This is the course description and syllabus for WRS 106 - To Boldly Go. This is a course I taught in Spring 2023.

Course Description

Speculative Fiction (or, Science Fiction) engages our ever-shifting individual, social, and philosophical presuppositions and asks us to reflect on how and why we throw ourselves into alternative futures and realities. Although these narratives may document and dramatize a future, these narratives are always directed from a contemporary moment. These futures speak to our presents. In Writing Studies 106, we will “boldly” embrace, grapple with, and critically reflect upon speculative futures—found in film, television, and short stories—that challenge our sensibilities, dispositions, and outlooks. In our discussions and writings, we will consider the political representations of race, sexuality, gender, power, and space and ask how speculative fictions invite us to critically destabilize these naturalized terms. “To Boldly Go” asks students to engage with a litany of transnational, transmedia, and interdisciplinary cultural productions to develop a more rigorous and textured analytical and reflexive writing practice. This course offers students a chance to become more sophisticated readers/viewers/listeners and writers through deep, critical engagement with 20th and 21st century representations of speculative futures.