Online Coursework, Here We Come!
I’ve received official word that classes at Bemidji State University will switch over to remote learning for an undefined amount of time starting on Friday (3/20). I’d assuming this was going to happen when I talked about this stuff a few days ago, so it wasn’t a surprise. And that means all my little preparations […]
The Space Opera Project Continues!
Some of you may recall that I began a database project last year containing space opera novels by women. To date, the list includes nearly 700 novels in the space opera genre. This has come through a combination of my own knowledge and the knowledge of the science fiction community, who have suggested numerous works […]
Academia During a Pandemic: Hunker Down Philosophy 1B
Almost as soon as I released yesterday’s post on things I’m planning to do in order to survive this pandemic we find ourselves in, things got made real at my university: classes have been cancelled entirely until March 30th. This presents some real challenges. For one, it looks like we’re going to lose two full […]
Academia During a Pandemic: Hunker Down Philosophy 1A
COVID-19 is upon us in the good old United States of America. Like many totally great countries, we are really prepared for a global pandemic involving a virus for which there is no direct treatment and which kills vulnerable populations a tad too easily. We’re super prepared. Mega prepared. So prepared it’s like this country […]
On Space Opera: The Heart of Genre, Forgotten by Scholars
A few years ago, I taught an upper division literature course on American space opera. There were a couple reasons I chose that angle over many other possible science fiction topics I could have taught: It gave me an excuse to teach Ann Leckie, Tobias S. Buckell, and Star Wars. The course was marked as “American […]
On the “Right” Kind of Reviews
One of the things that often bothers me about the reviewing process is the idea that some reviews are inherently more valuable than others. By this, I don’t mean in the sense of the quality of the writing itself; after all, some reviews really are nothing more than a quick “I liked it” or are […]