Reading Group Archive
2014-2015 Academic Year: "Conceptions"
Led by Mark Steinberg
Meeting 1 (Sept 17, 2014)
Readings:
Meeting 2 (October 22, 2014)
Readings:
Meeting 3: Race, Slavery, and Utopia in the Americas (November 19, 2014)
Led by Marc Hertzman
Readings:
Meeting 4: Dreamworld and Catastrophe (January 28, 2015)
Reading:
Meeting 5: Religion, Secularism, Utopia (February 25, 2015)
Led by Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi
Readings:
Meeting 6: Gilberto Gil (March 30, 2015)
Readings:
Meeting 7 (April 29, 2015)
Led by Maria Todorova and Kathryn Oberdeck
Reading:
Led by Mark Steinberg
Meeting 1 (Sept 17, 2014)
Readings:
- “Something’s Missing: A Discussion between Ernst Bloch and Theodor W. Adorno on the Contradictions of Utopian Longing” (1964) from The Utopian Function of Art and Literature, 1-17
- Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias” (1967)
- Fredric Jameson, “The Politics of Utopia.” New Left Review (Jan-Feb 2004): 35-54
- Michael Gordin, Helen Tilley, and Gyan Prakash, eds., Utopia/Dystopia: Conditions of Historical Possibility (2010), intro
Meeting 2 (October 22, 2014)
Readings:
- Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope (1954), "Introduction"
- José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia (2009), pp. 1-96
Meeting 3: Race, Slavery, and Utopia in the Americas (November 19, 2014)
Led by Marc Hertzman
Readings:
- Edward K. Chan, "Utopia and the Problem of Race: Accounting for the Remainder in the Imagination of the 1970s Utopian Subject"
- David J. Hellwig, "A New Frontier in a Racial Paradise: Robert S. Abbott's Brazilian Dream"
- Gerald Horne, from The Deepest South: The United States, Brazil, and the African Slave Trade, Chapter 10 "Confederates to Brazil"
- Gary Wilder, "Untimely Vision: Aimé Césaire, Decolonization, Utopia"
- Christopher Dunn, "Jorge Mautner and Countercultural Utopia in Brazil"
- Excerpt of Tommie Shelby interview with Paul Gilroy
Meeting 4: Dreamworld and Catastrophe (January 28, 2015)
Reading:
- Susan Buck-Morss, Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West (MIT Press, 2000).
Meeting 5: Religion, Secularism, Utopia (February 25, 2015)
Led by Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi
Readings:
- Roland Boer. “Religion and Utopia in Fredric Jameson.” Utopian Studies 19, No. 2 (2008): 285-312.
- Antoine Hatzenberger. “Kazanistan: John Rawls’s Oriental Utopia.” Utopian Studies 24, No. 1 (2013): 105-118.
- Andrew F. March. “Taking People as They Are: Islam as a ‘Realistic Utopia’ in the Political Theory of Sayyid Qutb.” American Political Science Review 104, No. 1 (February 2010): 189-207.
- Marco Lauri. "Utopias in the Islamic Middle Ages: Ibn Tufayl and Ibn al-Nafis.” Utopian Studies 24, No. 1 (2013): 23-40.
- Alireza Omid Bakhsh. “The Virtuous City: The Iranian and Islamic Heritage of Utopianism.” Utopian Studies 24, No. 1 (2013): 41-51.
- Robert L’Arrivee. “Discrimination and Violence in Alfarabi’s Virtuous City: A Response to Alireza Omid Bakhsh.” Utopian Studies 25, No. 2 (2014): 432-449.
Meeting 6: Gilberto Gil (March 30, 2015)
Readings:
- Paulina L. Alberto, "When Rio Was Black: Soul Music, National Culture, and the Politics of Racial Comparison in 1970s Brazil" Hispanic American Historical Review 89 no: 1 (2009): 3-40.
- Christopher Dunn, "Tropicália, Counterculture, and the Diasporic Imagination in Brazil."
