The Octavia Butler Mixtape Syllabus: Part IV
Blood, Boundaries, and Becoming
Description:
This final installment of The Butler Mixtape immerses us in Octavia E. Butler’s late and mid-career explorations of power, intimacy, and the price of survival. We will read Fledgling (2005), Butler’s haunting reimagining of vampire mythology that interrogates race, consent, and belonging through the eyes of Shori, a genetically modified, amnesiac girl whose existence destabilizes her entire species. Alongside Fledgling, we will study Bloodchild and Other Stories, a collection that blurs the lines between love and domination, dependence and autonomy, science fiction and autobiography.
Through close reading, archival materials, and collective reflection, we will ask: What does it mean to build a life inside systems that consume you? How does Butler’s speculative work complicate ideas of consent, kinship, and the ethics of care? What new futures open up when we refuse to look away from the entanglements of pleasure and exploitation? How might the world change with STEM-led projects by women?
Texts:
· Fledgling (2005)
· Bloodchild and Other Stories (1995, revised 2005)
Course Sequence:
**Please note that we are reading Fledgling over 3 weeks because the print is much smaller than the other texts we’ve read.
July 23rd—No class
July 30th—Fledgling (p.1-104, or complete chapter 10)
August 6th—Fledgling (p.105-205, or complete chapter 19)
August 13th—Fledgling (p.207-310, or complete the book)
August 20th—Short stories: “Bloodchild” (1984) and “The Evening and the Morning and the Night” (1987)
August 27th—No class
September 3rd—Short stories: “Near of Kin” (1979) “Speech Sounds” (1983) and “Crossover” (1971)
September 10th—Short stories: “Amnesty” (2003) and “The Book of Martha” (2003)
September 17th—Essays: Positive Obsession (1989) and Furior Scribendi (1993)