LIT4001: Dystopian Fiction Works of dystopian literature often imagines bleak, post-apocalyptic futures that are controlled by totalitarian regimes, subjugated by technology run amok, devastated by environmental disaster, or blighted by plague and/or all manners of contagion. As negative as these imagined worlds might be, however, they nevertheless manage to do productive, even positive, cultural work in our own. By focusing on and exaggerating contemporary problems, by making a space for them, dystopian fiction has the potential to open up new frontiers in the real world. Our emphasis throughout this upper division class will be how this potential manifests in a variety of literary texts and cultural objects.
