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Making Worlds

By Making Worlds

Science Fictions of Octavia Butler

Professor Chi-ming Yang | Univ. of Pennsylvania

ENGL 2501.401, also offered as: AFRC 2501/GSWS 2501

 

This course covers key novels, short stories, and essays by the great African American science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler, with a focus on her experiments with genre and gender-bending shape-shifters. Across texts that span her entire career, from the 1960s to 2006, Butler pursued the themes of time travel, slavery, biotechnology, ecological catastrophe, and urban survival. Novels will include selections from her Patternist, Xenogenesis, and Parable series, as well as the neo-slave narrative Kindred, the graphic novel Kindred, and her vampire novel Fledgling. Texts will be situated within the scholarly fields of Afrofuturism, Black speculative fiction, Black feminisms, animal studies, and climate fiction.

 

Below is a list of required readings. 

bookcover for Parable of the Sower

Parable of the Sower

Octavia E. Butler 

$19.99

$18.59

bookcover for Fledgling

Fledgling

Octavia E. Butler 

$18.99

$17.66

bookcover for Dawn

Dawn

Octavia E. Butler 

$18.99

$17.66

bookcover for Kindred (Anniversary)

Kindred (Anniversary)

Octavia Butler 

$17.00

$14.89

bookcover for Patternmaster

Patternmaster

Octavia E. Butler 

$17.99

$16.73

bookcover for Clay's Ark

Clay's Ark

Octavia E. Butler 

$17.99

$16.73

bookcover for Mind of My Mind

Mind of My Mind

Octavia E. Butler 

$17.99

$16.73

bookcover for Wild Seed

Wild Seed

Octavia E. Butler 

$18.99

$17.66

Science Fiction and Octavia Butler, English (cross-listed with: Africana Studies and Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies)