Instructor: Das | WF 02:00 PM – 03:20 PM
This class focuses on a contemporary selection of post-2000’s dystopian fiction from across the world, examining how it reimagines gender, power, and resistance. Our readings explore gender roles within dystopian societies, feminine and feminist subversiveness, and connections to contemporary sociopolitical realities and expectations. How do women’s bodies become sites of political contestation? How are gendered bodies regulated and disciplined by the state? What constitutes ‘rebellion,’ and how is ‘autonomy’ reclaimed? How does gender intersect with race, religion, caste, and citizenship across real and dystopian worlds? Throughout the semester, students will investigate these questions by situating texts within their local geographical and historical contexts and engaging with key critical concepts in feminism, intersectionality, and biopower. Classes will comprise a mix of lectures, in which texts and theoretical frameworks are contextualized, along with structured discussions and group work. Writers studied in this course may include, but are not limited to, Jessamine Chan, Basma Abdel Aziz, Laila Lalami, Prayaag Akbar, Michel Foucault, Achille Mbembe, Loretta J. Ross, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, and Audre Lorde.