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Lehrende/r: Dr. Klaus Schmidt
Veranstaltungsart:
Seminar/Übung
Anzeige im Stundenplan:
06.008.0036
Semesterwochenstunden:
2
Credits:
6,0
Unterrichtssprache:
Englisch
Min. | Max. Teilnehmerzahl:
- | 30
Prioritätsschema: Senatsrichtlinie zzgl. Bevorzugung höherer Fachsemester
Zulassung gemäß Richtlinie über den Zugang zu teilnahmebeschränkten Lehrveranstaltungen vom 07. März 2007.
Nähere Informationen hierzu entnehmen Sie bitte www.info.jogustine.uni-mainz.de/senatsrichtlinie
Über die Senatsrichtlinie hinaus werden bei der Platzvergabe für diese Veranstaltung Studierende höherer Fachsemester bevorzugt berücksichtigt.
Voraussetzungen / Organisatorisches:
Preliminary Discussion / Introduction: All questions relating to organization will be answered in the first session of this seminar (Apr. 21, 2022).
Procedure and Requirements: Students who take this course as an Übung (3 ECTS) give an oral presentation (including handout); those who take it as a seminar (6 ECTS) also submit a written paper (in addition to giving an oral presentation and preparing a handout). Your papers should average 12–15 pages of text plus outline and bibliography, and should be written in English. The papers must be submitted, at the latest, on August 15, 2022. For the form of your paper, please check “A Guide to Writing Term Papers” on our new home page (Studiensprachen/Englisch/Ressourcen/Amerikanistik) and, for reasons of simplicity, the 7th (2009), not the 8th (2016) or 9th (2021), edition of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (see Lehrbuchsammlung). Your handout (1–2 pages) is supposed to summarize the most important points of your oral report. Your oral report should average 20 minutes.
Inhalt:
In 21st-century literature and visual culture, we have seen a striking boom in dystopian plots, scenarios, and concerns. In this seminar, we will focus on dystopian representations of advances in digital technology and artificial intelligence that are just one step ahead. After familiarizing ourselves with the dystopian tradition in Terranglia, including Aldous Huxley’s and George Orwell’s genre-defining novels Brave New World (1932) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), we will analyze three high-profile examples in Anglo-American fiction and film: Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror (British TV series, 2011–19), Dave Eggers’s The Circle (American novel, 2013), and Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (British film, 2014). In independent projects, we will also take a look at more recent, highly acclaimed forays into digital dystopia, such as Westworld (TV series, 2016–present) and Devs (TV miniseries, 2020). Special emphasis will be placed on the potentials and dangers of AI and transhumanism, the nexus between free will and determinism/totalitarianism, as well as the light the projected worlds shed on anxieties and developments in our own dystopian times.
Empfohlene Literatur:
Compulsory Reading:
– Dave Eggers, The Circle (2013).
Please buy a paperback edition of Eggers’s novel. If you order online, the average cost is 10 euros (see, e.g., amazon.de). Do not purchase a “Kindle” edition (because you will need page numbers for parenthetical documentation).
The Circle should be read before the first day of class.
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