AwardsArthur O. Lewis AwardEach year the Society for Utopian Studies presents the Arthur O. Lewis Award for the best paper by a younger scholar (generally defined as untenured) given at the annual meeting of the Society. Arthur O. Lewis was one of the founders of the Society and served as its Chair on more than one occasion. To apply for this award, send five duplexed (back-to-back) copies of your revised paper by February 15, 2010 to the Awards Committee Chair. Revised papers must be article-length, approximately 20-25 pages, with citations. Winning essays will automatically be considered for publication in Utopian Studies. Please send submissions to: Eugenio Battisti AwardEach year the Society for Utopian Studies presents the Eugenio Battisti Award to the author of the best article in the previous year's Utopian Studies. Eugenio Battisti (1924-1989), a much beloved scholar of utopian studies, was the founder of the Associazione internazionale per gli studi sulle utopie and the originator of a series of conferences in Italy. The Award is funded by donations to the Society for Utopian Studies by its members and has been generously supported by Professor Battisti's wife, Giuseppa Saccaro Del Buffa, and son, Francesco Battisti. Kenneth M. Roemer Innovative Course Design CompetitionEach year the Society for Utopian Studies (SUS) presents the Kenneth M. Roemer Award for the best proposal for an undergraduate or graduate course on utopia, dystopia, utopianism, or a related subject. Kenneth M. Roemer is a former president of the Society, winner of the 2008 Lyman Tower Sargent Award for Distinguished Scholarship, and teacher in the field of utopian studies for more than two decades. A $200 award will be presented to the winner, and he or she will be invited to submit the winning syllabus and supplementary materials for publication on the Society’s website. To apply for this award, send an electronic copy of your application as a single PDF file to the Teaching Committee Chair no later than April 1, 2010. The application should include the following:
Only submissions by current SUS members will be accepted. The winner of this award must wait one year after winning to apply again. Please send your application to: Larry E. Hough Distinguished Service AwardThe Larry E. Hough Distinguished Service Award is for substantial achievement in support of utopian studies, broadly defined. Service may include achievements in teaching, and support of this society or other organizations that study utopia. Service may also include the dimension of reaching out to the non-academic community, such as developing museums, setting up archives, working with the visual arts, design, architecture, or planning, or engaging with support organizations for communal societies. Service may be for diversified activities, or it may involve dedication to a single activity. In either case, the service must be sustained over an extensive period of time. Any member of the society may submit nominations to the committee for this award, together with appropriate supporting materials. Nominees need not be members of the Society for Utopian Studies, nor is service for the Society a requisite for nomination. Lyman Tower Sargent Award for Distinguished ScholarshipThe Society's by-laws describe this award as aimed at recognizing "lifetime achievements, for diversified activity, and for accomplishments not only in the academic fields to which we are accustomed, but also for achievements in fields not usually considered for academic promotion and tenure," with distinguished work in at least two of the following areas: "Literary/ Publication/Published Scholarship", "Teaching", and "Professional service/non-literary activity". The Arthur O. Lewis Award has been presented to:2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 1995 Jeremy Stolow. "Utopia and Geopolitics in Theodor Herzl's Altneuland." Published in Utopian Studies 8, no. 1 (1997): 55-76. 1994 1993 Scott Kelley. "Photo-Utopia and Poetic Representations of the Impossible: The Utopic Figure in Modern Poetic and Photographic Discourse." Published in Utopian Studies 6.1 (1995): 1-18. 1992 1991 1990 Richard Toby Widdicombe. "Eutopia, Dystopia, Aporia: The Obstruction of Meaning in Fin-de-Siècle Utopian Texts." Published in Utopian Studies 1.1 (1990): 93-102. 1989 James J. Kopp. "Edward Bellamy and the New Deal: The Revival of Bellamyism in the 1930s." Published in Utopian Studies IV. Edited by Lise Leibacher-Ouvrard and Nicholas D. Smith (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1991), 10-16. 1988 Libby Falk Jones. "Breaking Silences in Feminist Dystopias." Published in Utopian Studies III. Edited by Michael S. Cummings and Nicholas D. Smith (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1991), 7-11. 1987
The Eugenio Battisti Award has been presented to:2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 Williams, Nicholas M. "The Limits of Spatialized Form: Visibility and Obscurity in Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward." Utopian Studies 10.2 (1999): 25-39. 1998 Lynda H. Schneekloth, " Unredeemably Utopian: Architecture and Making/Unmaking the World," Utopian Studies 9.1 (1998): 1-25. 1997 1996 1995 1994 1993 1992 Kenneth R. Hoover, "Mondragón's Answers to Utopias Problems." Utopian Studies 3.2 (1992): 1-20. 1991 Lee Cullen Khanna, "Beyond Omelas: Utopia and Gender." Utopian Studies 2.1&2 (1991): 48-58. 