Morales-Franceschi, Eric
TR 9:30 AM
Park Hall 0250
ENGL 3460 Literature and Utopia
This course is a survey of literary and historical renditions of eminently desirable (or wretched) worlds. It is a course, thereby, on literature’s (or, broadly conceived, storytelling’s) speculative capacity to think and imagine the conceivable limits of the (im)possible and to rouse affect as much as intellect. We shall tease out the motifs and rhetorical tactics employed by (anti-)utopian thinkers and writers as well as contemplate the various functions utopia (or dystopia) may fulfill, whether as wish-fulfillment, satirical commentary, cautionary tale, treatise on the good life, etc.
The first half of the class will be devoted to classic novels, essays, and manifestoes in the genre, whereas the second half shall explore utopia/dystopia vis-à-vis the environmental crisis.
The student will write two critical essays and partake in a series of in-class workshops and creative exercises.
Readings (and viewing):
Thomas More, Utopia
Karl Marx and Frederic Engels, The Communist Manifesto
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
Ursula Le Guin, The Dispossessed
Albert Hirschman, The Rhetoric of Reaction
David Henry Thoreau, Walden
How to Change the World, dir. J. Rothwell
Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything
Winona LaDuke, Recovering the Sacred & Chronicles