Schedule of readings:
Assigned readings should be completed before the scheduled date. Most assigned readings not included in the books ordered for the class are available as pdf files on the “Files” page of the Canvas site for the class (see the left margin of the Canvas front page for the “Files” link). Alternately, some short works are available online, at the links in the schedule of readings below. Suggested readings are not required but are instead provided as extra reading on topics that will be touched on in class; I will usually refer to those readings, but I will not assume that students have already read the suggested works.
Week 1.
January 6: Introduction: Genre theory
Darko Suvin, chapters 1 and 4, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction
Fredric Brown, “Preposterous”
Arthur C. Clarke, “Reunion”
Suggested only: Samuel R. Delany, “About 5750 Words”
January 8: Defining posthumanism: Technology, cybernetics, and embodiment
Veronica Hollinger, “Historicizing Posthumanism”
N. Katherine Hayles, “Toward Embodied Virtuality,” chapter 1 in How We Became Posthuman
N. Katherine Hayles, “The Semiotics of Virtuality: Mapping the Posthuman,” pages 147-151, in chapter 10 of How We Became Posthuman
N. Katherine Hayles, “Conclusion” to How We Became Posthuman
Elly Bangs, “Bespoke”
Suggested: Hans Moravec, excerpt from Mind Children
Week 2. Defining posthumanism: Ecocriticism, new materialisms, and more-than-human worlds
January 13: Alan Moore, et al., The Saga of Swamp Thing, vol. 1
Cary Wolfe, “Introduction: What Is Posthumanism?”
Rosi Braidotti, “A Theoretical Framework for the Critical Posthumanities”
Octavia Cade, “The History of a Coral Future”
Vandana Singh, “Indra’s Web”
Suggested: N. Katherine Hayles, “The Second Wave of Cybernetics: From Reflexivity to Self-Organization,” chapter 6, in How We Became Posthuman
Suggested: Ernest Callenbach, excerpts from Ecotopia
January 15: Speculative Aesthetics and Traditions of Body Modification
H.G. Wells, “The Limits of Individual Plasticity”
Steven Shaviro, “Thinking Like a Philosopher”
Clifford Simak, “Desertion”
James Blish, “Watershed”
Malka Older, “Sturdy Lantern and Ladders”
Suggested: Ted Chiang, “Story of Your Life”
Suggested: Sherryl Vint, “Speculative Fiction,” in After the Human
Suggested: Jayna Brown, “Being Cellular: Race, the Inhuman, and the Plasticity of Life”
Week 3. AI
January 20: no class
January 22: Alan Turing, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence”
John Searle, “Can Computers Think?”
Rodney Brooks, “Intelligence without Representation”
N. Katherine Hayles, “Prologue” to How We Became Posthuman
N. Katherine Hayles, “Transforming How We See the World,” from Unthought: The Power of the Cognitive Nonconscious (pages 1-5)
Ken Liu, “The Algorithms for Love,” available online at http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/the-algorithms-for-love/
Greg Egan, “Learning to Be Me”
Drew Hayden Taylor, “I Am . . . Am I”
Suggested: Isaac Asimov, “Evidence”
Week 4. Feminist speculative fiction and posthumanism
January 27: Rachel Swirsky, “Eros, Philia, Agape”
S.L. Huang, “Murder by Pixel: Crime and Responsibility in the Digital Darkness”
C.L. Moore, “No Woman Born”
Judith Merril, “That Only a Mother”
Suggested: Donna Haraway, “A Manifesto for Cyborgs”
Suggested: James M. Tiptree (Alice Sheldon), “The Girl Who Was Plugged In”
January 29: MKRNYILGLD, “The CRISPR Cookbook: A Guide to Biohacking Your Own Abortion in a Post-Roe World”
Izzy Wasserstein, “Syndical Organization in Revolutionary Transition”
Eugie Foster, “Whatever Skin You Wear”
Nisi Shawl, “Maggies”
Chelsea Vowel, “Aniskohocikan”
Suggested: Karen Tallbear, “An Indigenous Reflection on Working Beyond the Human/Not Human,” pages 230-235 in Munoz, et al., "Dossier: Theorizing Queer Inhumanisms"
Suggested: Patricia Melzer, “Introduction: Science Fiction’s Alien Constructions”
Week 5. Cyberpunk
February 3: William Gibson, Neuromancer
Bruce Sterling, “Preface” to Mirrorshades
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, excerpt from The Epistemology of the Closet
Suggested: Isiah Lavender III, “Technological Derived Ethnicities”
Suggested: Rudy Rucker, “Soft Death”
February 5: Gibson, Neuromancer
Suggested: N. Katherine Hayles, “Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers,” chapter 2 in How We Became Posthuman
Suggested: Graham Murphy and Sherryl Vint, “Introduction” to Beyond Cyberpunk
Suggested: Pat Cadigan, “Pretty Boy Crossover”
Suggested: Bruce Sterling, “Maneki Neko”
Week 6. Black SF and cyberpunk
February 10: Samuel R. Delany, Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand
Mark C. Jerng, “Introduction” to Racial Worldmaking
Zakkiyah Iman Jackson, “Outer Worlds: The Persistence of Race in the Movement ‘Beyond the Human’,” pages 215-218 in Munoz, et al., "Dossier: Theorizing Queer Inhumanisms"
Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces”
February 12: Delany, Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand
Mark Minch-De Leon, “Race and the Limitations of ‘the Human,’” in Vint, After the Human
Suggested: Katherine McKittrick, “Demonic Grounds: Sylvia Wynter”
Week 7.
February 17: No class
February 19: Delany, Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand
Suggested: Kodwo Eshun, “Further Considerations on Afrofuturism,” available online at: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/48294
Suggested: Nalo Hopkinson, “Report from Planet Midnight”
Week 8.
February 24: Octavia Butler, Dawn
Zakkiyah Iman Jackson, “On Becoming Human: An Introduction”
Suggested: Aliette de Bodard, “The Waiting Stars,” available online at https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/debodard_06_17_reprint/
February 26: Butler, Dawn
Suggested: Eva Cherniavsky, “After Bourgeois Nationalism”
Suggested: Octavia Butler, “Bloodchild”
Suggested: Victor Lavalle, “Up from Slavery”
Week 9. Postcyberpunk
March 3: Cameron Reed, The Fortunate Fall
Susan Stryker, “Transing the Queer (In)Human,” pages 227-230 in Munoz, et al., "Dossier: Theorizing Queer Inhumanisms"
Suggested: Raphael Carter, “The Congenital Agenesis of Gender Ideation”
March 5: Reed, The Fortunate Fall
N. Katherine Hayles, “The Materiality of Informatics,” chapter 8 in How We Became Posthuman
Suggested: Elizabeth Grosz, “Introduction” to The Incorporeal
Week 10.
March 10: Ted Chiang, “The Lifecycle of Software Objects,” in Exhalation
Ken Liu, “Simulacrum”
Suggested: Lisa Nakamura, “Cyberrace”
Suggested: Michelle N. Huang, “The Posthuman Subject In/Of Asian American Literature,” available online at
March 12: Charles Stross, Accelerando, Part 1, “Slow Take-Off”
Suggested: Vernor Vinge, “The Coming Technological Singularity,” available online at https://edoras.sdsu.edu/~vinge/misc/singularity.html