From Rosemary Jackson’s Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion 1981 Metheun and Company. New York.

Structured upon contradiction and ambivalence, the fantastic traces in that which cannot be said, that which evades articulation or that which is represented as ‘untrue’ and ‘unreal’. By offering a problematic re-presentation of an empirically ‘real’ world, the fantastic raises questions of the nature of the real and unreal, foregrounding the relation between them as its central concern. It is in this sense that Todorov refers to fantasy as the most ‘literary’ of all literary forms, as the ‘quintessence of literature’, for it makes explicit the problems of establishing ‘reality’ and ‘meaning’ through a literary text. As Bessiere writes, ‘Fantiastic narrative is perhaps the most artificial and deliberate mode of literary narrative … it is constructed on the affirmation of emptiness… uncertainty arises from this mixture of too much and of nothing (p.34). (Jackson 37)

If I wanted to examine Justin (Briggs) or Pavel (Weber), this would be a good work to look at. Specifically around 49-57 it would be helpful. Quote from Jameson’s work p.120 on the mode of romance.

In Defence of Fantasy: A Study of the Genre in English and American Literature since 1945 by Ann Swinfen. Published by Routledge & Kegan Paul in Boston in 1984.

What is fantasy?

The essential ingredient of all fantasy in ‘the marvellous,’ [sic] which will be regarded as anything outside the normal space-time cotinuum of the everyday world. Pure science fiction is excluded, since it treats essentially what does not exist now, but might perhaps exist in the future. The marvellous [sic] element which lies at the heart of all fantasy is composed of what can never exist in the world of empirical experience. Elements of the marvellous [sic] may irrupt into the normal world, but more often the reader is carried, at least part of the time, into another world… (Swinfen 5)

Why do we read fantasy?

Fantasy draws much of its strength from certain ‘primordial desires’ for the enrichment of life; the desire to survey vast depths of space and time, the desire to behold marvellous [sic] creatures, the desire to share the speech of the animals, the desire to escape from the ancient limitations of man’s primary world condition. (Swinfen 7)

Escapism is good, Pt 2
This is from Kath Filmer Scepticism and Hope in Twentieth Century Fantasy Literature. Ohio: Bowling Green State U Popular P, 1992.

…fantasy provides a certain fulfilment for its readers through the experiences of Escape, Recovery and Consolation. [In "On Fairy Stories"] Escape, Tolkien writes , is not a term to be used with scorn or pity, as it is in some critical circles; rather the term describes not “the flight of the deserter” but rather “the Escape of the Prisoner.” Fantasy gives us the opportunity to escape to the ‘real’ world, to catch visions of the marvellous and the wonderful, to produce in turn the experience of Recovery. (Filmer 26)

From Where No Man Has Gone Before: Women and Science Fiction by Lucie Armitt, New York: Routledge, 1991.

Increasingly women writers and critics of science fiction are offering new and alternative readings of stock themes and preoccupations.
…
One of the primary concerns of the science fiction writer is to challenge received notions of reality as it currently exists, and two of the most significant foundations upon which reality is based are time and language (forming the means whereby reality is compartmentalised [sic] into comprehensible units). (Armitt 7)

What is the point of science fiction?

to illustrate the significance of language and its structures to the structures of power, stressing the importance of women writers deconstructing not only the language of discourse but also the language of narrative, if existing power relations are to be challenged and subverted. (Armitt 7)

What are problems with science fiction?

Science fiction, like any other form of genre fiction, is particularly susceptible to the (often idiosyncratic) marketing strategies of the ‘popular’ paperback publishing industry. At times this can result in a very obvious tension between the book as a saleable commodity and the creativity of the writing contained therein. (Armitt 8 )

Criticism: Escapism, duh

One of the criticisms frequently launched against science fiction, in common with other fantasy forms, is that of escapism–something which is apparently deemed a lesser preoccupation than those of the realist modes.
…
Women are not located at the centre of contemporary culture and society, but are almost entirely defined from the aforementioned negative perspective of ‘otherness’ or ‘difference’. As such, the need to escape from a socity with regard to which they already hold an ex-centric position is clearly an irrelevant one. More appropriate perhaps is the need to escape into–that is, to depict–an alternative reality within which centrality is possible.
In addition to this, however, good science fiction (whether based on a technological or a socio-political foundation) places great emphasis upon the intrinsic link between perceived reality and the depiction of futurist or alien societies. Thus whatever the approach, and whatever the gender, the depiction of an alternative reality is only the first step of an essential reassessment process (9) on the part of both author and reader; making strange what we commonly perceive to be around us, primarily in order that we might focus upon existing reality afresh, and as outsiders. (Armitt 9-10)

“… the science fiction novel provides a forum for fictionalising frightening possibilities, as well as utopian dreams” (Armitt 10).

She says that what has been labeled science fiction is very slippery. Many are what I would call genre-challenged texts. “One approach to this is to define the boundaries within which one wants to work, and then to select material within those boundaries for inclusion” (Armitt 10).

“…the role traditionally assigned to the female within the text–victimised, powerless and sexually threatened” says Sarah Gamble in “Shambleau… and Others” in Armitt’s book (37). She is specifying a particular text, but I think this can often be extrapolated to texts in general.

Ursula LeGuin, in “A Citizen of Mondath” from The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction (1980) by LeGuin and Susan Wood, wrote:

That is a real danger, when you write science fiction. There is so little real criticism, that despite the very delightful and heartening feedback from and connection with the fans, the writer is almost his only critic.
…
What almost all of us need is some genuine, serious, literate criticism: some standards. I don’t mean pedantry and fancy academic theorizing. I mean just the kind of standards which any musician, for instance, has to meet…. The mediocre and the excellent are praised alike by aficionados, and ignored alike by outsiders. (29)

Susan Bassnett in “Remaking the Old World” in Armitt’s book, wrote about LeGuin’s work “nor can it be neatly categorised, either in terms of ideology or in terms of genre” (51).

“All writers are a product of a particular culture at a particular moment in time; the values they bring to their writing, the conventions they espouse, the critical statements they seek to make have a context” (Bassnett 52).

Adding a new course has been a bit tricky at my school. So many of the classes are open to anyone that when there is one with restricted access the advisors don’t know what to do. One class ended up with only half the students it should have had because the advisors filled the class with students who weren’t nursing majors.

It’s going to make, this semester, with only eleven students. But I should have been able to fill two classes.

I’m looking forward to the class and I hope that word will get out and next semester I’ll be teaching at least one and possibly two of these classes. The more motivated students are to “get” the information you are trying to teach, the more likely they are to succeed and excel.

Note: WAC/WID is Writing Across the Curriculum/Writing in the Disciplines.