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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).