- Larry Rother, "Gilberto Gil Hears the Future, Some Rights Reserved" New York Times (March 11, 2007).
- Julian Dibbell, "We Pledge Allegiance to the Penguin" Wired November 2004.
Meeting 7 (April 29, 2015)
Led by Maria Todorova and Kathryn Oberdeck
Reading:
- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia
2015-2016 Academic Year: "Practices and Materialities"
Led by Mark Steinberg
Meeting 1: Everyday Utopias (September 30, 2015)
Reading:
Meeting 2: World Music (October 28, 2015)
Led by Harry Liebersohn and Craig Koslofsky
Readings:
Meeting 3: Black Panthers as Utopian Practice (December 9, 2015)
Led by Sundiata Cha-Jua
Readings:
Meeting 4: Consumption, Coercion and Utopia (January 27, 2016)
Led by Claire Crowston
Readings:
Meeting 5: Industrial Utopias in the Early Twentieth Century: Contested Visions of Planned Landscapes for the Common Good (March 30, 2016)
Led by Kathryn Oberdeck
Readings:
Meeting 6: Nature, Labor, Science and Utopia (April 20, 2016)
Led by Kristen Romberg
Readings:
Led by Mark Steinberg
Meeting 1: Everyday Utopias (September 30, 2015)
Reading:
- Davina Cooper, Everyday Utopias: The Conceptual Life of Promising Spaces (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014). Chapters 1 (Introduction), 2 (Towards a Utopian Conceptual Attitude), 4 (Public Nudism and the Pursuit of Equality), 5 (Unsettling Feminist Care Ethics through a Women's and Trans Bathhouse) and 9 (Conclusion)
Meeting 2: World Music (October 28, 2015)
Led by Harry Liebersohn and Craig Koslofsky
Readings:
- Philip V. Bohlman, World Music: A Very Short Introduction (2002), esp. chaps 1, 3, 5, 7
- David Byrne, "I Hate World Music"
- "Songlines" magazine
- The Rough Guide to World Music (2000)
Meeting 3: Black Panthers as Utopian Practice (December 9, 2015)
Led by Sundiata Cha-Jua
Readings:
- Ward Churchill, "'To Disrupt, Discredit, Destroy': The FBI's Secret War Against the Black Panther Party" (!971)
- JoNina M. Abron, "The Legacy of the Black Panther Party." The Black Scholar 17, no. 6 (1986).
- David Hilliard (ed.), The Black Panther Party: Service to the People Programs (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008)
- Huey P. Newton, "Let Us Hold High the Banner of Intercommunalism and the Invincible Thoughts of Huey P. Newton, Minister of Defense and Supreme Commander of the BPP" (18 Nov 1970)
- Robyn Ceanne Spencer, "Engendering the Black Freedom Struggle: Revolutionary Black Womenhood and the Black Panther Party in the Bay Area, California." Journal of Woman's History 20, no. 1 (2008).
Meeting 4: Consumption, Coercion and Utopia (January 27, 2016)
Led by Claire Crowston
Readings:
- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Vol. 1, Chapter II “Of restraints upon the important from foreign countries of such goods as can be produced at home"
- Seth Rockman, "The Unfree origins of American Capitalism." The Economy of Early America: Historical Perspectives and New Directions (2006): 335-361
- Neil McKendrick, et al., The Birth of a Consumer Society (1982), ch. 1
- Jan de Vries, “Between Purchasing Power and the World of Goods: Understanding the Household Economy in Early Modern Europe,” in John Brewer and Roy Porter, eds. Consumption and the World of Goods (1993), 85-132
- Benjamin Franklin, "Information to Those Who Would Remove to America" (1782)
Meeting 5: Industrial Utopias in the Early Twentieth Century: Contested Visions of Planned Landscapes for the Common Good (March 30, 2016)
Led by Kathryn Oberdeck
Readings:
- Ebenezer Howard, To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, Original Edition with Commentary by Peter Hall, Dennis Hardy & Colin Ward (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 1-75.
