ASIA 390: Chinese Science Fiction

From cyborgs to vampires, from mind control to genetic manipulation, from space travel to time travel, from aliens to sentient robots, no genre has more fully grasped—and influenced—the relationship between scientific discoveries and social transformations than science fiction. It registers the fears and anticipation, the dread and fascination, that comes with scientific innovation and social change. This course will examine the contemporary explosion of Chinese science fiction in the larger context of cultural studies and science studies. We will read globally influential novels such as The Three-Body Problem and analyze films such as The Wandering Earth, asking how threats of global annihilation and the exhaustion of environmental resources, discoveries in virology and epigenetics, and innovations in cybernetics intersect with global development, climate migration, decolonization, race relations, and new social and geopolitical configurations.