Are We There Yet: Visions of Dystopia

Course Description

Summary

It is a commonly felt experience, in our current age of climate crisis, misinformation, pandemics, declining birth rates, late-stage capitalism, and the apparent twilight of democracy, etc., that we are living through (or at, or near) the end of the world. Where do we look for precedents for this feeling? To what extent does this dark life imitate art, or vice versa? Where does ‘dystopia’ end and realism begin? In this class we will encounter and analyze a selection of literary dystopias, eschewing those well-known high school standbys of the genre (The Hunger Games, Lord of the Flies, 1984, Fahrenheit 451) for works of art that you (probably?) haven’t already read, and which may feel somewhat more sensitive, specific, or human. Each week’s session will open with a handwritten quiz to ensure that students are keeping up with the reading, and close with a moment of intentional joy meant to help balance the depressing nature of the course material. Students can expect to write and revise at least one mid-length critical paper, mid-term. Final projects may take the form either of another, longer critical paper or a substantial and original dystopian narrative of one’s own, accompanied by a 1-2-page introduction / writers statement tracing the writer's influences and locating their work in our semester's canon of dystopias.