Creating Criptopia: Disability and Queerness in Utopia Literature

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

In 1516 Sir Thomas More’s Utopia founded a new literary genre: utopian literature. Since then, many different versions of utopia have been imagined in both fiction and non-fiction literature. But where do queer and disabled people fit into these utopias? Too often, they don’t fit at all. Over the years, however, a few radical authors have envisioned the seemingly impossible: a utopia for the queer and disabled—a criptopia. In this course, we will engage with a variety of criptopian texts, using queer, crip, and disability theory to inform our pursuit of questions such as, What happens to the queer and disabled in traditional utopias? What defines a criptopia? How would our society have to change to become a criptopia? And is a truly inclusive utopia even possible, or do utopias necessarily create outsiders? At the end of the semester, students will put these questions to the test by designing their own inclusive utopias/criptopias. Can you envision a utopia with no outsiders?