Each year the Society for Utopian Studies presents the Eugenio Battisti Award to the author of the best article in the previous year’s Utopian Studies. Eugenio Battisti (1924-1989), a much beloved scholar of utopian studies, was the founder of the Associazione internazionale per gli studi sulle utopie and the originator of a series of conferences in Italy. The Award is funded by donations to the Society for Utopian Studies by its members and has been generously supported by Professor Battisti’s wife, Giuseppa Saccaro Del Buffa, and son, Francesco Battisti.
The Eugenio Battisti Award has been presented to:
2023
Mark A. Tabone, “Insistent Hope as Anti-Anti-Utopian Politics in N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy.”
*Finalist: John Mark Robinson, “The Neoliberal Utopianism of Bitcoin and Modern Monetary Theory.”
2019
Agata Bielik-Robson, “The Messiah and the Great Architect: On the
Difference Between the Messianic and the Utopian.” Utopian Studies 29.2 (2018): 133-158.
*Finalist: Aaron Santesso, “Next Door to Nirvana: Neighboring States and the Utopian Border Paradox” Utopian Studies 29.3 (2018): 325-342.
2018
Clayton D. Colmon, “Queer Afrofuturism: Utopia, Sexuality, and Desire in Samuel Delany’s ‘Aye, and Gomorrah.’”Utopian Studies 28.2 (2017): 327-346.
*Finalists:
Nicholas Serruys. “Utopian Science Fiction from Quebec, from National Allegories to Cultural Accommodation: Joёl Champetier’s RESET—Le Voille de Lumiѐre (2011).” Utopian Studies 1 (2017): 72-119.
Annebella Pollen, “Utopian Bodies and Anti-Fashion Futures: The Dress Theories and Practices of English Interwar Nudists.” Utopian Studies 3 (2017): 451-481.
2017
Pascale LaFountain, “’Darkness, Waiting, Without Speaking’: Fluidity, Subjectivity, and Utopian Space in Ingeborg Bachmann’s Der Fall Franza,” Utopian Studies 27, no. 1 (2016): 77-92.
2016
Adrienne Rose Bitar [Johnson], “The Paleo Diet and the American Weight Loss Utopia, 1975-2014,” Utopian Studies 26, no. 1 (2015): 101-124.
2015
2014
Samuel Gerald Collins, “Train to Pyongyang: Imagination, Utopia, and Korean Unification,” Utopian Studies 24, no. 1 (2013): 119-143.2013
2013
Marlana Portolano, “The Rhetorical Function of Utopia: An Exploration of the Concept of Utopia in Rhetorical Theory” (pp. 113-141) (Vol. 23, No. 1, 2012)
2012
John Freeman-Moir, “Crafting Experience: William Morris, John Dewey and Utopia”
2010
Robert Hunter, “The Music of Change: Utopian Transformation in Aufsteig und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny and Der Silbersee.” Utopian Studies 21.2 (2010): 293-312.
Christine Nadir, “Utopian Studies, Environmental Literature, and the Legacy of an Idea: Educating Desire in Miguel Abensour and Ursula K. Le Guin.” Utopian Studies 21.1 (2010): 24-56.
2009
Janet Sarbanes, “The Shaker ‘Gift’: Charisma, Aesthetic Practice and Utopian Communalism,” Utopian Studies, Volume 20:1 2009.
2008
Darren Webb, for “Christian Hope and the Politics of Utopia” Utopian Studies 19.1 (2008).
2007
Janet Stewart –“Breaking the Power of the Past over the Present’: Psychology, Utopianism and the Frankfurt School” (Winter 2007).
2006
Edward K. Chan, for “Utopia and the Problem of Race: Accounting for the Remainder in the Imagination of the 1970s Utopian Subject.”
2005
Craig Smith, for “Great Reformation in the Manners of Mankind: Utopian Thought in the Scottish Reformation and Enlightenment.” Utopian Studies 16.2 (2005): 221-45.
2004
Fran Shor, for “SNCC and the Struggle for Civil Rights, 1960-1966.” Utopian Studies 15.2 (2004): 173-89.
2003
Peter Sands, for “Octavia Butler’s Chiastic Cannibalistics.” Utopian Studies 14.1 (2003): 1-14; and Susan McManus, for “Fabricating the Future: Becoming Bloch’s Utopians.” Utopian Studies 14.2 (2003): 1-22.
2002
Roger Paden, for “Marx’s Critique of the Utopian Socialists” Utopian Studies 13.2 (2002).
2001
Werner Christie Mathisen, for “The Underestimation of Politics in Green Utopias: The Description of Politics in Huxley’s Island, Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, and Callenbach’s Ecotopia.” 12.1: 56-78.
2000
Karpinski, Eva C. “Signifying Passion: Angela Carter’s Heroes and Villains as a Dystopian Romance.” Utopian Studies 11.2 (2000): 137-51.
1999
Hartman, Matthew. “Utopian Evolution: The Sentimental Critique of Social Darwinism in Bellamy and Pierce.” Utopian Studies 10.1 (1999): 26-41.
Williams, Nicholas M. “The Limits of Spatialized Form: Visibility and Obscurity in Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward.”Utopian Studies 10.2 (1999): 25-39.
1998
Phillip E. Wegner, “Horizons, Figures, and Machines: The Dialectic of Utopia in the Work of Fredric Jameson.” Utopian Studies 9.2 (1998): 58-73
Lynda H. Schneekloth, ” Unredeemably Utopian: Architecture and Making/Unmaking the World,” Utopian Studies 9.1 (1998): 1-25.
1997
Michael Gardiner, “A Postmodern Utopia? Heller and Fehér’s Critique of Messianic Marxism.” Utopian Studies 8.1 (1997): 89-122.
1996
Robert Appelbaum, “Utopian Dubrovnik, 1659: An English Fantasy.” Utopian Studies 7.2 (1996): 66-92.
1995
Michael Gardiner, “Utopia and Everyday Life in French Social Thought.” Utopian Studies 6.2 (1995): 90-123.
1994
Carl J. Guarneri, “The Americanization of Utopia: Fourierism and the Dilemma of Utopian Dissent in the United States.”Utopian Studies 5.1 (1994): 72-88.
1993
Philip E. Wegner, “Zamyatin’s We: A Critical Map of Utopia’s ‘Possible Worlds’.” Utopian Studies 4.2 (1993): 94-116.
1992
Michael Gardiner, “Bakhtin’s Carnival: Utopia as Critique” Utopian Studies 3.2 (1992): 21-49. Rpt. in Bakhtin: Carnival and Other Subjects. Selected Papers from the Fifth International Bakhtin Conference. University of Manchester, July 1991. Ed. David Shepherd. Vol. 3.2 – 4.1/2 of Critical Studies (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993), 20-47.
Kenneth R. Hoover, “Mondragón’s Answers to Utopias Problems.” Utopian Studies 3.2 (1992): 1-20.
1991
Peter Fitting, “Utopia Beyond Our Ideals: The Dilemma of the Right-Wing Utopia.” Utopian Studies 2.1&2 (1991): 95-109.
Lee Cullen Khanna, “Beyond Omelas: Utopia and Gender.” Utopian Studies 2.1&2 (1991): 48-58.
1990
Vincent Geoghegan, “Remembering the Future.” Utopian Studies 1.2 (1990): 52-68. Rpt. in Not Yet: Reconsidering Ernst Bloch. Ed. Jamie Owen Daniel and Tom Moylan (London: Verso, 1997), 15-32.