Recently added articles from Utopian Studies:
Editorial.
Jun 22, 2008; ... Octavia Butler died in February of 2006; she left behind a body of work exploring the impulse toward utopia and the potential for dystopia. This special issue of Utopian Studies is devoted to her work, which is still too little studied--especially by scholars of utopia. (Ritch Calvin's ...
The certainty of the flesh: Octavia Butler's use of the erotic in the Xenogenesis trilogy.
Jun 22, 2008; ... Personally, I find utopias ridiculous. We're not going to have a perfect human society until we get a few perfect humans, and that seems unlikely. Octavia Butler Introduction In the great Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro and a dozen or so friends set out to ...
"Every age has the vampire it needs": Octavia Butler's vampiric vision in Fledgling.
Jun 22, 2008; ... In both movies and novels, the "traditional" vampire is often presented as the "other" who threatens humanity. A white male who penetrates both society and the bodies of his victims, this vampire represents the "queered" or Othered because he embodies the fears and anxieties of the society ...
Theorizing fear: Octavia Butler and the realist utopia.
Jun 22, 2008; ... "Again, men have no pleasure, but on the contrary a great deal of grief, in keeping company where there is no power able to overawe them all." (Hobbes 75) "It's better to teach people than to scare them, Lauren. If you scare them and nothing happens, they lose their fear, and ...
Diversity, change, violence: Octavia Butler's pedagogical philosophy.
Jun 22, 2008; ... The deliberate and relentless depiction of violence in Octavia Butler's science fiction is striking. Her books are full of conflict that ranges from nuclear war to suburban looting, child abuse to concentration-camp slavery, self-defense to deliberate genocide. Within this violent world, ...
Of gifted children and gated communities: Paul Theroux's O-Zone and Octavia Butler's The Parable of the Sower.
Jun 22, 2008; ... Skywalker began his life as a slave on Tatooine, cared for by his mother, Shmi Skywalker, and owned by a Toydarian spare-parts dealer named Watto. It was obvious from the beginning that he was unusual and gifted: his mother claimed that she had experienced a virgin birth for Anakin, and ...
An Octavia E. Butler bibliography (1976-2008).
Jun 22, 2008; ... The last significant bibliography of works by and about Octavia Butler was in 1984 (Weixlmann). In the twenty-four years since then, Butler herself produced a great many works, but--even more significantly--a veritable cottage industry seems to have grown up around her work. And since her ...
H. G. Wells: a political life.
Jun 22, 2008; ... HG. Wells was born into a struggling lower-middle-class family on September 21, 1866 at Atlas House, High Street, in Bromley, Kent. He had two brothers, Frank (1857-1933) and Fred (1862-1954), and a sister, Fanny (1855-1864), who died before he was born. His father, Joseph Wells ...
An American Utopia and its global audiences: transnational perspectives on Looking Backward.(Critical essay)
Mar 22, 2008; ... Abstract This essay departs from conventional American Studies treatments to resituate Bellamy's utopia of 1888 within transnational debates over industrialism, socialism, and the state in European nations and their settler societies (including the United States) between 1890 ...
The fall and rise of an Antipodean Utopia: Brisbane, Australia.(Brisbane, Australia)(Critical essay)
Mar 22, 2008; ... Abstract This article describes and discusses a late-nineteenth century utopian text, The Curse and Its Cure, set in the city of Brisbane, capital of the state of Queensland, Australia. q-he first half of this book by Dr. "Thomas Pennington Lucas posits how Brisbane was utterly ...
From Utopia to empire: Atarashikimura and A Personal View of the Greater East Asia War (1942).(Critical essay)
Mar 22, 2008; ... Abstract Atarashikimura--"New Village"--was founded by the Japanese writer Mushakoji Saneatsu (1885-1976) in 1918 based on the utopian principles of restoring dignity to labor, communal living, and the actualization of the authentic self in artistic pursuits. The rhetoric and ...
Power, utopia, and the manipulation of the historical consciousness: perspectives from Collingwood.(R. G. Collingwood)(Essay)
Mar 22, 2008; ... Abstract A recurrent misconception about the concept of utopia fails to realize fully that its essential endeavor constitutes a speculative act involving the distribution of power and resources. Consequently, utopian desire is closely linked to structures of power and can be ...
The genomic imperative: Michel Houellebecq's The Possibility of an Island.(Critical essay)
Mar 22, 2008; ... Abstract "The Genomic Imperative" focuses on French writer Michel Houellebecq's 2005 dystopia The Possibility of an Island (La possibilite d'une ile). In its introduction, the essay links Houellebecq's work to the recent tradition of postmodern fiction (on the one hand) and to ...
Religion and Utopia in Fredric Jameson.(Critical essay)
Mar 22, 2008; ... Abstract Focusing on the interplay of religion and Utopia in Fredric Jameson's recent Archaeologies of the Future, I identify a tension: on the one hand, the content of religion has been superseded (although not its forms), yet, on the other, Jameson still wishes to make use of ...
Taxation in utopia.(Report)
Mar 22, 2008; ... Abstract Utopias of the right and the left offer different justifications for taxation and propose different tax systems. Here, utopian proposals are analysed and evaluated from two perspectives: the "ideal" form of taxation (visible, equitable, and non-avoidable), and the ...
Annette Lucia Giesecke. The Epic City: Urbanism, Utopia, and the Garden in Ancient Greece and Rome.(Book review)
Mar 22, 2008; ... Annette Lucia Giesecke. The Epic City: Urbanism, Utopia, and the Garden in Ancient Greece and Rome. Cambridge: Center for Hellenic Studies/Harvard University Press, 2007. xi + 204 pp. $18.95 Ancient Athens and Rome were very different cities. In particular, as Annette Giesecke ...
Sonja Fritzsche. Science Fiction Literature in East Germany.(Book review)
Mar 22, 2008; ... Sonja Fritzsche. Science Fiction Literature in East Germany. Bern: Peter Lang, 2006. 333 pp. $64.95 For the most part, this is a thorough and informative study of the history and development of science fiction in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The author's overriding ...
Daniel Pinchbeck. 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl.(Book review)
Mar 22, 2008; ... Daniel Pinchbeck. 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2007. 411 pp. $14.95 In his first book, Breaking Open the Head, Daniel Pinchbeck employs an epistemological insight of Jean-Francois Lyotard concerning radical thinking: "Being prepared to ...
Tom Moylan, and Raffaella Baccolini, ed.: Utopia Method Vision: The Use Value of Social Dreaming.(Book review)
Mar 22, 2008; ... Tom Moylan, and Raffaella Baccolini, ed. Utopia Method Vision: The Use Value of Social Dreaming. Oxford, Eng.: Peter Lang, 2007. 345 pp. $49.95 Following a series of seminars sponsored by the Ralahine Centre for Utopian Studies at the University of Limerick, Ireland, Utopia ...
Michael J. Griffin, and Tom Moylan, ed.: Exploring the Utopian Impulse: Essays on Utopian Thought and Practice.(Book review)
Mar 22, 2008; ... Michael J. Griffin, and Tom Moylan, ed. Exploring the Utopian Impulse: Essays on Utopian Thought and Practice. Vol. 2 of the Ralahine Utopian Studies. Bern: Peter Lang, 2007. 434 pp. $59.95; 25.00 [pounds sterling] This is a refereed collection of twenty papers presented at the ...