LITR 5737 Literary & Historical Utopias

Thursday, 21 June: alternative or multicultural utopias: selections from African American slave narratives; Dr. King’s Dream Speech; Toni Morrison’s Paradise; speech by Chief Seattle

Thursday, 21 June: alternative or multicultural utopias: selections from African American slave narratives; Dr. King’s Dream Speech; Toni Morrison’s Paradise; speech by Chief Seattle

Historical presentation: Donny L. Leveston: Mormonism

Discussion-starter: Carlos Castillo

Web review: Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists: Carmen Ashby

Monday, 2 July: final exam due by Tuesday, 3 July at noon.

Multicultural texts potentially related to utopian studies
(readings for Thursday 21 June)

Selections from Olaudah Equiano slave narrative

Selections from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845)

Selections from Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)

Selections from Dr. King's "Dream" speech

Chief Seattle's Speech

Discussion of African American & Native American texts:

How much may these texts fit as utopian texts? Is utopia compatible with multiculturalism?

Our first impulse will be to answer "It better be!"--but what examples do we have? If utopias tend to be mono-cultural or homogeneous, is there a reason?

How much have our utopias been conscious or unconscious of their homogeneity?

What counter-impulses?

Assign Ecotopia

Monday, 25 June: begin Ecotopia (read at least through p. 66, up to "Decline without Fall? The Ecotopian Population Challenge")

Historical presentation: sixties utopian movements—Ruth Pilarte

Historical presentation +- web review: Auroville: Carlos Castillo

Tuesday, 26 June: Instructor leads with page samples from Toni Morrison’s Paradise (African American novel with utopian themes) and two virtual-reality novels with utopian themes (Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash [1992] and Dennis Danvers’s Circuit of Heaven [1998])

Historical presentation: virtual utopias or Rainbow Gatherings: Danny Wankan

Web review: Ernest Callenbach sites on course webpage: Ruth Pilarte

Thursday, 28 June: conclude Ecotopia (Through p. 181--more or less welcome to read some parts more intensively than others.)

Discussion-starter: Cindy Goodson

Historical presentation: Amish community / lifestyle: Kristen Bird

Historical presentation: New Urbanism: Yvonne Hopkins

Discussion for Ecotopia

At this point in the course, how do you immediately connect Ecotopia to our previous course texts before the midterm?

1a. How to define the literary genre of “utopias?” What elements and difficulties repeatedly appear? What audiences are involved or excluded?

1b. What different genres contribute to, interface with, or branch from utopia? Examples: dystopia, ecotopia, Socratic dialogue, tract, propaganda, satire, science fiction, fantasy, novel / romance, adventure / travel narrative. Others?

1a. How to define the literary genre of “utopias?” What demarcations and difficulties repeatedly appear?

how identify genre? How does Ecotopia immediately announce that it's in a tradition of literary utopias?

How well does it work as entertaining fiction as opposed to didactic literature?

Midterms

Have started reading, will try to return by email by tomorrow night

Encourage follow-up, continued discussion, but not required or expected

What you'll get:

A first draft of your "Final Grade Report" with a grade for the midterm

Followed by "Midterm Comments"--at least a couple paragraphs, maybe more depending on helpfulness

Response as essential communication b/w instructor and student

Hazard of summer school grading: fatigue and haste > bursts of misdirected passion

Attempt to reach students, but student may not be there

If I do anything wrong or confusing, just inquire or reply in any way . . . or move along

Review classic utopian texts

Classical or mainstream texts related to utopian studies
(readings for Tuesday 19 June)

Classical sources on "The Golden Age"

The Creation from Genesis

The Book of Revelation (use handout)

Selections from the Book of Acts

Selections from Plato's Republic (use handout)

Utopian selections from European-American founding texts

Selections from Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776)

Question for discussion: How use these texts in final exam, compared to utopian novels? What attractions or distractions as utopian literature?

Recalling that in 2005, at this stage in the course we did a novel that didn't exactly take off . . .

How successful is this part of the class? Is it possible to arrange the study of these texts to better effect? Or . . .

Are post-midterm days in summer 5-wks session doomed?

Or are there inherent problems with studying "classical authorities" as opposed to "utopian fiction" in terms of reader interest, response?

Selections from Plato's Republic (use handout)

Essential points:

For literary scholars, the key point about the Republic is censorship as part of education--poets and storytellers as dangerous to state

For utopian studies, distinction between

"healthy city" and "feverish city"

"healthy city" as spartan, communal, close to nature

"feverish city" as one of multiplying needs, never enough > capitalist "scarcity" as premise of all economic activity

Follow-up Mormons as Utopians

2d. How essential is “millennialism” (apocalyptic or end-time narrative) to the utopian narrative?

Donny mentioned "Second Great Awakening" in America in early 1800s. LDS were a branch of this wider movement.

