Pedagogy Oct 2019

Locating Empathy

Emily Hall

Abstract

This article explores how to use science fiction, particularly texts centered on android protagonists, to open up discussions of marginalization, race, and oppression in the introductory literature classroom. In response to the hateful rhetoric directed toward asylum seekers, this author developed an entire course around personhood and rights. She first examines how, in particular sci-fi works, paranoia and prejudice compel citizens to delineate between kinds of personhood. She then illuminates how students were invited to make parallels between the othering that the androids endure and historical and present-day examples of human rights abuses. After a semester of examining and debating these issues, students selected an android or robot in a television show, film, or video game of their choice and first assessed how the android’s personhood was delimited by human and then articulated why humans placed these boundaries on the android. Throughout the article, the author explains the kinds of texts she used for the course, the assignment students were tasked with, and how the course broached other issues of power dynamics, such as consent and disability rights.

Journal
Pedagogy
Published
2019-10-01
DOI
10.1215/15314200-7615570
Open Access
Closed
Topics
race and writing disability studies

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (0)

No articles in this index cite this work.

Cites in this index (0)

No references match articles in this index.

Also cites 4 works outside this index ↓
  1. Baron-Kriese (1993)
    Exploring Divergent Realities: Using Science Fiction to Teach Introductory Political Science
    Extrapolation  ↗
  2. Berne (2005)
    Teaching Societal and Ethical Implications of Nanotechnology to Engineering Students thro…
    Bulletin of Science, Technology, and Society  ↗
  3. Kakoudaki (2014)
    Anatomy of a Robot: Literature, Cinema, and the Cultural Work of Artificial People
     ↗
  4. Wosk (2015)
    My Fair Ladies: Female Robots, Androids, and Other Artificial Eves
     ↗
CrossRef global citation count: 2 View in citation network →

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