ENGL 322
Robot Dreams: Artificial and Human Identities in Literature and Popular Culture Spring 2013
Division I Writing Skills
This is not the current course catalog

In this course we will trace artificial intelligence (A.I.) in literature and film from the industrial revolution to the “hive mind” of rave music and the age of the internet. We will consider the fear of A.I. as well as the optimistic view of it as an enhancement or amplification of the human. The image of the female and/or racialized robot is especially prominent, as is the notion that manufactured internet identities are variations on the theme of A.I. Readings will include E. T. A. Hoffmann’s short stories about automata, Karel Capek Rossum’s Universal Robots, Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods, Thomas Berger’s Adventure of the Artificial Woman, Donna Haraway’s “A Manifesto for Cyborgs,” and selections from Isaac Asimov, William Gibson, Jean Baudrillard and contemporary cyberpunk and steampunk fiction. Films will include Metropolis, Blade Runner, The Matrix, Sleep Dealers and selections from the series Battlestar Galactica.