English 5380-001 Fall 2009

Fall 2009

English 5380

British Literature and Science

This seminar will introduce students to the interdisciplinary specialization of literature and science with a survey of nineteenth- and twentieth-century British texts: excerpts from Charles Darwin’s seminal works of scientific prose, a parade of science-fictional or science-conversant prose narratives, and for good measure, a recent science-inflected work of British drama. As we sample historical and theoretical approaches to the study and cultural interplay of literary and scientific discourses, we will incorporate some review of pertinent scientific developments over the last several centuries. In this period, scientific theories of evolution, energy, entropy, and relativity accompany a host of social schemes and concerns, powerfully refracted in the storyworlds under narration: eugenics, degeneration, political order vs. cultural chaos, the possibility (or not) of individual and social renovation, of global utopia or planetary catastrophe. Classes will be in seminar discussion format. Students will give several formal class reports and write a midterm and final paper.

discussion guidelines

writing assignments

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REQUIRED TEXTS

Charles Darwin, Evolutionary Writings, ed. Secord (Oxford World's Classics)

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, The Coming Race, ed. Sinnema (Broadview)

Samuel Butler, Erewhon (Penguin Classics)

H. G. Wells, The Time Machine, ed. Arata (Norton Critical)

---, The Island of Dr. Moreau, ed. Harris (Broadview)

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (Harper Perennial)

Naomi Mitchison, Solution Three (Feminist Press at CUNY)

Doris Lessing, Shikasta (Vintage)