In authoritarian regimes, dictators tell you what you can and cannot do. In totalitarian regimes, they attempt to tell you what you can and cannot think. Some of the world’s greatest twentieth-century novels are keen diagnoses of totalitarianism as it appeared on both Right and Left, and these literary classics are the primary subject of this seminar: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon (1941), George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1946) and 1984 (1949), as well as Hannah Arendt’s monumental study of The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). But we will also consider the persistence of totalitarianism in our own, present-day society, what the Polish philosopher Ryzard Legutko calls The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies (2016). Are we losing our ability to think, speak, and act as free subjects? Can totalitarianism be confronted, resisted, or dismantled? In this class, students will read, write, and discuss in the decidedly anti-totalitarian spirit of academic freedom and viewpoint diversity. All persuasions are welcome: conservative, liberal, religious, secular, or “undecided.” You will not be graded on your opinions. You will be asked to think for yourself.