Survivors: Stories of Staying Alive

From deserted islands and nuclear wastelands to dangerous frontiers and zombie attacks -- this course explores aesthetic and intellectual issues in survival narratives both fictional and non-fictional: individualism and/or community; self-sufficiency and DIY movements; categorizations of good/evil, civilization/barbarity; survival as adventure; frontier experience. Survivor's guilt, trauma, and the moral ambiguities of human agency (such as violence or environmental impact). Readings from authors such as DeFoe, Steinbeck, Murakami, Spiegelman, Atwood, McCarthy, Auster, and Brooks. Examples in film, television and popular culture.