Nicole Suetterlin

This seminar explores how the catastrophic events of the Holocaust, slavery, and apartheid continue to shape communities and individuals in Germany, South Africa, and the U.S. Students examine the challenges of reckoning with historical trauma and the healing power of the arts in a society at war with its past.

What does it mean to be human in the 21st century? This question lies at the heart of posthumanism, a fast-growing, transdisciplinary line of research that challenges the patriarchal, colonialist, and anthropocentric paradigms underlying the Western tradition. This course offers an introduction to cutting-edge redefinitions of the human body and self. With course materials spanning from bioscience and ecology to fiction and film, it places posthuman science and fiction in a gritty dialogue. We will grapple with defining the human in an age of increasing interdependencies between man, machine, and the environment, asking how science/fiction helps us develop ethical frameworks for our fast-moving 21st-century ecologies and technologies.