Three Literary Parodies and an Homage

I've finally found the time to collect, in one place, the literary "finger exercises" occasioned by the MOOC (massive open online course) "Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World" I took in the summer of 2012. The course was taught by Prof. Rabkin of the University of Michigan. COURSERA provided the supporting software and infrastructure.

Three Parodies and an Homage

People who do not have first-hand experience with a COURSERA-based course may not get the insider jokes in the Alice piece. But the rest does not rely on such knowledge—you just have to know the literary piece being skewered/paid homage to.

National Anthem of Herland

Another parody on occasion of the MOOC I'm currently taking: This is a spoof of a classic of feminist literature, Herland, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (to be sung to the melody of Woody Guthrie’s “This land is your land, this land is my land”):

This land is her land, this land is my land,
Between high mountains we are an island,
A land of gardens, without male wardens.
This land was made for her and she.

A land of mothers, a land of sisters,
We need no brothers, we need no misters.
Parthénogenésis is our thesis.
This land was made for her and she.

If ever men came, we will not blame them.
We’ll keep them locked up, and train and tame them,
To mate with reason, only in season.
This land was made for her and she.