On this course, girls will explore the relationship between Science and Literature through debate, creative writing, and by delving into a variety of literary works including those by Blake, Swift, Shelley and Orwell.

Students will be encouraged to read novels which reflect on scientific issues, such as ‘Brave New World’, ‘Flowers for Algernon’ and ‘Oryx and Crake’. The girls will enjoy exploring the concept of dystopian literature, create their own dystopian worlds, and write the opening of a dystopian short story.

We will also examine literature’s response against enlightenment rationalism in the satirical ‘Gulliver’s Travels’, before moving on to look at the influences behind Mary Shelley’s iconic ‘Frankenstein’. We seek to bring the discussions raised by these texts into a contemporary context, and at the end the course, students will produce their own pieces of creative writing, focusing on a contentious scientific issue of our era.