Lyman Tower Sargent Research Articles

Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Yesterday: Eutopia, Dystopia and Violence in Marjorie Barnard and Flora Eldershaw’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow

ABSTRACT Marjorie Barnard (1897–1987) and Flora Eldershaw (1897–1956) were prolific Australian authors who co-wrote, under the pseudonym “M. Barnard Eldershaw,” five novels and four works of nonfiction published between 1929 and 1947. Their final collaboration, a future fiction entitled Tomorrow and Tomorrow, first appeared in Melbourne in 1947 and was reissued by the London feminist publisher Virago in 1983. Lyman Tower Sargent’s bibliography of Australian utopian fiction describes the novel thus: “Dystopia. Public opinion sampling used to limit liberty.” This is a reasonable enough shorthand description of the novel’s frame narrative, set in the “Tenth Commune” located somewhere in what is now the Riverina district on the border of New South Wales and Victoria, at some time in the twenty-fourth century. This article will argue, however, that the Tenth Commune is closer to a flawed eutopia than an outright dystopia; and that the novel’s truly dystopian content lies in its core narrative, Knarf’s novelistic account of mid-twentieth century Australia, which culminates in a quasi-apocalyptic destruction by fire of the city of Sydney. The extraordinary violence of this account will be contrasted to the essentially nonviolent character of the Tenth Commune and both will be situated in relation to Barnard’s growing involvement in the pacifist Peace Pledge Union.

Communism, Poetry: Communicating Vessels (Some Insubordinate Essays, 1999–2018)

Communism, Poetry: Communicating Vessels (Some Insubordinate Essays, 1999–2018)

Hope in the Age of Dystopia: The Ghost in the Machine in Øyvind Rimbereid's Solaris korrigert

Hope in the Age of Dystopia: The Ghost in the Machine in Øyvind Rimbereid's <i>Solaris korrigert</i>

Morganeering, Or the Triumph of the Trust: A Satirical Burlesque on the Worship of Wealth, Alexander William Bickerton, edited with notes and introduction by Lyman Tower Sargent (2020)

Review of: Morganeering, Or the Triumph of the Trust: A Satirical Burlesque on the Worship of Wealth, Alexander William Bickerton, edited with notes and introduction by Lyman Tower Sargent (2020) Dunedin: University of Otago, lvi + 253 pp., ISBN 978 0 47355 007 3 (pbk) ISBN 978 0 47355 009 7 (PDF)

Palestine +100: Stories from a century after the Nakba Edited by BasmaGhalayini. Manchester, U.K: Comma Press, 2019.

Palestine +100: Stories from a century after the Nakba Edited by BasmaGhalayini. Manchester, U.K: Comma Press, 2019.

Morganeering, Or, The Triumph of the Trust: A Satirical Burlesque on the Worship of Wealth

I’ll begin with a confession: before taking on this review, I’d never even heard of Alexander Bickerton, let alone his only novel, Morganeering. In my defence, he doesn’t rate a mention in the Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature (he lies in the gap between “bibliography” and “Biggs, Bruce”), or even in Lawrence Jones’ encyclopaedic survey of the novel in the Oxford History of New Zealand Literature in English. As Lyman Tower Sargent explains in his thorough introduction, Bickerton was well known during his lifetime, albeit for other reasons than his fiction. As the inaugural professor of physics at Canterbury College, where he taught from 1874 to 1902, he numbered Ernest Rutherford and Ettie Rout among his pupils.

Political Uses of Utopia: New Marxist, Anarchist, and Radical Democratic Perspectives

Political Uses of Utopia: New Marxist, Anarchist, and Radical Democratic Perspectives

Living] In Utopia: Lyman Tower Sargent and a Plan for Wellington Until the Destruction

This essay explores and recalls my relationship with Lyman Tower Sargent, an adviser and reader for my 1996 Master of Architecture thesis “A Plan for Wellington Until the Destruction” undertaken at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. The discussion is set against multiple backdrops: Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand (“between its horns the sea comes in eleven miles broad, and spreads itself into a great bay”), a place that I considered to be an ideal armature for a utopian construct; the “continent” (U.S.); the Jonestown agricultural commune, Guyana; and the work of artist Robert Mapplethorpe.

