tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-195890402007-02-12T21:09:30.273-06:00Nathaniel WilliamsBlogger21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19589040.post-1171052194647063072007-02-09T14:15:00.000-06:002007-02-09T14:46:05.971-06:00Hello. This is my first post, so I should introduce myself. I'm Nathaniel Williams, the new AboutSF Coordinator. You can call me Nate.<br /><br />I'm tremendously enthused to work for AboutSF. I chose KU as the place for my doctoral research because of my regard for James Gunn's work in the field. I've had the pleasure to take Prof. Gunn's Summer Institute and participate in the Campbell Conference for the past two years, so I may have met many of you there.<br /><br />In the coming weeks, I'll be adding new material to the site. Expect to see a few changes and some more frequent blog entries--including a series devoted to teaching science fiction that begins with Jim Gunn's just-posted entry. I'll also be making some changes here and there. If you have suggestions for improving the site, now is a perfect time to share them.<br /><br />I also want to congratulate Thomas Seay, the previous AboutSF Coordinator, for his new job as a U.S. congressional press aide for Nancy Boyda (D-Kansas). Thomas is one of the most motivated, creative people I know, and our loss is Representative Boyda's gain. I join everyone at CSSF in wishing him the best.<br /><br />I look forward to doing my part in this endeavor. - NateNathaniel Williamstag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19589040.post-1171052847649504122007-02-09T14:25:00.000-06:002007-02-09T14:32:07.386-06:00I was fortunate when it came to teaching an SF class. When I started teaching English full-time in 1970, after a dozen years directing university relations during the troubled 1960s, the chair of the Department said, "Some younger members of the Department hope you'll be willing to teach a class in science fiction." I taught a class every year and sometimes additional classes, of a different kind, in the spring, and after 1974 an intensive summer class. A couple of times I was asked to teach a seminar (expanded into the text Speculations on Speculation: Theories of Science Fiction, edited for Scarecrow Press with Matthew Candelaria).<br /><br /> Other teachers have had to fight for the privilege of teaching an SF class. In this space we hope that some of those teachers will share their insights into how to get a class approved, what to teach, and how to go about teaching SF, the problems they have encountered and the solutions they have found. During the 1970s the problems of teaching an SF class were mostly focused on what to teach and how. The mini-course was popular, with half a dozen topics offered for student choice, and one of them was often science fiction. I was invited to a couple of NCTE meetings to share my insights with large audiences of high-school teachers. But then the back-to-basics movement side-lined the mini-course, and, more recently, the no-child-left-behind laws with their incentives for teaching-to-the-tests have made optional courses even more difficult. I'd like to say here, however, that science fiction has benefits not always apparent or testable: it is exciting reading; it encourages the development of the imagination; it incorporates science, the social sciences, politics, and human responses and may encourage student curiosity in these areas; it emphasizes the connectedness of disciplines; and it deals with contemporary issues and their future outcomes. <br /><br /> I have a motto: "Let's save the world through science fiction." I'm not sure we can save the world, and I'm not sure science fiction can do it. But I think we should give it a try. Science fiction, by encouraging young people to read and to apply what they read to the world in which they live, is like Archimedes' lever. Let's save the world with it.<br /> James GunnNathaniel Williams