Courses

Interdepartmental 1211. Climate Fictions (Winter 2020, Middlebury College)

In a moment when the effects of global warming are being felt around the world, what purpose can fictional accounts of climate change serve? In this course, we will explore how the growing genre of “climate fiction” attempts to render the droughts, floods, forest fires, and storms of our warming world. Reading stories that range from apocalyptic to cautiously optimistic, we will ultimately consider how different narratives shape our imagination of the planet’s future.

Writing 101. Thinking Science Fiction (Fall 2019, Duke University)

Once confined to pulp magazines, science fiction has become a widespread feature of contemporary culture. What accounts for its ascent into popular television shows, films, and literary novels? What is the value of its imagination in a world that is becoming increasingly science fictional? This course explores some of the most interesting works in science fiction’s long history, from its earliest emergence in the 19th century and its “golden age” in the 1950s to its current genre-hybridizing form, which often incorporates elements of fantasy, horror, and mystery. As we encounter stories about time travel, interplanetary exploration and settlement, ecological collapse, aliens, artificial intelligence, and utopia, our aim will be to learn how these texts employ different tropes and techniques to “think science fictionally.” Engaging science fiction as a way of approaching the world, we will reflect on what this generic lens equips us to understand about our present moment. 

Literature/Environment 190. Aliens and Other Planets: Science Fiction for the Anthropocene (Fall 2017, Duke University)

 Science fiction has long been occupied with representing encounters with other forms of life, technology, planets, and societies. In this class, we will focus on novels, short stories, and films that specifically represent human encounters with other kinds of life and other worlds. Accordingly, the course will be divided into two sections: the first explores encounters with aliens and evolved humans, while the second half of the course will center around other planets and environments. 

Throughout this class, we will discuss the many different subjects raised by each work, including human evolution, alien language, colonialism, gender, race, and utopian politics. But we will specifically focus on how these works of science fiction have become newly relevant at a time when humans have altered the Earth’s ecosystems and climate in substantial ways, threatening both themselves and other species—an epoch sometimes referred to as the “Anthropocene.” By situating the human among aliens and other planets, these texts reveal the historical specificity of humanity’s situation on Earth, both in terms of how humans have formed biologically and how they relate to their nonhuman world.