Overview

Providing a comprehensive overview of American thought in the period following World War II, after which the US became a global military and economic leader, this book explores the origins of American utopianism and provides a trenchant critique from the point of view of those left out of the hegemonic ideal. Centring the voices of those oppressed by or omitted from the consumerist American Dream, this book celebrates alternative ways of thinking about how to create a better world through daily practices of generosity, justice, and care. The chapters collected here emphasize utopianism as a practice of social transformation, not as a literary genre depicting a putatively perfect society, and urgently make the case for why we need utopian thought today. With chapters on climate change, economic justice, technology, and more, alongside chapters exploring utopian traditions outside Western frameworks, this book opens a new discussion in utopian thought and theory.

Full Product Details

Author:   Sherryl Vint (University of California, Riverside)
Publisher:   Cambridge University Press
Imprint:   Cambridge University Press
ISBN:  

9781009180054

ISBN 10:   1009180053
Pages:   332
Publication Date:   16 May 2024
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

List of figures; List of contributors; Introduction: utopianism in dark times Sherryl Vint; 1. Pandemics and the lesson of history Priscilla Wald; 2. American futures Phillip E. Wegner; 3. Engendering utopia: the force of gender and the limits of feminism Jennifer A. Wagner-Lawlor; 4. America and/as white supremacy Edward K. Chan and Patricia Ventura; 5. American spirituality Andrew Tate; 6. Black escapes and Black wishlands Jerry Rafiki Jenkins; 7. Latinx belonging in new world borders: Mestiz@ rhetoric and critical utopian/dystopian dialectics of ambivalence Rubén R. Mendoza, Ph.D.; 8. Educating desire: young adult utopian fiction Jonathan Alexander; 9. Utopia after American hegemony Peter Boxall; 10. Technological fantasies Matthew Wolf-Meyer; 11. Utopian spaces Roger Luckhurst; 12. Environmentalism and ecotopias Gerry Canavan; 13. Economic justice Hugh C. O'Connell; 14. Renewing democracy Mathias Nilges; 15. The time of new histories: utopian possibility in America's twenty-first century John Rieder; Works Cited; Index.

Reviews

Author Information

Sherryl Vint is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, and of English, at the University of California, Riverside. She is a recipient of the Science Fiction Research Association's Lifetime Achievement and Innovative Research awards. She has published widely on speculative fiction and culture, including most recently Biopolitical Futures in Twenty-First-Century Speculative Fiction (2021).

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

No review item found!

Add your own review!

Countries Available

All regions