The Arts: Questioning the Contemporary World: Assessment One
The first assessment is a 1000-word essay to be submitted by 25 April 2024 at 2pm. It is worth 40% of the overall mark for the module.
You should write your essay on ONE of the following topics from one of the sections of the module taught in the spring term (‘Living in a Global World’, ‘Surveillance’, ‘Anthropocene‘).
Living in a Global World
1. ‘Novels and films about migration focus on the new forms of hierarchy and inequality created by globalization but they rarely offer solutions to these problems.’ Discuss with reference to either Dirty Pretty Things or Exit West.
2. Explore the ways in which either Dirty Pretty Things or Exit West show new forms of individual and/or collective identity emerging as a result of migration in a globalized world.
Surveillance
3. What does Shoshana Zuboff mean by the claim that Surveillance Capitalism is a threat to human nature itself?
4. Discuss the role of surveillance within the society portrayed in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.
5. Discuss the way that cultures of surveillance and censorship are explored in the ‘Arkangel’ episode of the TV series Black Mirror.
6. In what ways are ideas and practices associated with surveillance used in the work of Forensic Architecture?
Anthropocene
7. How does the emergence of the Anthropocene as a new geological era encourage us to think about the relationship between humans and the environment? Discuss with reference to the fiction of J. G. Ballard and/or N. K. Jemisin.
8. How is a posthuman point of view explored in Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s film Homo Sapiens?
9. How do science fictional narratives of ecocatastrophe blend the real and the speculative? Discuss with reference to EITHER J. G. Ballard OR N. K. Jemisin’texts studied in class.
10. How does science fiction help us to understand climate change? Explore through the discussion of one example.
11. What extra dimension does N. K. Jemisin’s use of fantasy and the supernatural bring to the understanding of the disaster that followed Hurricane Katrina?
12. Why are we fascinated by ruins? Are we indulging in fantasies of destruction, or does a film such as Homo Sapiens help us understand climate change?
13. In what ways does one cultural text we have studied help us better grasp the issue of climate change?
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