Great Issues in Social Science
Imagining Worlds: Comparative Development in Fiction and Fantasy

HSP 151 CRN
Dr. Andrew Schlewitz
Tuesdays
4:10 – 7:00pm
Observatory

Mode: Textual Analysis

After World War II ended, the field of comparative development exploded as scholars and political leaders in the US tried to figure out why some countries enjoyed so much more wealth and political stability than others. They debated the meaning of development, even as they worked on how to shape and control development in Latin America and newly independent countries in Africa and Asia.

But novelists and filmmakers have also explored this field. In creating post-apocalyptic worlds or imagining magical universes, they too have made implicit arguments about how development works, or what promotes ‘good’ or ‘bad’ development. In other words, like social scientists, artists have theories of development.

In this course we will compare the comparative development work of some of the leading development scholars with popular novels and film, trying to comprehend and explain the places where social science and art overlap, and where they are wildly apart. We will move chronologically, from the Cold War era to this era of War on Terror. We will touch on a variety of theoretical fields and genres, such as the political economy of Dune and Silent Running, the feminist critique in Woman on the Edge of Time and A Handmaid’s Tale, and the angst of postmodernism and globalization in Neuromancer and Dark City, and more.

We won’t settle the matter of comparative development, but we will get a thorough introduction into the field, and see that popular art argues as it entertains, and that social scientists do not just describe and analyze; they sometimes dream, or even hallucinate.