The Hunger Games, 1984, The Handmaid’s Tale…why is popular culture inundated with visions of a dystopian future or of totalitarian regimes cloaked under a utopian veil? How do artists and thinkers use dystopia to critique our world today as they imagine a bleak future? Are attempts to build a utopian society always doomed to fail? Our Learning Community will investigate the role of utopias and dystopias in history and contemporary culture.
Signature events includefilm screenings, trips to museums, and plays and performances, both on and off-campus.
Fall 2023 Courses
Book Banning in Dystopian Times
Book Banning in Dystopian Times
Faculty member teaching this course: Alex Barron
In this class we will study books that lawmakers and school boards have tried to keep out of classrooms and off library shelves. We will investigate why particular books are seen as dangerous, whether they are about national history or gay penguins. The course will cover the US today alongside other moments in history in which books have been banned or burned as a means of social control.
Dystopias at the Movies
Dystopias at the Movies
Faculty member teaching this course: Chris Flynn
Dystopian films have been around since the silent era. They present individuals and societies grappling with questions about how to survive and organize life in worlds that have decayed, declined, and collapsed. We will focus on global cinema going back to Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927), and looking forward to Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Delicatessen (1991) and City of Lost Children (1995), Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982), and Bong Joon-ho's Snowpiercer (2013), among others.
The Art of Catastrophe
The Art of Catastrophe
Faculty member teaching this course: Mary Helen Specht
Artists create dystopian spaces to help us engage critically and emotionally with problems in the real world. In this class, students will encounter a variety of genres—fiction, graphic story, visual arts, poetry, and film—and explore the ways artists respond to the present and future impacts of climate change. In addition to investigating the unique methods through which art grapples with the sociological, psychological, and geographical effects of a warming planet, students will ultimately, produce and revise their own creative work in response to this specific and pressing “dystopia.”
Dreams & Nightmares: Dystopian and Utopian Fiction
Dreams & Nightmares: Dystopian and Utopian Fiction
Faculty member teaching this course: Jen Alvarez Dickinson
This course explores the “what ifs” of speculative fiction. What if we could build the perfect society? What if something goes horribly wrong? In our exploration of utopian and dystopian literature and film, we will consider current social and technological forces and all their beautiful and terrifying possibilities.