An innovative interdisciplinary Humanities module at the University of Winchester has won an international award.
Utopian and Dystopian Fiction developed by Matthew Leggatt, Senior Lecturer in English and American Literature, has won the Kenneth M. Roemer Innovative Course Design Award from The Society for Utopian Studies.
The wide-ranging course - which covers speculative fiction, film, TV and video games - begins with Plato and Thomas More and comes right up to date with a slew of 21st century texts like Bong Joon Ho’s film Snowpiercer, Emily St John Mandel’s novel Station Eleven and, in next year’s iteration, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Chain-Gang All-Stars.
Matthew said that many of the students take the course because they are interested in dystopian fiction, and have read The Handmaid’s Tale and The Hunger Games, for instance - but they tend to be less familiar with utopian texts and ways of thinking.
“The module takes students on a journey of discovery meant to encourage them to reflect on society at present,” said Matthew. “I open the first session by considering the history of utopian thinking through Thomas More’s Utopia, and Plato’s Republic, but from there we jump ahead to the science fiction of the 20th and 21st centuries with Star Trek.”
Also included in the module mix are videogame BioShock, Pixar’s WALL-E, The Memory Police by Japanese author Yōko Ogawa, Invisible Cities by Italian writer Italo Calvino and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.
In the first week the students divide into groups and design their own Utopias with their own laws and governments.
“I think there is a crisis of political will at the moment, and this module tries to tackle that and show there are possible pathways out of the doom and gloom many students feel in the current political climate,” said Matt.
Fast becoming a leading figure in the field of Utopia and Dytopian studies, Matt recently edited the collection Wastelands and Wonderlands: Utopias and Dystopias in Film and Literature which was published by SUNY press this month.
Bringing together essays by scholars from across the world, the book explores a range of utopias and dystopias from visionaries as varied as William Morris and George Lucas to such fresh new and distinctive voices as Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah and N. K. Jemisin.
The book aims to dismantle myths about utopian and dystopian fictions in film and literature and explore their important relationship with today’s real world.
Among the contributors is Dr Daniel Varndell, Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities at the University of Winchester, who writes about the Utopian Thinking in the Anti-Utopian Cinema of Oscar-winning German filmmaker Michael Haneke.
Matt also co-hosts the popular Utopian and Dystopian Fictions podcast with Liam Knight, an independent scholar with a PhD from the University of Birmingham.
The podcast is now in its third season and recent guests have included Daniel Olivas, author of Chicano Frankenstein and Dr Amy Brookes from the University of Reading who discussed the role of architecture in speculative fiction.
You can hear the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.
Pictured top: Some of the thinkers featured in Matt's module - Plato, Captain Kirk, Thomas More and George Orwell (AI image created using Microsoft Copilot).
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