Postgraduate Course: Utopia and the Future (fusion online) (EFIE11287)
Course Outline
| School | Edinburgh Futures Institute |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
| Course type | Online Distance Learning |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 10 |
ECTS Credits | 5 |
| Summary | Utopia has a long history in scholarship, and recent years have seen it increasingly used as a conceptual and analytic framing for understanding contemporary crises and global challenges.
This interdisciplinary course will introduce you to the scholarship of utopia, and support you to apply it to a topic or complex challenge area of your own. It will explore how the concept of utopia has shifted over the centuries, how it might support the analysis of contemporary society, and how it might offer new ways of building hope for the future. |
| Course description |
The course is part of the MSc Education Futures, but will have relevance to you whatever programme you are studying, if you wish to pursue the application of interdisciplinary scholarship on the theme of utopia.
The course will introduce you to the concept of utopia and to utopia as method. It will include a series of 'deep dives' into applications of the term across a variety of disciplines and complex challenge areas. These will vary by year but may include the political science of utopia, utopia as method, utopia in education reform, utopia and AI, the history of utopian thought, climate and utopia, quantified utopias, literary utopia, utopia and creativity, utopia in theology and utopia in architecture.
Teaching includes structured online activities including supported reading groups and image-sharing over the two week pre-intensive period. The two-day intensive will consist of short lectures, discussions, creative activities and an 'assignment fair'. There is asynchronous 'drop in' support during the post-intensive period when you are working on your assignment.
Through this assignment, you will be supported to apply utopian thought and utopia as method to a challenge area of your own - for example education policy, climate change, global justice or technology acceleration.
Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) - Online Fusion Course Delivery Information:
The Edinburgh Futures Institute will teach this course in a way that enables online and on-campus students to study together. This approach (our 'fusion' teaching model) offers students flexible and inclusive ways to study, and the ability to choose whether to be on-campus or online at the level of the individual course. It also opens up ways for diverse groups of students to study together regardless of geographical location. To enable this, the course will use technologies to record and live-stream student and staff participation during their teaching and learning activities. Students should note that their interactions may be recorded and live-streamed. There will, however, be options to control whether or not your video and audio are enabled.
As part of your course, you will need access to a personal computing device. Unless otherwise stated activities will be web browser based and as a minimum we recommend a device with a physical keyboard and screen that can access the internet.
|
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
|
Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
Course Delivery Information
|
| Academic year 2024/25, Available to all students (SV1)
|
Quota: 10 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
100
(
Lecture Hours 3,
Supervised Practical/Workshop/Studio Hours 8,
Online Activities 3,
Formative Assessment Hours 1,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 2,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
83 )
|
| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
|
| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Summative Assessment:
The course will be assessed by means of the following assessment components:
1) 1500 Word Illustrated Assignment on Chosen Challenge Area (100%)
The assignment will ask students to apply Levitas's 'utopia as method' to a topic or challenge area relevant to their programme of study. Students on Education Futures, for example, might focus on education for climate change, the design of future learning spaces, universal access to education, decolonisation of education, childrens' digital futures or another topic of their choice. Students on other programmes will be able choose areas relevant to their studies. In most cases, it will be expected that students would use one of the course's 'deep dive' topics to inform their choice. Additional materials to support this will be provided post-intensive.
Students will work individually to produce a 1500 word illustrated assignment on their chosen challenge area. They will be required to structure the assignment in the following way with three sections:
1) Define and justify the topic, explaining - with references - how they see this as having relevance to utopian thought. (500 words)
2) Apply Levitas's 'utopia as method' to the chosen area, structuring the analysis according to Levitas's three phases 1) archaeology, 2) ontology, 3) architecture. Guidance will be given on how to do this during the course. (1000 words)
3) Source, create or generate 5 images which represent what a preferable future relevant to the topic might look like. The images should be labelled in a way which makes clear their connection to the analysis, and how they have been sourced. |
| Feedback |
Formative feedback will provided during the intensive period, when students discuss initial assignment ideas with the academic team during the 'assignment fair'. Student who are unable to attend the assignment fair will be encouraged to seek feedback from the course organiser.
Written summative feedback will be given to individuals on their final assignment. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate a critical understanding of contemporary scholarship of utopia.
- Be able to describe the relevance of utopian thought to a range of cultural, social and political contexts.
- Integrate knowledge from diverse disciplines to develop, evaluate and apply utopian thinking to specific social and political challenges.
- Develop creative and imaginative approaches to envisioning and representing utopia.
- Develop creative and imaginative approaches to envisioning and representing utopia.
|
Reading List
Indicative Reading List:
Bayne, Sian. 2023. Digital Education Utopia. Learning, Media and Technology. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2023.2262382
Grek, S., Tichenor, M., & Bandola-Gill, J. (2023). Numbers as Utopia: Sustainable Development Goals and the making of quantified futures. British Journal of Politics and International Relations. https://doi.org/10.1177/13691481231210385
Levitas, Ruth. 2013. Utopia as Method: The Imaginary Reconstitution of Society. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan UK.
Thaler, Mathias. 2022. No Other Planet: Utopian Visions for a Climate-Changed World. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.
Wegner, Phillip E. 2021. 'Escaping The Repetition Of Catastrophe: On Abensour's Utopianism'. Cultural Critique 111 (1): 168-81. https://doi.org/10.1353/cul.2021.0017. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Mindset: the course will support students to develop a strongly critical yet hopeful perspective on how to make a difference in the world. It will help them build confidence in their own ability to be innovative, lifelong learners able to take intellectual risks and act ethically.
Skills: the course will provide students with the opportunity to develop and consolidate their skills in research and enquiry, and enhance their capacity to identify and creatively tackle intellectual and social problems. It will support them to develop personal and intellectual autonomy. |
| Keywords | Utopia,Futures,Global Challenges,Hope,EFI,Level 11,PG,Education |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Prof Sian Bayne
Tel: (0131 6)51 6337
Email: sian.bayne@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Abby Gleave
Tel: (0131 6)51 1337
Email: abby.gleave@ed.ac.uk |
|
|
University Homepage