First Contact

Catalog description

A humanities-based interdisciplinary course on the problems and issues of first contact and interactions between humanity and non-Terran entities. What do the histories, experiences, and interactions of humans with other humans, animals, plants, AIs and postulated superhuman beings reveal about our limitations, biases and opportunities in the preparations for first contact? How might the humanities (religious studies, literature, history, philosophy, ethics, etc.) contribute to the protocols and thinking about first contact that move beyond scientific, pragmatic and anthropocentric western paradigms of rational knowledge and subjectivity.