UNIV 104MImagining Outer Space

Catalog

IMAGINING OUTER SPACE - - - The UNIV 101 & UNIV 104 courses offer a blended course format which includes two primary components, one focusing on the academic topic, taught by a faculty member with the second component devoted to new student transition topics, taught by a professional staff partner instructor. This freshmen seminar course will explore an intriguing intellectual topic, help freshmen hone critical thinking and writing skills, and assist students in making a successful transition to university life. - - - Outer space offers enduring mysteries for science and a grand canvas for the human imagination: an endless expanse on which to map our hopes, fears, and possible futures. In this seminar, we'll explore how space travel, alien life, and worlds beyond Earth have been imagined in literature, poetry, music, film, and television: a transdisciplinary archive that includes sci-fi classics (The War of the Worlds, Interstellar), cosmic soundscapes (Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Sun Ra), cartoon satires (The Jetsons, Futurama), contemporary literature (Tracy K. Smith, Samantha Harvey), and more. We'll also consider how outer space imaginaries have fed into serious public debate from the Cold War to the "new space race." Moving from classic and popular space imaginaries to contemporary arguments about private spaceflight and Mars settlement, we'll practice reading space both as an aesthetic experience evoking awe, the sublime, and the alien and as a political imaginary reflecting (and sometimes resisting) Earth-bound histories of empire, inequality, race, technology, and belonging. In the 3-credit civic discourse version, students will complete three Dialogue Labs: a reflective dialogue on the "final frontier" metaphor; a deliberative negotiation on who should govern and profit from space resources; and a multi-sided debate over settling Mars. NOTE: All UNIV 101 and UNIV 104 courses are restricted to students in their FIRST SEMESTER at the University. Students MAY NOT register for more than one UNIV 101 or UNIV 104 course.