ENGL 176 - Introduction to Science Fiction Literature

Credits: 5
Encourages students to engage critically with the imaginative and speculative nature of science fiction while fostering an appreciation for and understanding of the genre’s diverse and significant contributions to literature. Students will explore and analyze various science fiction texts through a multitude of literary lenses and frameworks, with close attention paid to how cultural, historical, and political themes are manifested in the text as well as how said texts explore issues related to race, gender, equity, environmentalism, technology, utopias/dystopias, and imbalanced power structures. Students will synthesize their engagement with course content through discussion, written work, research projects, and/or responses composed using other modalities.

Enrollment Requirement: Eligibile for ENGL 99 - Introductory Composition; or instructor permission.

Satisfies Requirement: Humanities/Fine Arts/English
Course Outcomes:
Students who successfully complete this class will be able to:

Identify literary elements and forms in various texts within the genre of science fiction.
Utilize multiple literary critical frameworks and paradigms to analyze science fiction texts.
Identify major literary movements, significant authors, and important sub-genres within the science fiction literature canon.
Identify how issues related to race, gender, religion, environmentalism, equity, and power structures influence the ways science fiction texts are written and read.
Be able to discuss how historical, technological, and cultural developments have influenced science fiction literature.
Develop critical commentary of science fiction texts through participation in class discussion and formal written and multimodal assignments.
Develop critical commentary of science fiction texts through research.

Program Outcomes
Students will demonstrate college-level reading skills by summarizing, analyzing, interpreting, synthesizing, and evaluating college texts; and develop an awareness of the approaches writers use for different audiences, genres, and rhetorical situations.

College-wide Outcomes

Critical Thinking - Critical thinking finds expression in all disciplines and everyday life. It is characterized by an ability to reflect upon thinking patterns, including the role of emotions on thoughts, and to rigorously assess the quality of thought through its work products. Critical thinkers routinely evaluate thinking processes and alter them, as necessary, to facilitate an improvement in their thinking and potentially foster certain dispositions or intellectual traits over time.
Diversity and Equity - In order to advance equity and social justice, students will be able to examine their own and others’ identities, behaviors, and/or cultural perspectives as they connect to power, privilege, and/or resistance.
Responsibility - Responsibility encompasses those behaviors and dispositions necessary for students to be effective members of a community. This outcome is designed to help students recognize the value of a commitment to those responsibilities which will enable them to work successfully individually and with others.
Written Communication - Written Communication encompasses all the abilities necessary for effective expression of thoughts, feelings, and ideas in written form.