Wastelands and Wonderlands: Utopias and Dystopias in Film and Literature

Explores a wide range of utopias and dystopias in film and literature and their important relationship to our present moment.

Wastelands and Wonderlands challenges readers, in these uniquely dystopian times, to reevaluate their ideas about utopia and dystopia. Bringing together film, literary, and utopian studies scholars from across the world, this interdisciplinary collection explores a wide range of utopias and dystopias in film and literature, from visionaries as varied as William Morris and George Lucas to such fresh new and distinctive voices as Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah and N. K. Jemisin. Contributors dismantle myths about utopian and dystopian film, literature, and television and explore the nature of utopian and dystopian fiction and its important relationship to our present moment. Whether through ecocritical work, work aimed at decolonizing utopian studies, debates about our relationship with technology and the nonhuman, forms of utopian hope and pessimism, or new thinking about cinematic and literary techniques and production, these essays offer fresh insight into the subject area and something to interest any reader.