This course explores dystopian texts--literary and filmic--produced in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.  It examines how visual and discursive representations of dystopia function as forms critique of social and political formations, national cultures, economic processes, and hegemonic ideas about the gendered, raced and sexualized order of things.  The course focuses in on the relationship between dystopian cultural production and what I have shorthanded “the question of history”—which is really a series of interrelated questions about how the past is invoked in and through dystopian representations, how dystopian representations compass (and perhaps theorize?) the unfolding of historical events, and how actual dystopian pasts (those already lived) are recirculated in and through dystopian representations of near and far futures.  Of special concern will be dystopian engagements with the histories of chattel slavery in the Americas and the Caribbean and the holocaust of World War II.  How are these histories invoked and to what end?  How are they brought together and how are they disaggregated and to what effect?  Throughout the quarter, we will treat a range of theoretical texts that explore issues of genre, literary form, and the narration of historical conflicts and contradictions. While dystopian representations can feel depressing, Marxist critics of the genre argue that they are also enlightening in that they oft times constitute critical thinking tools that might ideally contribute to consciousness of the need for far reaching social transformation. We will attempt to stay afloat in our current bleak moment by recognizing and building on the utopian aspiration that is part and parcel of dystopian representation.  You should expect to produce a substantial paper over the course of the quarter as well as several shorter writing assignments.  You should come prepared to work with literary, theoretical, and visual texts and to engage in collaborative knowledge production about our shared archive.