Hum/En 32 - The Origins of Science Fiction: Fictions about Science

This course considers a set of classic, often-adapted nineteenth-century literary works that helped to pave the way for modern "science fiction," and that simultaneously supplied us with many forms and terms we still use for imagining the monstrous and the horrifying. Why does the depiction of scientific work and scientists so often shade into the terrain of nightmare in fiction? What separates the "mad scientist" from the ambitious scientist? How and why do the literary inventions of the past still resonate in the present? Works considered may include: Frankenstein, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dracula, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Coming Race.