| Content | This course introduces students to the various forms and functions of knowledge and science in literature, particularly within the realm of science fiction, the genre that most directly epitomises this fundamental connection within literary texts.
In analysing how it shifts our understanding of ourselves and of supposedly inalterable facts about the reality we inhabit, we will examine how science fiction demonstrates that fiction is neither fundamentally in conflict with scientific knowledge, as previously supposed, nor a mere vehicle for its celebration, as still commonly presumed of science fiction. Instead, the genre, with its radical investigations into other forms of being, fearing and hoping, plays a crucial role in the social formation, order and negotiation of knowledge. As such, science fiction also represents a vital thought experiment regarding the “science of fiction”, i.e. the development of a knowledge of literature and the many fascinating ways in which it helps us to know our own world better, in turn.
In this course, we will take a systematic and theory-based approach to a deeper understanding of science fiction, particularly concerning its historical background, unique aesthetic/narrative tools, and relationship with the critical and technocultural contexts that shape it. Employing contemporary theoretical approaches, we will discuss a variety of themes within primary texts alongside diverse critical sources, all of which ultimately relate to knowledge and knowability. Particular areas of focus may include: other worlds and alien existences; altered temporality and alternate history; utopia and dystopia; climate fiction and the Anthropocene; trans-, posthumanist and cyborg identities; robots and AI; and alternative futurisms. Moreover, the course will thereby also engage with the fundamental (and at times overlooked) role of order and presentation of knowledge, i.e. its aesthetic and narrative forms, within science and literature. |
Performance assessment as a semester course