CHN 370 Science Fiction and the Future of China
This course will guide students to explore the political, cultural, and epistemological changes represented in Chinese science fiction. This course introduces students to three booms of Chinese science fiction, which all happened when China went through drastic changes in the last two centuries. It contextualizes the genre’s evolution in the intellectual history of modern China, where imagining the future of China is often the focus of contending ideologies and intellectual trends. We will read globally influential novels such as The Three-Body Problem and analyze SF blockbuster films such as The Wandering Earth. Topics include time travel, utopias and dystopias, race, gender, and sexuality, religion and culture, environmentalism, post-humanism, and the dangers, threats, and complexities of contemporary technologies. Taught in English.