Literature and the Future

We often think of literature as a window onto the past. This class, by contrast, will offer various ways of analyzing the relationship between writing and the future. Writing might represent forecasts of the future, as in some speculative fiction; it can attempt to speak to the readers of the future; it can use apocalyptic visions to make people in the present feel ethical responsibility to the future (as in some literature on climate change). Writing of the past can also hail us today as its own future. Authors may include Octavia Butler, Ursula Le Guin, David Mitchell, William Shakespeare, and more. Themes will include Afrofuturism, ecological futurity, revolutionary futures, literary reception, the future represented by your desire to finish a text, and more.