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Is the rise of the machine eroding human connection? How does literature imagine the place of human connection in a world marked by the rise of the machine? This course thinks about Industrial Age fiction, which swims in a heady mixture that’s part-dream and part-nightmare: Are machines bettering us, are they replacing us, will they miss us? We will look at how nineteenth century British writers tried to come to terms with an increasingly mechanized world: Literature of this time attempts new ways of articulating how machines were reshaping people’s lives, their sense of self, their ideas of love, personal growth, community, and social order. The three novels we will read for this course— Charles Dickens’s Hard Times, Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton, and George Eliot’s Mill on the Floss—are enmeshed in larger conversations and debates about the machine and the human. Readings of each novel will be paired with surrounding sociological, political, and critical discussions, in order to develop a richer understanding. A Dean's Teaching Fellowship Course.