Lori Wheeler

Oh the Places I’ll Go

     When I signed up for this seminar in the spring, my focus was still on literature as a content to be studied and shared with secondary students. I hoped to learn about utopian paradigms and be able bring them back to students as alternatives and contrasts to the dystopian texts they hold so dear in their literary lives. Having limited experiences with utopias myself, due in part to the inaccessibility I experienced as an undergraduate student, I came into the seminar hoping that my decade of teaching experience would serve as scaffolding for me to engage with course texts. I also hoped that in discovering utopian texts anew, I would be able to build reading ladders to scaffold student literacy to include utopias as well as dystopias.

     As a middle level teacher, I feel as if my purpose for the past twelve years as a teacher has been to develop student literacy practices that bridge the gap between entertainment and canonical texts as literature of ideas. I need students to engage in the texts they read, but how incredible would it be to show them that higher level canonical texts can be both entertaining and vehicles for advancement of thought and ideas? How great would it be if students could see a piece of literature as entertaining because of its own intrinsic value but also because it is entertaining for a text to move your ideas beyond your own consciousness? Although it seems too lofty a goal, this is what I attempt at the middle level. I love it when I can develop reading ladders (scaffolded texts) that move students from young adult-themed texts to canonical texts. I appreciate the way that Amy Sasser addressed this same concern in her 2013 final essay. She discusses the absence of utopias in the young adult canon and looks for ways to bring them into the discussion.

     Having taken the time in this seminar to explore utopian texts more, I think the combination of utopian and dystopian texts allows students to make this transition in a genre that provides a venue for students to recognize the imaginative and practical relevance of the canon.  If secondary teachers can bridge the gap between dystopias and utopias and discuss them as belonging to a genre with shared characteristics, students are able to explore both types of texts in search of their own utopias. It also moves students to composition: they begin to consider their own specific utopian features and may possibly appreciate the opportunity to articulate their version of utopia in a written assignment.  This blended genre connects as well in the secondary setting to the government and history classes in which students are enrolled. When we teach utopias and dystopias together, students are given the opportunity to  appreciate literature of ideas more and see how literature can and has moved influential leaders throughout history.

     As I plan to return to a new school year in a new position, I will be able to share my ideas for utopias and dystopias with the teachers I will now serve. I will be able to use the utopian reading ladder as support for teachers on my campus in much the same way I would have used them in my own classroom, but moving into an administrative position, this reading ladder will have a greater use for me. I will be able to show the connection between popular YA literature and the canon, perhaps even more than I would have in my own classroom. One of the most striking ways utopias will serve me as an educator will be as a professional extension of my second research post.

     The second post I made claims that the moment a character’s name is given or taken from them marks the transition between utopia and dystopia.  It is in utopias that characters have the freedom of self-owned names, sometimes even self-selected names. Dystopias are the opposite: the names characters do have are given to them by someone else, and / or their chosen names are taken from them. The more I immerse myself in both utopias and dystopias, I see the naming event as a common feature in both texts as dystopias move toward utopias and vice versa. While it may not be as critical to a text as other features of the genre such as setting and character roles, the naming event allows readers and critics to analyze a character’s growth and consciousness of their community’s paradigm. In an earlier class, I explored this idea but could not find literary criticism on the topic; in fact, the only research I could find to support my opinion came from sociologists and psychologists. What I thought might be developed into a whole section of my twenty-plus page research only amounted to one paragraph. I was disappointed at the time, but now I realize that the idea needed to wait until I had more exposure to the utopian side of the genre to develop it more fully. I anticipate that when I complete the program and need another “project” to work on that I will return to this idea to create conference proposals and perhaps a journal submission. I truly think I have hit on something significant with this idea.

      Another idea that powerfully strikes me as a further research topic when reflecting on this semester is the idea of utopia being a Western phenomenon. Course objective 3F asks if utopias are limited to Western civilization or if they can represent multiculturalism. I think the answer to this question is both yes and no. Coming off my semester studying Romanticism, I can see the idea of utopias as Romantic and very much a Western concept. Instead of accepting what exists and learning to live and operate within it, Western culture feels empowered to break off and create their own communities and governing systems. History has proven that Westerners do well to move toward utopia so long as the people moving toward them are similar to themselves.

     The positive news, however, is that Western civilization has become more tolerant of all cultures and considers itself (this is especially true for the U.S.) as a melting pot that embodies multiculturalism. I am only recently considering this question in detail. I think much like the concept of naming, multiculturalism needs to be considered in the context of both utopias and dystopias. When considering both types of texts, multiculturalism is expressed more fully in popular dystopian texts within the YA culture, however the dystopian texts we have explored in class seem to ignore or dismiss any need for discussion about multiculturalism. Anthem does not begin to recognize or discuss the differences between members of the community because the solidarity of the community does not allow for the recognition of differences, and even Prometheus ignores multiculturalism when he focuses solely on himself, and Gaea in the periphery. He does not consider any future members of his community not existing within his own tradition. The utopian texts included in this course seem to dismiss the need for multiculturalism. Herland as an isolated community is never given the opportunity to consider multiculturalism in the common sense, although the men, as members of a different culture, are welcomed and even to a degree integrated into the culture of Herland. The society of Ecotopia disregards the need for multiculturalism as well. When the members of Soul City wanted to maintain their own communities, the citizens of Ecotopia did not fight them on that point because having a multicultural perspective did not add to their society, apparently. This dismissal seems to agree with the course objective that utopias are a Western conceptualization of privilege.

     On the other hand, the presence of multiculturalism in YA dystopias almost seems to be a requirement of those texts. The characters in YA dystopias come from diverse economic and social classes as well as ethnicities and educational backgrounds. As the characters move from dystopian societies toward utopian structures within the narratives, the inclusion of diversity within the new utopia is critical. From my perspective, this is an essential element of modern Western societies: to be as inclusive as possible. For YA audiences, dystopias are by definition multicultural. The Romantic idea of the Western world expects for people and characters to move toward union with one another, which means anyone living in that world. In fact, the U.S., as explained in the Preamble to the Constitution, established its government in such a way as to form a “more perfect union” of people and cultures. Today, this means that utopian and dystopian worlds must be multicultural. Multiculturalism as a Western ideal is more recognizable in YA texts because younger readers are so much more comfortable with diversity than their adult counterparts. I predict that as these readers age, general utopian and dystopian texts will begin to represent multiculturalism more.

     When I came to this course, I was ready to explore the utopian genre without examining dystopias too closely. I felt as if I had already had my fill of dystopias from reading so many YA dystopias. I felt very ready to move on to other genres and topics. To my great surprise, I have a renewed interest in YA dystopias from my exploration of utopias in this course. The interconnectedness of utopia and dystopia informs my analyses of YA dystopias and allows for greater understanding of their usefulness as an educator and a scholar. I am excited to see how far these ideas about utopias and dystopias will carry me in my pursuit of presentation and publication.