Envisioning American Utopias: Fictions of Science and Politics in Literature and Visual Culture

The volume discusses utopian representations of American society, and reflections of American political thought and vision in literature, film, and television. The articles address topics of ecology, urbanism, politics, society, and heroism. Specifically, the volume addresses texts by Paul Auster, Ernest Callenbach, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Herman Melville, Edgar Allen Poe, Sam Shepard, Alexis de Toqueville, James Welch, and Nathanael West, and television series like 24, and the Star Trek and Stargate franchises, as well as video games. Contributors include Sandra Beyer, Rasmus Damkjær Christensen, Antje Dallmann, Allison Davis-White Eyes, Martin Dalgaard Grøn, Reinhard Isensee, Berenike Jung, Philipp Kneis, Daniela Simon, Katarzyna Sobieraj, Renate Ulbrich, and Thomas Wagenknecht.