SII199Y1Y L0351

First-Year Seminar

Utopias and Dystopias

Themes

This course is open only to newly admitted first year students.
The 199Y seminars do not substitute for POL101Y1. Also, the 199Y seminars do not count toward the requirements of any of the Political Science programs.

This course will explore alternative visions of good and bad ways of constructing social, economic and political orders. It will draw primarily upon fiction, reading novels like The Dispossessed, Looking Backwards, Brave New World, and 1984, but may also use materials from political theory and from the social sciences. Students will be asked to think about how work, income, and power should be allocated, what social norms regarding gender and sexuality should prevail, how children should be raised and educated, and so on. They should be prepared to examine and discuss their own views about such matters in comparison with the views expressed by the readings and by their fellow students

Texts

TBA

Format and Requirements

One two-hour seminar per week. Course requirements TBA.