Online via Zoom or InSpace

Dates: 6 Alternating Tuesdays: June 11, June 25, July 16, July 30, Aug 13, Aug 27, 2024
Time: 7-8:30 pm EST
Admission: $100 Patreon Members / $105 General Admission

PLEASE NOTE: All classes will also be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time.

“Read every day and learn from what you read.”
–Octavia Butler, Bloodchild and Other Stories

After federal suspect Jeffrey Epstein died in his cell at NYC’s Metropolitan Correction Center in 2019, the New York Times reported on his connection to leading scientists. Charged with sex trafficking minors, Epstein had also planned to impregnate up to 20 women at a time at his ranch in New Mexico and financed the World Transhumanist Association, now known as Humanity+. Transhumanists believe that technology will transform some humans into superior, immortal beings. The belief that science may make people superhuman has a long prehistory that coincides with the eugenics movement. Once repudiated as ableist and racist, eugenics has reemerged under the term liberal eugenics, which touts the possibility of longevity (even immortality) and curing human ailments.

In this bi-weekly reading group, we will read and reflect on two authors of color who complicate liberal transhumanism’s narrative of scientific progress. Octavia Butler’s short story “Bloodchild” (1995) and novel Dawn (1987) tell the story of an alien race that makes genetic trades with new worlds, forming symbiotic relationships that transform both species. Kazuo Ishiguro’s recent novel Klara and the Sun (2021) takes place in a dystopian future where children are genetically modified (with potentially debilitating side effects) or ostracized from mainstream society.

These texts allow us to question: How should we feel about a future where humans can be created and gestated outside the womb? How might producing designer children impact equality and social justice in society? Genetic editing of embryos is already happening, and nurturing human fetuses outside the uterus may soon become possible. In 2021, scientists reported growing mouse embryos in rotating glass vials; their results were nearly identical to mice produced in-utero.

Dr. Nielsen most recently hosted a reading group on “Frankenstein, Race, and Technology.” This newest book club builds on that session’s discussions about transhumanism and its implications for racial, gender equality into the 20th century. Like Shelley, Butler and Ishiguro invite readers to empathize with new life forms and ponder what comes afterthe singularity. However, no previous knowledge of Frankenstein or other texts is required, and participants may read as much or as little of the material below as they choose.

Week 1: Bloodchild and Octavia Butler’s Cultural Relevance
The late, great SciFi author Octavia Butler predicted the way that crises related to climate change might unfold (Parable of the Sower, subject of a recent opera) and imagined a descendant of an enslaved person traveling through time to experience their ancestor’s pain (Kindred, now a television series). We will view videos featuring Butler, discuss the issue of male pregnancy in “Bloodchild” (a short story from a collection of the same name), and debate the meaning of its “Afterword.” The pdf of “Bloodchild” will be made available to participants.

Week 2: First Half of Dawn
We read and discuss the first half of Octavia Butler’s novel Dawn, part of a trilogy marketed as Lilith’s Brood but more commonly known the Xenogenesis trilogy. Dawn is told from the POV of Lilith Iyapo, who awakens on an Oankali ship after a nuclear war obliterates earth. Unlike other survivors, Lilith tolerates the Oankalis’ alien differences: tentacles and sexual intercourse among three genders (male, female, and Ooloi).

Week 3: Second Half of Dawn
We discuss the end of Butler’s intriguing novel, which raises many questions. What’s the nature of the human? At what point are organisms no longer human, and why does that matter? Does altering the human species beyond recognition signify its obliteration or a new beginning?

Week 4: Transhumanism Today
After the halfway point, the group examines recent scholarly essays about transhumanism, including voices in favor of biohacking and gene editing and those who critique the movement to change humans through science and technology.

Week 5: First Half of Klara and the Sun
Many readers know Kazuo Ishiguro for Remains of the Day (1989) and Never Let Me Go (2005), which have been adapted into film. Klara and the Sun shares these novels’ sensitivity to the perspective of the subservient outsider. The narrative is told through the POV of the Artificial Friend Klara. She serves as a companion to 14-year-old Josie, who has been physically damaged by genetic modification.

Week 6: Second Half of Klara and the Sun
In this last session, we can discuss the novel’s end and make some comparisons. Who offers the most useful perspective for contemplating the changing nature of the human, Butler or Ishiguro? Whose views do you feel most drawn to? To what extent does identity—racial, gender, religious, etc.—determine how we approach transhumanism?

Wendy C. Nielsen, Ph.D. became a Professor of English at Montclair State University because she loves learning. Although Wendy teaches science fiction, comparative literature, and Medical Humanities in New Jersey, in her free time at home in Brooklyn, she is also a student herself (of Pilates, Buddhism, Tai Chi, cat care, and Narrative Medicine). Her scholarly research has focused on the recurrence of popular figures in Western cultural history. Women Warriors in Romantic Drama (University of Delaware Press, 2012) explored female assassins, soldiers, and feminists associated with the French Revolution such as Charlotte Corday and Olympe de Gouges. Motherless Creations: Fictions of Artificial Life, 1650-1890 (Routledge, 2022, out in paperback in Dec. 2023) examines Pygmalion’s statue, Frankenstein’s creature, homunculi, automata, androids, golems, and steam men as part of the literary genealogy of transhumanism in American, British, French, and German literature. Wendy has also written on Boadicea, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Elizabeth Inchbald, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in leading academic journals. Her current research project addresses the impact of race on narratives about healing, how constructed communities function in women writers’ illness narratives, and why humans seek to blame people when they become ill.

 Image: Free Stock photos by Vecteezy<