English 3720 - Literature, Science, and Technology: Frankenstein’s Future: Robotics and Cloning in Science Fiction and Film Dashboard

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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).

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Posted by Patrizio Murdocca on Sunday, March 26, 2017 - 19:51

Rodney Brooks joined the faculty at MIT in September 1894 and began work on his various robotics projects. The references to his research and that of his students in Chapter 3 and 4 took place at his MIT lab. 

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Posted by Austin Channell on Sunday, March 26, 2017 - 17:01

The setting for most of Brave New World, 632 AF (AD 2540) London is carefully regulated, controlled, and planned

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Posted by Austin Channell on Sunday, March 26, 2017 - 15:05

The Savage Reservation, located in New Mexico, is the antithesis of the ordered, controlled London in Brave New World

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Posted by Austin Channell on Sunday, March 26, 2017 - 14:56

Alfred Mond's large ammonium nitrate manufacturing plant, dubbed by Huxley as an "ordered universe in the midst of the larger world of planless incoherence," helped inspire the author to pen Brave New World. Alfred Mond is the namesake of Mustapha Mond, Resident World Controller of Western Europe in Huxley's novel.

Billingham Manufacturing Plant

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Posted by Kayla Bartee on Saturday, March 25, 2017 - 12:25

Where Victor Frankenstein's university is located. 

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Posted by Kayla Bartee on Saturday, March 25, 2017 - 12:25

Where Victor Frankenstein's university is located. 

Place
Posted by Hannah Resnick on Saturday, March 25, 2017 - 11:59

Victor Frankenstein's home town, where he left for university and returned a few years later after creating his creature. 

Capital of the European Region in Asimov's "The Evitable Conflict".

Place
Posted by Elizabeth Paul on Friday, March 24, 2017 - 23:02

James Whale filmed Frankenstein at Universal Studios in Hollywood.

Chronology Entry
Posted by Ali Maas on Friday, March 24, 2017 - 14:29
Chronology Entry
Posted by Anonymous (not verified) on Friday, March 24, 2017 - 14:25

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