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Courses & Schedules
English 159-2 - Winter, 2018
Topics in the Novel
Topic: The Novel as a Time Machine
Class Information
Instructor:
Thomas, George
CRN:
74422
Time:
MWF 2:10-3:00
Location:
1038 Wickson
Description
As Tobias Wilson-Bates and James Gleick have recently argued, the novel is a kind of time machine—it allows us to “travel” to other times. Such travel happens in various forms: historical novels take us back to earlier eras; time travel novels take the idea literally and depict people actually going to the past; counterfactual novels imagine times that never were, but might have been; dystopian novels imagine a future where things have gone terribly wrong; apocalyptic novels imagine the end of time; and what I call temporal novels ask probing questions about what time itself is. We will read novels (or excerpts) of all these types, as well as a dash of theory, in order to ask not only what novels say about time, but also what is at stake in the journeys they imagine.
Grading
Attendance/Participation, Two Papers, Group Presentation, Final Exam, Reading Responses.
Texts
The Time Machine
, H.G. Wells
Kindred
, Octavia Butler
The Sound and the Fury
, William Faulkner
The Handmaid's Tale
, Margaret Atwood
The Man in the High Castle
, Phillip K. Dick