Course Description: Science Fiction has been called "the twentieth
century's most characteristic genre" because it addresses many of the
issues that are central to the concept of "cultural modernity":
utopian/dystopian visions, technological developments/disasters, mass
media/mass culture, rapid social change, cultural clashes, and
encounters with the alien "other" (differentiated by gender, race,
class, etc.). What is interesting about works of science fiction is
not so much what they have to say about an imagined future, but what
they tell us about the culture that created them. In this course we
will think and write critically about key themes from two science
fiction novels (War of the Worlds, Brave New World) and from a range
of science fiction films and television series (such as the original
Invasion of the Body Snatchers, A Clockwork Orange, Blade Runner, and
Star Trek: The Next Generation) in order to examine how science
fiction comments on the cultural present.