Meets the following requirements: HS  W  

The literary imagination has made "fictions" of science and about scientists for as long as the terms have had cultural meaning (in English, since the 14th century).  This course examines some of these fictions from both past and present.  We will look at how "science" became a topic for Western literature and how that literature, especially over the last three hundred years, has reflected scientific thought.  We will notice how scientists have been treated in imaginative works ranging from celebration to satire, from the imaginative creation of the "mad scientist" to the scientist as "genius." The "Scientific Revolution," part and parcel of the modern Western world's political, ecological, and economic development will be background throughout.  Developments in scientific thought underlie barely hidden historical and contemporary conflicts between scientific, artistic, religious and spiritual (as well as political, economic, and historical) ways of thinking as well as the belief that ways of thinking can be separated.  Texts for this course are specifically selected to help us look at how literature reflects, expresses and shapes questions about science and scientists, religion and spirituality, within the historical frame of modern Western culture.  Books students will read include:  Mary Shelley, Frankentein, Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People, Bertolt Brecht, Galileo, Alan Lightman, Einstein's Dreams, and Gloria Naylor, Mama Day.  This is a writing-focused course.  Students will do four two-page response papers and four rewrites.  Conferences with the instructor to discuss response papers are required.  In addition, each student will write a longer essay on a work or theme raised in class. Evaluation includes class participation, response papers, the longer essay, and overall attendance at conferences and progress with writing.

Level: Intermediate.  Lab Fee $15  *HS*