Brave New Worlds: As Oscar Wilde famously wrote: “A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail.” Wilde’s quotation hits on a profound truth of the human condition: our belief that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. The search for brave new worlds has produced global exploration, population migration, colonization, military revolution, and scientific discovery. It has also pushed philosophers, writers, and poets to ask deeper questions about the breadth and reach of government, about collective political action, about citizen’s rights, about revolution and reform. This course will build our close reading and analytic skills by focusing on how our brave new worlds are described. Are these dreams? Travel narratives? Abstract philosophical debates? What kinds of rhetorical strategies do these texts use to imagine brave new worlds? Surely, there is no time like the present to ask ourselves: what is government and what, or whom, is it good for? Texts include: Plato’s Republic, Thomas More’s Utopia, Voltaire’s Candide, Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and N.K. Jemisin’s Fifth Season.