First-Year Seminars 110WP - How Words Change Worlds

Jean Paul Sartre tells us words are like 'loaded pistols.' They have the power to transform worlds and inspire revolutions. Focusing on the power of language and the ideas they carry, we will look at writers as agents of social and political change. How do governments and society react to their work (censors, the media, readers?) We have two goals: to examine the interaction between aesthetics and politics, and the relationship between writers and governments. We will include some of the 'greats' such as Rousseau, Swift, Orwell, Sartre, Andrei Platonov, Solzhenitsyn, Rushdie and Chinua Achebe.

Course limited to new first-years & transfers/FPs entering as first-years.