Our analysis will focus on different dystopias of governmental control, how evolutions in mass-market media and technology either reinforce or inhibit their development, and finally how these mechanisms manifest themselves among different social classes and immigrant populations. It includes both classic texts as well as recent additions to the genre that will certainly become classics: Bradbury’s elucidation on the potential effects of literary censorship in Fahrenheit 451, Huxley’s chilling portrait of an almost unrecognizable repression in the form of a society drugged into perpetual happiness in Brave New World, and Orwell’s dystopian vision of a government that uses fear to control the masses in Nineteen Eighty-Four are all timeless. Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tail portrays similar abhorrent conditions but in a current context, while simultaneously addressing the lack of female agency in contemporary society. Moore’s V for Vendetta, which was brilliantly adapted for film, bridges multiple literary barriers by portraying the historically oldest tale of control and rebellion in the form of a graphic novel. Once we have surveyed these chilling tales of control, the class will turn its attention to¬ the recent rise of state-sponsored technologies of surveillance and application. Postman’s Technopoly charts the technology’s historical progression through three defined periods; in the current and final stage, technology overtakes culture and replaces many of the established fabrics of society: interpersonal communications, religion, education, and various social institutions. DeLillo’s White Noise centers on the media and advertising, claiming that its presence predominates to such an extent that people have become oblivious, mindless corporate-dictated consumption robots.


“W” CREDIT:
English-200 is a “W” credit meaning that you’ll receive your writing credit in addition to the VLPA general education credit. As a “W” credit, this course requires that you produce 10-15 pages of writing for which you will receive feedback regarding both your ideas and your composition. This writing requirement is broken up into 3 assignments, two short papers (3-4 pages) due on weeks four and seven, respectively, and a final paper due on the Monday of finals week. The goal for each is to start from something small, a sentence or even a word, and use tight and careful textual focus to think about something big. For the most part, you will be on your own to decide on your topic, but I’ll ask you to lead with a short quotation. You will UNPACK the significance of your passage, and then SITUATE it within the larger text in order to GENERALIZE about the text as a whole. Again, a prompt with specifics will be posted on the course website closer to the due date of the first paper.


TEXTS:
o Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1849) (Del Ray 50th Anniversary, 1987; 0345342968)
o Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (Harper Perennial Classics, 1998; 0060929871)
o George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (Plume Centennial Ed, 2003; ISBN: 0452284236)
o Alan Moore, V for Vendetta (Vertigo, 1995; ISBN: 0930289528)
o Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tail (Anchor, 1998; ISBN: 038549081x)
o Neil Postman, Technopoly (Vintage, 1993; ISBN: 0679745408)
o Don DeLillo, White Noise (Penguin, 1986; ISBN: 0140077022)
* Engl-242 Course Reader—@ Ave Copy: 4141 University Way NE #103; 206-633-1837.
o (recommended): Everyday Writer or MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 6th Ed.