Margaret Atwoods MaddAddam Trilogy - Einzelansicht

Please follow the "comment" link above for more information on comments, course readings, course requirements and grading.

What is life like after society has been destroyed? And why and how has this destruction taken place to begin with? As demented imperatives of "growth" continue to wreak havoc on ecosystems and as social orders buckle under the contradictions and violence of capitalism, dystopian scenarios have become a staple in cultures across the globe. In this class we will read the three novels, Oryx & Crake, The Year of the Flood, and MaddAddam by famous Canadian writer, Margaret Atwood. In these grimly timely works, Atwood depicts human lives after a human-made virus has ravaged society: how isolated individuals struggle to survive and retain their sanity in a hostile world. However, Atwood also describes in detail how society laboured to bring about its own collapse in the first place. We will discuss both pre- and post-collapse concerns: session topics include survival, biotechnology, religion, ecological activism, authoritarian capitalism, and the intersection of gender and class. Along the way, we will have occasion to study how the novels represent love, memory, resignation, and other issues under conditions of extinction and pandemics. We will also ask how whiteness bears on the literary creation of dystopian worlds, and how the latter are shaped by narrative tones like satire and irony.

Please note that this course will take place synchronously. We will meet online Fridays 10-12 AM via Discord, an easy-to-use and free-of-charge software which, unlike Zoom, respects your privacy. We will use its chat function and, occasionally, voice chat to discuss the reading questions I post before each session. Also, announcements will be communicated to you via Discord. In conjunction with Moodle, the latter will be indispensable to our seminar. So, if you are disinclined to use that software, I am afraid there is no point in joining this class.

Please purchase:

Oryx & Crake. London: Virago, 2009. ISBN: 978-0349004068

The Year of the Flood. London: Virago, 2010. ISBN: 978-0349004075

MaddAddam. London: Virago, 2014. ISBN: 978-1844087877

All written by Margaret Atwood. Subsequent reprints are just as fine, but please purchase the Virago editions. Other texts will be made available via Moodle.

Taken together, the novels alone amount to some 1,500 pages of reading. While they read quickly, I would nevertheless ask you to start with Oryx & Crake as soon as possible.

Over the course of the seminar, students will write a learning journal consisting of reading responses and reflections on both individual class discussions and the seminar as a whole (3 credits). To gain 6 credits, students will additionally submit a term paper.