| Summary: | The purpose of this study is to analyze two works within the fantasy and the fantastic genre, Eragon by Christopher Paolini and Border by John Ajvide Lindqvist, and how ideas of race are expressed in either work. This study will also discuss how racial elements in fantasy can be utilized in education, both to problematize those ideas as well as how they can be used as a resource to gain some new perspectives from a didactic perspective. This study aims to answer the following question formulations: How does either work express racial ideas? What similarities and differences can be found in their expressions of race? How can these racial ideas be problematized and used as a resource from a didactic perspective? Critique of ideology is the overarching method, while the analytic methods used are close reading and comparative analysis. The theory behind the study is how race are constructed from a norm, humans, and how other races in a fantastical setting differ from this norm by being directly compared to the norm. This also dictates what constitutes as a human or “other”, as well as were leakage can be found in the norms. The conclusion of this study is that both of these works being analyzed shows different aspects of how fantasy and the fantastical can be used in education when it comes to the racial ideas, one upholds the racial ideas of the past and the other uses those same ideas for subversion. In education, works within the fantasy and the fantastical genre can be utilized in two different ways. The first is to problematize and create awareness of the racial ideas in fantasy literature, and the second is to use fantasy works that subverts racial ideas in order to deconstruct and gain a new understanding of race and racism in our own world.
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