Category Archives: Uncategorized

by Han Kang (2011) Guest post by Nayantara Chandrasekhar A few months ago, my three-year-old cousin asked me, “if dogs can’t talk to each other, how do they know what each other is thinking?” To the three year old, I … Continue reading →

Han Kang2023, The New Yorker Note: ‘The Middle Voice’ is drawn from Han Kang’s 2011 novel Greek Lessons, which was translated to English in 2023. My student Nayantara Chandrasekhar wrote a guest post about Greek Lessons which you can read … Continue reading →

China Miéville 2011, Del Rey In a recent essay in Aeon, Nikhil Mahant points out (I think correctly) that most alien languages imagined in sci-fi aren’t really all that different from existing human languages. ‘As a philosopher of language, I … Continue reading →

Deborah Eisenberg2018. Ploughshares 44(1). Also in The Best American Short Stories 2019, ed. Anthony Doerr.  [jstor] We read a series of stories this semester that took up the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign—the most important feature of language, according to … Continue reading →

Preston L. Allen2013, Akashic Books This is our longest reading, and the most disturbing one, at least for me. But we had a well-attended, insightful discussion, and I came away appreciating this book in new ways—so thanks, as always. Emily … Continue reading →

Ted Chiang2015, Subterranean Press. Also in the collection Exhalation. We had such a great discussion on Friday. A friend of mine walked by our table and told me later that he could tell it was a good discussion just from … Continue reading →

Jorge Luis Borges1942, La Nación; also in Ficciones (Here’s the Spanish original; here’s an English translation.) We had a lovely, lively and stimulating discussion of ‘Funes the Memorious.’ Our edition is only six pages long and I felt like we … Continue reading →

Wendy Nikel2021. In Philosophy Through Science Fiction Stories, ed. De Cruz et al. ‘Whale Fall’ was an experiment for me this semester. I came across it over winter break, read the first few paragraphs, and saw that it was about … Continue reading →

Mary Shelley1818 [online] Frankenstein is often called the first sci-fi novel. For this class we don’t read the most sci-fi-heavy parts of the book: we skip over Victor’s education in scientific theories, his construction and animation of the creature, his … Continue reading →

Octavia Butler1983. In Bloodchild and Other Stories. [pdf] ‘Speech Sounds’ is all about language. It’s a wonderful story for this class because it allows us to peel back layer after layer of the extremely complex question: What is language? It … Continue reading →