Anxiety and Creativity

This course traces how authors from antiquity to the present have productively channeled anxiety into creating beautiful and meaningful works of literature. We investigate anxiety's existential and historical causes, from the fear of death to the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and the ecological crisis, as well as its various treatments, such as stoicism and self-optimization. The course combines philosophical and literary perspectives to examine the relation between anxiety and creativity and to engage with various aesthetic responses—from essays to fiction and film—to the troubles of being that anxiety designates. Students emerge from class readings and discussions with an understanding of anxiety as a social formation, literary preoccupation, and, when harnessed, a spur to aesthetic invention.