Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Monday, June 29, 2015

Teaching, Octavia Butler

I'll be teaching Kindred in "What Is Compelling?" today. My lecture centers on the literal and the figural in the novel, opening onto the larger theme of the surviving-woman as against the more conventionally sfnal "efficacious-man" in Butler's work. The lecture only takes us about halfway through our three hours -- I plan to open the floor to student discussion in order to allow the richness of the novel to have its play. This is a bit risky this late in the term -- if they haven't read the material the talk will go dead pretty quickly, I'm counting on the quality of the novel to have grabbed them through to the end however busy they were otherwise. We shall see.

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