Frank Herbert’s Timeless Vision: Insights on the Present from Dune

Course Objectives
Frank Herbert’s Dune has been the subject of several adaptations and attempted adaptations for the screen because it remains a stunning work of imagination and social commentary, more than half a century after the publication of the first of Herbert’s six novels. This course seeks both to examine the stories and ideas contained in the six-book series and to contextualize these works within the author’s and American society’s changing views.

Taught from a materialist radical feminist perspective, the course will bring a gender/feminist lens to analyzing the work, its implications and Herbert’s own evolving views on gender and sexuality over the span of a generation in which the books were published. In this way, there is no essential Dune the course seeks to discover as much as it seeks to interrogate the social and creative processes that gave rise to a series of distinct works.

Herbert’s work and tributes to it David Lynch and others did, in the mid twentieth century, something academic scholars struggled to do: offer a fundamentally different view of history than the progressive secularism of its time. The series calls upon us to consider the possibility that what we imagine as eternal and inexorable will be forgotten, while what we deemed outmoded and moribund as the long-term structures of history and society.

Texts
At the beginning of the course, students will receive a series of Dropbox links to download each of the videos and readings we will be discussing. It is not necessary to read the original six Dune books. If students would like to read them before or during course, used copies can easily be obtained at local bookstores or online.

Lecture Schedule
We will meet from 5:30pm to 7:00pm Tuesday and Thursday nights beginning on May 6th.

Date	Lecture	Lecturer	Optional Readings/Film
May 6th	Intro; Biography; Brief History of Sci-fi; Themes, Adaptations & Inspirations	Leisl	None
May 11th	Dune	Leisl	TBA
May 13th	Canon and Canonicity; Frank Herbert and the Revanche de Dieu	Stuart	“1979: Year of Destiny”
May 18th	Dune Messiah	Leisl	TBA
May 20th	Children of Dune	Leisl	TBA
May 25th	Ecology and Society: Desert People and Desert Patriarchy	Stuart	Excerpts from History of the Mediterranean and Desert Patriarchy
May 27th	God Emperor of Dune	Leisl	TBA
June 1st	Heretics of Dune	Leisl	TBA
June 3rd	Parthenogenesis: Mary Shelley and the Tleilaxu Tanks	Stuart	None
June 8th	Chapterhouse Dune	Leisl	TBA
June 10th	West vs. East: Politics and Cultures in Dune	Guest: Kara Kennedy	TBA
June 15th	Bene Gesserits to Honored Matres: Gender, Sex and Women in Dune	Leisl	TBA
June 17th	Eugenics, Genetic Engineering, and Controlled Breeding: The Rise of the Transhuman?	Leisl	TBA

But the question now is: Which one really works? What is best strategy to erectile dysfunction? I think that my penis canadian viagra store size is bit more than skeptical right now – many people are when something seems too good to be true. Don’t take this option around more substantial as well as littler quantities as well buy viagra in spain as in rural areas. If discount on cialis those muscles are flabby, the best pieces are quickly tired. You may ask viagra discount store amerikabulteni.com why the sphincter of Oddi dysfunction is acidity.

The course deviated from its original syllabus significantly and some episodes are missing. But here are the dowloadable episodes

Date	Lecture	Lecturer
May 6th	Intro; Biography; Brief History of Sci-fi; Themes, Adaptations & Inspirations	Leisl Westfall
May 11th	Speculative fiction and the limits of the human sciences	Stuart Parker
May 20th	Dune	Leisl Westfall
June 8th	God Emperor of Dune	Leisl Westfall
June 15th	The “Duniverse” as Frank Herbert Left It	Leisl Westfall
June 22nd	Canonicity and Reproduction	Stuart Parker
July 16th	Gender in Dune	Leisl Westfall
July 21st	Course Conclusion	Leisl Westfall