LIT 3313 - Summer 2026 - Peebles

This course examines utopian and dystopian ideas through short fiction and selected critical readings. Students will explore imagined societies and future worlds to consider how communities are organized, what values they prioritize, and what tensions arise when “better” systems are put into practice. Readings range across a variety of voices and approaches to speculative writing, pairing stories with accessible theoretical perspectives that offer new ways to interpret power, identity, technology, and environment. By the end of the term, students will have a stronger vocabulary for discussing utopian and dystopian narratives and a clearer sense of how speculative literature can reflect, question, and re-imagine the world we live in.