2016 marks exactly 500 years since the English humanist and statesman Thomas More published in the city Leuven his world-famous book Utopia. Leuven is celebrating this milestone with a major city festival featuring exhibitions, street art, film, music, theatre, dance, literature, lectures and city walks. The cornerstone is the international, art historical exhibition 'In Search of Utopia' at M - Museum Leuven. The festival will officially start on Monday, 26 September 2016 after a festive opening weekend on 24 and 25 September and will end on 17 January 2017. In the book 'In Search of Utopia' the reader is introduced to the world of More and his friends, with the ideals and dreams of the times. The desire of far-away horizons and the cobweb of new sciences that patiently layed upon the reality. Magnificent works of the 15th- and 16th Century artists: Quinten Metsijs, Hans Holbein, Jan Gossaert en Albrecht Dürer are being brought together in this exciting and intriguing story. It shows in an unexceeded way the imagination of an ideal world.

In Searching for Utopia, Hanna Holborn Gray reflects on the nature of the university from the perspective of today’s research institutions. In particular, she examines the ideas of former University of California president Clark Kerr as expressed in The Uses of the University, written during the tumultuous 1960s. She contrasts Kerr’s vision of the research-driven “multiveristy” with the traditional liberal educational philosophy espoused by Kerr’s contemporary, former University of Chicago president Robert Maynard Hutchins. Gray’s insightful analysis shows that both Kerr, widely considered a realist, and Hutchins, seen as an oppositional idealist, were utopians. She then surveys the liberal arts tradition and the current state of liberal learning in the undergraduate curriculum within research universities. As Gray reflects on major trends and debates since the 1960s, she illuminates the continuum of utopian thinking about higher education over time, revealing how it applies even in today’s climate of challenge.

An illustrated history of a perennially powerful idea: the quest for the ideal society from classical times to the present day.

On April 4, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France and The New York Public Library will present a major exhibition, displaying more than 400 books, manuscripts, drawings, prints, maps, photographs, and other original material from both libraries. This work is the catalog for the American exhibition. Through stirring essays by Roland Schaer and other leading scholars on utopian thought, the book will wxplore the long tradition of thought and art that has envisioned the "perfect place,"moving from classical antiquity to the present. It is conveniently divided into four parts: I. The Classical and Judeo-Christian models for the Western Idea of Utopia; II. The Flowering of Utopian Imagination from Thomas Moore to the Enlightenment; III. Utopia in History; and IV. The Utopias and Dystopias of the 20th Century. Along with a dazzling selection of paintings, illuminations, and other items from the Bibliotheque Nationale's noted collection of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, The New York Public Library contributions include first or important editions of seminal works of utopian thought, political science, history, and fiction since the invention of printing. As well, The New York Public Library contributes beautiful illustrations from its collection of 16th century drawings of Theodore de Bry, posters from the Soviet Union and the 1939 World's Fair in New York, engravings from colonial times, and illuminationed manuscripts. Lavishly illustrated with many full color representations, this book will appeal to scholars and students of philosophy, history, and art, in addition to general readers curious about utopian thought.

There are countless milestones that have paved the path to this moment and many that lie ahead that could lead us to a utopian future... with your help. This book presents over 100 of them to inspire hope and action for that utopian future we can create together.

This book endeavours to understand the seemingly direct link between utopianism and the USA, discussing novels that have never been brought together in this combination before, even though they all revolve around intentional communities: Imlay’s The Emigrants (1793), Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance (1852), Howland’s Papas Own Girl (1874), Griggs’s Imperium in Imperio (1899), and Du Bois’s The Quest of the Silver Fleece (1911). They relate nation and utopia not by describing perfect societies, but by writing about attempts to immediately live radically different lives. Signposting the respective communal history, the readings provide a literary perspective to communal studies, and add to a deeply necessary historicization for strictly literary approaches to US utopianism, and for studies that focus on Pilgrims/Puritans/Founding Fathers as utopian practitioners. This book therefore highlights how the authors evaluated the USA’s utopian potential and traces the nineteenth-century development of the utopian imagination from various perspectives.