First-Year Research Seminar: Time Travel: Science, Fiction, and the Western Imagination

Catalog description

This seminar will examine the idea of time travel from the perspectives of Western literature, popular culture, philosophy, physics, and the history of science. Co-taught by a professor of literature and a professor of physics, the course will consider how the concept of time travel has changed the human imagination. By exploring time in several contexts, we will examine the construct of time and what it means to travel through it. Through thinking about time travel we will necessarily reflect on a variety of related topics including the nature of time, the role of metaphor in scientific understanding, and such speculative topics as parallel universes, the origin of the universe, wormholes, and infinity. What defines a clock, and how does the concept of time differ from its measurement? Students will write several essays reflecting on these fields and questions and will also take on a research project that will involve studying research methodologies in the humanities and the sciences. Course readings will be taken from the fields of philosophy (Aristotle, Augustine, Bergson), physics (Einstein, Penrose, Smolin, Hawking), the history of science (Galison, Gleick), literature (Wells, Proust, Woolf, Heinlein, Asimov), and popular culture (Doctor Who, Harry Potter, The Terminator).