CHINA 271: Understanding East Asian Culture Through Science Fiction (CHINA 171, GLOBAL 200)

Course Description

We live immersed in technology but are uncertain about where technology is taking us - to a dead end or a better place? Technology has helped create utopian visions of good society while plunging societies into dystopic nightmares. Science and technology have been a universal path for all societies in the West and East to join the modern world, but divergent cultures approach technoscientific modernity differently, and science fiction offers us a good platform to explore and debate key issues in technologically immersed culture and society. This course will introduce students to representative sci-fi works of literature and film in China and Korea. We will ask questions how Chinese and Korean artists embrace technoscientific innovations, critique tech-induced environmental degradation and climate change, expose ills of technological alienation and exploitation by profit-driven uses of technology, and challenge the anthropocentric domination of nature and of working classes. We will also explore the ways Chinese and Korean writers and filmmakers preserve the traditional, environmentally sound traditions. Taking a global, comparative perspective, this course the course will appeal to students of diverse ethnic, professional, and cultural backgrounds, offering a space for comparing different views of technoscience while appreciating the common grounds of humanity. Students will study critical concepts of science fiction studies, ecology, technology, environmentalism and apply them to close analyses of fiction and cinematic texts. The ultimate educational purpose is to provide a window for exploring alternative cultures and technoscientific imaginaries.