Technology, Stories and Storytelling
Explore the intersection between technology, imagination, and what it means to be human with these Fall 2020 courses.
ENGL255: Literature of Science and Technology (Melanie Rio)
“The (In)Human Factor”
This course examines representations of science of technology in British and American literature since the Industrial Revolution, with special emphasis on intersections of scientific and social progress and evolving ideas of what it means to be human. Our reading will cover a range of genres, from natural philosophy to science fiction, and explore a variety of scientific disciplines, including computing, communications, genetics, and space exploration.
Through close reading of the texts assigned and engagement with a set of core themes, we will discuss how literature depicts, predicts, critiques, and reimagines major scientific and technological developments. This course will also encourage discussion of literary form and how these ideas are reinterpreted in other mediums, including music and film. This course satisfies the Distributive Studies Humanities (DSHU) requirement for General Education.
ENGL378Z: Women and Memory in Material and Digital Worlds (Jessica Enoch)
This course focuses on how the U.S. is remembering the 100-year anniversary of its 19th Amendment—women’s right to vote—ratified in 1920. We will explore commemorative projects dedicated to the suffrage anniversary by considering such questions as which suffragists are remembered and why? How are commemorative projects engaging the exclusivity and diversity of the suffrage movement? And, in what ways are commemorative projects connecting the suffrage anniversary to the 2020 presidential election, present-day feminist and electoral politics, and voting rights?
We will study a range of commemorative genres dedicated to the suffrage movement from YouTube memorializations to monument creations and from plays and musicals to art installations. Interested in these questions and concerns? Enroll in this course!
ENGL479J: Flash Fictions (Rion Scott)
Flash fiction exists somewhere between the short story and the prose poem. Traditionally described as a short story of less than one thousand words, it is a form that has risen to prominence alongside the proliferation of online literary journals (circa 2008), many of which publish solely flash fictions. The form’s abbreviated nature allows writers to hint at a larger world, or tell a complete narrative in a fragmentary space. In this class we will examine the various forms and structures of flash fiction (narrative, joke, triptych, etc.) and read the work of various journals (Smokelong Quarterly, Wigleaf Top 50) and practitioners of the form (Kathy Fish, Ernest Hemingway, Alice Walker, Tara Campbell, Joy Williams, etc.). Final grade will be based on papers, short responses, journals and flash stories.