1990 Larry E. Hough Distinguished Service Award has been presented to:2008 Peter FittingPeter Fitting's extensive service to the Society for Utopian Studies and the discipline of Utopian Studies encompasses several roles, including that of Chair of the Steering Committee/ President (1994-98) and the organization of several conference as both local chair and program chair (Memphis 1997, San Antonio 1999, Toronto 1994, 1995 and 2007.) His facilitation of special events and lively plenaries at the SUS meetings has enriched the conference experience for all attendees and advanced the discipline. On the SUS steering committee, he has served in every possible role, and continues to facilitate the SUS website. He is a longstanding member of the editorial boards of Utopian Studies and Science Fiction Studies. He has also been instrumental in recruiting new scholars into the field of utopian studies and nurturing their careers. Naomi JacobsNaomi Jacobs has contributed an immense amount to the Society of Utopian Studies and to the field of Utopian Studies. With her commitment to the Society as a warm and engaged community of scholars, she has served in every possible capacity on the Steering Committee, including the awards committee. She served as President/ Chair of the Steering Committee from 1998-2002. She serves on the editorial board of Utopian Studies, H-Utopia (Humanities Net website for utopian studies), and the Ralahine Series in Utopian Studies. She has also been a tireless organizer of conferences, including meetings in Portland (2008), San Diego (2003), Vancouver (2000) Montreal (1998) and St. Louis (1993). She has been an encouraging colleague in the discipline and a sage advisor to peers and junior colleagues alike. Naomi is known for her warmth, generosity, and compassion. She always has been available to help with professional advice and help, and is one of the SUS members who most encourages junior participants to keep coming back and be more involved. 2007 The Society for Utopian Studies has awarded Jennifer Wagner-Lawlor the Larry E. Hough Distinguished Service award, in recognition of her many contributions to the Society, including a decade serving as Secretary-Treasurer. She has served in almost every capacity on the Steering Committee and organized two conferences in Memphis (1995 and 2005). 2002 Professor Colombo is founder and Director of the Interdepartmental Center for Utopian Studies at the University of Lecce, which has produced many volumes of original scholarship on utopian theory. Professor Fortunati is founder and Director of the Center for Utopian Studies at the University of Bologna. She has hosted innumerable conferences and individual scholars, and is the editor of many translations and edited volumes that have contributed substantially to the international exchange of ideas in the field. Professor Saccaro del Buffa was an organizer of the Italian conferences that initiated the internationalization of the field of utopian studies. Through their original research and their generous hospitality, our three distinguished colleagues from Italy have helped to build a vital, international community of scholars and to enlarge the conceptual as well as the geographical range of the field.
2000
1998 Lyman Tower Sargent Award for Distinguished Scholarship has been presented to:2009 Fredric Jameson is one of the most important intellectuals of the last fifty years, having produced a tremendous amount of influential scholarship-this is now compromised of more than 20 books and hundreds of essays, with other major books to be released in the near future. Jameson’s overall contribution was also acknowledged in the fall of 2008 with the Norwegian parliament’s naming him as the fifth recipient of the Holberg International Memorial Prize awarded to a scholar working in the fields of the arts and humanities, social sciences, law, and theology. The question of Utopia is central to all of Jameson's work. For example, his second book, Marxism and Form: Twentieth-Century Dialectical Theories of Literature (1971), played a significant role in introducing to an English reading audience the rich theorizations of Utopia found in German critical theory, in works written by Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, and most significantly, Ernst Bloch. Similarly, Jameson’s 1977 Diacritics essay, "Of Islands and Trenches: Neutralization and the Production of Utopian Discourse," was the first to introduce to a U.S. readership Louis Marin’s groundbreaking book, Utopiques: Jeux d’espaces (1973). Jameson’s deeply influential effort to formalize an original Marxist literary and cultural hermeneutic, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (1981), also directly addresses the problematic of Utopia, illuminating, for example, the Utopian figurations and horizons to be found in the fictions of Honoré de Balzac and Joseph Conrad and realism and modernism more generally. The commitment to the "dialectic of Utopia and ideology" is also evident in Jameson’s influential reconsideration of the labors of the mass cultural text, "Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture" (1979), where he argues that ideology in mass culture is impossible without Utopia. In his landmark 1991 book, Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, the winner of the Modern Language Association’s James Russell Lowell Prize for an outstanding work in criticism, Jameson argues that even in a cultural situation that seems allergic to Utopia, nevertheless "one finds everywhere today-not least among artists and writers-something like an unacknowledged ‘party of Utopia’: an underground party whose numbers are difficult to determine, whose program remains unannounced and perhaps even unformulated, whose existence is unknown to the citizenry at large and to the authorities, but whose members seem to recognize one another by means of secret Masonic signals." In his 1992 book, The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System, Jameson explores the Utopian figurations at work in Jean-Luc Godard’s Passion and Kidlat Tahimik’s The Perfumed Nightmare; and in his Wellek Library Lectures in Critical Theory published under the title, The Seeds of Time (1994), Jameson explores the anti-Utopianism of postmodern thought more generally, before moving on to an investigation of the Utopian strains at work in the architectural projects of Peter Eisenman, Rem Koolhaas, and the Critical Regionalist movement. Moreover, the centerpiece of this study is a breathtaking reading of the then recently "rediscovered" modernist Utopia, Andrei Platonov’s Chevengur. Jameson also wrote essays on a diverse array of Utopian and science fictional texts, a number of which were brought together in the second half of his book, Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (2005). These include deeply influential essays on the work of Thomas More, Charles Fourier, George Bernard Shaw, A.E. Van Vogt, Brian Aldiss, Ursula Le Guin, Philip K. Dick, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Vonda MacIntyre, William Gibson, and Kim Stanley Robinson. 