SciFi, Sex and Race

Catalog description

While science fiction forces us to see what is familiar in new and surprising ways, imagining the unfamiliar also builds upon the familiar. This makes sci-fi a good ‘venue’ to study the widespread assumptions about human nature in different settings. This course interrogates how we negotiate these basic human categories through various science fiction films and theoretical essays. Reflection on these topics will hopefully provoke fascinating and difficult philosophical questions about the nature of reality, the limits of human knowledge, the notions of personal (racial, ethnic, sexual) identity, and the nature and foundations of universality of these categories.