Sontag, Tzvetan Todorov, Vivian Sobchack, J.P. Telotte, and many more.

Prerequisites: Successful completion of the “A” portion of the Reading & Composition requirement or its equivalent. Students may not enroll in nor attend R1B/R5B courses without completing this prerequisite