HIS 2520 - UTOPIAN AND DYSTOPIAN VISIONS

credits: 3.0
A study of the utopian tradition and its dystopian counterpart; begins with a survey of historical thinking from Plato to Rousseau with a focus on the tension between dreams of an ideal, or at least better, world and fears of a worse one; concludes with an extended consideration of twentieth and twenty-first century fiction and film. The dream of a better world has been a central focus of the self-understanding of what we call western civilization since Plato stumbled out of his cave and dreamed up his Republic (which he tried to pawn off on Socrates but that is a different subject). Fine-tuned in the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, such visions frequently served as blueprints for efforts to remake human society through revolution, reform, or relocation. At the same time, anxieties about dystopia-utopia’s evil twin that seems to lurk within those blueprints-have provided a rich history of nightmares, both real and imagined, that serve as warnings to the dreamy or the complacent. Drawing on a selection of historical sources, fiction, and film, this course explores the competing visions of the ideal world and the nightmare society. What can we learn about a society from its dreams of what it could be? What can we learn from its darkest fears about what it could become? Of particular interest will be issues relating to race, gender, equality/inequality, and the environment. Objectives: A) Identify the major themes in utopian and dystopian thinking; B) Evaluate the relationship between political/philosophical ideas and specific efforts to remake human societies; C) Evaluate the relationship between political/philosophical ideas and their representation in fiction and film; D) Analyze how representations of utopian and dystopian societies inform us about issues in contemporary society, such as those relating to gender, race, inequality, and the environment; E) Construct an imagined society that reflects a particular understanding of a better world. Method of Instruction: Discussion, presentations, and mini-lectures. Method of Evaluation: In-class quizzes and response essays; compare/contrast papers; and final project. Meets *WEP Distribution Requirement.