Download or read book Better Worlds written by Peter Roberts and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2013-02-21 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Better Worlds: Education, Art, and Utopia provides a fresh examination of utopia and education. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach and drawing on literature and the visual arts as well as traditional non-fiction sources, the authors explore utopia not as a model of social perfection but as the active, imaginative building of better worlds. Utopian questions, they argue, lie at the heart of education, and addressing such questions demands attention not just to matters of theoretical principle but to the particulars of everyday life and experience. Taking utopia seriously in educational thought also involves a consideration of that which is dystopian. Utopia, this book suggests, is not something that is fixed, final, or ever fully realized; instead, it must be constantly recreated, and education, as an ongoing process of reflection, action, and transformation, has a central role to play in this process.

Download or read book News from Nowhere written by William Morris and published by Broadview Press. This book was released on 2002-10-11 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written in 1890, at the close of William Morris’s most intense period of political activism, News from Nowhere is a compelling articulation of his mature views on art, work, community, family, and the nature and structure of the ideal society. A utopian narrative of a future society, it is also an immensely entertaining novel. This Broadview edition includes a wide variety of contextualizing documents, including portions of Morris’s essays, lectures, and journalism; excerpts from precursor utopian texts; writings on Bloody Sunday, art, work, and revolution; and contemporary reviews.

Download or read book William Morris News from Nowhere written by William Morris and published by . This book was released on 2016-10-07 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: News from Nowhere (1890) is a classic work combining utopian socialism and soft science fiction written by the artist, designer and socialist pioneer William Morris. In the book, the narrator, William Guest, falls asleep after returning from a meeting of the Socialist League and awakes to find himself in a future society based on common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. In this society there is no private property, no big cities, no authority, no monetary system, no divorce, no courts, no prisons, and no class systems. This agrarian society functions simply because the people find pleasure in nature, and therefore they find pleasure in their work.The book explores a number of aspects of this society, including its organisation and the relationships which it engenders between people.

Download or read book News from Nowhere written by William Morris and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-04-03 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book explores a number of aspects of this society, including its organisation and the relationships which it engenders between people. Morris cleverly fuses Marxism and the romance tradition when he presents himself as an enchanted figure in a time and place different from Victorian England. As Morris, the romance character, quests for love and fellowship-and through them for a reborn self-he encounters romance archetypes in Marxist guises. Old Hammond is both the communist educator who teaches Morris the new world and the wise old man of romance. Dick and Clara are good comrades and the married lovers who aid Morris in his wanderings. The journey on the Thames is both a voyage through society transformed by revolution and a quest for happiness. The goal of the quest, met and found though only transiently, is Ellen, the symbol of the reborn age and the bride the alien cannot win. Ellen herself is a multidimensional figure; a working class woman emancipated under socialism, she is also a benign nature spirit as well as the soul in the form of a woman.[1] The book offers Morris' answers to a number of frequent objections to socialism, and underlines his belief that socialism will entail not only the abolishment of private property but also of the divisions between art, life, and work.

Download or read book The Return of Nature written by John Bellamy Foster and published by Monthly Review Press. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 688 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, 2020 Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize A fascinating reinterpretation of the radical and socialist origins of ecology Twenty years ago, John Bellamy Foster’s Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature introduced a new understanding of Karl Marx’s revolutionary ecological materialism. More than simply a study of Marx, it commenced an intellectual and social history, encompassing thinkers from Epicurus to Darwin, who developed materialist and ecological ideas. Now, with The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology, Foster continues this narrative. In so doing, he uncovers a long history of the efforts to unite questions of social justice and environmental sustainability, and helps us comprehend and counter today’s unprecedented planetary emergencies. The Return of Nature begins with the deaths of Darwin (1882) and Marx (1883) and moves on until the rise of the ecological age in the 1960s and 1970s. Foster explores how socialist analysts and materialist scientists of various stamps, first in Britain, then the United States, from William Morris and Frederick Engels, to Joseph Needham, Rachel Carson, and Stephen J. Gould, sought to develop a dialectical naturalism, rooted in a critique of capitalism. In the process, he delivers a far-reaching and fascinating reinterpretation of the radical and socialist origins of ecology. Ultimately, what this book asks for is nothing short of revolution: a long, ecological revolution, aimed at making peace with the planet while meeting collective human needs.

