The seminar will engage students in the exploration of different ways of knowing – and their purposes, values, and limitations – in the arts and humanities. The seminar considers what counts as knowledge, and by whom; the methods employed to gain or affirm knowledge; the values attributed to knowledge; and the ethical and aesthetic implications of what one gains and does with the acquisition of knowledge. Students will integrate literature, film, theater, art, and philosophy in discussions and assignments. Equally, we shall investigate the dynamic and complex ways in which we know via the principal vehicle of our being human and how ‘contests’ with both within the human and non-human realms utilize many aspects or elements of knowing (e.g., narrative, myth, science, morality and technology). This course takes as its premise the following starting point: that knowing (and knowledge) is a diverse human construct involving three planes of human activity, 1) the emotional/psychological, 2) the somatic, and 3) conceptual/analytical. Our ‘playing fields of enquiry’ will be a series of seminal sci-fi novels (and their equivalent films) that challenges and ‘contests’ how we know ourselves to be human.