In this course we will develop writing and argumentative skills through exploring theoretical and imaginative texts that revolve around technology, science and social order. We will read texts that take up the questions of artificial intelligence and human attachment (Ex-Machina), the relation between justice and techniques of scientific prediction (Foundation, Minority Report), and time travel (The Time Machine) among others.

In this class, we’ll look at a number of works of dark comedy, past and present. Reading humor as a reaction to despair or anxiety, we’ll explore how each of these works use comedy to represent and critique real social and political issues.

Laughing to Tears: Dark Comedy in Literature and Film

“Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that…Yes, yes, it’s the most comical thing in the world.”

—Samuel Beckett, Endgame

“What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears?”

Course Description: From Columbus’ ‘discovery’ of the Americas to ongoing debates about immigration and labor, travel has played a significant role in Latin America’s story.  But what does it mean to travel? How does the experience of ‘taking a trip’ being ‘out of place,’ or encountering a ‘visitor’ have an impact on individuals, identities, and cultures?  How has Latin America been a site of travels in pursuit of personal roots and unchartered routes, but also a region touched by the unexpected ruptures that can emerge out of experiences of travel?

“Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t”

-Proverb (Unknown Origin)

What are the different binary oppositions that terms like representation and fiction tend to set up and how do different texts, and the novel in particular attempt to free our analytical thinking from oppositions like fiction vs. non-fiction and art vs. reality? How might we begin to understand the relationship between language and the world without seeing these respective spaces as being easily juxtaposed or spaces that are easily set apart?

Death, by murder, illness or suicide is the end result in many of literature’s most compelling stories of romantic love. From the topos of the fallen woman that permeates the 19th century novel, to the performances of awesome vengeance in Hedda Gabler and Medea, women heroines often take the brunt of society’s censure of “inappropriate” passion. The protagonists (both male and female) are always marked by their difference, which is often based on their willingness to confront society.

Given the violent and tragic history of the Caribbean it is hardly surprising that many of the region’s greatest writers have sought to challenge historical injustice, and its legacy into the present, through literature. Some of the questions we shall consider in this course include: How does literature function as counter-history? How does writing resist historical erasure and oblivion? How do certain literary texts attempt to recover or re-imagine lost or suppressed histories?

According to the philosopher Gottfried Liebniz, we live in “the best of all possible worlds.”  Whether or not that’s true, it hasn’t prevented us from ceaselessly imagining – or even creating – alternate realities: shiny fantasy worlds where our most cherished dreams come true or, when we’re feeling less optimistic, nightmarish dystopias where they are mercilessly crushed.  What constitutes a possible world or parallel universe?

Is there such a thing as the perfect crime?  Can murder be considered beautiful or artistic?  What exactly is the relationship between art and murder?  In this class, we will be exploring the gruesome interplay between violence and beauty in literature and film.

Some texts rebel against a literary tradition, some against a political regime, and some against society as a whole. In this course we will consider works of fiction, film, music and photography, focusing particularly on their connections to rebellion and revolution. We will explore texts that explicitly deal with revolution and texts which deal with it on a metaphoric level. Together we will witness how literature and art work not only to provide awareness, but also as active agents with the power to incite national and global change.