ENGL258

Humanities (HU), Domestic Pluralism (DP)

Dystopian fiction conjures bad places: landscapes decimated by climate change, murderous regimes, or evil robotic empires. What do all these “bad places” reveal about the cultural fears and global anxieties in our own and distant times? This course explores the foundations of dystopian fiction within, oddly enough, early visions of its seeming opposite: that is, the utopia. From there, we move into classic and contemporary dystopian fictions, from literary fiction to YA, exploring how issues of gender, class, environmental justice, and politics are interrogated through these dark visions of humanity-gone-wrong.