Literature of Utopia/Dystopia: Dystopian Fiction

This course addresses the concurrent and interrelated themes of utopian and dystopian thought and their primary expression through 20th and 21st century literary texts. As such, it critically engages and interrogates relationships between knowledge and power, and freedom and oppression that have long been expressed in world literature. At its core, utopian/dystopian literatures are always in conversation with historical, social, and cultural thought, expressing anxiety towards the relationship between social structures and institutions with the individuals and the imposition of coercive power. Texts addressed in these course include those by writers such as Thomas More, Charlotte Gilman Perkins, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Ray Bradbury, Margaret Atwood, Philip K. Dick, Octavia Butler, etc. This course counts toward the Analytical Inquiry: Society and Culture requirement.