Could It Happen Here? Now? Dystopian Novels for Our Time

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In a time when many believe that contemporary events are unfolding in ways that bode ill for the future, the dystopian classics of youth are the focus of renewed interest as possible guides to “what might happen”. This course will be devoted to a careful, mature consideration of four such classics as we seek both to understand each text as a literary work originating in its own time and place and to glean possible insights into our own time and place. The texts are: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World; Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here; George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four; and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

Texts
  • Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World
  • Lewis, Sinclair. It Can’t Happen Here
  • Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four
  • Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451
TAUGHT: AUTUMN 2017