2014-2015 Academic Catalog

Sep 27, 2024

2014-2015 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

ENG 280 - Studies in Contemporary Fiction: Literary Speculations

This advanced seminar conducts cultural and historical examinations of speculative fiction and theory produced after 1945 in response to prevailing societal anxieties of the times. The course is organized around four subgenres of postwar speculative literature - alternate history, plague and disaster, technology and artificial life, and futurity and posthumanity - in an effort to understand the critical aims and social impact of these authors’ fictional and theoretical thought experiments. Our investigations will also draw on genre theories to explore the shifting conventions of literary, science, and slipstream fictions, and assess the rehetorical effects of the genre-bending exercises of their authors. The theories of Rene Girard (plague), N. Katherine Hayles (posthumanity), Emile Durkheim (anomie), and Tzvetan Todorov (the fantastic) will frame our critical examinations.

Satisfies the Genre (B-2) or Period (C-3) requirement for undergraduate English majors.

Prerequisites: VE or ENG 20 Introduction to Literary Analysis

Anticipated Terms Offered: Periodically