Summer Term

POSC 351: Utopian and Dystopian Political Visions

Coined in 1516 to describe an imagined island community that was ‘no place’, utopia has come to mean eutopia – ‘good’ (or ‘better’) place. The concept has had a rich academic and literary life, including the advent of the dystopia, a term likely first used in 1868. The ‘dystopian turn’ has dominated the genre since the late 19th century, and it is the form contemporary readers are most familiar with, particularly given its proliferation in young adult fiction starting in the mid-2000s. While the course will engage with the utopian (and dystopian) intellectual tradition, it is focused in particular on the literary genre. Its framing question is what insight into our politics can we gain by engaging with it in its fictional extremes in both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ places? To inspire our thinking, the course will engage with works of utopian and political theory paired with works of utopian and dystopian fiction in a variety of media forms