- Kathryn Oberdeck, “Archives of the Unbuilt Environment: Documents and Discourses of Imagined Space in 20th Century Kohler, Wisconsin” in A. Burton, ed. Archive Stories: Evidence, Experience, History (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), pp. 251-271
- Documents from Kohler of Kohler News and Kohler striking workers showing contested visions of this “garden industrial village”:
- “For More Beautiful Homes” from Kohlre of Kohler News, May 1924
- “Conditions in Model Town Not As Rosy” The New Deal, Aug 3, 1934
- “Kohler Village: Model or Myth?” from “The Kohler Worker’s Story," UAW-CIO, September, 1955
Meeting 6: Nature, Labor, Science and Utopia (April 20, 2016)
Led by Kristen Romberg
Readings:
- McKenzie Wark, Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene (London: Verso, 2015), Preface and Chapter 1 (Alexander Bogdanov: Workings of the World) of Part I (Labor and Nature), pp. xi-xxii and 1-61
- Zoe Todd, “Relationships,” Cultural Anthropology website (January 21, 2016)
2016-2017 Academic Year: "Environments: Utopia and Dystopia in Environmental History"
Led by Bob Morrissey and Rod Wilson
Meeting 1 (September 21, 2016)
Reading:
Meeting 2 (October 13, 2016)
Readings:
Meeting 3: Betting on Environmental Utopia: Palo Alto vs. Urbana (November 30, 2016)
Reading:
Meeting 4: Contextualizing Standing Rock: Native Peoples, Energy, and Environment in Historical Perspective (January 18, 2017)
Readings:
Meeting 5: Sustainability and the Crisis of Global Modernity (February 15, 2017)
Readings:
Meeting 6 (April 12, 2017)
Readings:
Led by Bob Morrissey and Rod Wilson
Meeting 1 (September 21, 2016)
Reading:
- Ernest Callenbach, Ecotopia (1975)
Meeting 2 (October 13, 2016)
Readings:
- Kate Brown, Plutopia, Introduction, pp. 3-9.
- Kate Brown, Dispatches from Dystopia, chapter 6 (Gridded Lives: Why Kazakhstan and Montana Are Nearly The Same Place) and chapter 7 (Returning Home to Rustalgia), pp. 97-150.
Meeting 3: Betting on Environmental Utopia: Palo Alto vs. Urbana (November 30, 2016)
Reading:
- Paul Sabin, The Bet: Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon, and Our Gamble over Earth's Future (2013), Intro and chapter 4 (The Triumph of Optimism), pp. 1-9, 131-180.
Meeting 4: Contextualizing Standing Rock: Native Peoples, Energy, and Environment in Historical Perspective (January 18, 2017)
Readings:
- Braun, Sebastian. "Revisited Frontiers: The Bakken, the Plains, Potential Futures, and Real Pasts." In The Bakken Goes Boom: Oil and the Changing Geographies of Western North Dakota, edited by William Caraher and Kyle Conway, 91-116. Grand Forks, N.D.: University of North Dakota, 2016.
- Shewry, Teresa. “Utopia Haunted: Loss and Hope in the Nuclear Pacific.” In Hope at Sea: Possible Ecologies in Oceanic Literature, 147-175. Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 2015.
- Voyles, Traci. “The Big Hurt: Boom and Bust on Contested Ground.” In Wastelanding: Legacies of Uranium Mining in Navajo Country Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 2015.
Meeting 5: Sustainability and the Crisis of Global Modernity (February 15, 2017)
Readings:
- Prasenjit Duara, The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Intro (pp. 1-17), Chapter 2 (pp. 53-90), Chapter 7 (pp. 239-278), and Epilogue (pp. 279-288).
Meeting 6 (April 12, 2017)
Readings:
- T.B.D.