Vulnerabilities and Resilience: Urban Spaces - Dys/Utopian Spaces, 5 op

This course provides an introductory look into twenty-first century literary debates on vulnerability and resilience, especially in the contexts of city literature and dystopia, and against the background of the Anthropocene. Through a selection of contemporary texts, we will investigate concepts central to literary manifestations of vulnerability and resilience in the city, including different forms of utopia and dystopia, notions of control and surveillance and the dynamics between centres and peripheries.

The course is a collaboration between Tampere University and Technische Universität Braunschweig (Germany), with students from both universities attending, and with several teachers contributing to online seminars. Course readings consist of British, American, German and Finnish texts (in English translation when relevant). Assessment will be by a course diary that includes a focused analysis of one course text.