DRAFT SYLLABUS: TO BE UPDATED JANUARY 2017
(NOTE: 12-page final paper will be optional alternative to utopia project this semester.)
Professor Mary Baine Campbell
Fall 2011
English 128a: Alternative Worlds: Modern Utopian Texts
Office: 236 Rabb, x 6-2146
Office hours: Tuesday 2:00-4:00, Friday 10-11:00
“The island of Utopia is 200 miles across at the middle part where it widest, and nowhere much narrower than this except towards the two ends, where it gradually tapers. These ends, curved round as if completing a circle 500 miles in circumference, make the island crescent-shaped, like a new moon.” Or like a smile. Starting from these words Thomas More, future Lord Chancellor of England,a reader of Plato’s Republic, created in 1516 the first of a 500-year, nowglobalplethora of fictions that imagine something closer to theheart’s desire than any of the “real” worlds we have lived in during those centuries.
Why do people imagine other and better worlds? Why do they do it more often, and more energetically, at certain historical moments—including ours? Can it have any consequence beyond the experience of reading? Can fictions change the world?
This course will survey some major fictions and their influence, American, European and Russian, from the English Renaissance to Germanyand the US in the 21st century. We’ll talk about and createtexts that attempt to alter, elevate, or just recover our social instincts and beliefs--some of which have succeeded. Without the impulse to make such texts, at any rate, we are surely lost. This will not, then, be a sociology or history of sociology course, though I hope it will benefit from the presence of sociology and politicsstudents: political interest and awareness are supported and subtlized as much by the work of the creative imagination as by theorizations of the social sciences. And utopian fiction is very often the venue in which new ideas are first circulated to the larger world. It is a fact of interest for majors in literary disciplines that literary, dramatic and film work has been done with an eye towards fashioning finer realities in the here and now. Thus this course will not study escapist fictions, whatever their broad relevance (or fun). The necessity of fictionitself in the ongoing invention of a just world will be a continuing source of our interest. There are no clearly dystopian texts on the syllabus.
Our goals: This is now a required feature of Brandeis syllabi. My own deepest goals for this course should be clear above, and I look forward to hearing yours when we meet in class. But more pragmatically: this is an Experiential Learning course. I expect you to discover for yourself, especially in the writing (or scripting, filmmaking, photographing, staging, performing, singing, whatever) of your own utopian text, the utopian impulse, and the excitement of conscientiously imagining a better world. You will be much better positioned to try this after reading, analyzing and commenting on exemplary attempts, from earlier and recent European and American societies, of others whose “real worlds” were a little or a lot different from your own. This will help you see how provisional and context- dependent utopian thinking is, and how insufficient past utopian constructs may seem to your own ideals, the problems you see in your own world.
By the end of the course you will have spent a lot of timeand energy analyzing not only the social ideas of past utopia-writers and social planners, but the interest ofliteraryand cinematic interventions into this discourse--often reflexive, ironic, even satiric in relation to the literary representation of a world of scarcity converted into a worldof more equally distributed plenty. You will have learned above all from trying it yourself--it isn’t easy! I hope it will give you a continuing taste for imagining better worlds.
Texts: Please be sure to buy these editions/translations!
Thomas More, Utopia, introd. China Miéville (Verso Books, 2016).
Tommaso Campanella, La Città del Sole/The City of the Sun, trans. Daniel J. Donno (Berkeley, University of CA Press, 1981).
Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World and Other Writings, ed. Kate Lilley (Penguin Books, 1994).
Anne-Marie-Louise d’Orléans, Duchesse de Montpensier, Against Marriage, ed. and trans. Joan de Jean (University of Chicago Press, 2002).
Karl Marx and Friederich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (Penguin, 2002).
William Morris, News from Nowhere (Penguin Classics, 1994).
Octavia Butler, The Parable of the Sower (Grand Central Publishing, 2000).
