Utopia Discourse with Ruth Austin

The first in a series of lunchtime talks organised as part of the Venturing Beyond cultural programme at Somerset House.

Ruth Austin's research and teaching interests are focused on twentieth-century literature and film with a particular interest in responses to literature and film to the First and Second World Wars as well as twentieth century dystopian and utopian writing. Currently Ruth is looking at the German Occupation of Paris during the Second World War and in particular at the way in which Cocteau's work from the period can be seen to engage with the city under the curfew. Ruth is the founding organiser of the Cities After Hours colloquium which brings together brings together researchers from across UCL and beyond considering the city "after hours" from a variety of disciplinary perspectives.

In this talk, Ruth will reflect further on her research, in particular on how the contemporary can be explored in the imagined futures of both fictional utopias and dystopias. Taking Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland (1915) as a starting point - a text which imagines a community made up solely of women - Ruth will consider the presence and absence of the city in this work which engages with issues relating to gender identity in the early part of the twentieth century. 

Image: Photographic portrait of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, c. 1900