Worldbuilding and Imagination

Catalog description

To make a convincing future, you need to create a convincing world. Storytellers, artists, game designers, politicians and scientists all engage in the practice of building worlds in order to inspire, to question and sometimes to terrify us. They create narratives, experiences and simulations of places, real and imagined, that combine scientific, cultural and aesthetic forms of knowledge. The engine that drives these critical practices is imagination. This course explores the theory and practice of worldbuilding and imagination as a way to time travel to the future and the past, as well as to other configurations of the present. Students learn worldbuilding perspectives to understand the systems we live in and define plans of action to change them for the better. In this way, worldbuilding is a way to create collective visions for the future that inspire change today. Students study a variety of future worlds and imagine their own through collaborative projects that involve writing, making and public engagement.