Recommended: The Utopia Reader, eds. Gregory Claeys and Lyman Tower Sargent (NYU Press, 1999).
We will also see and discuss Wolfgang Becker’s filmGoodbye, Lenin! (Germany, 2003), Yakov Protazanv’s Russian film Aelita: Queen of Mars (2024) (Soviet Union,1924), the new documentary short Soul City, and as a special bonus provide a film screening of a Yes Men film with one of the Yes Men, on May Day!
Very useful website (from New York Public Library): utopia.nypl.org
Graduate Student tutorial: We will meet one hour weekly in my office (biweekly if you prefer) to discuss your choices among theoretical and historical works such as Louis Marin,Utopiques;William Jameson,Archeology of the Future(and/or “An American Utopia” with Kathy Weeks’ response, “Utopian Therapy”);J. C. Davis, Utopia and the Ideal Society; Phil Wegner (recent speaker in the department), Imaginary Communities: Utopia, the Nation and Spatial Histories of Modernity; Ruth Levitas, Utopia as Method, Bill Ashcroft’s Utopianism in Postcolonial Literatures or Ahmed Khaled Towfik’s dystopic novel Utopia. Each of you will briefly presentone of these to the class.
Writing:
After shopping period you’ll write every week(starting Monday, Jan. 23), turning in 1 or 2 pages at the first class meeting of each week and posting it on LATTE the night before (8:00 pm!): mini-papers or comments, extended questions, parodies, even bits of utopian writing inspired in some way by readings. Feel free to use this assignment in ways really useful or pleasurable for you. One 5-6 p. analytical paperis dueFriday, March 10.
Your final assignment, a utopia (orfragment of one) of your own, may if it is a written text be published in a collection of student utopias from our course in combination with those of Prof. Julia Douthwaite at Notre Dame, Dr. Laurent Loty at CNRS (the National Center for Academic Research) in France, and others in France, Africa and the Caribbean. These may be written (or filmed, scripted, enacted, designed as board games or wiki-spaces, etc.!) collectively or individually, and should be started by mid-March, to be ready by 1:00pm Friday, May 5, in my mailbox in the Office of the Department of English, Rabb 144. No worries, there’s a handout on “turning in”non-textual projects!
As an alternative final project, you can produce a 12-p. paper for the new long-paper requirement. Please stay in contact about this, and discuss topic and bibliography with me by mid-March. I can be helpful in brainstorming and reading drafts.
Graduate students may write a 20-25 p. seminar paper, or create a utopian project with a shorter critical essay on it, due Monday May 8.
Grades:
Your grades will be based on your achievement in three equal categories: 1) participation (weekly writings and attendance), 2) a 5-6 p.analytical paper, and 3) a home-made utopia (or 12 p. longer paper). Weekly writings themselves will be ungraded: your grade for those will be determined by the number you turn in: 12 out of 12 = A, 11 = B, 10 = C, 9 = D, 8 = F. Please note that to get an A in this portion of your grade you must turn in all 12. They must be turned in on paper, for my responses, and on time: they are time-sensitive in their effects. I’ll also ask you to post them on our LATTE site.
The University requires us to remind you that all cases of plagiarism will be prosecuted. It’s hard to imagine someone plagiarizing a utopia!
IF YOU HAVE A DOCUMENTED DISABILITY WHICH MIGHT REQUIRE ANY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENTS, PLEASE SEE ME AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.
SCHEDULE: READINGS, SCREENINGS, AND PAPERS
Week 1: Tuesday, Jan. 17: Introduction: Ovid, Virgil and Genesis on the Golden Age and the Garden of Eden; the medieval “Land of Cockaigne.” Please come having read the brief excerpts posted for that week on the LATTE site. For those who like books they are also in the Utopia Reader (recommended): pp. 8-11 and 71-76.
