Utopian Imaginings

Utopian Imaginings PDF Author: Victoria W. Wolcott
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438497504
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
"Sometimes that's all it takes to save a world, you see. A new vision. A new way of thinking, appearing at just the right time." These words were spoken by a fictional character in N. K. Jemisin's 2019 utopian novella Emergency Skin. But the idea of saving the world through utopian imaginings has a deep and profound history. At this moment of rupture—with the related crises of the pandemic, racial uprisings, and climate change converging—Utopian Imaginings revisits this history to show how utopian thought and practice offer alternative paths to the future. The third book in the Humanities to the Rescue series, the volume examines both lived and imagined utopian communities from an interdisciplinary perspective. While attentive to the troubled and troubling elements of different spaces and collectives, Utopian Imaginings remains premised in hope, culminating in a series of inspiring exemplars of the utopian potential of the college classroom today.

Utopian Imaginings

Utopian Imaginings PDF Author: Victoria W. Wolcott
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438497504
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 180

Get Book

Book Description
"Sometimes that's all it takes to save a world, you see. A new vision. A new way of thinking, appearing at just the right time." These words were spoken by a fictional character in N. K. Jemisin's 2019 utopian novella Emergency Skin. But the idea of saving the world through utopian imaginings has a deep and profound history. At this moment of rupture—with the related crises of the pandemic, racial uprisings, and climate change converging—Utopian Imaginings revisits this history to show how utopian thought and practice offer alternative paths to the future. The third book in the Humanities to the Rescue series, the volume examines both lived and imagined utopian communities from an interdisciplinary perspective. While attentive to the troubled and troubling elements of different spaces and collectives, Utopian Imaginings remains premised in hope, culminating in a series of inspiring exemplars of the utopian potential of the college classroom today.

Eighteenth-Century Utopian Fiction

Eighteenth-Century Utopian Fiction PDF Author: Christine Rees
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317898168
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Utopian fiction was a particularly rich and important genre during the eighteenth century. It was during this period that a relatively new phenomenon appeared: the merging of utopian writing per se with other fictional genres, such as the increasingly dominant novel. However, while early modern and nineteenth and twentieth century utopias have been the focus of much attention, the eighteenth century has largely been neglected. Utopian Imagination and Eighteenth Century Fiction combines these major areas of interest, interpreting some of the most fascinating and innovative fictions of the period and locating them in a continuing tradition of utopian writing which stretches back through the Renaissance to the Ancient World. Begining with a survey of the recurrent topics in utopian writing - power structures in the state, money, food, sex, the role of women, birth, education and death - the book brings together canonical eighteenth century texts countaining powerful utopian elements, such as Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels and Rasselas, and less familiar works, to examine the reworking of these topics in a new context. The unfamiliar texts, including Gaudentio di Lucca, are described in detail to give students an idea of relevant material across a broad area. A section is devoted specifically to women writes, an area which has become the focus of attention. The mixture of texts provides a useful cross-reference for students tackling the subject from various perspectives and the comprehensive bibliography provides a valuable tool for those with general or specific interests

Law and the Utopian Imagination

Law and the Utopian Imagination PDF Author: Austin Sarat
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804791864
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
Law and the Utopian Imagination seeks to explore and resuscitate the notion of utopianism within current legal discourse. The idea of utopia has fascinated the imaginations of important thinkers for ages. And yet—who writes seriously on the idea of utopia today? The mid-century critique appears to have carried the day, and a belief in the very possibility of utopian achievements appears to have flagged in the face of a world marked by political instability, social upheaval, and dreary market realities. Instead of mapping out the contours of a familiar terrain, this book seeks to explore the possibilities of a productive engagement between the utopian and the legal imagination. The book asks: is it possible to re-imagine or revitalize the concept of utopia such that it can survive the terms of the mid-century liberal critique? Alternatively, is it possible to re-imagine the concept of utopia and the theory of liberal legality so as to dissolve the apparent antagonism between the two? In charting possible answers to these questions, the present volume hopes to revive interest in a vital topic of inquiry too long neglected by both social thinkers and legal scholars.

The Post-Utopian Imagination

The Post-Utopian Imagination PDF Author: M. Keith Booker
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313076359
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
In America, the long 1950s were marked by an intense skepticism toward utopian alternatives to the existing capitalist order. This skepticism was closely related to the climate of the Cold War, in which the demonization of socialism contributed to a dismissal of all alternatives to capitalism. This book studies how American novels and films of the long 1950s reflect the loss of the utopian imagination and mirror the growing concern that capitalism brought routinization, alienation, and other dehumanizing consequences. The volume relates the decline of the utopian vision to the rise of late capitalism, with its expanding globalization and consumerism, and to the beginnings of postmodernism. In addition to well-known literary novels, such as Nabokov's Lolita, Booker explores a large body of leftist fiction, popular novels, and the films of Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney. The book argues that while the canonical novels of the period employ a utopian aesthetic, that aesthetic tends to be very weak and is not reinforced by content. The leftist novels, on the other hand, employ a realist aesthetic but are utopian in their exploration of alternatives to capitalism. The study concludes that the utopian energies in cultural productions of the long 1950s are very weak, and that these works tend to dismiss utopian thinking as na^Dive or even sinister. The weak utopianism in these works tends to be reflected in characteristics associated with postmodernism.

