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Race and Utopian Desire in American Literature and Society

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  • © 2019

Overview

Editors:
  1. Patricia Ventura

    1. Department of English, Spelman College, Atlanta, USA

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  2. Edward K. Chan

    1. Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan

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    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  • Addresses a need for scholarship on the issue of race and utopia in US literature
  • Covers a wide range of racial identities and utopian texts
  • Inorporates the voices of multiple scholars covering a variety of racialized historical and contemporary literatures

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Table of contents (15 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xxix
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  2. Introduction: Race and Utopian Desire

    • Patricia Ventura
    Pages 1-19
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Keywords

About this book

Bringing together a variety of scholarly voices, this book argues for the necessity of understanding the important role literature plays in crystallizing the ideologies of the oppressed, while exploring the necessarily racialized character of utopian thought in American culture and society. Utopia in everyday usage designates an idealized fantasy place, but within the interdisciplinary field of utopian studies, the term often describes the worldviews of non-dominant groups when they challenge the ruling order. In a time when white supremacy is reasserting itself in the US and around the world, there is a growing need to understand the vital relationship between race and utopia as a resource for resistance. Utopian literature opens up that relationship by envisioning and negotiating the prospect of a better future while acknowledging the brutal past. The collection fills a critical gap in both literary studies, which has largely ignored the issue of race and utopia, and utopian studies, which has said too little about race.

Editors and Affiliations

  • Department of English, Spelman College, Atlanta, USA

    Patricia Ventura

  • Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan

    Edward K. Chan

About the editors

Patricia Ventura is Associate Professor of English at Spelman College, USA.


Edward K. Chan is Associate Professor in the School of Culture, Media, and Society at Waseda University, Japan.

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