Literary Roundtable: Climate Fiction

About the Course:

In this course, we consider what the future could look like through climate change fiction that won’t let dystopia have the last word. We will sample works from this movement, from canonical apocalyptic pieces in the final decade of the 20th century to works from the past five years that ask the same question from different perspectives—and offer different answers. We will examine how dystopian, utopian, and apocalyptic stories are altered or challenged when read through the lens of decolonial thought and indigeneity, gender and sexuality, race, and class.

Each week, a novel is coupled with handouts excerpting essays, poetry collections, or graphic novels to offer a fuller scope of the work’s representative place in a conversation that is as urgent as it is visionary.

About the Instructor: Karina Mathew is a fiction writer, activist, and scholar of 20th- and 21st-century contemporary literature at Harvard University. Her research focuses on speculative fiction, women’s literature, and the environment. In 2022 she was one of eight Harvard Horizons Scholars, a cross-campus award for which she delivered her public talk, “Imagining Extraterrestrial Contact.”

I‌nstructor: Karina Mathew

Meeting Time: Mondays, 7:15-8:45pm

Sessions

Mon, Jan 15, 7:15-8:45pm EST

Mon, Jan 22, 7:15-8:45pm EST

Mon, Feb 5, 7:15-8:45pm EST

Mon, Feb 19, 7:15-8:45pm EST

There are four required books for this course. These books are included in your registration fee and will be available for in-store pick-up prior to the first session.

• Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
• Eleutheria by Allegra Hyde
• Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction, edited by Joshua Whitehead
• A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

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