"Posthuman" often conjures up images of distant futures populated with cyborgs, clones, and various other naturally and artificially intelligent beings. But the posthuman is not the exclusive domain of futuristic speculation. After all, the post- in "posthuman" can be taken to indicate what is after but also beyond the human. In this course, we rediscover a Renaissance world rife with posthuman beings, encounters, and imaginings, animated by active debates about whether to define the human as universal, rational, and self-contained - or not. Drawing on critical posthumanist frameworks supplemented by tools from textual material studies and digital humanities, we will explore works of poetry, drama, and prose that bend and blur boundaries between human, animal, vegetable, mineral, and mechanical. What happens to human readers who listen to the language of cats, or puzzle over the similarity between moss and broken automata, or observe the flames that erupt between "male" and "female" stones? Asking these questions - and much more - we will also consider how the early modern posthuman resonates with our contemporary moment. (Note: This Writing-Intensive Seminar in English (WISE) course fulfills WIM for English majors. Non-majors are welcome, space permitting. For enrollment permission contact farrahm@stanford.edu.)
5 units · Letter (ABCD/NP)
"Posthuman" often conjures up images of distant futures populated with cyborgs, clones, and various other naturally and artificially intelligent beings. But the posthuman is not the exclusive domain of futuristic speculation. After all, the post- in "posthuman" can be taken to indicate what is after but also beyond the human. In this course, we rediscover a Renaissance world rife with posthuman beings, encounters, and imaginings, animated by active debates about whether to define the human as universal, rational, and self-contained - or not. Drawing on critical posthumanist frameworks supplemented by tools from textual material studies and digital humanities, we will explore works of poetry, drama, and prose that bend and blur boundaries between human, animal, vegetable, mineral, and mechanical. What happens to human readers who listen to the language of cats, or puzzle over the similarity between moss and broken automata, or observe the flames that erupt between "male" and "female" stones? Asking these questions - and much more - we will also consider how the early modern posthuman resonates with our contemporary moment. (Note: This Writing-Intensive Seminar in English (WISE) course fulfills WIM for English majors. Non-majors are welcome, space permitting. For enrollment permission contact farrahm@stanford.edu.)