Sarah Pedzinski
Instructional Consultant
Indiana University Bloomington
CLLC-L 110 Wretched Worlds: Dystopias in Fiction
Introduction
Every semester, the Collins Living Learning Center at Indiana University calls for innovative and interesting course proposals to sponsor. The process is detailed and highly competitive as courses must be voted on and approved by both the Collins Board of Educational Programming, which is composed of undergraduate representatives of the learning center, as well as the full-time directors of the Learning Center. Applicants are asked to propose a topic, syllabus, submit recommendations, interview, and teach a mock class. My course, Wretched Worlds: Dystopias in Fiction, was accepted into the Collins program during my second year as an Associate Instructor (Fall 2018) and taught during my third year (Fall 2019). It received high praise from students, and I was subsequently nominated for Collins instructor of the year.
Course Overview
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In this course, students must engage with a variety of dystopian landscapes in different mediums. From Aldous Huxley's monumental Brave New World to Netflix's popular series Black Mirror and everything in-between, students will use these texts to define what a dystopia is, where it comes from, and examine why we have been and continue to be fascinated with visions of a dark future. Students are required to approach texts wholly, examining their creators and historical context alongside the worlds themselves. This requires students to take interdisciplinary and critical approaches to distinguish between primary and secondary sources, genres and mediums, and fiction and nonfiction. Evaluation will incorporate multimedia projects, creative representations, and argumentative, academic writing. Ultimately, students will be able not only to discuss the genre and provide examples of dystopias from a variety of mediums and time periods, but also understand how and why these "wretched worlds" and dark futures have developed throughout time.
