About this Event
Conference Programme: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lynl1ftEABkMC-Kr7pYPWPdsDHnrMRcC3vFSCRhZ21o/edit?usp=sharing
Contact email: [email protected]
Keynote speakers:
- Prof Joy James (Williams College)
- Ken MacLeod (BSFA-winning science fiction author)
- Dr Troy Vettese (European University Institute) and Drew Pendergrass (Harvard University)
As global systems shudder from the latest wave of impacts relating to the climate crisis, it is apparent that the ‘end of history’ discussed in the early 1990s has now ended, or changed its meaning: plagues, wars, societal collapse are making their return to areas of the world that imagined they had consigned these things to the past. The crises and convulsions of capitalist society are no longer confined to the Global South. Historically, humans have responded to the challenge of living through and overcoming large-scale changes by imagining whole societal models that include real-imagined solutions to the challenges they are facing. They have envisioned utopias.
Utopian thinking is necessary because it facilitates the transition to new framings of societal problems, or as Keynes put it, ‘the difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones’. Because utopianism obliges scholars to project a vision of society transformed as the context for specific innovations, it reflects the ‘global’ nature of contemporary social challenges. It also involves an inherently multi- and inter-disciplinary approach that brings problems and questions formulated in one area of enquiry into dialogue with those working in neighbouring, but hitherto unconnected, fields.
To this end, our conference will bring together leading thinkers in the fields of (among others) political economy, utopia studies, digital humanities, Black studies, memory and heritage studies, postcolonial and decolonial thought, renaissance studies, peace studies, war studies, the sociology of literature, and computer game studies to discuss the role that utopia and utopian thinking plays in their efforts to envision societal responses to ongoing and future crises. A key focus of the conference will be on utopian strategies that seek to illuminate structurally ingrained forms of domination by advancing radically different visions of human society.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Oddfellows Hall, Grosvenor Street, Manchester, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00