Utopian and Dystopian Literature
OVERVIEW. This seminar will survey utopian and dystopian literature from Plato to Louise Erdrich. Although covering mainly twentieth- and twenty-first century texts, we will read several pre-twentieth-century texts as needed background. After Plato, we will jump to the sixteenth century (one text), move on to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (four texts), and then take up mid-twentieth-century American and British texts (four), later twentieth-century American and Canadian texts (two), and early twenty-first century American texts (two). The reading list is about one-third utopian texts, one-third dystopian, and one-third “hybrid” (utopian/dystopian; some of these texts are called “critical utopias”.)
Because I am hoping that this seminar will enroll students with different critical predilections, I will try to balance shared reading with individual student’s interests and projects, always remembering, though, that as designed this seminar will cover a lot of ground rapidly.
STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES.
By the end of the semester, students who take this course will be able to demonstrate the following:
– an acquaintance with many of the historically important utopian and dystopian texts;
– the realization that it is difficult to define the genres of utopian and dystopian (and
critical utopian) literature;
– a sense of the continuities–especially in terms of the kinds of questions considered–
that obtain among these texts;
– concomitantly, again, a sense that the utopian/dystopian tradition has been punctuated
at intervals with dramatic changes as social, political, and literary landscapes and ideologies have shifted;
– the understanding that, even though usually about the future, utopian/dystopian
literature frequently mirrors its own times, often in surprising ways;
– some familiarity with utopian/dystopian poetics (how do these authors represent a
perfect/imperfect future?);
– some familiarity with utopian/dystopian rhetoric–how do utopian/dystopian authors
make their fictions plausible and persuasive?; and
– acquaintance with some of the important critical texts on utopian/dystopian literature,
including those written about feminist (and indigenous) utopias, dystopias, or critical utopias.
METHODS AND SALIENT QUESTIONS/TOPICS.
Even though this is indeed a heavy reading course with an emphasis on primary texts, you will engage four times during the semester with secondary material: (a) a recent article on one of the texts we will be reading as a class that you will find and report on to get discussion going on that text; (b) at least five articles on the non-shared reading that you will be reporting on; (c) one book-length treatment of our topic; and (d) whatever research you need to do for the seminar project.
Each class session, then, will start with the “pump-priming” report on a recent critical article about the text read for that session, followed by a discussion of that text + a report on a chapter from The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature + a report on a non-shared text, except the last class, which would be budgeted for the mock conference presentations on the seminar projects and peer reviews (which would be in the nature of respondents to the mock conference presentations + a written peer review).
A wonderful book that we will be reading to provide important historical background and central concepts/themes is Gregory Claeys, ed., A Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature (2010). It has eleven chapters; our salient questions would stem from the concepts in the chapters in this book (as you can tell from the fifth, sixth, tenth, and eleventh chapter titles, the book covers dystopias as well as utopias):
PART I – History
- “The concept of utopia”
- “Thomas More’s Utopia: sources, legacy, and interpretation”
- “Utopianism after More: the Renaissance and Enlightenment”
- “Paradise transformed: varieties of nineteenth-century utopias”
- “The origins of dystopia: Wells, Huxley and Orwell”
PART II = Literature
- “Utopia, dystopia and science fiction”
- “Utopia and romance”
- “Feminism and utopianism”
- “Colonial and postcolonial utopias”
- “’Non-western’ dystopian traditions”
- “Ecology and dystopia”
ASSIGNMENTS.
E-letters to the class – frequency (written both before and after discussion of a text)
E-letters – portfolio (selected e-letters + a reflective essay on all of them written during
the semester)
Report on a recent critical article on one of the texts that we will all be reading
Plot summary of a non-shared text (see the text list for what books students will select
from for this course component)
Synopses of at least five critical articles on a non-shared text
Oral report on a non-shared text
Summary of and seminar discussion leader for a chapter from The Cambridge
Companion to Utopian Literature
Synopsis of and evaluative review of a book of criticism (for some possibilities, see the
secondary reading list below)
Individual seminar project (a “standard” seminar paper; some students may decide to
try their hand at writing a creative piece in the genre; if they choose to do this, they will also write a critical afterword)
Peer review of another student’s seminar project
Mock conference presentation on the seminar project
Respondent to a mock conference presentation
Class attendance
TEXTS.
Gregory Claeys, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature (2010).
Plato, Republic; no report
Thomas More, Utopia (1516); report on Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis (1626) and
Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World (1666)
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, Parts III and IV (1726); report on Samuel Johnson:
Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1757)
William Morris, News from Nowhere (1890); report on Edward Bellamy, Looking
Backward 2000-1887 (1888)
- G. Wells, The Time Machine (1895); report on Wells, A Modern Utopia (1905)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland (1914); report on Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”
(1899)
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932); report on Huxley, Island (1962)
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949); report on Yevgeny Zamiatin, We (1924)
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953); report on Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano (1952)
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (1962); report on Ernest Callenbach, Ecotopia
(1975)
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed (1974); report on Joanna Russ, The Female Man
(1975)
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale (1985); report on Marge Piercy, Woman on the
Edge of Time (1976)
Cherie Dimaline, The Marrow Thieves (2017); report on Suzanne Collins, The Hunger
Games (2008) [the other two books in the trilogy = Catching Fire (2009) and Mockingjay (2010); two prequels: The Ballad of Snakes and Songbirds (2xxx) and Sunrise on the Reaping (2025)]
Louise Erdrich, Future Home of the Living God (2017); report to be determined
A Few Important Critical Works on Utopian and Dystopian Literature in General.
Nan Bowman Albinski, Women’s Utopias in British and American Fiction (1988).
Kingsley Amis, New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction (1960).
Raffaella Baccolini and Tom Moylan, eds., Dark Horizons: Science Fiction and the
Dystopian Imagination (2003).
Frances Bartkowski, Feminist Utopias (1989).
Marie Louise Berneri, Journey through Utopia (1950).
Robert Elliot, The Shape of Utopia (1970).
Mark Holloway, Heavens on Earth: Utopian Communities in America, 1680-1880
(1951).
Libby Falk Jones and Sarah Webster, eds., Feminism, Utopia, and Narrative (1990).
George Kateb, Utopia and Its Enemies (1972).
Frank E. and Fritzie P. Manuel, Utopian Thought in the Western World (1979).
[very long]
H. L. Morton, The English Utopia (1952).
Tom Moylan, Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination (1986).
—, Scraps of the Untainted Sky: Science Fiction, Utopia, Dystopia (2000).
Lewis Mumford, The Story of Utopias (1922).
Vernon Louis Parrington, Jr., American Dreams: A Study of American Utopias (1947).
Kenneth M. Roemer, The Obsolete Necessity: America in Utopia Writings, 1888-1900
(1976).
Chad Walsh, From Utopia to Nightmare (1962).
Carol Weisbrod, The Boundaries of Utopia (1980). [not at UHM; I have a copy]
Hoda M. Zaki, Phoenix Renewed (1988).
N.B. The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature lists 75 works for “Further Reading” (many of the ones above are also on that list).