History Department Symposium "Past Perfect: Utopian Visions in Historical Perspective"  

On Friday, January 27 in Chancellor's Suite, University Center, Seton Hall University campus. This event is free and open to the public.

"Past Perfect: Utopian Visions in Historical Perspective"

A Center of Excellence Symposium in Comparative History

This symposium seeks to explore the phenomenon of utopias in all their incarnations—real and imagined; micro and macro; past, present and future. We seek to situate utopian thinking historically and culturally. Are these visions of a perfect world a distinctive feature of Western modernity or do they tap into a more universal impulse? What can utopias tell us about the societies and eras that produced them? What is the view of human nature underlying utopian ideals? 

We look to explore the processes by which utopian ideals are developed and disseminated. What sort of people build utopias? What makes some utopian models more attractive than others? What are the conditions in which individuals are prone to affiliate themselves with utopian movements? Finally, we seek to investigate the fate of utopias. Why have utopian communities been so difficult to sustain over time? Have some visions of utopia had more of a lasting impact than others? What is the point at which dreams of utopia cross the line into dystopias—nightmares of oppression, conformity, and the subjugation of the individual?

PROGRAM:

9:00-9:30 Coffee and Introductions
9:30-11:00 Session 1: American Utopias

Brigitte Koenig, Seton Hall University
"By-Path of the Promised Land: The Search for an American Anarchist Utopia"

Fernanda H. Perrone, Rutgers University
"New Jersey’s Utopian Communities"

Moderator: Dermot Quinn

11:00-11:15 Coffee Break
11:15-12:45 Session 2: Science in Service of Utopia

Talya Zemach-Bersin, Yale University
"Educational Utopias: Social Engineering for World Peace, 1919-1950"

Rosemary Wakeman, Fordham University
"Tomorrowland: New Town Utopias of the 1960s"

Moderator: Sara Fieldston

12:45-1:30 Lunch Break
1:30-3:00 Session 3: Humanistic and Religious Utopias

Joanne Paul, University of Sussex
"The Message of Thomas More’s Utopia"

Catherine Osborne, University of Notre Dame
"So That We May One Day Be One: Imagining and Inhabiting the Interfaith Church in the American 1960s"

Moderator: William Connell

3:00-3:15 Coffee Break
3:15-4:45 Session 4: Russia’s Utopian Visions

Katherine Pickering Antonova, Queens College, City University of New York
"Andrei Chikhachev and the Imperial Russian Village as Utopia"

Eliot Borenstein, New York University
"News from Nowhere: Global Russians and the Geopolitics of Utopian Diaspora"

Moderator: Nathaniel Knight

4:45-5:00 Coffee Break
5:00-5:30 Closing Remarks and Roundtable Discussion