NEH Seminar: Utopias(GSMorson)

[John Kieselhorst]

NEH Summer Seminar for College Teachers
Directors: Gary Saul Morson (Slavic) and
Michael Williams (Philosophy), at Northwestern University
6 Weeks, 6/17/96 to 7/26/96

        Northwestern University will host an NEH summer seminar for college
teachers from June 17 to July 26 1996. The topic will be Views of Nowhere:
Utopia in Interdisciplinary Perspective.  It should be of special interest
to professors of literature, culture, politics and history;  to those
interested in problems of interdisciplinarity and the relation of
philosophy to literature; and to those concerned to explore the logic of
utopian and anti-utopian thought.
        This seminar has two main aims, one theoretical and one
meta-theoretical. At the theoretical level, it will examine some of the
central texts of the Utopian tradition. The intention is to explore the
tradition as both a literary form and a vehicle of political thought, so as
to investigate the relations between literary form and political content.
The approach will be interdisciplinary throughout.  Precisely because
Utopian texts can and must be approached from various angles, the seminar
will provide an ideal context for a comparative investigation of the ways
in which scholars from different disciplines approach the same texts.  We
want to ask: what conventions, questions, and traditions, do scholars from
different disciplinary backgrounds bring to the texts in question?  How do
differences in background and approach affect the readings that are
produced? With one director a specialist in Russian literature and literary
theory, the other a philosopher and an expert on skepticism, the
participants will engage with them in an open-ended debate.  In short, the
seminar will be both an experiment  in the interdisciplinary investigation
of a rich, complex and puzzling body of writing and, at the same time, a
practical examination of the possibilities (and perhaps limitations) of
interdisciplinary understanding.
        We seek participants from varying disciplines:  literature,
philosophy, political theory, intellectual history.
        Texts to be discussed will include works by Plato, More, Swift,
Bellamy, and Marx; Chernyshevsky, Dostoevsky, Herzen, Zamyatin, Sinyavsky;
and others.  We seek to establish a collegial atmosphere and to work with
participants on their own projects.
        Participants, who will be housed at Northwestern in Evanston, will
receive $3,200 to defray their expenses for the six-week seminar. NOTE: NEH
requires that all applicants be either United States citizens or foreign
nationals resident in the U.S. for three years.

For further information, contact:
Gary Saul Morson, Department of Slavic Languages, Northwestern University,
Evanston IL 60208-2206.  office phone: 708-467-4098; home: 708-362-2172.
e-mail: g-morson at nwu.edu.
        or: Michael Williams, Department of Philosophy, Northwestern
University, Evanston IL, 60208-1315.  home phone: 708-475-8670.
        or our assistant John Kieselhorst, e-mail; jak209 at lulu.acns.nwu.edu.

John Kieselhorst
Assistant Secretary
Center for the Writing Arts