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There has long been a connection between the concept of utopia as a perfect society and the desire for perfect humans to live in this society. A form of selective breeding takes place in many fictional utopias from Plato’s Republic onwards, but it is only with the naming and promotion of eugenics by Francis Galton in the late nineteenth century that eugenics becomes a consistent and important component of utopian fiction. In my introduction I argue that behind the desire for eugenic fitness within utopias resides a sense that human nature needs improving. Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) prompted fears of degeneration, and eugenics was seen as a means of restoring purpose and control. Chapter Two examines the impact of Darwin’s ideas on the late nineteenth-century utopia through contrasting the evolutionary fears of Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872) with Edward Bellamy’s more positive view of the potential of evolution in Looking Backward (1888). Chapter Three uses examples from three late-nineteenth-century feminist utopias to highlight the aspirations within these societies to use science to transform women’s social position and transcend the biological determinism of their reproductive role. Chapter Four focuses on the social theory and utopian fiction of Charlotte Perkins Gilman to illustrate how eugenics becomes part of her vision of progress for women and the human race as a whole. Chapter Five turns to dystopian fiction from H.G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Charlotte Haldane and Katherine Burdekin to examine how eugenic ideas retained an element of idealism even in the context of the dystopias of the first half of the twentieth century. Chapter Six looks at the fate of eugenics in utopian fiction after the Second World War and argues that the resurgence of utopianism in the form of the ecological utopia continue to rely on eugenics, population control and manipulation of human behaviour to succeed. My conclusion argues that eugenics is a utopian idea with enduring appeal despite the disastrous effects of its practical implementation, and that utopian and dystopian fiction offer an important lens through which to understand the hopes and fears represented by the different versions of eugenics and the current debates over genetic enhancements and transhumanism.

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2006. Graduate Programme in Political Science. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 331-345). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:NR19803

Complexe et mystérieuse, l’utopie représente sans doute l’une des notions dont la longue carrière dans l’histoire de la pensée et de la culture humaines est incontestable. Compte tenu de cette grande richesse conceptuelle, notre analyse de l’utopie dans la littérature française de l’aube du classicisme à l’aube des Lumières commence par l’esquisse du cadre théorique de l’utopie, à partir du mot lui-Même, des multiples significations qu’il a reçues au long du temps et par la mise en évidence des deux paradigmes qui le caractérisent, à savoir un paradigme théorique et un paradigme littéraire. Tout en suivant l’origine et les métamorphoses du concept d’utopie jusqu’à son évolution vers un genre littéraire particulier, nous nous sommes arrêtée sur un corpus de textes qui témoignent, à notre avis, à la fois de la consécration, de la maturité et de l’élasticité du genre utopique, il s’agit des deux romans de Cyrano de Bergerac, Les États et Empires de la Lune et du Soleil, du roman de Gabriel de Foigny, La Terre australe connue, des Aventures de Télémaque de Fénelon et des trois pièces de Marivaux, L’île des esclaves, L’île de la raison et La Colonie. À la lumière de la signification duale du terme créé par More, à savoir celle de lieu de nulle part (« ou-Topos »), mais aussi celle de lieu de bonheur (« eu-Topos »), nous avons divisé notre étude en deux grandes parties, l’une consacrée à l’analyse de l’espace utopique et l’autre à l’analyse de la société utopique. Plurivalent et hétérogène, l’espace utopique suit, dans chacun des ouvrages analysés, quelques principes généraux tels que l’insularité, l’altérité et l’isolement, tout en prenant, en même temps, des configurations à part, ce qui témoigne à la fois de l’identité particulière de chaque œuvre choisie et du réseau de significations qui se tisse entre elles. L’analyse de la société utopique est elle aussi une source extrêmement riche d’observations et de conclusions et s’appuie sur trois coordonnées majeures : l’altérité de la société utopique, sa nature idéale et sa critique implicite de la société humaine. Derrière ces piliers théoriques, nous retrouvons la description effective de la société utopique, avec le portrait de l’Utopien, le procès de l’homme et de nombreux aspects économiques, politiques et organisationnels qui caractérisent toute communauté. / Complex and mysterious, utopia has undoubtedly been one of the concepts whose long career in the history of human thinking and culture has been undeniable. Having in view this conceptual legacy our analysis of utopia in the French literature from the beginning of Classicism to the beginning of the Enlightment starts with the description of the theoretical background of utopia, with the word, as such, and the various significances that it has received along the time and with the presentation of the two paradigms characterizing it, the theoretical and the literary paradigm. From the origin and the metamorphoses of the concept of utopia down to its evolution towards a literary genre in itself we have approached a corpus of texts that demonstrate once and again the consecration, the maturity and the elasticity of the utopian genre, in the two novels of Cyrano de Bergerac, Les États et Empires de la Lune et du Soleil, the novel of Gabriel de Foigny, La Terre australe connue, the Aventures de Télémaque by Fénelon and the three plays by Marivaux, L’île des esclaves, L’île de la raison et La Colonie. In the light of the dual significance of the term created by More, that of a place of nowhere (« ou-Topos »), but also that of a place of happiness (« eu-Topos »), we have divided the paper into two big parts, one devoted to the analysis of the utopian space and the other to the analysis of the utopian society. Plurivalent and heterogeneous, the utopian space pursues, in every work analyzed, some general principles such as the insularity, the otherness and the isolation, and, at the same time, all of them acquire special configurations which proves both the particular identity of the work chosen and the web of significances that binds them. The analysis of the utopian society is in itself a rich source of observations and conclusions and relies on three major coordinates: the otherness of the utopian society, its ideal nature and its implicit scrutiny of the human society. Behind these theoretical pillars we discover the actual description of the utopian society, with the portrait of the Utopian being, the trial of the human being, and the numerous economic, political and organizational aspects that characterize the entire community.

