ENGL1100B: Composition and Rhetoric

Abstract

In the twenty-first century, dystopian fiction is everywhere. This type of fiction portrays imaginary societies that are “dystopian”: societies that intensify the most troubling aspects of the real world (scapegoating, groupthink, authoritarianism) in order to create fictional “bad places” that serve as warnings for audiences. Even though works of art such as the film adaptation of The Hunger Games construct dystopian societies, their heroes and heroines provide utopian hope: hope that their dismal situation (and ours) can be transformed for the better, into something resembling a “good place.” In this course, we will engage with a small sampling of dystopian short stories and film, and you will learn the fundamentals of college-level writing as you compose argumentative essays about these works.