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Science: Fiction, Fact, and Fantasy

ENGL 1595.401
also offered as: ENVS 1410
instructor(s):
TR 12:00-1:29pm

Literature and science both tell stories about how the world works. Both develop in conversation with a host of con-texts, driven by larger cultural forces. Both use metaphor as a tool for thinking–-albeit in different ways. In this course, we will explore how English literature, from the early 19th century to today, grapples with the rapidly changing relationship between humans and the natural world. We will explore how literature reflects on, converses with, and even helps shape the sciences of energy and evolution. We begin in the 19th century because this period witnessed not only the industrial revolution and the emergence of the ecological sciences, but also a nascent environmental consciousness. Its literature helped set us on—and struggled against—the ecology-breaking worldviews that have brought us to where we are today. As we hope to develop a more ethical relationship to our world, literature enables us to understand how we got here and perhaps even to discover paths not taken that may guide us in our own efforts to live better in our world.

English Major Requirements
  • Sector 1 Theory and Poetics (AETP)
  • Sector 5 19th Century (AE19)
  • Sector 6 20th & 21st Centuries (AE20)
English Concentration Attributes
  • 20th-21st Century Concentration (AE21)
  • Theory & Cultural Studies Concentration (AETC)
College Attributes