Welcome to April’s installment of Classroom Takeover, a new monthly feature here at Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog! Every month, a new blogger creates an ideal college class featuring a subject, author, or genre that they think doesn’t get enough attention in mainstream college classes.

This month’s class comes from the lovely Fyrefly of Fyrefly’s Book Blog, who very helpfully caved to my pleas for help last month and sent in this post. Fyrefly is one of my favorite bloggers, not least because she sent me a Classroom Takeover post. She’s also an excellent book reviewer, with a writing style I’m totally jealous of and would in fact steal if I could get away with it.

So, without further ado, Fyrefly’s April class:

Science in Fiction: So You Want Your Lit Class To Count As A Science Elective (or vice-versa)

Intro

Arts & Sciences. So often lumped together into a single unit within a university, and yet, so frequently seen as polar opposites.

Distribution requirements are often equally problematic for majors in both fields; but here I am, ready to bridge the gap with a class that focuses on novels that come with a full semester’s-worth of biology built right in, plus some extra-credit reading from across the sciences.

Reading List

1) Ecology: Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver. It’s officially three interrelated stories involving the inhabitants of a small rural town, and the meaning of family, and interconnection. But Kingsolver’s got a degree in biology, and she really lets it shine: the Appalachian mountain environment is just as much of a character as any of the three leads.

2) Parasitology: Peeps by Scott Westerfeld. Vampirism isn’t the result of demonic possession, it’s the result of a sexually-transmitted parasite infection. Cal’s a carrier of the parasite who’s immune to its effects, and he has to hunt down his former girlfriends who have all become vampires. Bonus points for the inclusion of tons of information on real-world parasites.

3) Cell Biology: A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L’Engle. In order to save her little brother – and possibly the entirety of creation – Meg must journey inside his mitochondria.

4) Marine Biology: Fluke by Christopher Moore. The main character is a biologist who has spent his life looking for the hidden meanings in humpback whale song. When he encounters a whale with “Bite Me” written across its tail flukes, he knows he’s stumbled onto something much bigger.

5) Evolution: The Darwin Conspiracy by John Darnton. When a biology graduate student unearths a diary belonging to one of Darwin’s daughters, a diary that hints at some terrible secret involving Darwin’s voyage on the Beagle, he soon comes to realize that he might have stumbled across one of the greatest cover-ups in the entirety of the history of science.

6) Genetics, Endocrinology, and Development: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Part family saga and part coming of age novel, this book traces the path of a recessive mutation that causes Cal Stephanides to be missing an enzyme that’s required for normal masculinization, causing him to be raised for most of his life as a girl.

Extra Credit

- Chemistry: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley.

- Physics: Schrodinger’s Ball by Adam Felber and The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman.

- Computer Science: Little Brother by Cory Doctorow.

- History of Science: Ship Fever by Andrea Barrett.

Final Exam

1) Discuss the plausibility of Jurassic Park, paying particular attention to the fossilization of insects and the mechanisms of sex determination in amphibians.

2) In the graphic novel series Y: The Last Man, something happens that kills all the male mammals worldwide.
a) Give a plausible mechanism by which this mass gender-cide could occur.
b) Assuming that no solution is found, discuss the ecological ramifications of this event in twenty years, one hundred years, and one thousand years.

3) How does the Municipal Darwinism in Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines support and/or contradict the principles of evolution by natural selection as described by Darwin?

Who else got horrific flashbacks to final exams they hadn’t properly studied for? Anyone? Or was I the only one who half-assed studying for anything? Sometimes I’m surprised I actually graduated college.

Thanks so much to Fyrefly for providing this lovely Classroom Takeover post! It makes me feel somewhat better for not taking more science classes while I could.

If you’d like to create your own Classroom Takeover post, there are plenty of free spots available! Quite literally, because I don’t have any Classroom Takeovers for May-December. This makes me very sad and I may have to resort to begging on Twitter again for posts, which is never pretty to see. So, if YOU’D been wanting to create your own class, please check out this post here and then get to emailing me!

For previous Classroom Takeovers, check out the Classroom Takeover tag. Happy learning!