{"id":1164,"date":"2016-02-11T17:16:44","date_gmt":"2016-02-11T15:16:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=1164"},"modified":"2016-02-11T17:16:44","modified_gmt":"2016-02-11T15:16:44","slug":"the-road-to-legitimation-ii-teaching-sf-within-english-studies-in-spain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2016\/02\/11\/the-road-to-legitimation-ii-teaching-sf-within-english-studies-in-spain\/","title":{"rendered":"THE ROAD TO LEGITIMATION (II): TEACHING SF WITHIN ENGLISH STUDIES IN SPAIN <\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

As part of the work I\u2019m doing to write my current work-in-progress, the article \u201cScience Fiction in the Spanish University: The Boundaries that Need to be Broken\u201d, I have sent a message to the very active e-mail list of AEDEAN (the Asociaci\u00f3n Espa\u00f1ola de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos, www.aedean.org). In this message I have asked my colleagues in the field of English Studies in Spain who has taught SF and who has published on this genre. <\/p>\n

I think that building a consistent bibliography is something I will have to postpone to another moment but, in the meantime, I\u2019ll comment here on the answers received regarding the teaching of SF in the English Departments of Spain. I have also asked a number of Spanish colleagues working in Departments of Spanish, Literary Theory and Humanities about their activities concerning SF, with the added problem that there is not a comprehensive list similar to the one that we, AEDEAN members, use (and enjoy!).<\/p>\n

AEDEAN is quite a big association, with more than 1,000 members. Yet, I have received messages only from 9 (there are at least a dozen other members, as I know, who have produced doctoral dissertations and publications on SF but they have not contacted me, surely for lack of time). Of these 9 specialists, only 6 offer details of their teaching. I\u2019m summarising these details here, as these colleagues have also emailed me syllabi which I have decided not to attach to this post for the sake of brevity.<\/p>\n

Juanjo Bermudez de Castro, a part-time associate teacher at the Universidad Aut\u00f3noma de Madrid (Department of English) and the Universidad Polit\u00e9cnica de Madrid (Linguistics), teaches at UPM an SF course addressed to students of Engineering (Electronics, Chemistry, Electricity, Mechanics, Industrial Design). If I understand Juanjo correctly, he actually teaches English language but uses the course as an excuse to teach SF which, he tells me, students love. He uses El Hombre Ilustrado<\/em> by Ray Bradbury, the films Moon<\/em>, Blade Runner<\/em>, and I Robot<\/em>, the TV series Black Mirror<\/em>, etc.<\/p>\n

Pere Gallardo, now of Universitat Rovira i Virgili, formerly of the Universitat de Lleida is, no doubt the most experienced teacher of SF within English Studies in Spain. He taught \u2018Narrativa Ut\u00f2pica\u2019 within \u2018Filologia Anglesa\u2019 between 1995-1996 and 2000-1, and is now teaching \u2018Literatura i Societat\u2019 (since 2013-14) within the new degree in \u2018English\u2019. Pere has also taught a long list of seminars and tutored a long list of TFGs. However, he no longer teaches SF at MA level nor does he supervise any doctoral dissertations because the programmes at URV within which he used to do so have been suppressed. I had the chance to share with him back in 2009-2010 the course \u201cScience Fiction and the Concept of Change\u201d within the MA \u2018Cultural Studies in English: Texts and Contexts\u2019, for which I am infinitely grateful. Pere names no particular authors or texts because, as he tells me, the list is too extensive\u2026<\/p>\n

Alberto L\u00e1zaro, of the Universidad de Alcal\u00e1, tells me that he has used texts by the SF author he knows best as a researcher, H.G. Wells, in the third year survey course \u2018British Fiction\u2019. The module on the Victorian novel includes segments from The Time Machine<\/em>. The syllabus also includes in the contemporary fiction module a section called \u2018Trends towards fantasy: science fiction, the heroic fantasy and the horror story\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u00c1ngel Mateos Aparicio, of the Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha in Ciudad Real, is currently teaching a fourth-year elective, \u2018Literatura Anglonorteamericana y Canon\u2019. The course is divided in two parts: detective fiction and SF. \u00c1ngel tells me that this is so in case students don\u2019t like SF or have no experience of the genre, as it is common. His reading list includes: Isaac Asimov\u2019s On Science Fiction<\/em> (extracts), Brian Aldiss\u2019s \u201cOut of the Gothic\u201d from Trillion Year Spree<\/em>, John W. Campbell\u2019s \u201cWho Goes There?\u201d, Byron Haskin\u2019s film The War of the Worlds<\/em>, Ray Bradbury\u2019s \u201cThe Pedestrian\u201d, Philip K. Dick\u2019s \u201cImpostor\u201d and \u201cAdjustment Team\u201d, William Gibson\u2019s \u201cThe Gernsback Continuum\u201d and \u201cRed Star, Winter Orbit\u201d and, finally, Andy and Larry Wachowsky\u2019s Matrix<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Bill Phillips of the Universitat de Barcelona tells me that his course \u2018Literatura i Conflicte\u2019 (2011-14) included Robert Heinlein\u2019s Starship Troopers<\/em>. He claims that (I translate) \u201cConsidering the interest the students showed and the debates inspired by the novel, this is the most productive text I have ever taught\u201d. Apparently, students were also interested in Sheri Tepper\u2019s The Gate to Women’s Country<\/em> (taught 2012-13) but found Ursula K. Leguin\u2019s The Dispossessed<\/em> (taught 2014) boring\u2026 Bill mentions that Mary Shelley\u2019s Frankenstein<\/em> used to be part of the syllabus for \u2018Literatures en angl\u00e8s del ss XVIII i XIX\u2019. Bill\u2019s colleague Prof. Jackie Hurtley seems to have taught perhaps as early as the 1980s a course on utopia.<\/p>\n

