Speculation — faith — hope
These are cultural artifacts created texts by students in the undergraduate Comparative Literature course Back to the Future, as well as by graduate students in the CLC course The Future. Both courses, taught by Professor Felipe Quetzalcoatl Quintanilla, invited the creators here included, to think about how the “the future” has been imagined in ancient texts and in ever more contemporary and global visions of “things to come”. The students thus came to consider canonical spiritual and philosophical texts that help us imagine “time” itself, as well as humanity’s place within the cosmos, as tinkerers, voyagers, exiles, builders of utopia, or destroyers of worlds.
Swaddled
By Danica Pawlick-Potts
Medium: Acrylic on canvas and string
For the final creative project, I created a visual piece. Since we read “The Machine Stops” by E.M. Forster at the beginning of the semester I had been taken with the imagery of a person being “swaddled” by a machine.
The Future: 50 Years from Now
Video (creative class project) produced by Wonder Hiadzi, Veronica Stoiber and Aldean Ellis
The reason for undertaking this project is to explore the extent to which a wide-cross section of individuals thinks about the future that may have any correlation with the thoughts of the future-minded writers and film directors that we studied in the course.
A Dystopia in Disguise
By Elsie Sheppard
The COVID-19 pandemic progressed faster than anyone anticipated. The world has begun to shut down during these devastating times. Borders closed, hospitals overwhelmed, struggling supply chains, and scared citizens are a result of governments’ drastic measures to flatten the Coronavirus curve.
A reflection on the Star Trek Universe
By Paula Marie Acevedo Mejia
Space, the Final Frontier.
These words carry on the depths and desires of human mind.
Development. Growth. Prosperity. Ambitiousness.
It is never ending; the lengths of what someone is capable of.
Paradise Found: Confessions of a Light Bringer
By James Hogg
Before we begin…
Let’s establish some ground rules. The author of this story was raised in the United Church, a Protestant branch of Christianity. As such, the author would claim to have some understanding of Christianity, as well as claims the right to provide analysis and criticism of the faith and its institutions.
Capitalism, consumerism, and futurism /// Primitivism and socialism/communism
By Saghar Ghezel
The first collage is intended to represent aspects of capitalism, consumerism, and futurism. This work is intended to draw on the potentially dystopian elements of a capitalist consumer society. The combination of Mark Zuckerberg’s headshot and the famous Orwellian quotation regarding mass government surveillance is in reference to recent controversies concerning Zuckerberg selling datas of Facebook users to advertisement companies.
The Future: Bright to Dark
By Arya Ameen
When I planned my creative project, I wanted to create a photo collage (going from “brighter” themes to “darker” themes) with a combination of my own drawings and some from the Internet based off of some of the readings/screenings we have had in our course over the past year. I wanted to hand-tear the clippings, making the rips more jagged and rough as the collage progressed to darker stories.
Greetings, reader!
By James Hogg
As I am writing this from the year two-thousand and sixty, and it is intended to be read in twenty-one hundred, we can safely assume that I am statistically dead.