Locations: Islands and Walled Cities
Week 2:Friday, Jan. 20: ON LATTE: excerpt from Plato’s Republic in The Utopia Reader, pp. 27-56; “First Letter” of Amerigo Vespucci (July 18, 1500).
Week 3: Tuesday and Friday, Jan. 24 and 27: Thomas More, Utopia (England, 1517).
Week 4: Tuesday and Friday, Jan. 31 and Feb. 3: Tommaso Campanella, City of the Sun (Italy, 1602).
Week 5: Tuesday and Friday, Feb. 7 and 10: Henry Neville, The Isle of Pines (England, 1668), in Three Early Modern Utopias.
Early Feminist Utopias
Week 6: Tuesday and Friday, Feb 14 and March 17: Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing-World (England, 1666). ON LATTE: “Of Many Worlds in This World” (a poem by Cavendish); illustrated excerpt on “Grey drone-fly” from Robert Hooke’s Micrographia (England, 1665).
Week 7: WINTER BREAK (Feb. 21 and 25)
Week 8: Tuesday, Feb. 28 and Friday March 3: Blazing-World (conclusion);Anne-Marie-Louise d’Orléans, Duchesse de Montpensier, Against Marriage (France, 1660.
Rational Societies
Week 9: Tuesday and Friday, March 7 and 10: ON LATTE: Excerpt from James Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana (England, 1656) and “Part 3: The Eighteenth Century,” in Utopia Reader, pp. 140-181; the Constitution of the United States of America (US, 1787), pp.151-176 in Selma R. Williams, Fifty-Five Fathers: The Story of the Constitutional Convention. Short papers due Friday in class.
Week 10: Tuesday and Friday, March 14 and 17: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Communist Manifesto(1848).
A Century of Realized Utopias
Week 11: Tuesday and Friday, March 21 and 24: William Morris, News from Nowhere (Britain, 1890).
Week 12: Tuesday March 28: William Morris, News from Nowhere, cont. Film screening: Aelita: Queen of Mars 2024(USSR, 1921): Thursday, March 30, 7:00 pm (room TBA);Friday March 31 discussion.
Week 13: Tuesday April 4: ON LATTE: Herbert Marcuse (original Brandeis faculty), “The End of Utopia” (essay, US, 1967), and extracts from Occupy!: Scenes from the Occupation of America (anthology, US, 2011). Screening Thursday, April 6, 6:00pmwith pizza,ofGoodbye, Lenin! (film, Germany, 2003) about the fall of the Berlin Wall and its consequences for afamily. Friday April 7: discussion of Goodbye, Lenin!;for background, seebiased but information-rich (don’t skip the section on “Ostalgie”).
Week 14 (April 11 and 14): PASSOVER BREAK
The Future is (sort of!) Unwritten
Week 15: No class Tuesday (last day of Passover). Friday, April 21: Octavia Butler, The Parable of the Sower (vol. 1 of trilogy fusing dystopia and Utopia; US 1993).
Week 16: Tuesday and Friday: April 25 and 28: The Parable of the Sower cont. ScreeningThursday, 6pm:Soul City(US, 2016), documentary short on African-American intentional community founded by Civil Rights activist Floyd McKissick.
Week 17: Monday May 1: Special Opportunity: The Yes Men come to Brandeis, will lead a seminar on their wonderful and effective street theater and media hoax techniques for activists, 2-5 pm. Screening of one of their films (TBA) Sunday 6:00pm.
Tuesday, May 2: Let’s talk about (or screen, or perform, or play!) your utopias. For those who chose the 12-p. paper option, we’d like to hear your main idea, and what got you interested in it. Reports from those who attended Yes Men seminar very welcome.
FINALDRAFTS OF UTOPIAS DUE FRIDAY MAY 5, 1:00pm, in my mailbox in theEnglish Department Main Office, Rabb 144. NO LATE UTOPIAS! (-;
Final Drafts of optional 12-p. papers (and graduate student seminar papers) due Monday May 8, same place, 1:00 pm.