S1020 Science and Modern Literary Imagination

Although fifty years ago, C.P. Snow disjoined the sciences and the humanities in his famous construction of \"two cultures,\" writers have in fact incorporated the scientific enterprise and its implications into their literary imagination almost as long as science has existed. In this course, we shall explore some of the resultant literature as well as its expression in film. This will include theatrical productions in which issues relating science to society and culture are explored, and works that are often considered under the genre of \"science fiction:\" future-oriented imaginative exercises in which scientific ideas and/or new science-based technologies are used to extrapolate future societies as well as to comment on the writer\'s own society and culture.