Utopia, Dystopia

4 credits · Undergraduate

Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students an opportunity to explore intellectual topics with a faculty member and peers in a seminar setting. In this course we will examine utopian literature from its classical beginnings, in Plato's Republic, and in his Timaeus and Critias (which tell the story of the lost world of Atlantis), as well as in some plays of Aristophanes. We will also consider later developments, in Thomas More's Utopia, and in such works as William Morris' News from Nowhere, and Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed. Towards the end of the semester the seminar participants will be divided into groups, each of which will be asked to devise its own utopia on a particular theme, for oral presentation in class.