This class will study science fiction film from 1950 to the present. Discussions will be organized around the relationship between scientific and technological innovation and social and geopolitical transformation: how, for example, the threats of nuclear war and the exhaustion of environmental resources, discoveries in virology and genetics, and the innovations in cybernetics and artificial intelligence all intersect with decolonization and global development, race relations, and new social and geopolitical configurations. We will explore how science fiction film registers and responds to the uncertainties of a changing world: to changing conceptions of the human and of life.
