Film for Non-Majors: Back to the Future

9 units · Undergraduate

Intermittent: 9 units Can movies predict our future? From the beginning of cinema, writers have speculated and imagined the future with varying degrees of accuracy, ranging from spot-on technological predictions to grim dystopias. This course explores how cinema has imagined, projected, and interrogated the future from the silent analog era to the contemporary digital age. We will analyze films presenting speculative futures as commentaries on not only the time they were made, but also the current moment we are in and the potential of what may arrive next. Through screenings, readings, and discussions we will cover topics include technological advancement, socio-political anxieties, environmental crises, evolution of human identity, post-humanism, and the frontier.