Download or read book News from Nowhere Or an Epoch of Rest Being Some Chapters from a Utopian Romance By William Morris written by William Morris and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-11-09 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: News from Nowhere (1890) is a classic work combining utopian socialism and soft science fiction written by the artist, designer and socialist pioneer William Morris. It was first published in serial form in the Commonweal journal beginning on 11 January 1890. In the novel, the narrator, William Guest, falls asleep after returning from a meeting of the Socialist League and awakes to find himself in a future society based on common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. In this society there is no private property, no big cities, no authority, no monetary system, no divorce, no courts, no prisons, and no class systems. This agrarian society functions simply because the people find pleasure in nature, and therefore they find pleasure in their work. The novel explores a number of aspects of this society, including its organisation and the relationships which it engenders between people. Morris fuses Marxism and the romance tradition when he presents himself as an enchanted figure in a time and place different from Victorian England. As Morris, the romance character, quests for love and fellowship-and through them for a reborn self-he encounters romance archetypes in Marxist guises. Old Hammond is both the communist educator who teaches Morris the new world and the wise old man of romance. Dick and Clara are good comrades and the married lovers who aid Morris in his wanderings. The journey on the Thames is both a voyage through society transformed by revolution and a quest for happiness. The goal of the quest, met and found though only transiently, is Ellen, the symbol of the reborn age and the bride the alien cannot win. Ellen herself is a multidimensional figure: a working class woman emancipated under socialism, she is also a benign nature spirit as well as the soul in the form of a woman.The book offers Morris' answers to a number of frequent objections to socialism, and underlines his belief that socialism will entail not only the abolishment of private property but also of the divisions between art, life, and work. In the novel, Morris tackles one of the most common criticisms of socialism; the supposed lack of incentive to work in a communistic society. Morris' response is that all work should be creative and pleasurable. This differs from the majority of Socialist thinkers, who tend to assume that while work is a necessary evil, a well-planned equal society can reduce the amount of work needed to be done by each worker. News From Nowhere was written as a Libertarian socialist response to an earlier book called Looking Backward, a book that epitomises a kind of state socialism that Morris abhorred. It was also meant to directly influence various currents of thought at the time regarding the tactics to bring about socialism........ William Morris (24 March 1834 - 3 October 1896) was an English textile designer, poet, novelist, translator, and socialist activist. Associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement, he was a major contributor to the revival of traditional British textile arts and methods of production. His literary contributions helped to establish the modern fantasy genre, while he played a significant role in propagating the early socialist movement in Britain. Born in Walthamstow, Essex, to a wealthy middle-class family, Morris came under the strong influence of medievalism while studying Classics at Oxford University, there joining the Birmingham Set. After university, he trained as an architect, married Jane Burden, and developed close friendships with the Pre-Raphaelite artists Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti and with the Neo-Gothic architect Philip Webb. Webb and Morris designed a family home, Red House, then in Kent, where the latter lived from 1859 to 1865, before moving to Bloomsbury, central London. In 1861, Morris founded a decorative arts firm with Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Webb, and others: the Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co......

Download or read book News from Nowhere written by William Morris and published by . This book was released on 2019-09-06 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: News from Nowhere (1890) is a classic work combining utopian socialism and soft science fiction written by the artist, designer and socialist pioneer William Morris. In the book, the narrator, William Guest, falls asleep after returning from a meeting of the Socialist League and awakes to find himself in a future society based on common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. In this society there is no private property, no big cities, no authority, no monetary system, no divorce, no courts, no prisons, and no class systems. This agrarian society functions simply because the people find pleasure in nature, and therefore they find pleasure in their work.

Download or read book The Routledge Companion to William Morris written by Florence S. Boos and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-29 with total page 574 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Morris (1834–96) was an English poet, decorative artist, translator, romance writer, book designer, preservationist, socialist theorist, and political activist, whose admirers have been drawn to the sheer intensity of his artistic endeavors and efforts to live up to radical ideals of social justice. This Companion draws together historical and critical responses to the impressive range of Morris’s multi-faceted life and activities: his homes, travels, family, business practices, decorative artwork, poetry, fantasy romances, translations, political activism, eco-socialism, and book collecting and design. Each chapter provides valuable historical and literary background information, reviews relevant opinions on its subject from the late-nineteenth century to the present, and offers new approaches to important aspects of its topic. Morris’s eclectic methodology and the perennial relevance of his insights and practice make this an essential handbook for those interested in art history, poetry, translation, literature, book design, environmentalism, political activism, and Victorian and utopian studies.

