2022 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
"Utopia" in Contemporary American Literature
| Project/Area Number |
20K12951
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| Research Institution | Keio University |
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Principal Investigator |
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| Project Period (FY) |
2020-04-01 – 2023-03-31
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| Keywords | Utopia / Science Fiction / Public Art / post-human / community / Slusser, George / Le Guin, Ursula / Robinson, Kim Stanley |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
In 2022, although progress on my research continued to be slowed due to pandemic restrictions on travel and accessing archives, because of my research activities I was given the opportunity to review a forthcoming book for the Science Fiction Research Association on the history of science fiction by a prominent science fiction scholar, George Slusser. This review will be published in the fall of 2023.
In the summer, I traveled to Lille, France, which was the European City of Culture for 2022. The city had taken the theme of Utopia for its yearlong exhibition, and it was enlightening to visit museums, exhibits, and events where this theme was used to start discussions -- especially about ideas of post-human utopia -- via public art. Following this research trip, I traveled to Brighton, UK, where I presented a paper at the annual Utopian Studies Society (Europe) on the theme of community in Ursula Le Guin’s “The Dispossessed.”
In the fall, I presented a paper at the 61st annual conference of the American Literary Society of Japan about Kim Stanley Robinson’s use of collective narration and extended narrative timeframes in his works, "The Years of Rice and Salt" and “The Mars Trilogy.”
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Research Products
(2 results)
