“Remember to imagine and craft the worlds you cannot live without, just as you dismantle the ones you cannot live within.”

-Dr. Ruha Benjamin

This English 1A course centers around readings and writing assignments that discuss the role of imagination in creating the future during times of uncertainty. Through an analysis of readings on this topic from a variety of genres, some questions we will discuss include: What is imagination? Why is it important, especially now? How can we use imagination to reimagine our own individual & collective identities? How are we using imagination to reimagine concepts like intelligence and life through new technology like A.I. & synthetic biology? What are the risks & benefits associated with these reimaginings? We will also apply these questions to our own experience with imagination more generally, allowing us to reflect on the imagination we use every day and its impact on our personal, academic, and professional lives.

Textbooks: Ruha Benjamin’s Imagination: A Manifesto (2024); Ethan Mollick’s Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI (2024); Amy Webb & Andrew Hessel’s The Genesis Machine: Our Quest to Rewrite Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology (2022)

Note: This is an in-person course that is open to SJSU students only. Click here to sign up & register.