Middlemarch and the Utopian Impulse
ENGL 858
Graduate
Winter 2027
3 Units
In-person
3
This course will center theories of utopia anchored in a long reading of George Eliot鈥s Middlemarch. Famously a 鈥no place,鈥 utopian thinking crosses literature, design and architecture, politic theory, film and art. We will use Middlemarch鈥攊n which utopian ideas arrive via glimmers and potentialities in the text鈥攖o think carefully about utopia鈥檚 relationship to realism. We will read criticism and theory by Marx, Adorno and Ernst Bloch, Anahid Nersessian, Gary Wilder, Jos茅 Esteban Mu帽oz to additionally consider the place of utopian thought for the present.