Reading & Composition

What do we do when we dream? Why do we dream, and what are we to do with our dreams in the morning? Dreams are our hopes and ambitions, but also delusions, fears, and hidden desires. They can furnish us with important messages from our gods, or reveal to us premonitions of the future. Inspiration, whether poetic or scientific, is often said to come from dreams, and we might often call a real-world calamity a nightmare— although a terrifying nightmare can certainly feel like the greatest calamity of all. Dreaming plays with and upends our understanding of reality: and, indeed, both the sweetest pleasure and the most blood-curdling fear takes place in our nocturnal states.

This R&C course will explore how dreams have been portrayed in literature and film, considering why dreams have become such a powerful figure for exploring the unconscious, alternate realities, and hallucinogenic perception. We will read canonical texts that take dreaming seriously—from Synesius’ 4th c. C.E. guide to dream-divination, to Freud’s groundbreaking Interpretation of Dreams. We will think about the dreamlike experience of going to the cinema, as well as the political imagination that dreaming
helps us cultivate. This course will, of course, not be without its practical side: students will have the option of keeping a dream-journal in lieu of our creative-writing assignment, and our course will enjoy a guest lecture from a somatic artist on the science of lucid dreaming. Though this course is about what we do when we sleep, we can promise you that it will be anything but a snooze!