Though it might not boldly go where no man has gone before, one Winter Quarter section of the course History Through Film will offer Ohio University students the chance to explore sci-fi concepts in new ways.
The course is a “wonderful opportunity to expose students to a variety of issues that a standard course would not offer,” said Nicholas Creary, the course’s instructor and creator.
The idea for a history course centered on science-fiction television shows, such as Star Trek, Firefly and Battlestar Galactica, arose when Creary was discussing the course History Through Baseball with another professor, Charley Alexander. They found themselves asking, “What blockbusters are we going to get to attract the students?”
Creary proposed the Star Trek version of History Through Film as a joke, but as he thought more about it, he began to create a structure through which the course could be created and then put into a syllabus.
“My goal is to use the course as a lens to begin a discussion on significant issues in the latter 20th century and early 21st century,” said Creary.
This will be the second time this course is offered at OU. Dave Shields, who took the course when it was offered in 2008, said he expected the course to be much easier than it actually was.
“The class was more challenging than I had expected,” Shields said. “Because of the backdrop of Star Trek, the class always seemed game for traditional history course topics like civil and human rights, colonization — ‘To go where no man has gone before’ — slavery and war.”
When Shields took the course, he wasn’t aware that it would focus on Star Trek. When he found this out, he planned on dropping out because he “wasn’t a big Trek fan.”
“Fortunately, some friends told me that I wouldn’t regret taking Creary’s class, so I stuck with it,” Shields said.
Creary said he believes the course will be an exploration from the starting frontier to the final frontier.
“The class often focused on historical issues, particularly the Civil Rights Movement of the ’60s, which informed and inspired the original Star Trek series,” Shields said. “I left the class a fan of Star Trek.”
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