Depictions of nature, the inhuman, and the superhuman in literature; literary explorations of empathy, technology, race, gender, language, dis/ability, and labor in human experience. Novels, short stories, and poems that explore issues of the human: how to define what is human (recognizing flexible and perhaps permeable boundaries between human and nonhuman), how to defend the human (humans at war with themselves and others), how humans are exploited (labor and human capital), and how humans change (technological development and future human evolution). Imaginative and ethical issues in different genres. Revolving topics course; may be repeated once for credit.