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Utopias Conference Series: Utopia, Dystopia and Science Fiction

Overview

The word ‘utopia’ was famously coined by Thomas More in 1516, but recognisably utopian ‘ideal states’ had been staples of literary and philosophical imagining ever since antiquity. In the European tradition, there is a continuing tension in the conceptualisation of ideal societies between, respectively, an aspiration to dominate nature and a desire for reconciliation with it. By the middle decades of the twentieth century both versions of utopia appeared to have fallen into disrepute, displaced either by ‘science’ on the political left or by ‘dystopia’ on the political right. From the 1960s on, however, it becomes possible to trace the re-emergence of utopian politics in and around the so-called ‘new social movements’. As with earlier utopianisms, this new utopianism often found aesthetic expression in literature and the arts, including architecture, but also in such popular cultural forms as science fiction. In December 2001 the University of Tasmania hosted the first Australian conference on utopia, dystopia and science fiction, organised around the theme of ‘Antipodean Utopias’. Since then, the Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at Monash University has convened a series of conferences as part of its developing research strength in the areas of utopian studies and science fiction studies.

The fourth Utopias conference, Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe is scheduled for September 2010. Please see the conference website for details.

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Utopias Conference Series:
Utopia, Dystopia and Science Fiction