Imagining the University

Imagining the University PDF Author: Ronald Barnett
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135098433
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
Around the world, what it is to be a university is a matter of much debate. The range of ideas of the university in public circulation is, however, exceedingly narrow and is dominated by the idea of the entrepreneurial university. As a consequence, the debate is hopelessly impoverished. Lurking in the literature, there is a broad and even imaginative array of ideas of the university, but those ideas are seldom heard. We need, consequently, not just more ideas of the university but better ideas. Imagining the University forensically examines this situation, critically interrogating many of the current ideas of the university. Imagining the University argues for imaginative ideas that are critical, sensitive to the deep structures underlying universities and are yet optimistic, in short feasible utopias of the university. The case is pressed for one such idea, that of the ecological university. The book concludes by offering a vision of the imagining university, a university that has the capacity continually to re-imagine itself.

Utopian Imagination and Eighteenth Century Fiction

Utopian Imagination and Eighteenth Century Fiction PDF Author: Christine Rees
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131789815X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
Utopian fiction was a particularly rich and important genre during the eighteenth century. It was during this period that a relatively new phenomenon appeared: the merging of utopian writing per se with other fictional genres, such as the increasingly dominant novel. However, while early modern and nineteenth and twentieth century utopias have been the focus of much attention, the eighteenth century has largely been neglected. Utopian Imagination and Eighteenth Century Fiction combines these major areas of interest, interpreting some of the most fascinating and innovative fictions of the period and locating them in a continuing tradition of utopian writing which stretches back through the Renaissance to the Ancient World. Begining with a survey of the recurrent topics in utopian writing - power structures in the state, money, food, sex, the role of women, birth, education and death - the book brings together canonical eighteenth century texts countaining powerful utopian elements, such as Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels and Rasselas, and less familiar works, to examine the reworking of these topics in a new context. The unfamiliar texts, including Gaudentio di Lucca, are described in detail to give students an idea of relevant material across a broad area. A section is devoted specifically to women writes, an area which has become the focus of attention. The mixture of texts provides a useful cross-reference for students tackling the subject from various perspectives and the comprehensive bibliography provides a valuable tool for those with general or specific interests

Automation and Utopia

Automation and Utopia PDF Author: John Danaher
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674984242
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Automating technologies threaten to usher in a workless future, but John Danaher argues that this can be a good thing. A world without work may be a kind of utopia, free of the misery of the job and full of opportunities for creativity and exploration. If we play our cards right, automation could be the path to idealized forms of human flourishing.

Food Utopias

Food Utopias PDF Author: Paul V. Stock
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317657721
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Food is a contentious and emotive issue, subject to critiques from multiple perspectives. Alternative food movements – including the different articulations of local, food miles, seasonality, food justice, food knowledge and food sovereignty – consistently invoke themes around autonomy, sufficiency, cooperation, mutual aid, freedom, and responsibility. In this stimulating and provocative book the authors link these issues to utopias and intentional communities. Using a food utopias framework presented in the introduction, they examine food stories in three interrelated and complementary ways: utopias as critique of existing systems; utopias as engagement with experimentation of the novel, the forgotten, and the hopeful in the future of the food system; and utopias as process that recognizes the time and difficulty inherent in changing the status quo. The chapters address theoretical aspects of food utopias and also present case studies from a range of contexts and regions, including Argentina, Italy, Switzerland and USA. These focus on key issues in contemporary food studies including equity, locality, the sacred, citizenship, community and food sovereignty. Food utopias offers ways forward to imagine a creative and convivial food system.

Imagination in Human and Cultural Development

Imagination in Human and Cultural Development PDF Author: Tania Zittoun
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135103194
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
This book positions imagination as a central concept which increases the understanding of daily life, personal life choices, and the way in which culture and society changes. Case studies from micro instances of reverie and daydreaming, to utopian projects, are included and analysed. The theoretical focus is on imagination as a force free from immediate constraints, forming the basis of our individual and collective agency. In each chapter, the authors review and integrate a wide range of classic and contemporary literature culminating in the proposal of a sociocultural model of imagination. The book takes into account the triggers of imagination, the content of imagination, and the outcomes of imagination. At the heart of the model is the interplay between the individual and culture; an exploration of how the imagination, as something very personal and subjective, grows out of our shared culture, and how our shared culture can be transformed by acts of imagination. Imagination in Human and Cultural Development offers new perspectives on the study of psychological learning, change, innovation and creativity throughout the lifespan. The book will appeal to academics and scholars in the fields of psychology and the social sciences, especially those with an interest in development, social change, cultural psychology, imagination and creativity.

The Logic of Fantasy

The Logic of Fantasy PDF Author: John Huntington
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231053785
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description