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English 350-192-012 Freshman Seminar: (Im)Perfect Worlds: The Uses of Utopia Instr:
James Chapson
Course Information:
TR 12:30pm-1:45pm CRT 286
Course Description
How should we live? Should we have one spouse or several? Could work be structured to make our jobs less tedious? What should our towns or cities look like? When machines do all our work, and our lifespan has been doubled or tripled, what will we do with our time—will life then be worth living? Utopias are often misunderstood as unrealistic dreams of perfection or as demonic nightmares of tyranny; in fact, they are a way of thinking about how we live by imagining (and sometimes actually creating) alternative societies. The course will explore how utopias can be used to construct new ways
of thinking about the most basic and essential aspects of daily life.
It will begin with a close reading of Thomas More’s Utopia, then branch
off into a study of other fictional and actual alternative societies.
The class will require reading, engagement in class discussion, original
thinking and writing, and some research. Students must be willing
to insert themselves imaginatively into unusual, even bizarre, societies
that question our assumptions about how we should live.
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