English 3720 - Literature, Science, and Technology: Frankenstein’s Future: Robotics and Cloning in Science Fiction and Film Dashboard
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Description
English 3720, Vanderbilt University (Spring 2017). “Literature, Science, and Technology: Frankenstein’s Future: Robotics and Cloning in Science Fiction and Film.” TR 9:35-10:50 (ESB 320). Professor Jay Clayton.
How do the futures literature and film imagine shape public attitudes toward science and technology? What is the human in an age of artificial intelligence, autonomous weapons, and synthetic biology? How do science fiction and films influence public policy concerning scientific research? This course focuses on fictions and films about artificial life from Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and James Whale’s iconic 1931 film of that novel, through Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), to classic robot stories by Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and others, to twenty-first century dystopias such as Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake (2003) and David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (2004). Films will include adaptations of many of these novels, as well as Blade Runner (1982), A.I. (2001), Her (2013), and Ex Machina (2015).
Galleries, Timelines, and Maps
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Individual Entries
Where the original Talos defended the shores from invasion.
The film WALL-E takes place in an unspecified city on the east coast of the United States. Th film depicts a desert-like atmosphere filled with trash, pollution, and destruction; the city (and the rest of the world) is completely abandoned and destroyed due to the waste and pollution produced by mankind.
Vincent and Ava's research is funded by the British Ministry of Defence on a secret research base facility.
The setting for the dystopian society seen in the "Fifteen Million Merits" episode of Black Mirror.
In Orphan Black, Sarah Manning sees her clone commit suicide at Huxley Station in Toronto.