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Mapping Dreams: British and North-American Utopianism |
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- In the next three years the team of researchers committed to the project "Mapping Dreams: British and North-American Utopianism" will develop the main lines of research that have been pursued since it started in 2004. On the whole, the team's research interests remain the same. They include: contemporary utopianism and dystopianism; the city as utopia; the idea of America as utopia; 19th and 20th-century feminist utopianism; utopian communities in Victorian Britain; utopia and the pastoral-georgic imaginary in eighteenth-century Britain.
- Divergent interests and conceptual frameworks notwithstanding, team members share a concern with the connections between the specific textual realizations of utopianism and the concept of (British and American) national identity, taken as a historical process of ceaseless redefinition and challenge.
- Ongoing activities include the publication of the e-journal Spaces of Utopia (3 issues per year) and the organization of the Utopian Encounters (twice a year), both undertakings providing valuable interfaces between Portuguese and foreign academics. In the same spirit, researchers will of course continue to present papers and publish articles as active members of the international academic community of Utopian Studies. Five team members have had papers accepted for the 8th international conference of the Utopian Studies Society / Europe to take place in Plymouth, UK, in July 2007. Making the most of the contacts developed over the course of the last few years, the team plans to host the Utopian Studies Society international conference in Oporto in 2009 and to edit a selection of the proceedings, just as it did in 2004 (two volumes published in 2005 and 2006, Utopia Matters: Theory, Politics, Literature and the Arts, and Nowhere Somewhere: Writing, Space and the Construction of Utopia).
- In the course of the project, a select group of young researchers doing their M.A. or Ph.D. degrees under the supervision of team members will be engaged with the project's work, for mutual benefit.
- The team will also undertake to further the knowledge of the topic of utopianism outside academic circles, bringing the result of their work to the awareness of society at large. They will accordingly co-organize and participate in public sessions on utopianism, both in the form of debates and small conferences, such as the ones that took place at the Ateneu Comercial do Porto and the Clube Literário do Porto in June and July 2007. Efforts are being made to extend such initiatives to other cities, taking advantage of the opportunities provided by the network of public libraries.
- A set of workshops held at Universidade do Porto in December 2006, where representatives of the universities of London (Royal Holloway), Limerick and Bologna took part, provided the opportunity for the group members to design a thematic network on utopianism, SOCIUS (Social Change and Interdisciplinary Utopian Studies). The group members applied for European funding for this network within the COST programme. This network will eventually lead to the planning of an MA and PhD European course.
- Team Members
- Iolanda Cristina Freitas Ramos
- Jorge Miguel Bastos da Silva
- Maria de Fátima de Sousa Basto Vieira de Melo Costa
- Maria Isabel da Cunha Donas Botto
- Maria Teresa Lobo Castilho
- Sara Graça Silva
- Teresa Botelho
Other Researchers
- José Fernando Freitas Mota
- Márcia Diana Fernandes Lemos
- Maria Aline Salgueiro Seabra Ferreira
- Miguel Ramalhete
- Paula Fernanda Alves Gomes
- Susana Costa
- Ana Figueira
- Isabel Oliveira Martins
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Iolanda Ramos
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Research Groups 
