ENGL 465Humanity in Computerized Society
This course explores how the societal and artistic contexts of computing have changed which stories get told about human "reason" and "progress." By studying cultural narratives, both dominant and newly emergent, students will gain literacy in the range and risks of digital life and citizenship. In a world where each human expression is mediated by hardware and software, platform and code, what counts as human becomes a field of open questions. What is human culture? What are the humanities? What stories do we humans tell ourselves about how to live humanely alongside machines? The course addresses such questions, conjoining theories of narrative in cultural and literary studies to theories of accountability in law and politics, and to social history since the 1940s, a decade that saw dramatic changes in the status both of human beings (e.g. the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) and of high technology.