February 24, 2003
Utopia scholar to deliver annual UCSC faculty
research lecture
By Scott Rappaport
UCSC professor of history Jonathan Beecher will deliver the 36th annual
Faculty Research Lecture on Tuesday, March 11, at 8 p.m. in the Second
Stage Theater on campus. The event is free and open to the public.
|
"I write on weird and obscure
topics, but I try to write for a wide audience," Jonathan Beecher
said in speculating on why he was selected by UCSC faculty members. |
Beecher was selected by UCSC faculty members for the prestigious honor
given in recognition of outstanding research achievements at the university.
One of the worlds leading intellectual historians, Beecher will
speak on the topic: "Two Concepts of Utopia."
"Utopian speculation has been a vehicle--not only for imagining
better worlds, but also for criticizing the world we live in."
Beecher noted. "Theres something in the utopian enterprise
that we desperately need."
Beecher said that utopias have had a bad name since the collapse of
the Soviet Union. He added that many critics of utopias misunderstood
what the great writers in the utopian tradition have been saying.
"Its been said by many critics that someone who believes
in utopia today is widely considered out to lunch, or out to kill,"
Beecher explained. "I think that modern utopian thinking has been
gravely compromised by the ideologically motivated wars of the 20th
century, by the totalitarian regimes that claimed to be inspired by
utopian ideas."
Beecher described his upcoming lecture as a trip into the past, beginning
with Thomas More, who invented the genre of utopia in 1516, and ending
with Ernst Bloch, the late 20th-century author of The Principle of
Hope. Along the way, Beecher will cover the Russian anti-utopian
writers Fyodor Dostoevsky and Yevgeny Zamyatin, as well as Jonathan
Swifts Gullivers Travels, the work of 18th-century
French thinker Denis Diderot, the late 19th-century Victorian utopian
William Morris, and the 19th-century early French utopian socialist
Charles Fourier.
"Its a broad topic that allows me to talk about a lot of
writers that interest me," Beecher noted. "I think it should
be broadly accessible."
Although he said his first reaction to being selected as the annual
speaker by the Academic Senate was one of amazement, Beecher speculated
on why he thought he was chosen.
"The history that I write is readable," he observed. "I
write on weird and obscure topics, but I try to write for a wide audience."
Beecher published his first book, The Utopian Vision of Charles
Fourier, shortly after his arrival at Santa Cruz in 1970. In 1986,
he finished Charles Fourier: The Visionary and His World, a monumental
study grounded in years of archival research, that has now been translated
into both French and Japanese. In 2001, he published a second major
biography, Victor Considerant and the Rise and Fall of French Romantic
Socialism.
An inspiring lecturer in French, European, and Russian intellectual
history, Beecher received the Alumni Associations Distinguished
Teaching Award in 1988. He is currently at work on a study of the history
and tradition of anti-utopian writing, as well as a volume about Herman
Melville.
Beechers excitement and enthusiasm for new research is contagious.
"Im an archive rat," he confessed. "I recently
learned of a great archival collection in Russia. Its in the old
central party archive of the Communist party--letters, manuscripts,
and documents of early French utopian ideas--all created at the beginning
of the Soviet Union."
"I read about its existence in the French newspaper Le Monde,"
Beecher added. "Its the history of European socialism buried
in an archive. All of it had been inaccessible to Western scholars until
after the fall of the Soviet Union. I want to inventory it for scholars
of French history, and Ive just written an article telling the
story of the formation of the collection."
For more information about the lecture, contact Susanna Wrangell
at (831) 459-2086.
Return to Front Page
|