In this course, we will transport ourselves into the many alternate worlds of speculative fiction. From imagined geographies and cosmologies to robot uprisings and alien invasions, we will investigate how stories often reimagine our world by conjuring entirely new ones. Drawing on foundational and twenty-first-century speculative fiction and film, we will take up questions such as how sci-fi addresses the ethics of scientific research and what stories with non-human characters reveal about the human experience. Class activities include analyzing a range of examples and common tropes, discussing narrative and visual theories, and trying your hand at world building through creative writing and visual storytelling.
World Building: Fantasy, Science Fiction and the SupernaturalWriting
Scheduled Class Time*
08:00 AM - 11:00 AM (PDT)
*The course will meet for two hours daily (Monday–Friday) for a live class during this window of time. The exact time will be set closer to the program start. In addition to the live meeting times, students will engage in out-of-class learning assignments such as assigned readings, group work, pre-recorded online lectures, and more.