The thing is to turn crazy without any provocation. Don Quixote
Ovid, Cervantes, and Orwell had something in common: in their writings, argues literary scholar Frederick de Arnas, these prescient writers all “linked war and censorship [and fake news] in increasingly dystopian terms.” These three authors, spanning two thousand years, were either physically censored for their socio-political critiques (banished from their homelands) or wrote futuristically about the same, because they saw “the writing on the wall” so to speak that their worlds were descending into chaos. What does this mean for us? For this session, we are bringing together two scholars, an historian who works on how news (and fake news) spread across the Early Modern British Empire, and an Annenberg professor who traces how current technologies and cultures of media production have the power to shape public life. Professors O’Neill and Ananny will guide us in conversation to decipher, like Ovid, Cervantes, and Orwell, the “writing on the wall” in our present political landscape and hopefully, avert the chaos.
Each spring session will be paired with an Ahmanson Lab workshop on a related topic.