{"id":74096,"date":"2024-09-11T00:01:32","date_gmt":"2024-09-11T04:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world.edu\/?p=74096"},"modified":"2024-09-11T00:01:32","modified_gmt":"2024-09-11T04:01:32","slug":"a-college-course-thats-a-history-of-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/a-college-course-thats-a-history-of-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"A college course that\u2019s a history of the future"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h4>\n

Title of course:<\/h4>\n

Science Fiction as Intellectual History<\/p>\n

What prompted the idea for the course?<\/h4>\n

For most of its history, science fiction was a disreputable, throwaway genre. But sources of culture and thought aren\u2019t just found in classic literature or in the writings of the great thinkers. They\u2019re also in popular entertainment: movies, comics, pulp magazines, TV.<\/p>\n

Big thoughts often come in chunks with labels like \u201cThe Future\u201d or \u201cTechnology\u201d or \u201cFreedom.\u201d And most ideas about these things are shaped by science fiction.<\/p>\n

So in this class, my students explore how\u00a0the theories of Charles Darwin<\/a>, for example, are reflected in science fiction like \u201cJurassic Park<\/a>,\u201d \u201cThe Island of Dr. Moreau<\/a>,\u201d \u201cX-Men<\/a>\u201d and \u201cThe Wrath of Khan<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m lucky to be the third generation of professors teaching this course at Auburn. It\u2019s an old staple here that I inherited.<\/p>\n

What does the course explore?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

I usually pick three big plot ideas from sci-fi: alien encounters, time travel and superhuman abilities. Then we trace the development of those ideas, primarily through American fiction.<\/p>\n

Students might read H.G. Wells\u2019 \u201cThe Time Machine<\/a>,\u201d which was written in the 1890s and tells the story of the Eloi and Morlocks, post-human races from 800,000 years in the future; C.L. Moore\u2019s secret visitors from the future in the 1953 novella \u201cVintage Season<\/a>\u201d; and Steven Spielberg\u2019s 1985 escape to an idealized 1950s in \u201cBack to the Future<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

These works all include mind-bending theories about what time travel might look like. But students also see how each of them tells a different story about the anxieties and obsessions of the times in which they were created.<\/p>\n

For example, Wells\u2019 novel is a vision of how thousands of years of Victorian class divisions lead to the evolution of a group of cannibalistic underground humans. In \u201cBack to the Future,\u201d Marty McFly leaves the dingy, broken-down 1980s for a clean and shiny version of the 1950s, one that looks much more promising than 1985. The film taps into the 1980s\u00a0political and<\/a>\u00a0cultural nostalgia<\/a>\u00a0for so-called \u201csimpler\u201d times. (Of course, in their version of 1955, Biff and Marty never deal with segregation or Cold War nuclear panic.)<\/p>\n

Science fiction offers a kind of film negative of history \u2013 a back door into what made people worried or scared rather than what was heroic. Sci-fi captures that fear and anxiety.<\/p>\n

Rod Serling\u2019s 1960 \u201cTwilight Zone\u201d episode \u201cThe Monsters Are Due on Maple Street<\/a>\u201d is the story of how neighbors turn on each other when they suspect an alien invasion is taking place. It parallels the American crisis over desegregation and communist subversion.<\/p>\n

As Serling concluded<\/a>, \u201cFor the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout of its own \u2013 for the children, and the children unborn. And the pity of it is that such things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why is this course relevant now?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

New technology, along with endless\u00a0predictions<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0prophecies<\/a>\u00a0about the future, bombard students.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to take a moment to step back. How is the way we talk about and use technology influenced by the way we\u2019re trained to think about technology and the future? And how much do past visions of the future dictate the choices of the present?<\/p>\n

What\u2019s a critical lesson from the course?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Students often think technology has rules and it will follow those rules.\u00a0But technology doesn\u2019t work like that<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s both terrifying and uplifting, because it means that we can still create and imagine our future as we see fit.<\/p>\n

What materials does the course feature?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

I anchor the course with a series of novels; the list changes, but it always includes \u201cThe Time Machine\u201d and Ursula K. Le Guin\u2019s 1971 novel \u201cThe Lathe of Heaven<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beyond that, I try to pepper in a mix of pulp stories, TV shows, radio dramas, comic books and films. I assign the 1970s avant-garde sci-fi stories of\u00a0Brian Aldiss<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Joanna Russ<\/a>, and underground literature from the 1980s, such as the graphic novel \u201cEd the Happy Clown<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

I shape the course like a traditional \u201cgreat books<\/a>\u201d course \u2013 those that feature the works of intellectual and literary giants \u2013 by assigning a different work every week. I just have a different idea about what makes a great book.<\/p>\n

We also spend a delightful week examining the economic and cultural history of \u201cso-bad-its-good<\/a>\u201d B movies and late-night features, where I have them watch an episode of the Canadian sci-fi show \u201cThe Starlost<\/a>,\u201d considered one of the worst shows in television history. Sometimes you have to learn what not to do.<\/p>\n

What will the course prepare students to do?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

They learn to read and think. They learn that all stories have ideas and philosophies, whether simple or complex, wise or foolish.<\/p>\n

I hope they learn to watch for nonsense in public debates about technology and the future \u2013\u00a0like how some people assume computer modeling<\/a>\u00a0for human language is the same thing as language \u2013 and keep an eye out for\u00a0ideologies masquerading as action films<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I hope they learn to love an author they\u2019ve never read before \u2013 and learn to appreciate how much reading and stories make life worth living.]<\/p>\n

Author Bio:<\/strong> Adam Jortner is the Goodwin Philpott Eminent Professor of Religion at Auburn University<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Title of course: Science Fiction as Intellectual History What prompted the idea for the course? For most of its history, science fiction was a disreputable, throwaway genre. But sources of culture and thought aren\u2019t just found in classic literature or in the writings of the great thinkers. They\u2019re also in popular entertainment: movies, comics, pulp […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[435085],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-74096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-higher-education","tag-intellectual-history"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nA college course that\u2019s a history of the future - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/a-college-course-thats-a-history-of-the-future\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A college course that\u2019s a history of the future - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Title of course: Science Fiction as Intellectual History What prompted the idea for the course? 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