Course overview
This course introduces students to narratives of apocalypse: from sacred literatures, through representations of genocide and extinctions, to science fiction and the speculative. Students will be tasked with thinking deeply and critically on the moral and aesthetic aspects of creative engagement with communal, ethnic and planetary catastrophe. The course will present practical techniques for the writing of historical narratives, as well as science and speculative fiction, and will encourage creative responses to issues both past and prescient, such as climate change, technological revolution and disaster, migrations, and the future of humanity.
Course learning outcomes
- Confidently read, understand and appreciate a range of contemporary literary texts and the contexts of their production.
- Begin to demonstrate an awareness of how to frame a research problem and devise ways of addressing it in the context of creative writing.
- Prepare and deliver polished and carefully edited samples of creative writing (through a series of exercises and drafts).
- Critically evaluate their own and others’ written materials.
- Engage productively and respectfully with their peers.