By the 1840s, Second Great Awakening > Nation's first large-scale millennial movement

"The Millerites" > 7th Day Adventists, 7th Day Baptists, Jehovah's Witnesses

Joseph Smith and early Mormonism are contemporaries

"Latter-Day Saints" refers to "end-times"--Joseph Smith had a lot of ideas, but many of them are centered on Christ's return

not to Jerusalem but to North America

Early Mormon history is being de-emphasized, for better or worse. LDS gains normalcy, becomes another mainline or mainstream church, but some will miss the radical nature of early Mormonism

***Polygamy: compare to other utopias in terms of restructuring family, allowing socialist qualities of nuclear family to expand or extend into extended family or community

***Early Mormon communities had common barns, pasturage, sharing of stocks--Practice may partly survive in keeping of supplies for crises

My ignorance of LDS society is definite, but it is a highly organized society--does anyone know about "wards?"

One final possibility:

Mormon journey to Utah parallels . . .

Ancient Jews from Egypt to Canaan or Promised Land of Milk and Honey

or ML King as Moses leading African America to freedom: "I've been to the mountaintop"; southern sheriff as Pharaoh

Cf. Herland in imitation of style + change

Herland begins as manly adventure story, adapts to feminist utopia

Narrator slowly converts—does reader too?

Cultural issues

3e. What social structures, units, or identities does utopia expose, extend, or frustrate? What changes in child-rearing, feeding, marriage, aging, etc. result? (Social units or structures: person-individual, gender, sex, family [nuclear or extended], community, village/town/city, class, ethnicity, farm, region, tribe, clan, union, nation, ecosystem, planet.)

Cf. Herland as utopia with special spin or angle, political or economic theme that is foundation for social improvement

E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (1973)

important influence on "slow-growth" or "no-growth" policies of 1970s: Jerry Brown, Jimmy Carter, the Club of Rome

repudiated by hyper-growth policies of 1980s, Reagan, Clinton

Houston projected to grow by 3 million people by 2025 (like adding two San Antonios or 1 Milwaukee to city).

Schumacher sites on Research links

Decentralization, de-industrialization; cf. Gandhi

'swadeshi', which, in effect, means local self-sufficiency

1970s

ecological conscience

mid-70s: Nixon-Ford administration

late 70s: Carter administration: no-growth?

80s: Reagan: hyper-growth 

How does it show its datedness? How have we surpassed? What anticipations of change?

In what ways does it resist datedness? What surprises?

Carlos Castillo

                                        Is Multiculturalism Possible in Utopian Societies?

 1a. How to define the literary genre of “utopias?” What elements and difficulties repeatedly appear? What audiences are involved or excluded?

The Difficulties we have seen with many of the novels we have read is the homogeneity of the people in these utopian societies.  Look at More’s Utopia, Bellamy’s Looking Backward, Gilman’s Herland, and even Rand’s Anthem…

Why is there no multicultural component in these novels: at least pertaining to their inclusion in the “working” utopia? Does it have to do with the historical context? Is it a problem as categorized in course objective (1a) that makes this a difficulty not easily overcome?

I think, like gender roles, the multicultural aspect is one that is difficult to deal with….for the most part, it seems easier to gloss over this area than spend the time to grapple with it.

Olaudah Equiano : Selections from Slave Narrative

 Selections from Olaudah Equiano slave narrative

1d. What other stylistic or affective elements recur? Examples: nostalgia, hope, alienation, displacement or transference, didacticism.

2a. What kinds of stories rise from or fit with the attempt to describe an ideal or dystopian community?

3f. What social structures, units, or identities does utopia expose or frustrate? What changes result in child-rearing, feeding, marriage, aging, sexuality, etc.? (Social units or structures: person/individual/self, gender, sex, family [nuclear or extended], community, village/town/city, class, ethnicity, farm, region, tribe, clan, union, nation, ecosystem, planet.) How may utopian studies shift the usual American arguments over race, sex, faith, and gender to cultural and socio-economic class?

Do you see any utopian (dystopian) elements in this narrative?

Do you see transference? Nostalgia? Hope? Alienation? Didacticism?

Do you think I have missed any course objectives?

I would say that all of the above seem to be present, at least in some instances. Some of the quotes that I pulled that prove this to me are below:

“Houses so constructed and furnished require but little skill to erect them. Every man is a sufficient architect for the purpose. The whole neighbourhood afford their unanimous assistance in building them and in return receive, and expect no other recompense than a feast.”

“Our land is uncommonly rich and fruitful, and produces all kinds of vegetables in great abundance. . . . All our industry is exerted to improve those blessings of nature. Agriculture is our chief employment; and every one, even the children and women, are engaged in it.”

