Programme (draft) - Demanding the Impossible: 3rd Utopias Conference
DAY 1, December 5
8:30 am – 8:55 am Registration
8:55 am – 9 am Opening by Prof. Rae Francis, Dean of Arts, Monash University
9 am – 10 am, H3 Lecture Theatre Keynote Address – Chair: |
Tom Moylan– Making the Present Impossible: On the Vocation of Utopian Science Fiction |
10 am – 10:30 am Break
| 10:30 am – 12 pm SCG03, Chair: |
SCG04, Chair: |
SCG05, Chair: |
Verity Burgmann – Utopian Socialism: the Australian Experience A. B. Carretero & Carmen Morales– Dialogic Philosophy, Participative Communication and Utopia R.J. Imre & B. Patterson– Interstellar Relations: The Westphalian Planet-State |
Paul Cheung – Of Cats, Coincidence and Continuity: Utopias with Chinese Characteristics? Kong Xinren – A Belief Lies in Future: Recent Chinese History Science Fiction |
Louise Katz– No Man’s Land and Everyman’s Land: The Ideal Meets the Real in Israel/Palestine Craig Johnson – Cities from Scratch Roberto González-Casanovas – Aztec Sacrifice as Dystopia in Colonial vs. Postcolonial Discourse: Cultural Politics in Competing Mythologies of Conquest |
12 pm – 1 pm Launch of Colloquy special issue on SF & Lunch
| 1 pm – 2:30 pm SCG03, Chair: |
SCG04, Chair: |
SCG05, Chair: |
Hester Joyce– Lost hope: Pakeha (white settler) anxieties in The Quiet Earth and The Navigator Peter Marks– Screening the Future: Surveillance and Utopian Projections Jaroslav Kušnír– Game, Fantasy and Sci-Fiction in Damian Broderick´s novel Godplayers |
Mahrokh Hosseini– Elements of Fantasy in Margareth Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale vs. Science Fiction Chris Palmer– Ambiguous, Unsettled and Unconvincing Dystopias in Recent Fiction Simon Sellars– Zones of Transit: J.G. Ballard's Pacific Utopias |
Lucian Chaffey– Chaodyssey and annihilation: Farscape’s wormholes and black holes Chien-fu Hsueh– A Route in-between: The Functions of Travel in Thomas More’s Utopia Evie Kendal– How the Author is alive and kicking in Utopian “social-science-fiction” |
2:30 pm – 3 pm Break
| 3 pm – 4 pm SCG03, Chair: |
SCG04, Chair: |
SCG05, Chair: |
David Jack– Scared Old World: Allegories of Catastrophe in Huxley’s Brave New World Thomas Ford– Demands and Impossibility: Bureaucracy and Utopia |
Christopher Yorke– Utopia and the Death of Virtue Matthew Chrulew– Heterotopian Science Fiction: Nature and Technology |
R. Cunneen– Difficulties with Reading Utopias: The Case of M.B. Eldershaw’s Tomorrow Kalinda Ashton– History and Amnesia in Amanda Lohrey’s The Reading Group |
4pm – 4:30 pm Break
| 4: 30 pm – 6 pm SG01, Comparative Utopias Workshop |
Lyman Tower Sargent – What would a truly comparative utopian scholarship require? Jacqueline Dutton– Comparative Mythology Roberto González-Casanovas – Utopian and Dystopian Typologies of Arawaks vs. Caribs: Relativising Cannibals in Colonial Myth and Postcolonial Critique |
DAY 2, December 6
8:30 am – 9 am Registration
| 9 am – 10 am, H3 Lecture Theatre Keynote Address – Chair: |
Terry Eagleton– Utopia and the New Testament |
10 am – 10:30 am Break
| 10:30 am – 12 pm SCG03, Chair: |
SCG04, Chair: |
SCG05, Chair: |
Will Douglas – The Discontinuity of Possibility and our Hopes for the Future in Last and First Men Matthew Ryan– The Dystopian rendering of Ideology and Utopia in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road Chris Palagy– Circumventing Dystopia: The Grand Inquisitor Fails |
Michael Kulbicki– Iain M Banks, Utopia, and Critical Hope David Farnell– The Morality of Preemptive Regime Change in Iain M. Banks’ The Player of Games Dougal McNeill– James Kelman: Utopias of Form |
Claire Henry – Madame X and Girl King on the High Seas of Lesbian Separatist Utopia Linda Wight – Feminist Utopia or Masculinist Dystopia? Helen Merrick – Doing science differently? Visions of feminist scientists |
