Faculty At Home Seminar: Science Fiction and Law

Catalog description

What is the law's relationship to biotechnology and bioengineering? How have advances in science impacted legal definitions of personhood, property, rights, and other core attributes of human-ness, and how has the law responded to these developments, especially in the midst of global climate change? This seminar will examine a series of science fiction texts in order to wrestle with such questions. Our materials will include novels (Asimov's Caves of Steel, Octavia Butler's Kindred) and films and television serials (Bladerunner), which we'll analyze alongside excerpts from specific legal decisions (Roe v Wade, Moore v UCLA).