I'm not as well versed in Le Guin's novels as I am in her short fiction (although, dude, for commentary on sex and gender: THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS), but for the short stories, I'd say go straight for the two collections The Birthday of the World and A Fisherman of the Inland Sea. I'm trying to remember specific stories that'd work especially well for your purposes...
Any one of the first four stories in Birthday will be useful if you want to do sex and gender. The latter four are more varied. "Solitude" (like many Le Guin stories) deals with the effect of the studied culture on the studying anthropologist, and also with the way we perceive introverts, which is one of the reasons I find it fascinating. (Basically it posits an alien culture where introversion is the norm.) "Old Music and the Slave Women" is another outsider-looking-in-on-a-culture story, and deals with slavery and the social system it supports, and may be my favorite of the bunch. The title story "The Birthday of the World" is loosely based on Aztec culture, where the rulers of a civilization are also its gods. And "Paradises Lost" is one of those generation-ship stories, about what it means to lead your whole life on a ship as a mere bridge for the generations that will reach the destination, and the role of religion in that kind of situation. Also an incredibly brilliant story.
A Fisherman of the Inland Sea also has a couple of the sex/gender stories--Le Guin likes to return again and again to a couple of cultures with odd sexual configurations, which I love but the interconnectedness of which may make them harder to teach alone. In general it's not as strong--it's an earlier collection--but "The Shobies' Story" and "Dancing to Ganam" deal with faster-than-light travel in really interesting and complex ways, and might be of use to you.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2009-03-06 07:32 am (UTC)Any one of the first four stories in Birthday will be useful if you want to do sex and gender. The latter four are more varied. "Solitude" (like many Le Guin stories) deals with the effect of the studied culture on the studying anthropologist, and also with the way we perceive introverts, which is one of the reasons I find it fascinating. (Basically it posits an alien culture where introversion is the norm.) "Old Music and the Slave Women" is another outsider-looking-in-on-a-culture story, and deals with slavery and the social system it supports, and may be my favorite of the bunch. The title story "The Birthday of the World" is loosely based on Aztec culture, where the rulers of a civilization are also its gods. And "Paradises Lost" is one of those generation-ship stories, about what it means to lead your whole life on a ship as a mere bridge for the generations that will reach the destination, and the role of religion in that kind of situation. Also an incredibly brilliant story.
A Fisherman of the Inland Sea also has a couple of the sex/gender stories--Le Guin likes to return again and again to a couple of cultures with odd sexual configurations, which I love but the interconnectedness of which may make them harder to teach alone. In general it's not as strong--it's an earlier collection--but "The Shobies' Story" and "Dancing to Ganam" deal with faster-than-light travel in really interesting and complex ways, and might be of use to you.