{"id":4207,"date":"2024-02-14T15:54:27","date_gmt":"2024-02-14T15:54:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/learningspaces.dundee.ac.uk\/dundeeuniculture\/?p=4207"},"modified":"2025-09-15T10:46:30","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T09:46:30","slug":"ustopias-utopias-dystopias-and-margaret-atwood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/culture\/ustopias-utopias-dystopias-and-margaret-atwood\/","title":{"rendered":"Ustopias: Utopias, Dystopias And Margaret Atwood"},"content":{"rendered":"

A collaboration between Illustration students and the English Department is on show in the Dundee Central Library. This special exhibition is a follow up to last year\u2019s \u2018Blazing Worlds! Science Fiction by Women\u2019. It features artwork from the Michael Kirkham\u2019s Level 2 Illustration students from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design and is based on the PhD topic of English postgraduate researcher Rachel Harrison, on women\u2019s science fiction writing, in collaboration with supervisor Keith Williams.<\/p>\n

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This word-and-image exhibition responds to the work of Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/em> and other speculative fictions about the future. In particular, it responds to Atwood\u2019s notion of \u2018Ustopia\u2019 and the danger that idealistic plans for reforming human society, real or imagined, can lead to unintended consequences:\u00a0\u2018Ustopia is a word I made up by combining utopia and dystopia \u2013 the imagined perfect society and its opposite \u2013 because, in my view, each contains a latent version of the other.\u2019 Margaret Atwood, \u2018Dire Cartographies: The Roads to Ustopia\u2019, In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination <\/em>(London: Virago Press, 2011), pp.66-98 (66)<\/p>\n

The exhibition is in two parts:<\/p>\n

The first part shows artwork illustrating student responses to Atwood\u2019s concept and her analysis of the ironic reversibility of utopian visions, fictional or historical.<\/p>\n

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The second includes the student\u2019s own visions of \u2018perfect\u2019 utopian worlds which also contain the dangerous potential to become their dystopian opposites.<\/p>\n