From We to the Walking Dead: A Century of Dystopia and Gender in Literature and Film

3 units

From We to The Walking Dead: A Century of Dystopia and Gender in Literature and Film will explore constructions of gender and dystopia over almost a one-hundred-year span. We will discuss a variety of texts and films as we explore how authors construct, envision, and re-envision dystopian societies, and how historical gender roles may be reified and/or revised by these authors. We will consider specifically how gender affects and is affected by the following themes: humanity in inhumane environments; beauty in the context of ugliness; the normal and abnormal when the abnormal becomes the norm; femininity and masculinity when conventional civilization crumbles; freedom/liberation and restriction/oppression; fear and anxiety; conscience and the ethics of dystopia.