ENGL1918: The Worlds We Have Made: Some of Us Are Already Living in a Dystopia/ After the Apocalypse

Over the last 20 years, film, video, television and other media have increasingly depicted the end of the world/ this world. Whether in totalitarian states in which liberal freedoms no longer exist or after the decimation of the natural environment, society and its infrastructures, the idea that we are headed to ruin is an entertaining prospect (in that it is suffused into so much of our entertainment-oriented media). This course analyzes these dystopian and post-apocalyptic representations in relationship to the “catastrophes” impacting various marginalized groups in the present, problematizing the futuristic settings of the world’s end. This course considers the modes of thought that have led and are leading to our destruction(s) and that drive our consumption of these pessimistic imaginings of the future. Together we will connect the apocalypses/dystopias that we turn away from and disavow in the present, those we pave the way for in the future, and those that we pay good money to watch. Finally, we will consider how marginalized subjects have imagined and theorized other modes of political and social organization within their apocalyptic presents and what, if anything, we can do about these present and potentially future catastrophes. Readings may include include comics and films from Marvel and D.C., and novels and short stories by N.K. Jemisin, P.D. James Alexis, Pauline Gumbs, and Octavia Butler.

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