Course description
This course is designed to investigate the role that mathematics and mathematicians play in literature, focusing on the long history of fictional works both by and about mathematicians in which mathematics is associated with postmodernism, insanity, and death (see the course trailer for some quick examples).
In this course, we will look at the ways in which the properties of literature—character, narrative, theme—combine to create these associations while asking the following questions: How is math treated in fiction during different historical circumstances? What purpose does the theme of mathematics serve fiction authors? How are mathematicians characterized in literary texts? Do mathematicians write differently about their subject than non-mathematicians? How do these two different groups—mathematicians and non-mathematicians—value mathematics as knowledge?
The general purpose of the course, then, will be to investigate how the narrative of mathematics inscribed in literature and the ways in which this narrative is (or is not) accepted or rejected by mathematicians.
The course will require three major writing assignments of five or more pages, along with short, written responses to the readings.
Course texts:
• We by Yevginy Zemyatin
• Pi dir. by Darren Aronofsky
• A Beautiful Mind dir. by Ron Howard
• Vas: An Opera in Flatland by Steve Tomasula, design by Stephen Farrell
