2021-2022 Catalog

ENG-388 Utopias and Dystopias

This course explores how literature helps us imagine better worlds and survive when things go horribly wrong. In his book Utopia, Thomas More created a fictional island that was both a "good place" and "no place," and ever since, writers and dreamers have tried to build their own utopias on principles of equality, simplicity, and happiness. As we discuss novels, poems, manifestos, and films from the 19th through the 21st centuries, we will consider how dystopias reflect anxieties about technology, gender inequality, racial injustice, and climate change as well as how utopias give us hope for our shared future.

Credits

4

Prerequisite

WRI-102 or WRI-H103

Core Curriculum

  • Studies in Literature

Offered

Ocasionally