What happens when our dreams and nightmares become real? After the past year of upheaval and distress, this suggestion may no longer seem very far-fetched. Concerns about social, ecological, and technological crises, when thematized, however, are often relegated to genres of fiction suggesting a certain departure from reality. If our circumstances have become similar to a “work of science fiction,” then we must also take a closer look at how works of not just science fiction, but also horror and fantasy, rely on the boundaries between familiar and unfamiliar—enabling us to imagine and cognitively process difficult questions that at first, seem uncanny and estranged from our lives. In this course, we will examine film and literature primarily fromEast Asia that are concerned with the gap between the familiar and the unfamiliar. Through different genres of media, we examine how bodies, spaces, and even the Earth itself—that we take for granted as familiar entities—can become uncanny, strange, and alien. Our class discussion will take us from questions of environmental crisis and neo-imperialism in Bong Joon Ho’s spin on the monster film genre in The Host, through the politics of the self and the boundaries between human and machine in Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell, and Huang Jianxin’s Dislocation, to concerns about the end of the Anthropocene and human dominance over Earth in Chi Hui’s The Rainforest and Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaa, Valley of the Wind. This course will introduce students to a wide range of East Asian language materials in translation. No previous knowledge of the region is required. This course aims to help you develop your critical thinking, writing, oral expression, and research skills through the analysis of media. Through this course, we will practice analytical writing and research through synchronous and asynchronous assignments building up to a final humanities research paper. Prerequisites: This class fulfills the second half of the College of Letters and Science’s Reading and Composition requirement. A passing grade from Reading and Composition R1A course or equivalent fulfillment of requirements for Part A of R&C is required to take this course (Please see: http://guide.berkeley.edu/undergraduate/colleges-schools/letters-science/reading-composition-requirement/.)