SCHC 452 H01 28430

HistoryCiv, Humanities, EngLit, AIU

Notes:

This course gives students the opportunity to explore utopian writing, a historical genre of prose fiction that continues to influence popular culture and politics. We will begin our studies with More’s Utopia, but we will investigate changes in the form across the so-called scientific, industrial, and cultural revolutions. Since utopian narratives also illustrate how certain literary forms reflect, influence, and revolutionize cultural identity, politics, and technology, some of the texts we will read are not literary “classics.” Nevertheless, these texts demonstrate the correspondent link between society and its creative production. Our central question for the course will be: what difference does it make to imagine a better world? This question will lead to several others: can a utopia show us a better way of organizing society and its governing institutions, why do writers continue to develop this genre, and how might this form of writing influence different conceptions of what constitutes a desirable future?