RELG256

This class examines how science fiction has addressed the deeply religious questions of what is means to be a person, and the nature of the self, consciousness, and the supernatural. Given the recent rise of A.I. (artificial intelligence) technology, we pay particular attention to how the genre understands the human and our relationship to the non-human and the trans-human: the A.I., the robot, the alien, the divine, and the monster. We consider this relationship in terms of the central concerns of religion, from ethics and philosophy, to fears about an A.I. apocalypse, to the nature of the soul. In class we analyze diverse science fiction and speculative fiction (types of media, time periods, cultures), and utilize A.I. and other software in projects.