2020-2021 Academic Catalog

Apr 16, 2024

2020-2021 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

ENG 213 - Utopias/Dystopias: Writing Resistance and Identity

In her 2014 National Book Award speech, science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin said, “Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society… writers who can remember freedom - realists of a larger reality.” In this class we will strive to be the writers Le Guin called for. Animated by the question “What if?”, speculative fiction interrogates received ideologies and questions the naturalness or inevitability of social structures and systems of power, “reality” as we know it. This course considers how minority groups have used speculative fiction as a vehicle for writing alternative conceptions of history, society, and identity. Ranging from visionary utopias to nightmarish yet strangely familiar dystopias, these stories make space for those relegated to the margins, pointing not only to what can be but to what already is. Science fiction, in its circuitous way, does not predict, so much as describe. This creative writing class will involve weekly writing exercises, discussion of science fiction texts, and workshop, and will culminate in a novella-length speculative fiction final project. For undergraduate Creative Writing minors, this course fulfills the advanced requirement. This course also fulfills the Diversity and Inclusion (D & I) requirement.

Course Designation/Attribute: DI

Anticipated Terms Offered: Annually