Samuel Delany: Sexuality and Science Fiction
There are few living writers as serious or prolific as Samuel Delany. With nearly forty books in print, he is known most prominently as a science fiction writer. A sexual radical who has transformed the boundaries of gay sex and sociality, race, and utopia in his fiction, Delany has also created an immense catalog of nonfiction writing and criticism. The latter work, always avoidant of oversimplifications, contains meditations on cruising and social life before and after the Times Square Renovation Project, reflections on his marriage and parenting with the poet Marilyn Hacker, the changing states of genre and gender through the 20th century, ruminations on teaching, Sigmund Freud and Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, poststructuralism, capital, discourse and writing, as well as cultural and literary criticism in general. Delany has much to offer any reader curious enough to linger beyond the limits formal expectation. We might take a cue from his novel Trouble on Triton and describe the complexity and breadth of Delany’s thought as a kind of ambiguous heterotopia in itself.
In this course we will read Samuel Delany primarily as a writer and thinker whose scope has never been limited by genre or provincialism. We’ll start with Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, his classic account of the commercialization of Times Square (and what was lost with its sanitization), before turning to the novel Trouble on Triton: an Ambiguous Heterotopia, Delany’s “response” to Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, which follows the sexual follies of the space-traveling ex-prostitute Bron Helstrom. Along the way, we’ll consider, with Delany, questions of queer life and utopia, subjunctive mood, literature and materialism, as well as the distinction between choosing a set of philosophical positions and an enduring struggle of thought.
Course Schedule
Tuesday, 6:30-9:30pm ETSeptember 02 — September 23, 2025
4 weeks
$335.00
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