Université Charles de Gaulle – Lille 3

Time: 18.-20.06.2015
Venue: Lille
Deadline: 30.11.2013

How do utopias represent, increase or resolve inequalities between men and women? This is the starting point for this international conference. ‘Utopia’ (ou-topos, meaning no place) is a term coined by Thomas More in his eponymous text, published in 1516. In the Bâle edition of the same text (1518), More uses the term Eutopia to designate the imaginary place he wrote about. This neologism does not rely on the negation found in ou- but in the prefix eu- meaning good. Eutopia therefore means ‘the place of well-being,’ in other words, an ideal society.

Often satirical and subversive, the aim of a utopia is to denounce the shortcomings of a given era through an imaginary (faraway or mythical) place: Plato’s Kallipolis, Marivaux’s Slave Island (1725), Candide’s Eldorado (1759) and so on; the spatial (and sometimes temporal) distancing is aimed at avoiding … read more (PDF)