This project examines urban renewal efforts in Eisenhüttenstadt, a German city on the border between Germany and Poland founded in 1950 as a socialist utopian project. Originally called Stalinstadt, Eisenhüttenstadt was planned as a steel manufacturing hub and worker’s paradise. Its products would enable the rise of cities across the Eastern Bloc and its design, focused on the needs of young families, would be a model of humane urban living. Under East German rule the city thrived. Then, in 1991, came German reunification. Today Eisenhüttenstadt suffers from urban blight, massive unemployment, and depopulation. At the same time, state and private actors are working together to revitalize Eisenhüttenstadt, imprinting on the city a new utopianism as they transform it into a new urban paradigm: an environmentally sustainable city that caters to an aging and shrinking population.  My research uses ethnographic, archival, and visual methods to examine these efforts, and asks how new urban futures can be imagined in deindustrializing cities when traditional engines of growth disappear. I observe how architects and municipal officials draw on Eisenhüttenstadt’s legacy of socialist ethics in urban planning—prioritizing an attention to community cohesion, population density, and the economical use of resources both natural and financial—as they address contemporary crises: unemployment and urban emptiness, rising energy costs, an aging population, and an influx of Syrian refugees. My two primary theoretical interests are, broadly, temporality and materiality. I ask how the 20th century’s industrial and material legacies are being reimagined and redeveloped, what logics stand behind those changes, and how those logics—and legacies—are understood by the people who encounter them. I ask how people use their interactions with the built environment to situate themselves in history, as well as how people’s perception of the past influences their imagination of urban futures. And I ask how, as federal mandates are interpreted at the local level, the socialist ethics which influenced Eisenhüttenstadt’s officials reemerge in the present day. I do so over the course of five chapters. Chapter One examines how socialist urban planning was defined in East Germany and how residents of Eisenhüttenstadt experienced the transition from socialism to capitalism. Chapter Two focuses on one element of the urban landscape called the Wohnkomplex and how it is being rebuilt, according to socialist logics, to accommodate the needs of the elderly. Chapter Three examines street names, and how history comes to be experienced or erased in the urban landscape. Chapter Four examines street lamps, whose partial privatization in 2015 set off robust debate about the failure of local government to prioritize citizens’ well-being over financial gain. Chapter Five focuses on the refugee housing crisis and how residents and municipal officials in Eisenhüttenstadt responded to the unexpected need to house thousands of new residents

This study considers how fundamental shifts in the relationship between religion, community, and public life are reflected in the archaeological record of four excavation sites in the Amana Colonies—a former school (1870-present), a church (1865-present), a domestic outhouse (1860s-present), and a remote farmstead (1860s-1890s). The Colonies are a collection of seven villages founded and settled by German pietists in the mid-nineteenth century. In 1932 this community voluntarily abandoned the religiously-led communal lifestyle that it had practiced in Iowa for 76 years—a fundamental alteration in community structure that became known as the Great Change. This study was initially formulated to examine material culture—specifically privy refuse—from before and after the Great Change with an eye toward identifying shifts in the kinds, amounts, or origins of material goods used and discarded by Amana citizens. Though the original questions posed by the study could not be fully addressed with the data available, the sampled sites did offer several insights into the ways that the Amana citizens used space and material culture before and after the communal period. Artifacts collected at a domestic outhouse suggest that the structure had been re-purposed for use in the disposal of food preparation waste after the Great Change. A comparison of artifact densities between the sites indicated a high intensity of use of the grounds of the church, likely reflective of the community’s organization around religious identity. Finally, an analysis of the relative frequency of three types of artifacts found in quantity at all sites (metal, glass, and ceramic) led to the conclusion that the remote farmstead likely reflects a lifeway outside the Amana norm, and may suggest the ways in which Amana material usage was shaped by communal living.