Juan Antonio Prieto of the Universidad de Sevilla has emailed me the syllabus corresponding to the courses he used to teach, in English: \u201cH\u00e9roes y monstruos en la literatura y en el cine de ciencia-ficci\u00f3n norteamericanos\u201d (doctoral course 2007-8, 2008-9, with a second renewed edition in 2009-10), and \u201cNarrativas apocal\u00edpticas en la ciencia-ficci\u00f3n norteamericana\u201d (MA course, 2012-13). Regrettably a recent reform has eliminated this course. <\/p>\n

Juan Antonio Su\u00e1rez, of the Universidad de Murcia, pioneered the introduction of cyberpunk with the doctoral course \u201cPostmodern Aesthetics and Society: Cyberpunk Fiction\u201d (1996-7). His \u2018Licenciatura\u2018 survey course on contemporary American Literature included William Gibson\u2019s \u201cJohnny Mnemmonic\u201d. He tells me that after years of not including SF in his teaching he has re-introduced the genre in his syllabus as a \u201csymptom of the progression of the digital\u201d (my translation). He uses one week to lecture on literature and computers: computer-generated literature, computer-mediated literature and literature about the digital environment.<\/p>\n

Finally, myself. My \u2018Licenciatura\u2019 elective on short fiction, \u2018Narrativa Curta\u2019 2005-6, was divided between Gothic and SF\u2013I included in it Asimov\u2019s \u201cThe Bicentennial Man\u201d and tales from I, Robot<\/em>, also Dick\u2019s \u201cMinority Report\u201d. In the same academic year I taught the doctoral seminar \u201cEnemy Alien, Alien Enemy: Wars in Science Fiction and Film\u201d which included Wells\u2019s War of the Worlds<\/em>, Heinlein\u2019s Starship Troopers<\/em> and Joe Haldeman\u2019s Forever War<\/em>. I\u2019m now teaching (2015-16) a third\/fourth year elective, \u2018Prosa Anglesa: Considering SF as a Genre\u2019 with an ambitious reading list composed of Ursula Le Guin\u2019s The Left Hand of Darkness<\/em>, Orson Scott Card\u2019s Ender\u2019s Game<\/em>, William Gibson\u2019s Neuromancer<\/em>, Octavia Butler\u2019s Dawn<\/em> and Richard Morgan\u2019s Altered Carbon<\/em>. Perhaps for the first and the last time, depending how the transformation of the four-year BAs into three-year BAs progresses.<\/p>\n

What conclusions can we draw? Obviously, the position of SF is extremely fragile within English Studies in Spain despite the enormous importance of this genre for anglophone culture. If my information is correct and complete, I can safely say that only Pere Gallardo seems in a position to teach SF regularly, albeit limited to BA courses and not even using a label that clearly announces the contents of his course. This is typical. \u00c1ngel Mateos Aparicio\u2019s decision to split his course into detective fiction and SF, and my own decision to split \u2018Narrativa curta\u2019 between Gothic and SF is also symptomatic of a peculiar situation: our students, as I have found out first hand, are not SF readers. This is a classic paradox of the English Departments in Spain: what is very popular among Anglophone individuals is often totally unknown for teachers and students. The name \u2018Terry Pratchett\u2019 for instance rings hardly any bells.<\/p>\n

I believe that we will eventually find an audience though perhaps this will require using still for a long time to come other labels under which to teach SF. This will never be a case of students demanding to be taught SF (as they ask me to be taught Harry Potter<\/em>). Perhaps, paradoxically, the teacher best positioned to reach a wide readership interested in SF is Juanjo Berm\u00fadez, the colleague who teaches the future Engineers at UPM. <\/p>\n

I hope this post is not read as a lament for what is not happening but as a call to do more for SF in English Studies within Spain\u2026 Why? Very simple: because this is a genre that matters enormously in the culture we teach and do research on. And because no other literary genre is as well-equipped to understand not just our future, but, mainly, our present.<\/p>\n

Comments are very welcome! (Thanks!) Just remember that I check them for spam; it might take a few days for yours to be available. Follow on Twitter the blog updates: @SaraMartinUAB. You may download the yearly volumes from http:\/\/ddd.uab.cat\/record\/116328. See my publications and activities on my personal web http:\/\/gent.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/
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As part of the work I\u2019m doing to write my current work-in-progress, the article \u201cScience Fiction in the Spanish University: The Boundaries that Need to be Broken\u201d, I have sent a message to the very active e-mail list of AEDEAN (the Asociaci\u00f3n Espa\u00f1ola de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos, www.aedean.org). In this message I have asked my colleagues […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[408],"class_list":["post-1164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-fiction","tag-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}