DHUM 25A09 - Utopian and Dystopian Visions in Literature, Film and the Arts

One of the most popular trends in fiction, film and television today is that of a ‘dystopia’—a distant or not-so-distant future or parallel world in which the problems of today’s society have gone unchecked and have reached horrifying extremes. Its corollary, utopian fiction (or the projection of an ideal world that unfortunately does not exist, or does not yet exist) is far less common today—yet these opposing dynamics in writing, painting and visual storytelling still have the same purpose: to stress the shortcomings of our world today by either showing a world in which they have been solved (utopia) or a world in which they have gotten far worse (dystopia).

Another key feature of utopian/dystopian storytelling is that it has indeed existed for centuries. This class will allow students to follow that development from its utopian origins in Platonic philosophy and later in Augustinian and myriad other religious doctrines, through key trends of the Age of Discovery, the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, then through the 20th century’s overwhelming dominance of dystopian visions (focusing successfully on extreme politics, technology and censorship), to current trends in terms of feminist dystopias and parallel developments in environmental dystopias.

The overall chronological structure of our class discussions will be augmented by parallels drawn to today’s trends.

No pre-requisites.

The first two classes will be lecture classes on the history and development of utopian thought from the time of Plato, through the Age of Discovery, to the late 19th century. Starting in class 3, the five main dystopian themes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries will be dealt with in more depth and in a more interactive way, blending lessons, student presentations and discussions of readings and writing assignments. Students will often be asked to compare two dystopian works on a similar theme through a choice of writing assignments. The last class will be a comprehensive, two-hour, written exam on the entire semester, blending object testing and writing assignments.

Workload and Student Assessment:

Grading is based on Continuous Assessment and breaks down as follows: