University Park, Pennsylvania, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics and Epistemology
  • Editors' Message
    with Stephanie Peebles Tavera, A. Elisabeth Reichel, and Manuel Sousa Oliveira
    Utopian Studies 34 (3): 582-585. 2024.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Editors’ MessageJennifer A. Wagner-Lawlor, Editor, Stephanie Peebles Tavera, Assistant Editor, A. Elisabeth Reichel, Book Review Editor, and Manuel Sousa Oliveira, Editorial AssistantWelcome to Utopian Studies 34.3, the final issue for 2023. We want to start by thanking subscribers (and of course authors!) for their patience as this new editorial team has worked its way, together, through a new “look” and a new format for the journal…Read more
  • Editors' Message
    with Stephanie Peebles Tavera, A. Elisabeth Reichel, and Manuel Sousa Oliveira
    Utopian Studies 34 (2): 345-349. 2023.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Editors’ MessageJennifer A. Wagner-Lawlor, Editor, Stephanie Peebles Tavera, Assistant Editor, A. Elisabeth Reichel, Book Review Editor, and Manuel Sousa Oliveira, Editorial AssistantThis second issue of Utopian Studies 34 comprises a variety of historically and theoretically grounded contributions, ranging in time and place from medieval Persia to Cold War America to contemporary global media culture. The issue opens with a surprisi…Read more
  • Editors’ message
    with Stephanie Peebles Tavera and A. Elisabeth Reichel
    Utopian Studies 34 (1). 2023.
  •  1
    Editors' Message
    with Stephanie Peebles Tavera, A. Elisabeth Reichel, and Manuel Sousa Oliveira
    Utopian Studies 34 (1). 2023.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Editors’ MessageJennifer A. Wagner-Lawlor, Editor, Stephanie Peebles Tavera, Assistant Editor, A. Elisabeth Reichel, Book Review Editor, and Manuel Sousa Oliveira, Editorial AssistantThis issue of Utopian Studies: The Journal of the Society for Utopian Studies comes to you under new editorial leadership. Before introducing ourselves, I wish first of all to extend thanks to former editor Dr. Nicole Pohl (Oxford Brookes University), wh…Read more
  •  7
    While the words “utopia” and “anticipation” frequently appear together in discussions of the concepts of utopia and dystopia, little attention to the relationship of Anticipation Studies to utopian studies exists. Moreover, the relevance of literature and the arts to Anticipation Studies seems almost invisible. This essay focuses on the structuring of the original utopian narrative, Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, in order to understand how this seminal text conceptualizes utopia’s relation to past, p…Read more
  •  5
    It is a common socio-moral practice to appeal to reasons as a guiding force for one’s actions. However, it is an intriguing possibility that this practice is based on fiction: reasons cannot or do not motivate the majority of actions—especially moral ones. Rather, pre-reflective evaluative processes are likely responsible for moral actions. Such a view faces two major challenges: i.) pre-reflective judgements are commonly thought of as inflexible in nature, and thus they cannot be the cause of t…Read more
  •  28
    The Persistence of Utopia: Plasticity and Difference from Roland Barthes to Catherine Malabou
    Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy 25 (2): 67-86. 2017.
    The theorizing of utopia is a persistent theme throughout several generations of the French continental tradition, and alongside the process theory of Alfred North Whitehead to a large degree recuperates the concept of utopia from its supposed dismissal by Marx and his intellectual descendants. Most recently, attention to the notion of plasticity, popularized by Catherine Malabou, extends speculation on utopian possibility. Compelled to answer to Marx’s denigration of utopia as fantasy, the tend…Read more