Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World

This course comprises ten units. Each will include a significant reading, typically a novel or a selection of shorter works. I will offer video discussions of each of the readings and also of more general topics in art and psychology that those readings help illuminate. Each unit will include online quizzes and ask you to write a brief essay offering your own insights into the reading. In order, the units are:

1. Grimm — Children's and Household Tales
2. Carroll — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass
3. Stoker — Dracula
4. Shelley — Frankenstein
5. Hawthorne & Poe — Stories and Poems
6. Wells — The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Invisible Man, "The Country of the Blind," "The Star"
7. Burroughs & Gilman — A Princess of Mars & Herland
8. Bradbury — The Martian Chronicles
9. LeGuin — The Left Hand of Darkness
10. Doctorow — Little Brother

In Unit I, the specific stories are the ones in the Lucy Crane translation (1886) which was published by Dover and is available online through Project Gutenberg. In Unit V, the specific readings are: Hawthorne's "The Birthmark," "Rappaccini's Daughter," "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment," and "The Artist of the Beautiful"; Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Black Cat," "The Oval Portrait," "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar," "The Bells," "The Raven," "Annabel Lee." All the readings except Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles and Ursula K. LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness will be available online at no charge.