“Deformity is indeed unknown amongst us, I mean that of shape. . . . Our women too were in my eyes at least uncommonly graceful, alert and modest to a degree of bashfulness nor do I remember to have ever heard of an instance of incontinence amongst them before marriage.”

“I then was a little revived, and thought, if it were no worse than working, my situation was not so desperate: but still I feared I should be put to death, the white people looked and acted, as I thought, in so savage a manner; for I had never seen among any people such instances of brutal cruelty; and this not only shewn towards us blacks, but also to some of the whites themselves.”

Fredrick Douglass – Narrative of the life of

Selections from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845)

Do you see any other course objectives that we could relate to the narrative by Douglass?Any utopian(dystopian) elements in this narrative?

What I found in my readings:

“It was the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery, through which I was about to pass. It was a most terrible spectacle. I wish I could commit to paper the feelings with which I beheld it.”

“I strolled around and over the town, gazing with wonder and admiration at the splendid churches, beautiful dwellings, and finely-cultivated gardens; evincing an amount of wealth, comfort, taste, and refinement, such as I had never seen in any part of slaveholding Maryland.”

“Every thing looked clean, new, and beautiful. I saw few or no dilapidated houses, with poverty-stricken inmates; no half-naked children and bare-footed women, such as I had been accustomed to see in Hillsborough, Easton, St. Michael's, and Baltimore. The people looked more able, stronger, healthier, and happier, than those of Maryland. I was for once made glad by a view of extreme wealth, without being saddened by seeing extreme poverty.”

“I will venture to assert, that my friend Mr. Nathan Johnson (of whom I can say with a grateful heart, "I was hungry, and he gave me meat; I was thirsty, and he gave me drink; I was a stranger, and he took me in") lived in a neater house; dined at a better table; took, paid for, and read, more newspapers; better understood the moral, religious, and political character of the nation,--than nine tenths of the slaveholders in Talbot county Maryland.”

“A colored man and a fugitive slave were on unfriendly terms. The former was heard to threaten the latter with informing his master of his whereabouts. Straightway a meeting was called among the colored people, under the stereotyped notice, "Business of importance!" The betrayer was invited to attend. The people came at the appointed hour, and organized the meeting by appointing a very religious old gentleman as president, who, I believe, made a prayer, after which he addressed the meeting as follows: "~Friends, we have got him here, and I would recommend that you young men just take him outside the door, and kill him!~" With this, a number of them bolted at him; but they were intercepted by some more timid than themselves, and the betrayer escaped their vengeance, and has not been seen in New Bedford since. I believe there have been no more such threats, and should there be hereafter, I doubt not that death would be the consequence.”

“I found employment, the third day after my arrival, in stowing a sloop with a load of oil. It was new, dirty, and hard work for me; but I went at it with a glad heart and a willing hand. I was now my own master. It was a happy moment, the rapture of which can be understood only by those who have been slaves.”

Harriet Jacobs (penname Linda Brent) – Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Selections from Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)

 “No toilsome or disagreeable duties were imposed on me. My mistress was so kind to me that I was always glad to do her bidding, and proud to labor for her as much as my young years would permit. I would sit by her side for hours, sewing diligently, with a heart as free from care as that of any free-born white child.”

“It was written by one of his friends, and contained these words: "Now that death has laid him low, they call him a good man and a useful citizen; but what are eulogies to the black man, when the world has faded from his vision? It does not require man's praise to obtain rest in God's kingdom." So they called a colored man a citizen! Strange words to be uttered in that region!”

Does anyone have additional examples of utopian or dystopian elements in this book?

Chief Seattle’s speech

Chief Seattle's Speech

“Our good father in Washington--for I presume he is now our father as well as yours, since King George has moved his boundaries further north--our great and good father, I say, sends us word that if we do as he desires he will protect us. His brave warriors will be to us a bristling wall of strength, and his wonderful ships of war will fill our harbors, so that our ancient enemies far to the northward -- the Haidas and Tsimshians -- will cease to frighten our women, children, and old men.”

“No; we are two distinct races with separate origins and separate destinies. There is little in common between us.”

“Our dead never forget this beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its verdant valleys, its murmuring rivers, its magnificent mountains, sequestered vales and verdant lined lakes and bays, and ever yearn in tender fond affection over the lonely hearted living, and often return from the happy hunting ground to visit, guide, console, and comfort them.”

“Then we will dwell apart in peace, for the words of the Great White Chief seem to be the words of nature speaking to my people out of dense darkness.”

“But why should I mourn at the untimely fate of my people? Tribe follows tribe, and nation follows nation, like the waves of the sea. It is the order of nature, and regret is useless. Your time of decay may be distant, but it will surely come, for even the White Man whose God walked and talked with him as friend to friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We will see.”

“And when the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the White Men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children's children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude. At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful land. The White Man will never be alone.”

“Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only a change of worlds.”