Download or read book Visualizing Utopia written by M. G. Kemperink and published by Peeters Publishers. This book was released on 2007 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains the essays presented at the workshop 'Visualizing Utopia' held in May 2005, organized by Mary Kemperink and Willemien Roenhorst. The essays presented here discuss utopian thinking from 1890 until 1930. From the end of the eighteenth century, this utopian thinking developed from what can be called 'classic' utopianism into 'modern' utopianism. Utopianism unmarked by temporality made way for a tale situated in time - future time. Thus what was first regarded as merely a thought experiment gradually assumed the character of a real political programme. In their view of the new world and new people, writers, artists, architects, social reformers, cultural critics, politicians, etc., would often draw on representations already present in the culture. These could be biblical representations, such as those of the Apocalypse, Christ the Saviour and earthly paradise, or ancient myths, such as those of the Age of Gold, Arcadia, the sun-drenched world of Gnosticism and the Wagnerian mythological universe. The workshop concentrated on the following two aspects: the way in which the future Utopia and the path that would lead to its realization was given shape in the artistic field as well as in the non-artistic field, and the question to which culturally rooted concepts these representations were related. This double line of approach created the opportunity for specialized researchers from different disciplines - history, cultural history, art history, history of architecture, literary history - to discuss utopianism as it manifested itself in Europe and the United States at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century.

Download or read book The Last Utopians written by Michael Robertson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Last Utopians delves into the biographies of four key figures--Edward Bellamy, William Morris, Edward Carpenter, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman--who lived during an extraordinary period of literary and social experimentation. The publication of Bellamy's Looking Backward in 1888 opened the floodgates of an unprecedented wave of utopian writing. Morris, the Arts and Crafts pioneer, was a committed socialist whose News from Nowhere envisions a workers' Arcadia. Carpenter boldly argued that homosexuals constitute a utopian vanguard. Gilman, a women's rights activist and the author of "The Yellow Wallpaper," wrote numerous utopian fictions, including Herland, a visionary tale of an all-female society. These writers, Robertson shows, shared a belief in radical equality, imagining an end to class and gender hierarchies and envisioning new forms of familial and romantic relationships. They held liberal religious beliefs about a universal spirit uniting humanity. They believed in social transformation through nonviolent means and were committed to living a simple life rooted in a restored natural world. And their legacy remains with us today, as Robertson describes in entertaining firsthand accounts of contemporary utopianism, ranging from Occupy Wall Street to a Radical Faerie retreat.

Download or read book News from Nowhere Or an Epoch of Rest written by William Morris and published by . This book was released on 2018-03-12 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: News from Nowhere (1890) is a classic work combining utopian socialism and soft science fiction written by the artist, designer and socialist pioneer William Morris. It was first published in serial form in the Commonweal journal beginning on 11 January 1890. In the novel, the narrator, William Guest, falls asleep after returning from a meeting of the Socialist League and awakes to find himself in a future society based on common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. In this society there is no private property, no big cities, no authority, no monetary system, no divorce, no courts, no prisons, and no class systems. This agrarian society functions simply because the people find pleasure in nature, and therefore they find pleasure in their work. Odin's Library Classics is dedicated to bringing the world the best of humankind's literature from throughout the ages. Carefully selected, each work is unabridged from classic works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or drama.

Download or read book Manifestoes and Transformations in the Early Modernist City written by Professor Christian Hermansen Cordua and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2012-11-28 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The industrialization of the nineteenth-century European city facilitated developing conceptions of the model city, and allowed for large scale urban transformations. The urban discourse in the latter half of the nineteenth century was consequently dominated by a dialectic exchange between the ideal and the practical, a debate played out in the formation of the modern metropolis. Manifestoes and Transformations is the first work to deal with urban utopias and their relationship with actual urban interventions. Bringing together a carefully chosen, wide-ranging team of experts, the book provides a broad, contextual exploration of the ideas and urban practices which are the foundations of our conception of the contemporary city. As such, it is a valuable resource for students interested in the formation of the modernist city.