2008 Tom Moylan is honored for his groundbreaking books and leadership in the field of Utopian Studies. In Demand the Impossible, he formulated the concept of the critical utopia and identified the key group of four novels that are still central to any discussion of 1970s utopianism. By bringing critical theory to bear on utopian fictions, he made it possible to conceive of how texts can be ironic and self-reflexive, yet still carry political force. Scraps of the Untainted Sky performed similarly significant work by theorizing the critical dystopia. In addition to these foundational books, the Society honors Professor Moylan's contributions in article-length works on topics ranging from liberation theology to his recent work with Irish music. Equally important is his work as an editor, including the collection of essays on Bloch that Professor Moylan edited with Jamie Daniel, the Jameson special issue of Utopian Studies, and volumes edited with Raffaella Baccolini and with Michael Griffin, collections well-known for bringing together people working in disparate areas of utopian studies. Professor Moylan's formative and energetic work with the Ralahine Centre for Utopian Studies at the University of Limerick has created a remarkable forum for global and interdisciplinary scholarship. In the words of Professor Naomi Jacobs: "Through his tireless work to organize lecture series colloquia and conferences, as well as through his own scholarship, [Tom Moylan’s] influence on the field has been 'incalculably diffusive' (to steal a phrase from George Eliot)." Ken Roemer Ken Roemer is the author of some of the most important studies of American utopian literature to be published in the last thirty years. He has worked indefatigably to support the teaching of utopian literature as a significant area of American studies, the careers of young scholars in the field, and the work of the Society as a whole. Ken Roemer’s first book, The Obsolete Necessity: America in Utopian Writings, 1888-1900 (Kent State University Press, 1976) appeared only a year after the Society’s founding in 1975, and became a landmark achievement in both American and utopian literary studies, even being nominated at the time for a Pulitzer Prize. Through a diverse range of essays and interventions on the work of Bellamy, Wells, Skinner, Le Guin and others, and including his efforts in assembling, writing for, and editing the important 1981 volume America as Utopia (Burt Franklin), Ken continued not only to help advance the nascent field of utopian studies, but also to enrich American studies more generally (something he equally contributed in his diverse and groundbreaking work in Native American literary studies). The continued significance of Ken’s scholarship to the development and progress of utopian studies is seen in his most recent book in the field, Utopian Audiences: How Readers Locate Nowhere (University of Massachusetts Press, 2003). In this original and innovative study, Ken turns to the often-neglected question of the readers of utopian literature, and shows in great detail how the studies of readers, actual and implied, can further deepen the field of utopian studies. Ken has long been a dedicated teacher of utopian literature, not only developing a number of different courses in his years at the University of Texas, Arlington, but also sharing his methods and insights in his textbook, Build Your Own Utopia: An Interdisciplinary Course in Utopian Speculation (University Press of America, 1981). In all of his work—as a scholar, teacher, mentor, and leading member of the Society—Ken Roemer has contributed tremendously to the development of the field of utopian studies. 2002 Professor Claeys' extensive writings on utopianism include fourteen edited volumes of utopias, making available texts that had been extremely difficult to access, as well as two important authored books on Robert Owen. He co-edited the Utopian Reader and the Syracuse University Press Series on Utopianism and Communitarianism; he also consulted with the Bibliotheque Nationale de France and the New York Public Library on the 2000 exhibit on Utopias, as well as on the creation of the two resulting volumes. His contributions as teacher, editor and scholar of utopian studies have been essential to the field. Gorman Beauchamp, University of Michigan Professor Beauchamp is honored as a scholar of remarkable accomplishment, as a founder and supporter of the Society, and as an important influence on young scholars who have been drawn to the field through his encouragement and example. His perceptive and witty scholarship has helped to build the intellectual program and international reputation of the field of utopian studies. Through his distinguished publications, as well as the papers presented with impeccable style at conferences in the United States and abroad, he has inspired and enlightened a host of admiring colleagues. 1997
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