Course Code: ENGL 239
Academic Year: 2024-2025
Unlike utopian novels and films that depict desirable and pleasing worlds of the future, "dystopian" literary and cinematic works present us with troubling images of a future that in many ways may already be here. This course examines some of these images and the problems they pose. We will read and view a number of dystopian novels and films, discussing their form and content and analyzing what they have to say about the future and the world we live in now. Novels include The Time Machine (H.G. Wells), The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell). Films include Blade Runner (Ridley Scott), A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick) and Twelve Monkeys (Terry Gilliam).