Utopias, Dystopias, and the Work of the Imagination

Seminar conception, organization, and lecture at the Annual Meeting of American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), Seminar: Utopias, Dystopias, and the Work of the Imagination (18.-20.03.2016)

Friday, March 18, 2016 Stream A (8.30am–10.15am)

• Eirene Visvardi (Wesleyan University): On the Verge of Utopia. Dystopia, Hope, and the Reasoned Passions
• Matthew Hadley (University of Minnesota): Wells's »Stubborn Beast Flesh«. The Laboratory and Utopia in »The Island of Dr. Moreau«
• Elisabetta Di Minico (Universitat de Barcelona): Feminine Bodies in Fictional and Historical Dystopias
• Nitzan Lebovic (Lehigh University): The Destruction of the City. The Biopolitical Film and the Utopian-Dystopian Axis

Saturday, March 19, 2016 Stream A (8.30am–10.15am)

• Kristina Mendicino (Brown University): Stellar Models. Benjamin and Scheerbart
• Dania Hückmann (Harvard University): Jean Améry – Ressentiment and Utopian Time
• Sze Wei Ang (University of Hong Kong): Utopia and Race
• Elisabeth Weber (University of California, Santa Barbara): Common Places, »Killboxes.« Living Together in the Age of Drones

Sunday, March 20, 2016 Stream A (8.30am–10.15am)

• Kimberly Coates (Stony Brook University): Feminism is Humanism. How Monique Wittig's »Les Guérillères« Ends Feminist Utopias
• Ulrich Plass (Berlin Center for Literary and Cultural Research): Dystopian Totalities. Herbert Marcuse's »One-Dimensional Man« and the Contemporary Novel
• Juan Torbidoni (Harvard University): Precision and Wholeness. »The Man Without Qualities« and the Utopia of Exact Living
• J. DeLeon (New York University): »Utopia and Hubris In One«. Queer Manifestos In Theory/As Praxis

Ulrich Plass is working in ZfL-Project Representing Time in Capitalist Realism in Contemporary German and English Literature, funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.