(Un)Natural Histories: Observation, Exploration, and Knowledge

Catalog description

What do we learn from observation? This course centers on literature around the year 1800 that probes how we know what we know in the wake of the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment, with shifting ideas of mind, consciousness, language, and world. We’ll consider how creative literature sits in relation to science and philosophy by looking at periods before such distinctions of field were solidified. We will also consider the history of science fiction and read contemporary fiction that continues to interrogate ideas of objective observation, especially across lenses of gender and race. Possible authors include Francis Bacon, John Locke, David Hume, the Shelleys, the Darwins, Jeanette Winterson, Ursula Le Guin, and Octavia Butler.