BUILDING BETTER WORLDS

As 20th century literary traditions prove increasingly ill-equipped to capture the realities of 21st century life, readers look towards fictional worlds for inspiration and escape from the political chaos of day-to-day existence. When we write we shape the world, because the worlds we imagine impact the world we inhabit. But what does it mean for a writer to 'build a world?' What obligations does the creator of a fiction have to readers who inhabit a world they wish to escape? Are the worlds we build for escape always political? Can we build another world as an avenue to better understand this one?

In this seminar we will explore the concept of "world building" by looking at a variety of work from authors who are known for their immense secondary worlds (such as J.R.R. Tolkein, Ursula K. Le Guin, N.K. Jemisin, or Octavia Butler) but also at fiction that applies techniques of both immersion and politics in ways that may subvert our understanding of what it means to 'create.' Writers discussed are as wide ranging as Toni Morrison, Angela Carter, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Margaret Atwood, Shirley Jackson, Ray Bradbury, Clive Barker, all the way up to contemporary writers whose works populate our best loved Independent bookstores: Helen Oyeyemi, Victor LaValle, Ted Chiang, Marlon James, Jeff VanderMeer, Colson Whitehead, Salman Rushdie, Carmen Maria Machado, Alexandra Kleeman, or Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.