Our seminar will center on utopian literature and thought in the late seventeenth century and eighteenth century in the light of contemporary utopian theory.  Topics covered will include utopia as social critique, utopian satire and lampoon, gendered spaces in utopia, rationality and nonsense, the literature of colonization and exploration, and the ways in which the rhetorical construction of ideal selfhoods in these works serves to exclude—or even eliminate— individuals and populations outside Enlightenment norms.  Most of the seminar’s final weeks will be devoted to fostering student research and writing, and to crafting seminar papers with a view to publication or dissertation work.