Pamela Bedore
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 13
Language
English
Description
Look at the portrayal of community, choice, and rules to determine when the sacrifices being made cross the threshold between a completely perfect society and a complete lack of freedom. As the genre starts to tackle "big" questions of philosophy around individual free will, the line blurs and we are left with dystopias that are dressed up to look like utopias.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 1
Language
English
Description
Enter the world of utopian and dystopian fiction. After a brief foray into the definition and origin of utopia, dive into Ursula K. LeGuin's short story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas and explore the ambiguities of "perfect" worlds. Then, get a deeper understanding of the ways genre functions and how it shapes literature.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 20
Language
English
Description
Margaret Atwood is an icon in utopian and dystopian fiction. Explore the ways she has helped to shape utopian thought and sexual politics with one of her classic novels, The Handmaid's Tale, as well as her more recent MaddAddam trilogy. Atwood is known for apocalyptic writing but you'll see how even her darkest works have elements of humor and satire with intrinsic meaning.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 2
Language
English
Description
Take a step back and learn about the origins of the utopian genre, beginning with Thomas More's Utopia of 1516. More's foundational work gave us the word "utopia," but did it create the genre? Explore the elements of the story to see how it set conventions for later works but also critiqued the very idea of utopia in the process.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 24
Language
English
Description
Reflect on how dystopia shows us the darker side of contemporary reality right here in our connected global world, focusing on issues we struggle with every day. Conclude with the recurring theme around utopian yearnings and the sinister road that leads to dystopia, proving that the perfect place is no place. This powerful genre embodies a simultaneous optimism and cynicism.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 8
Language
English
Description
Many utopian stories were concerned with the quest to determine where women belong in an ideal society. Charlotte Perkins Gilman went a step further by creating a utopian society populated solely by women: Herland. See how questions of gender equality are reframed without the reference of an opposite gender and the impact of Gilman's vision on the feminist movements of the later 20th century.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 15
Language
English
Description
The feminist utopian movement began in the 1970s and, despite the name, doesn't feature very many traditional "utopias." There is a guarded optimism represented in these novels that dealt with real-world issues of discrimination by creating societies portrayed as classless, crimeless, government-free, but laden with satire.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 11
Language
English
Description
Perhaps the most famous of the three defining dystopias of the early 20th century, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four has created a vocabulary of ideas we continue to use in political discourse today. Trace the ways Orwell uses language to shape his dystopic vision and the way it both reflects and distorts reality.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 6
Language
English
Description
Can utopian literature have real-world impact? This question is integral to understanding the significance of Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy. Witness the ways Bellamy's socialist vision of the future had genuine influence on the social activists of Gilded Age America. Professor Bedore also introduces the idea of "euchronia."
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 21
Language
English
Description
Does it seem like a lot of the most popular books for young adults lately have been dystopias? In this lecture, explore why teens are so drawn to dystopia, what current anxieties are being tracked in this large body of YA literature, and what the impact of this literature on young adult readers has been. You'll also discover why this subgenre is so popular with adults.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 14
Language
English
Description
Delve deeper into the central question of free will and how utopian studies respond emotionally and intellectually by examining A Clockwork Orange. Discover the literature that influenced it and was impacted by it, while exploring the nuanced differences between reading and watching this pivotal work. Burgess looks at extreme situations to pose questions we continue to struggle with.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 5
Language
English
Description
Shift your attention from rural American utopias to explore from a different perspective: Victorian anxieties about technology and the vanishing frontier. Analyze these fears in Samuel Butler's Erewhon, which utilizes utopian conventions and heavy doses of satire to critique religion, health, education, and humanity's increasingly complex relationship to machines.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 12
Language
English
Description
Published during the wave of anti-communist hysteria of the 1950s, John Wyndham's The Chrysalids is one of the earliest examples of Young Adult dystopian fiction and a potent examination of the "fear of the Other" in dystopian storytelling. See how it set the stage for the extremely rich strain of dystopian literature aimed at younger readers that dominates bestseller lists in the 21st century.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 16
Language
English
Description
Delve into the science fiction-based worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin, who approaches various situations with an open mind, drawing upon disciplines like physics, anthropology, and fine arts. She builds worlds in which people attempt all kinds of strategies of governance. Discover how Le Guin uses sci-fi and utopia to explore LGBTQ issues with the intent to change our views on gender and sexuality.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 19
Language
English
Description
Examine the many ways Butler challenges boundaries - not only of genres, but also of human identity. See how she tackles the questions that are important in defining utopian futures: what does it mean to be human? Is utopia always an unresolvable paradox? And if it is, does it have to be? How much can we change and still be considered human? And really, does being human even matter?
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 4
Language
English
Description
The 19th century was the "century of utopia" and also marked the transition from utopian to dystopian stories in popular literature. Look at Americans who attempted to build real-world utopias, and in turn examine the work of two authors who reacted to the American attempt at perfect societies. Consider the ways that optimistic, utopian thinking is integral to the idea of the American Dream.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 7
Language
English
Description
Unlike the utopian tradition, science fiction doesn't have a single text that defines its origin. It does, however, have several figures credited with its creation. One such figure is H.G. Wells, who not only helped in the creation of science fiction as a genre, but was also deeply devoted to utopian thinking. Ultimately, his work brought utopia and science fiction together in the same space.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 3
Language
English
Description
Continue your exploration of the early history of utopia by examining notable works produced during the two centuries following More's initial work. Compare and contrast the ideas of "classical utopia" and "critical utopia" and understand how laughter was an integral part of 18th-century utopian storytelling, focusing on Voltaire's Candide and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 22
Language
English
Description
The cyberpunk genre often features advanced information technology. Through satire or in earnest, we get at the same anxieties about contemporary American society: the internet has amazing potential to create a better, more egalitarian world, but we may be going about it all wrong, creating a new generation of young people who rely on technology without truly understanding it.
Author
Series
Great Courses volume 10
Language
English
Description
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, published in 1932, is the second of the "Big Three" dystopian novels of the interwar years. Investigate the ways Huxley projects the anxieties of his day onto the future, creating a world in which people are controlled not by pain or fear, but by pleasure, and consider how utopian and dystopia are often only matters of perspective.