Download or read book Growing Old in a Better World written by Robert Troschitz and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-09-23 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As utopias question social ills and express human wants and unfulfilled dreams, they offer insights into the problems, desires and ideals of a certain time. This book uses this lens to examine cultural representations of ageing and old age in utopian writings from the Renaissance till today. The individual chapters offer detailed analyses and interpretations of numerous utopias from Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) to contemporary science fiction. Through close readings, the book explores age-related fears and ideals and investigates how perceptions of ageing and the life course as well as attitudes towards older people have developed over the centuries. Covering a large time span and a broad range of different utopias, the book identifies long-term developments and also puts certain dreams such as that of ever-lasting youth into a wider perspective. It thus enriches both our understanding of the cultural history of ageing and the history of utopian thought. The book will appeal to scholars and students from the fields of cultural gerontology and utopian studies, as well as literary studies and cultural history more generally.

Download or read book Nineteenth Century British Literature Then and Now written by Simon Dentith and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-06 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Envisioning today’s readers as poised between an impossible attempt to read texts as their original readers experienced them and an awareness of our own temporal moment, Simon Dentith complicates traditional prejudices against hindsight to approach issues of interpretation and historicity in nineteenth-century literature. Suggesting that the characteristic aesthetic attitude encouraged by the backward look is one of irony rather than remorse or regret, he examines works by Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Anthony Trollope, William Morris and John Ruskin in terms of their participation in significant histories that extend to this day. Liberalism, class, gender, political representation and notions of progress, utopianism and ecological concern as currently understood can be traced back to the nineteenth century. Just as today’s critics strive to respect the authenticity of nineteenth-century writers and readers who responded to these ideas within their historical world, so, too, do those nineteenth-century imaginings persist to challenge the assumptions of the present. It is therefore possible, Dentith argues, to conceive of the act of reading historical literature with an awareness of the historical context and of the difference between the past and the present while allowing that friction or difference to be part of how we think about a text and how it communicates. His book summons us to consider how words travel to the reality of the reader’s own time and how engagement with nineteenth-century writers’ anticipation of the judgements of future generations reveal hindsight’s capacity to transform our understanding of the past in the light of subsequent knowledge.

Download or read book Industries of Architecture written by Katie Lloyd Thomas and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-11-06 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At a time when the technologies and techniques of producing the built environment are undergoing significant change, this book makes central architecture’s relationship to industry. Contributors turn to historical and theoretical questions, as well as to key contemporary developments, taking a humanities approach to the Industries of Architecture that will be of interest to practitioners and industry professionals, as much as to academic researchers, teachers and students. How has modern architecture responded to mass production? How do we understand the necessarily social nature of production in the architectural office and on the building site? And how is architecture entwined within wider fields of production and reproduction—finance capital, the spaces of regulation, and management techniques? What are the particular effects of techniques and technologies (and above all their inter-relations) on those who labour in architecture, the buildings they produce, and the discursive frameworks we mobilise to understand them?

Download or read book Collaborative Writing in the Long Nineteenth Century written by Heather Bozant Witcher and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-17 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing the collaborative process to life through an array of examples, Heather Witcher shows that sympathetic co-creation is far more than the mere act of writing together. While foregrounding the material aspects of collaboration – hands uniting on the page, blank space left for fellow contributors, the writing and exchanging of drafts – this study also illuminates its social aspects and its reliance on Victorian liberalism: dialogue, the circulation of correspondence, the lived experience of collaboration, and, on a less material plane, transhistorical collaborations with figures of the past. Witcher takes a broad approach to these partnerships and, in doing so, challenges traditional expectations surrounding the nature of authorship itself, not least its typical classification as a solitary activity. Within this new framework, collaboration enables the titles of 'coauthor,' 'influencer,' 'editor,' 'critic,' and 'inspiration' to coexist. This book celebrates the plurality of collaboration and underscores the truly social nature of nineteenth-century writing.

Download or read book The Folk written by Ross Cole and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Who were 'the folk'? This question has haunted generations of radicals and reactionaries alike. The Folk traces the musical culture of these elusive figures in Britain and the US during a crucial period from 1870 to 1930, and beyond to the contemporary alt-right. It follows an insistent set of disputes surrounding the practice of collecting, ideas of racial belonging, the poetics of nostalgia, and the pre-history of European fascism. It is the biography of a people who exist only as a symptom of the modern imagination and the archaeology of a landscape directing the flow of global politics today"--