What have women dreamt? One century of feminist utopian fictions revisited

What have women dreamt? One century of feminist utopian fictions revisited

Presentation by Teresa Botelho

If utopianism, in the contemporary sense of the word, is an articulation of what Ernst Block has called the “principle of hope”, feminist utopian fictions, which first emerged in the English speaking world in the second half of the nineteenth century, have mirrored, in the ensuing one hundred years, a plethora of different dreams, goals and visions. In the golden age of 19th century feminist utopianism, these ranged from the political and pragmatic to the sociological, centered on civic emancipation and the right to vote and on the reversal of restrictive public roles, while one hundred years later, the most daring “ambiguous utopias” of second wave feminism, assumed the shape of “thought experiments “ that questioned the very concepts of stable constructions of gender. 

This presentation will map out the evolution of trends of feminist utopian texts and the narrative juxtapositions of the tropes of argumentation and persuasion with the formats of speculative literature and science fiction. 


Tuesday 23, 7pm
Casa dos Amigos do Minho - Rua do Benformoso 244, Lisboa

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Teresa Botelho is Associate Professor of American Studies at FCSH, Nova University and a member of the research project “Mapping Dreams: British and American Utopianism” at CETAPS.


+ info:

www.thisisthebarbershop.blogspot.com
www.utopiaandutopianism.com/