Part I: Feminist Speculative Fiction
The seminar discusses narratives that speculate about technological ‘progress’ and the future of society or even mankind. It includes feminist sci-fi literature and speculative fiction by Mary Shelley, Ursula L. Guin, Margaret Atwood, Jeannette Winterson and others. Although the seminar focuses on literature from the twentieth and twenty-first century we will begin with Shelley’s Frankenstein to develop a sense of a historical tradition. The aim of this seminar is to understand what it means to imagine a concrete and specific future in literary terms. It interrogates the representation of time in futuristic narratives and the shaping of fictional worlds in relation to the present. It discusses questions of form as well as the conjunction of aesthetics and politics in feminist speculative fiction.
Part II: Climate Fiction
The seminar focuses on contemporary fiction to explore how the sense of an impending climate catastrophe shapes fictional futures. It interrogates critical concepts in the field of climate fiction and the Anthropocene as well as literary strategies, conceptions of authorship and the social role of literature. As a cultural medium, literature may always reflects on the present but climate fiction tends to be self-consciously socially engaged and committed to change. In exploring future scenarios, it draws on various modes and genres: on dystopian and apocalyptic narratives as well as on science fiction and speculative fiction.
The syllabus includes works by Margaret Atwood, John Lanchester, Charlotte McConnaughy and Marge Piercy. |
