{"id":83,"date":"2010-07-21T21:24:46","date_gmt":"2010-07-22T01:24:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/teachingutopia.wordpress.com\/?p=83"},"modified":"2012-06-08T16:27:19","modified_gmt":"2012-06-08T20:27:19","slug":"utopian-literature-delusional-distractions-or-essential-revelations-kenneth-roemer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/utopian-studies.org\/teaching\/utopian-literature-delusional-distractions-or-essential-revelations-kenneth-roemer\/","title":{"rendered":"Utopian Literature: Delusional Distractions or Essential Revelations (Kenneth Roemer)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nature and Goals of the Course:<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is a particular type of selective survey of utopian literature.\u00a0 It begins in a rather traditional way, posing questions about how concepts of \u201cutopia\u201d and \u201cutopian literature\u201d have been defined and used, and by offering a brief historical overview.\u00a0 (See the course packet for a selection of brief and two extended attempts to answer the defining question by modern scholars and a variety of non-scholars as different as Confucius, Dostoyevsky, Mr. Rogers, and Oprah; for the history overview, see Kumar\u2019s selection in the packet).\u00a0 Each major section of the course also uses a traditional organizational device: chronology.\u00a0 This is appropriate.\u00a0 Utopian literature is a literature grounded in dialogue.\u00a0 Authors often respond to earlier writings.\u00a0 Hence to understand the context of a particular work, it is often useful to know what preceded it. Finally, the course\u2019s focus on utopias of
\nthe \u201cWestern World\u201d is also traditional. What makes this course different from other traditional surveys is its arrangement on a spectrum beginning with forms of expression that were not to be questioned and ending with utopias that question themselves.\u00a0 To be more specific, we begin with visions of better worlds that depend upon divine authority and then move on to utopias (religious and secular) that sometimes do allow alternative viewpoints (e.g., dialogue forms) but clearly imply that one alternative is much better than the others.\u00a0 We next examine satiric works (from light hearted to freightingly dystopic) that either present their vision of better worlds indirectly or ironically or even as frightening warnings that emphasize the dire extrapolations of the worst in the present.\u00a0 The course concludes with discussion of utopias that offer representations of better
\nworlds that offer \u201canswers\u201d but also pose questions about alternative forms of utopia and even questions about the possibility of imagining utopia, while still maintaining that utopian speculation is a crucial means of understanding the past, present, and future.<\/p>\n

Students who successfully engage in class discussions and complete the readings and in- and out-of-class written assignments should have a awareness of the nature and importance of some of the most significant American, British, and European utopian works and should be able to articulate orally and in writing their views on (1) how utopian concepts have been defined,\u00a0 (2) some of the most important issues raised in the utopias (e.g., economic and gender equality, impact of technology, environmentalism, the nature of happiness, individual vs. communal identity and responsibility), and (3) the importance of variety of the utopias suggested by the spectrum indicated above \u2013 how this variety suggests different forms of authority for utopian expression and different forms of readers attitudes about and responses to utopian literature.<\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> for the full syllabus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nature and Goals of the Course: This is a particular type of selective survey of utopian literature.\u00a0 It begins in a rather traditional way, posing questions about how concepts of \u201cutopia\u201d and \u201cutopian literature\u201d have been defined and used, and by offering a brief historical overview.\u00a0 (See the course packet for a selection of brief […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-syllabi"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3lS3Y-1l","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utopian-studies.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utopian-studies.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utopian-studies.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utopian-studies.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utopian-studies.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/utopian-studies.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":115,"href":"https:\/\/utopian-studies.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions\/115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utopian-studies.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utopian-studies.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utopian-studies.org\/teaching\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}