The postapocalypse is a popular device in literature that discusses the future after catastrophic events and the societal and environmental changes that follow. This course will introduce students to the postapocalyptic genre and the idea of cultural practices as a means of resilience in the following novels: In Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower (1993) a young woman creates her own religion in a dystopian world of corruption and environmental devastation; in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006) a father and his son survive on tales of old and their own company, and Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven (2014) features a travelling group of actors, who perform Shakespeare 20 years after a devastating pandemic. We will discuss how speculations about the future in literature can be relevant for contemporary issues, which genre conventions are connected to the postapocalypse, and what power relations and discourses are focused on in stories of the end of the world. Please purchase and read the following novels in the given order:

Octavia Butler. Parable of the Sower. 1993
Cormac McCarthy. The Road. 2006.
Emily St. John Mandel. Station Eleven. 2014.
(Disclaimer: The literature to this course features descriptions of physical and sexual violence, suicide, and cannibalism.)

The syllabus as well as information about the course, active participation, and additional reading materials will be made available on Stud.IP at the beginning of the winter semester.