Event
Futures and Illusions: Hope and the Longing for Utopia
(8th Annual Religion, Literature, and the Arts Conference)
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Description
“Understanding and communicating our visions for the future is a work undertaken by fictional narratives, by political movements and monuments, and by religious communities. Although the qualities of a happy future differ in each of these frameworks, the variety testifies that the hope for an eventual utopia is a widespread human quality. Utopias reveal the desire to find meaning in our capacity to build better futures as groups or communities, seeing our changes as universal and longstanding; however, they also reflect our fear that hopes for justice and peace are based in—or result in—mere illusion. Utopias therefore hover near to us: before we move into them, they already influence how we think about the present in a way analogous to the influence of the past.” (UI)
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Place
University of Iowa, USA
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Date
24-26 August 2012