Fall 2004

E 375L • Victorian Literature

Course Description

Victorian Futures—
We will investigate the way Victorian writers imagine the future in terms of changed sex and gender norms, altered relations of labor and production and threatening forms of racial embodiment. We shall think about the emergence of Victorian science fiction in the context of imperial expansion, New Woman debates, the emergence of Eugenics and the consolidation of scientific racism. We will read the following texts as symptomatic of their own times while asking the question “what difference did the future make?” Questions of genre will also be foregrounded.

Grading Policy

1 in-class presentation
2 short response papers (3-4 pages)
Final paper (10-12 pages)
Class participation

Texts

Marx and Engels, “The Communist Manifesto”
Rosetti, Christina, “Goblin Market”
Wells, H.G., The Time Machine
Wells, H.G., The Island of Dr. Moreau
Morris, W., News from Nowhere
Wilde, O., “The Soul of Man under Socialism”
Butler, S., Erewhon
Bulwer-Lytton, E., The Coming Race
Gilman, C.P., Herland
Jeffries, R., After London
Bellamy, E., Looking Backward

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