While I know that this is not meant to be a space for comments on my personal life, I do want to write a little bit about my background, because I feel that my approach to literature and art is always influenced by my work and my personal history.
I am currently a junior, and I am a drama major. I specialize in costume design and construction, and am hoping to have a career in this field. I have worked for Shakespeare and Company in Massachusetts and Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia constructing costumes, and this summer I am looking forward to working with The Williamstown Theatre Festival, which is also in Massachusetts. When I graduate, I am planning on moving to New York, and hopefully I will find work in the theatre. I wanted to put this info in my post because I find that the more I learn about the theatre, and costumes in particular, the more I relate the rest of my life back to my work. When I see a movie one of the first things I notice is the costume design, and so it is likely that if I decide to write about a SF movie I may make comments related to my work and how it links to our class topic of Afrofuturisms. Science Fiction costumes are a lot of fun because they can be imaginative and outrageous, but they also often reference historical periods or modern day culture, and I don't think I will be able to resist talking about them when I analyse a movie. I also think that I learned most of my text analysis in drama classes, so it may be that I analyse literature a little bit differently than students who have spent more time taking English classes.
Science Fiction and Fantasy have been my favorite fiction genres since I learned to read, or even before that, as my parents read the "Oz" books to me when I was still in preschool. In grade school, I became an avid reader when I discovered adult fantasy books. Later I became tired of dragons and wizards and so forth, and I started to read more science fiction. Since I got to college I have been so busy working and reading plays for school that I haven't had a lot of time to read for fun, and I miss reading SF! I decided to take this class because Octavia Butler is one of my favorite authors, I have read all of her books, and I figured any class that had her work as required reading was the class for me.
