FYS 53 Imagining Utopia
Given the desperate situation of our world-environmental crises, racial injustice, reactionary politics, out of control AI—it can be hard not to devolve into dystopianism and despair. Yet, in this course, we will focus on religious communities who, faced with similar societal challenges, imagined a hopeful future: utopia. We will see that utopian thinking tends to flourish during times of precarity and unrest, when the fracturing of the old social order opens up new spaces of possibility. The course starts with a brief genealogy of utopian socialism-inspired intentional communities and political reform across the Atlantic world, with special attention on its religious and philosophical roots. From there, we will study the utopian visions of a range of communities from the late-nineteenth century to the present, including Llano del Rio’s socialist utopia, the Oneidan community's vision of sexual liberation, the early Rastafari commune at Pinnacle. We'll explore how their utopian visions inspired political change and consider what lessons these communities might offer us today. Through these and other sites, students will confront the promise and challenges of living in alternative societies. Open only to first-year frosh.