This volume contains the essays presented at the workshop 'Visualizing Utopia' held in May 2005, organized by Mary Kemperink and Willemien Roenhorst. The essays presented here discuss utopian thinking from 1890 until 1930. From the end of the eighteenth century, this utopian thinking developed from what can be called 'classic' utopianism into 'modern' utopianism. Utopianism unmarked by temporality made way for a tale situated in time - future time. Thus what was first regarded as merely a thought experiment gradually assumed the character of a real political programme. In their view of the new world and new people, writers, artists, architects, social reformers, cultural critics, politicians, etc., would often draw on representations already present in the culture. These could be biblical representations, such as those of the Apocalypse, Christ the Saviour and earthly paradise, or ancient myths, such as those of the Age of Gold, Arcadia, the sun-drenched world of Gnosticism and the Wagnerian mythological universe. The workshop concentrated on the following two aspects: the way in which the future Utopia and the path that would lead to its realization was given shape in the artistic field as well as in the non-artistic field, and the question to which culturally rooted concepts these representations were related. This double line of approach created the opportunity for specialized researchers from different disciplines - history, cultural history, art history, history of architecture, literary history - to discuss utopianism as it manifested itself in Europe and the United States at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century.

Essays that critically evaluate America’s domestic and foreign policy landscape since President Obama took office. President Barack Obama was elected to office on a wave of hope. With his tenure as President of the United States now concluded it is time to take stock of his record at home and abroad. The Bitter Taste of Hope is a collection of essays that critically evaluate America’s domestic landscape on the one hand, particularly new social movements, and the nation’s foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, on the other. Stephen Eric Bronner engages a wide-ranging set of political and ideological conflicts that defined the “Age of Obama,” especially the most pressing international concerns that have developed in accord with an increasingly globalized world. Bronner illuminates not only well-known events like the American involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, the plight of the Palestinians, and the Arab Spring but also matters about which the general public knows little such as the national hopes of the Circassians, the complexities of Sudan, and the pitiful existence endured by the Coptic Christians of Cairo. Clearly written, lively in its style, interdisciplinary in conception and timely in its message, The Bitter Taste of Hope will undoubtedly prove required reading for activists and academics alike.

In this sequel to Bernard Suits’ timeless classic philosophical work The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia, published in its full and unabridged form for the first time, Suits continues to explore some of our most fundamental philosophical questions, including the value of sport and games, and their relationship to the good life. In Return of the Grasshopper, Suits puts his theoretical cards on the table, exploring the in-depth implications of his definition of utopia, assessing the merits of a gamified philosophy, and explaining how games can provide an existential balm against the fear of death. Perhaps most importantly, for the first time in print, Suits reveals his underlying worldview: that humanity is forever fated to endure a cyclical existence of privation, brought on by material scarcity, and boredom, resulting from material plenitude. An essential companion to The Grasshopper, this edition includes an introductory chapter that puts Suits’ life and work into context, helping the reader to understand why Suits has had such a profound influence on contemporary philosophy and how his ideas still provide powerful insight into the human condition. This book is important reading for anybody with an interest in the philosophy of sport, leisure and play, political philosophy, ethics, existentialism or utopian studies.

How do readers transform Utopia? How do they manipulate imaginary worlds to gain new perspectives of their own worlds? In order to answer these and other questions, this study employs a wide spectrum of reader-response approaches to define the nature and impact of utopian literature.

A distinguished group of philosophers discuss a wide range of issues about games, sport, and play - a topic largely neglected in recent philosophical literature. They ask consider what games and sports have in common, pose questions about their value, and add philosophical voices to the on-going debates in game studies.

Visualizing Loss in Latin America engages with a varied corpus of textual, visual, and cultural material with specific intersections with the natural world, arguing that Latin American literary and cultural production goes beyond ecocriticism as a theoretical framework of analysis. Gisela Heffes poses the following crucial question: How do we construct a conceptual theoretical apparatus to address issues of value, meaning, tradition, perspective, and language, that contributes substantially to environmental thinking, and that is part and parcel of Latin America? The book draws attention to ecological inequality and establishes a biopolitical, ethics-based reading of Latin American art, film, and literature that operates at the intersection of the built environment and urban settings. Heffes suggests that the aesthetic praxis that emerges in/from Latin America is permeated with a rhetoric of waste—a significant trait that overwhelmingly defines it.

Data Visualization for Design Thinking helps you make better maps. Treating maps as applied research, you’ll be able to understand how to map sites, places, ideas, and projects, revealing the complex relationships between what you represent, your thinking, the technology you use, the culture you belong to, and your aesthetic practices. More than 100 examples illustrated with over 200 color images show you how to visualize data through mapping. Includes five in-depth cases studies and numerous examples throughout.