Ursula K. Le Guin: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Literature, Spring 2025

Ursula K. Le Guin was one of the most important science-fiction and fantasy writers of the last century, a feminist pioneer and a crucial figure in the transformation of both SF and fantasy in the 1960s and after. This seminar course surveys her career, with an emphasis on her own attempts to make “genre fiction” artistically significant despite ongoing condescension from arbiters of “serious” literature. We will read extensively from her novels, short stories, and non-fiction writings, asking what unites the varying strands of her work and what changes as she moves among genres—and as she engages with the changing contexts of literature and politics since World War II.

Detailed syllabus (pdf).

Last updated: February 28, 2025.

  • Tuesday, January 21. Introduction.

  • Thursday, January 23. Early Stories/Contexts.

  • Tuesday, January 28. Freya and Semley.

    • Rocannon’s World (1966), 1:1–30.

    • “How Freya Gained Her Necklace and How Her Loved One Was Lost to Her,” in Colum, The Children of Odin, 45–52.

  • Thursday, January 30. Odin and Olhor.

    • Rocannon’s World, 1:1–74.

  • Tuesday, February 4. Mindhearing and annihilation.

    • Rocannon’s World, complete.
    • Le Guin, introduction to Rocannon’s World (New York: Harper & Row, 1977; Hainish Novels, 1:1011–14).
    • Exercise due: how it’s written.

  • Thursday, February 6. Off to wizard school.

    • A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), chaps. 1–5 (Books of Earthsea, 7–66).

  • Tuesday, February 11. What kind of resolution?

    • A Wizard, complete; also read Le Guin’s afterword.

  • Thursday, February 13. Fantastic!

    • A Wizard, continued.
    • Attebery, Fantasy, chap. 9.
    • Exercise due: thou hast nor youth nor age.

  • Tuesday, February 18. Who sees?

    • Suvin, “On the Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre.”
    • The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), chaps. 1–7 (Hainish Novels & Stories, 1:389–58).

  • Thursday, February 20. Gender, redux, redux.

    • Left Hand, chaps. 1–11.
    • “Is Gender Necessary?”
    • “Is Gender Necessary? Redux,” in Hainish Novels & Stories, 1:1033–43.

  • Tuesday, February 25. Ice kings.

    • Left Hand, chaps. 1–15.
    • Jameson, “World Reduction in Le Guin.”

  • Thursday, February 27. Homosociality; commies.

    • Left Hand, complete, including the Appendix.

  • Tuesday, March 4.

    • Left Hand, continued.
    • Exercise due: draft paper 1 introduction.

  • Thursday, March 6. Naming the way.

    • “Unchosen Love” (1994), in Hainish Novels & Stories, 2:207–26 (first published in Amazing Stories 69, no. 2).
    • Le Guin, Lao Tzu, at least through the first book (poems 1–37).
    • Roberts, introduction to Dao De Jing.

  • Tuesday, March 11. Laozi’s little utopia.

    • Le Guin, Lao Tzu, complete.
    • Prettyman, “Daoism, Ecology, and World Reduction in Le Guin’s Utopian Fictions”.

  • (Wednesday, March 12.)

  • Thursday, March 13. Two worlds are greater than one.

    • The Dispossessed (1974), chaps. 1–3 (Hainish Novels & Stories, 1:613–88).

  • (Saturday, March 15. Spring recess.)

  • Tuesday, March 25. Study war no more.

    • The Dispossessed, through chap. 9 (through 1:857).

  • Thursday, March 27. I thought it was going to have been Earth all along.

    • The Dispossessed, complete.
    • Exercise due: connect some dots.

  • Tuesday, April 1.

    • The Dispossessed, continued.
    • Delany, “To Read The Dispossessed.”.
    • Le Guin, “A Response, by Ansible, from Tau Ceti,” in Hainish Novels & Stories, 1:1028–32.

  • Thursday, April 3. A new old heroine.

    • Tehanu (1990), chaps. 1–4 (Earthsea, 393–426).

  • Tuesday, April 8. Bringing back the old magic.

    • Tehanu, through chap. 8 (through 472).

  • Thursday, April 10. The curse of misogyny.

    • Tehanu, through chap. 11 (through 514).

  • (Friday, April 11.)

    • Paper 2 proposal and bibliography due.

  • Tuesday, April 15. A dragon did it.

    • Tehanu, complete.
    • “Earthsea Revisioned,” in Earthsea, 982–93.
    • Plotz, Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea, chap. 3.

  • Thursday, April 17. Tradition: threat or menace?

    • The Telling (2000), chaps. 1–3 (Hainish Novels & Stories, 2:589–637).

  • Tuesday, April 22. Pairs and fives.

    • The Telling, through chap. 6 (through 2:706).

  • Thursday, April 24. The tale retold.

    • The Telling, complete.

  • Tuesday, April 29. Work in progress.

  • Thursday, May 1. Revolutions, conclusions.

  • (Friday, May 9.)