CFP

Utopia/Dystopia

Utopias and (their opposite) dystopias arise from the urge to describe a possible world, a hard-to-come-true probability. Therefore, they either promise good news or foreshadow a warning for the future, depending on the benign or malign nature of the urge. From Plato’s republic and Al-Farabi’s virtuous city to the early modern utopias of Thomas More, Campanella and Francis Bacon; from Christine de Pizan’s city of women philosophers, scholars, and saintesses to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s feminist society from which war, conflict, and domination are expelled; from the critiques of utopia and “best possible worlds” narratives, which were taken as the first target in the experience of modernity, to the chaotic dystopias and contemporary science fictions, where perfectionism results in autocratic, totalitarian and oppressive regimes; this vast literature not only scrutinizes the temporal, spatial, geographical, cultural, scientific, and technological experiences from the political, economic, religious, moral, legal, and social dimensions of human life, but also addresses problematic concepts such as God, the state, nature, freedom, race, and gender. Devoting its third issue to “Utopia/Dystopia”, Nesir welcomes your original work on the topics listed below, which should be sent to [email protected] by August 1, 2022.

Nesir is also open to the articles outside the dossier’s topic, book reviews, research notes, questionnaires, panel discussions, and interviews that discuss the unique and interdisciplinary problems and tendencies of literature through texts, concepts and periods.

▪︎ The concerns that compel authors to write a utopia or a dystopia
▪︎ The methodological, aesthetic, ideological, and theological meanings of utopias and dystopias
▪︎ From the pre-modern utopian perfectionism to the postmodern dystopian pessimism
▪︎ Social constructivism and utopia/dystopia
▪︎ Utopia/dystopia as a conception of “place” and “space”
▪︎ Metaphors and allegories in utopias and dystopias
▪︎ Time and the perception of time in utopias and dystopias
▪︎ Mythologies and utopia/dystopia
▪︎ Science fiction and utopia/dystopia
▪︎ Feminism and utopia/dystopia
▪︎ Humanism and utopia/dystopia
▪︎ Marxist criticism and utopia/dystopia
▪︎ Utopia overthrown by science fiction
▪︎ The debate on genre: what counts as utopia or dystopia, and what does not?
▪︎ The similarities and differences between utopias and dystopias
▪︎ Utopias and dystopias in movies and TV series: adaptation and original scenarios
▪︎ Utopia and dystopia in various contexts of comparative literature
▪︎ World literature and utopia/dystopia
▪︎ Utopia/dystopia in modern Turkish literature
▪︎ Posthumanism and utopia/dystopia
▪︎ Language problems and utopia/dystopia
▪︎ Contemporary philosophy and utopia/dystopia
▪︎ Irony, satire and utopia/dystopia
▪︎ Hope, anxiety, wonder and utopia/dystopia