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Soc 206-- The Utopia Project


Spring 2007

Need examples of fictional utopias to get you started? Looking for more reliable sources on historical or real-world utopian societies? Try the selected resources below!
All items marked with are at the UCC Library.

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Your reference librarian: Katie Cunnion
I am generally in the library M-F 8:00 am to 5:00 pm. I'm sometimes out teaching classes, but if I'm in my office, please feel free to come talk with me about your assignment! If you can't make it into the library, email me! Or ask me a question NOW with online chat! (generally M-F 8am-noon, sometimes 1pm-3pm)

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Contents

 | Timeline of Utopian Fictions |  Real-World Utopias & Communes  |  Dystopias |  Citation- Chicago Style | 

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Timeline of Utopian Fiction

360 BC

Plato. The Republic. [Greece]

888 P

"Plato's Republic centers on a simple question: is it always better to be just than unjust? ... To answer the question, Socrates takes a long way around, sketching an account of a good city on the grounds that a good city would be just and that defining justice as a virtue of a city would help to define justice as a virtue of a human being" (From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

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1516 AD

More, Thomas. Utopia [England]

321.07 M

"More coined the term "utopia" which is a pun meaning both "good place" and "no place." More's Utopia is discovered on a voyage to the newly discovered Americas" (Sir Thomas More from Oregon State University).

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1600s

Campanella, Thomaso. The City of the Sun [Italy]
Available online through Project Gutenberg.

"La Citta Del Sole (1601) advocates communism, eugenics and an education program in which the illustrated walls of the city form the classroom. ... Solarians learn through observation, not so much of Nature herself, but of their own city, which resembled a huge illustrated encyclopedia, featuring murals and alphabets" (From Yale's America and the Utopian Dream website).

Bacon, Francis. The New Republic (1624-1627) [England]

824 BAC

"Francis Bacon was the founder of modern scientific method. He believed that science and technology could be harnessed to benefit mankind. His utopian work, New Atlantis, describes a society centered on [this ideal]" (From Yale's America and the Utopian Dream website).

Cavendish, Margaret. The Blazing World (and other stories) (1666) [England]

823.4 CAVENDIS C

"Cavendish was one of the later 17th-century's most notoriously eccentric woman {her nickname was "Mad Meg"}. A prolific writer and amateur scientist, she was the only woman of the time allowed to visit {but not to join} the Royal Society. Her flamboyantly unconventional dress and 'hobbies' were indulged by her husband ... [The Blazing World] is a wonderfully peculiar work: part fantasy, part feminist utopia, part scientific compendium" (From Margaret Cavendish, website from North Carolina State University).

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1800s

Bellamy, Edward. Looking Backwards, 2000-1887 (1888) [United States]

321.07 B

"In Looking Backward, the year 2000 is rich to the point of excess, cluttered with gadgets and consumer culture. Bellamy foresaw credit cards, shopping malls and even online shopping, in the form of the ordering and delivery of goods through a series of pneumatic tubes underground" (From Yale's America and the Utopian Dream website).
Equality (1897)

335 B


Morris, William. News from Nowhere (1890) [England]

823.8 MORRIS M

"A classic novel of a scion of the Arts and Crafts movement, News from Nowhere celebrates collectivism and the non-competitive life of farm workers in the future. The worry-free atmosphere contrasts with the physical horrors of late Nineteenth-century industrialism" (From Yale's America and the Utopian Dream website).

Howells, William. A Traveler from Altruria (1894) [United States]
Available online through Project Gutenberg

"A gentleman from Altruria visits America where he is astonished to find a civilization like that of his own country before Evolution, its change from a stratified capitalistic society to a one-class socialstic, Christian utopia" (From Yale's America and the Utopian Dream website).

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1900s

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Herland (1915) [United States]

813.52 GILMAN G

"Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland was written during a period in the 20th century that saw a wealth of utopian writing; Gilman's work is unique, however, because she is one of the earliest writers who treat women in their utopian vision (From the Frankenstein Project at Georgia Tech).

Hilton, James. Lost Horizon (1933) [England]

813.52 H

"Hilton coined the term “Shangri-La” in this 1933 utopian fantasy, inventing a synonym for an idyllic escape from stress and real life, a visionary nirvana or remote haven free of the turmoil that besets human life" (From Yale's America and the Utopian Dream website).

Skinner, B.F. Walden Two (1945) [United States]

813.54 S

One of the most famous attempts to apply the scientific findings of behavoralism and psychology to civil planning, Skinner proposes a utopian society where notions of "personal freedom" are set aside in favor of uniform reward and joint custody of labor. Several real-world communes have since attempted to implement a "Walden Two" model: see "Twin Oaks" below.

Le Guin, Ursula K. "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" (1973) [United States]
published in: The Wind's Twelve Quarters

813.54 LEGUIN L

"An allegorical tale about a utopian society in which Omelas' happiness is made possible by the sacrifice of one child for the sake of the group" (From the Short Stories for Students article below).

Callenbach, Ernest. Ecotopia (1975) [United States]

813.54 CALLENBA C

One of the first "ecological" utopian fictions.

Murakami, Haruki. Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985) [Japan]

895.635 MURAKAMI M

Half about a futuristic society where one "data-scrambler" (imagine a cross between a private investigator and an accountant) races to discover why his other colleagues have all begun to disappear mysteriously, half about a quiet, sleepy utopian town where unicorns graze outside the gates, exiles lurk in the woods, and where everyone is identified precisely by the duties assigned to them.

Niman, Michael. People of the Rainbow: a nomadic utopia (1997) [United States]

321.07 N

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Historical Real-World Communes and Utopias

Websites of Utopian Communities (from the Utopia Project assignment)

Friesen, John and Virginia. Palgrave Companion to North American Utopias (2004)

307.77 F

Fogarty, Robert. Dictionary of American Communal and Utopian History (1980)

REF. 335.973 F

Kinkade, Kathleen. A Walden Two Experiment: the first five years of the Twin Oaks community (1973)

335.9 K

Twentieth-Century Interpretations of Utopia: a collection of critical essays (1968)

321.07 N

Utopias and Utopian Thought (1966)

321.07 M

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Dystopias

Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale (1986)

813.54 A

Hillegas, Mark. The Future as Nightmare: H.G. Wells and the anti-utopians (1967)

823.912 H

Orwell, George. 1984 (1949)

823.912 O

Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World(1932)

823.912 HUXLEY H

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Citation Formatting-- Chicago Style

The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed.

REF 808.02 C

Chicago Manual of Style Online
The official website of the 15th ed. of The Chicago Manual of Style. Includes linked table of contents and frequently asked Q&As.

Using Chicago Style to Cite and Document Sources
From Chapter 7 of the Bedford-St. Martin's Handbook online.

Chicago / Turabian Documentation
From the Writing Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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