There are no pre-requisites for this module to be added

Fredric Jameson's essay ‘Progress vs Utopia; or Can we Imagine the Future, questions our capacity to imagine alternative political systems while also suggesting that utopian literature possesses the creative and visionary capacity to challenge past and existing political structures. In this module, you will engage with this tension between the lack of change and the possibilities offered by utopian and dystopian literature. You will therefore analyse literary texts in their socio-political and economic contexts and you will engage with, reflect on and debate the representation of political systems and how literature represents their utopian alternatives, or hint to utopian possibilities in dystopian texts. You will also trace shifts in theoretical conceptions of utopia and changes in literary aesthetic strategies from the classical era to the present, notably through the dystopian turn. Through the use of utopian theory, you will assess how utopian literature represents power structures and how these are sustained through violence, discourses, economic structures, politics and ideology. You will also critically engage with the texts through the representations of resistance to these political systems, and analyse the ways in which these novels promote and imagine alternatives to their contemporary politics and debate the success of their visions. To do so, you will also be investigating core theoretical utopian concepts such as commonwealth, horizon, hope, resistance, desire which counter the violent, exclusionary, totalitarian and authoritarian systems represented. The course will tackle core issues issues such as violence, political representation, power, the utopian horizon and hope, structures of desire, imagination, neoliberalism, posthumanism and ecocriticism and explore the issue of genre.

Upon completion of this module you will be able to

LO1: Critically reflect on the ways particular political systems have been represented in literature and culture.

LO2: Assess and debate theoretical ideas of utopia in relation to political and economic structures.

LO3: Apply theories of utopia and dystopia in the analysis of particular texts and particular historical moments.

LO4: Engage with a range of critical approaches to genre of utopia/ dystopia.

LO5: Critically analyse particular texts relating to economics, commonwealth, citizenship and agency in their cultural, theoretical, political context.