12 pm – 1 pm Lunch
| 1 pm – 2:30 pm SCG03, Chair: |
SCG04, Chair: |
SCG05, Chair: |
Raymond A Younis– The Wheel of Time/Places of Refuge / (Utopian Imaginaries East and West) Krishna Barua– “The oceanic circle”: Mahatma Gandhi’s and his Ram rajya Geoffrey Berry – Ecocentric mythopoeia and the absolute aegis of adaptation |
Leonard Wilcox– Don DeLillo’s Dystopia: Postmodern Capitalism in Cosmopolis Wei-Yun Yang– Re-imagination of Galactic Empires: Doris Lessing's Shikasta and The Sirian Experiments Zachary Kendal – The Dystopia of Urth: The Myth of Pandora in Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun |
Thomas Reuter– Arriving in the Future: The Utopia of Here and Now Stefan R. Siebel– Basic Income: An Economic Utopia and its Reality Around the World Ben Hoh– “What if the World was Made of Wood?”: The apocalyptic utopianism of blogging geopolitical trauma |
2:30 pm – 3 pm Break
| 3 pm – 4 pm SCG03, Chair: |
SCG04, Chair: |
SCG05, Chair: |
Luke Howie– Images and the Monster Within Alec Charles– The flight from history: British television’s most enduring fantasy |
H. Gardner & S. Schmidt– Autopias Hyijin Lee– Pythagorian utopianism and numerology |
Joan Roelofs– The Considerant Manifesto Dimitris Vardoulakis – Utopia and Suicide in Aris Alexandrou The Mission Box |
4pm – 4:30 pm Break
| 4: 30 pm – 6 pm SG01, Comparative Utopias Workshop |
Rob Baum– Gender dystopia in the Far/Middle East: An Artful Experimen Angela Yiu – Utopian Schemes in Japan from the 1910s to 1930s Christopher Yorke – Utopia ex nihilo: Ando Shoeki and the Heresy of Physiocracy in Edo-Era Japan |
DAY 3, December 7
8:30 am – 9 am Registration
| 9 am – 10 am, H3 Lecture Theatre Keynote Address – Chair: |
Lucy Sussex– A Tour Guide in Utopia |
10 am – 10:30 am Break
| 10:30 am – 12 pm SCG03, Chair: |
SCG04, Chair: |
SCG05, Chair: |
Julia Vassilieva – On Imagination, Energy and Excess:The Lasting Legacy of Eisenstein’s Utopias Rachel Torbett – The Silence Afterwards: Lyotard with Haneke’s “Le Temps du Loup” Claire Perkins – Your Friends and Neighbours: Recent Suburban Utopias |
Kate Rigby– Apocalypse Now: Whither Utopianism in the Midst of Catastrophe? David Fonteyn– Tourmaline : A meditation on Thanatos, Eros and Fertility Chris Coughran– Ecology, Eutopia, and the Everted Sphere of the Future |
Darren Jorgensen– Utopia as Failed Revolution: Ursula Le Guin and Louis Marin after 1968 Jacqueline Dutton– The Worst Place in the World: French Women's Writing on Australia in 2007 Bill Metcalf – The Encyclopedia of Australian Utopian Communalism |
12 pm – 1 pm Lunch
| 1 pm – 2:30 pm SCG03, Chair: |
SCG04, Chair: |
SCG05, Chair: |
Julie Kelso– ‘Radical Heterosexuality’ in the Song of Songs: Meditating on the Impossibility of the Love that Cannot Speak Its Name Sarah Curtis – Evangelical Utopianism as a Hysteric Symptom Blair McDonald– Finitude’s War: Returning to the Question |
Simon Robb– ‘What do you think, children are psychics?’ Pip Stokes – Care of Place Robyn Walton – Wyndham Lewis, Frank Lloyd Wright: Re-imagining Baghdad and London |
Rudolphus Teeuwen– Losing the War, Winning Utopia: Christian Friedrich Weiser and Germany, 1918 A. Milner & R. Savage– Pulped Dreams: Utopia and American Pulp Science Fiction Oleksandr Golozubov – From Abbey Telem to Animal Farm: spectrum of the comic forms in the European Utopia |
2:30 pm – 3 pm Break
| 3 pm – 4 pm SG01, Comparative Utopias Workshop |
Darren Jorgensen– The Dreamtime as a Modern Utopia Hester Joyce – New Zealand Cinema and Expressions of Utopia |
4 pm – 4:30 pm Break
| 4:30 pm – 5:30 pm, H3 Lecture Theatre Keynote Address – Chair: Andrew Milner |
Lyman Tower Sargent – Australia as Dystopia and Eutopia |