Description: Using the film "The Matrix" as a point of reference, this course presents celebrated explorations of servitude and emancipation -- from religious mysticism to Marxism and artistic modernism. Texts by Lao Tzu, Farid ud-Din Attar, Plato, Freud, Marx, Baudelaire, J.S. Mill, Proust, de Beauvoir, Malcolm X, Marcuse, Baudrillard. Course taught in English. Cross-list: FSEM 127.