Immortality. Everyone seems to want it. Or, well, practically everyone. Well, not me. I don’t want it. But, look, even the world’s oldest recorded epic hero, Gilgamesh, struggled against the notion of mortality and his own impending, inevitable death, and ever since (and probably long-before) members of our species have sought ways to subvert it. This course aims to explore Immortal Fiction, in which narratives capture the human, yearning desire to find immortality, the spectacular failures as well as the bitter and unexpected consequences that often go hand-in-hand with the rare successes, and we will look, too, at the evergreen notion of living forever as it plays out across time, as access to different technologies change the human perception of what it means to live forever, how one obtains that goal, and how people mount vicious campaigns to achieve it. The reading list for this course is still in process but might possibly include excerpts from Gilgamesh, the novels Frankenstein, The Portrait of Dorian Gray, Cloud Atlas, Mind of My Mind, Never Let Me Go, Dracula, Orxy and Crake, and others. We might watch some Black Mirrors, or some Good Places, and explore other media that tackles what it means to die and how we (sometimes) wish we wouldn’t.
Learning Outcomes:
Delivery Method: Remotely accessible
Course Level: 2000-level
Credits: 4
M/Th 1:40PM - 3:30PM (Full-term)
Maximum Enrollment: 20
Course Frequency: One time only
Categories: All courses , Literature , Remotely Accessible
Tags: fiction , immortality , literature , Research , Writing