This “Studies” course is a survey of utopian and dystopian literature from Plato to Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games). It is organized chronologically: after Plato, we will jump to the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries (just two texts), to be followed by several texts from nineteenth-century America and Britain; early twentieth-century America and Britain; later twentieth-century America, Britain, and Canada; and twenty-first-century America. The reading list is about one-third utopian texts, one-third dystopian, and one-third “hybrid” (utopian/dystopian; some of these texts are called “critical utopian”). Because this is a “Studies” course, students will be doing individual research, culminating in a major research project due at the end of the term. Also because this is a “Studies” course, it carries a writing-intensive (“W”) designation.
Students who take this course will, I hope, gain (a) a nodding acquaintance with many of the important utopian and dystopian texts; (b) the realization that it is difficult to define the genres of utopian and dystopian (and critical utopian) literature; (c) concomitantly, insight into current conflicts about canonicity and “high” and “low” literature; (d) a sense of the continuities–especially in terms of the kinds of questions considered–that obtain among these texts; (e) concomitantly, again, a sense that the utopian/dystopian tradition has been punctuated at intervals with dramatic changes as social, political, and literary landscapes and ideologies have shifted; (f) the understanding that, even though usually about the future, utopian/dystopian literature frequently mirrors its own times, often in surprising ways; (g) some familiarity with utopian/dystopian poetics (how does an author represent a perfect/imperfect future?); (h) some familiarity with utopian/dystopian rhetoric–many of these texts call for dramatic changes in human behavior, frequently through warning about what will happen “if this goes on”–how, then, do utopian/dystopian authors make their fictions plausible and persuasive?; and (i) acquaintance with some of the important critical texts on utopian/dystopian literature, including those written about feminist utopias, dystopias, or critical utopias.
Besides frequent electronic letters posted to the entire class about the shared reading (and a portfolio at the end of the term based on these weekly letters) and the major research project, students in this “Studies” course will also work on a non-shared text (preparing a plot summary of, and synopses of three critical articles on, the non-shared text; delivering an oral report to the class on the text), be expected to participate frequently in class discussions, do some collaborative work (in pairs) on one of the shared readings, read (and summarize) a critical book on our topic, and critique a draft of a peer’s major research project.
REQUIRED TEXTS: Plato, Republic; More, Utopia; Swift, Gulliver’s Travels; Morris, News from Nowhere; Wells, The Time Machine; Gilman, Herland; Huxley, Brave New World; Orwell, 1984; Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451; Burgess, A Clockwork Orange; Le Guin, The Dispossessed; Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale; and Collins, The Hunger Games.