Jennifer Burwell – författare

Notes on Nowhere was first published in 1997. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.The term utopia implies both "good place" and "nowhere." Since Sir Thomas More wrote Utopia in 1516, debates about utopian models of society have sought to understand the implications of these somewhat contradictory definitions. In Notes on Nowhere, author Jennifer Burwell uses a cross section of contemporary feminist science fiction to examine the political and literary meaning of utopian writing and utopian thought.Burwell provides close readings of the science fiction novels of five feminist writers-Marge Piercy, Sally Gearhart, Joanna Russ, Octavia Butler, and Monique Wittig-and poses questions central to utopian writing: Do these texts promote a tradition in which narratives of the ideal society have been used to hide rather than reveal violence, oppression, and social divisions? Can a feminist critical utopia offer a departure from this tradition by using utopian narratives to expose contradiction and struggle as central aspects of the utopian impulse? What implications do these questions have for those who wish to retain the utopian impulse for emancipatory political uses?As one way of answering these questions, Burwell compares two "figures" that inform utopian writing and social theory. The first is the traditional abstract "revolutionary" subject who contradicts existing conditions and who points us to the ideal body politic. The second, "resistant," subject is partial, concrete, and produced by conditions rather than operating outside of them. In analyzing contemporary changes in the subject's relationship to social space, Burwell draws from and revises "standpoint approaches" that tie visions of social transformation to a group's position within existing conditions.By exploring the dilemmas, antagonisms, and resolutions within the critical literary feminist utopia, Burwell creates connections to a similar set of problems and resolutions characterizing "nonliterary" discourses of social transformation such as feminism, gay and lesbian studies, and Marxism. Notes on Nowhere makes an original, significant, and persuasive contribution to our understanding of the political and literary dimensions of the utopian impulse in literature and social theory.Jennifer Burwell teaches in the Department of English at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.

In a culture that often understands formal experimentation or theoretical argument to be antithetical to pleasure, Atom Egoyan has nevertheless consistently appealed to wide audiences around the world. If films like The Adjuster, Calendar, Exotica, and The Sweet Hereafter have ensured him international cult status as one of the most revered of all contemporary directors, Egoyan's forays into installation art and opera have provided evidence of his versatility and confirmed his talents.Image and Territory: Essays on Atom Egoyan is both scholarly and accessible. Indispensable for the scholar, student, and fan, this collection of new essays and interviews from leading film and media scholars unpacks the central arguments, tensions, and paradoxes of his work and traces their evolution. It also locates his work within larger intellectual and artistic currents in order to consider how he takes up and answers critical debates in politics, philosophy, and aesthetics. Most importantly, it addresses how his work is both intellectually engaging and emotionally moving.