Looking Backward—Fondly: Personal and Professional Texts/Contexts Derived from Knowing Lyman Tower Sargent for Forty Years

Lyman Tower Sargent has had a personal and professional impact upon me. I cannot separate the effects of reading his work from engaging with him as a mentor—and more. Hence, this piece will focus on personal and professional texts and their contexts. I revisit Sargent's “An Ambiguous Legacy: The Role and Position of Women in the English Eutopia,” an essay he contributed to my Future Females: A Critical Anthology (1981). I include passages from my novels Oy Pioneer! and Oy Feminist Planets: A Fake Memoir which describe protagonist Sondra Lear's relationship with Thurston Howell III, interactions stemming from my longstanding association with Sargent. I describe a prominent male scholar's positive—almost utopian—influence on what I am here calling a retrospective autobiographical portrait of the professor as a young woman. This piece emphasizes that a festschrift contribution is about reciprocity between author and honoree.

Reading Lyman Tower Sargent Along with William Morris

Ever since I encountered Lyman Tower Sargent's writing, he has signified to me a scholar whose lifelong dedication to utopian thought and literature has nurtured generations of students, critics, and practitioners of utopia. It is for this reason that my birthday wishes briefly place Lyman's work alongside that of William Morris—a writer, critic, designer, and activist whose inspiration was the past.

Utopian Studies: An Interdisciplinary Pursuit

The article reflects on Lyman Tower Sargent's role in fostering interdisciplinary inquiry.

Lyman Tower Sargent Annotated Bibliography (1964–2019)

An annotated bibliography of the utopian scholarship of Lyman Tower Sargent from shortly before he submitted his Ph.D. dissertation to the present day.

Lyman Tower Sargent's Utopian Literature in English: An Annotated Bibliography from 1516 to the Present: New Recognition

This article celebrates Lyman Tower Sargent's online bibliography of Utopian literature, its creation at the Penn State Libraries, and its cataloging by the Library of Congress.

Utopia from Text to Interpretation: A Homage to Lyman Tower Sargent

Lyman Tower Sargent is one of the few scholars and intellectuals I have met whose research and studies are embodied in their actual life, since for him the values of utopianism (equality, peace, elimination of poverty, a harmonious life wherein a balance between the mind and the body is ultimately achieved) constitute the base and foundation of his personal and political choices. My essay is a personal reflection on his life and scholarly work.

Lyman Sargent

This is a personal reflection on and celebration of Lyman Tower Sargent by the president of the Society for Utopian Studies.

Gentle Nudges and Poignant Pushes: Plasticity and Generous Scholarship

This reflective essay describes and discusses numerous nudges Lyman Tower Sargent has given me during our interactions, dotting a timeline from my first Society for Utopian Studies conference in Memphis in the late 1990s through a recent e-mail about a conference on food utopias at Porto in April 2019. These moments—linked by their impact upon me—speak to his exemplary behaviors with both quantity and quality of scholarship. In the fields of communal as well as literary utopias, in genres as distinct as book reviews are from bibliographies, in providing definitions and classifications for others in the field, and finally, by demonstrating an openness to new ideas and to younger scholars, Sargent has influence that reaches far wider than anyone first touched by his gentle nudges would ever suspect. I am fortunate to have been one of those recipients.

Thus, We Must Choose Utopia

Lyman Tower Sargent stands at the core of contemporary utopian studies. While the utopian proclivity to reach for a better world, and to reflect on how we think about and engage in that hope-ful practice, has been with us in most cultures for centuries, the scholarly field of utopian studies dates back to the 1960s; and from the beginning Lyman has been formative to its development. To situate this accomplishment, I believe he can be counted as one of a few singular intellectuals who have had such an impact on an entire field.

He Contains Multitudes

This is a personal reflection and appraisal of Lyman Tower Sargent's work and influence.

Slicing Up the Utopian Pie

This article merges the intellectual concept of utopia and the material culture of the pie as a metaphor to explore the relative hegemony of Judeo-Christian (and/or Anglo-European) utopian literature and criticism. Citing Lyman Tower Sargent's contributions to opening up scholarship on comparative utopias, the author underscores his influence on her own thinking and publications on the topic. The study traces parallels between intellectual and material cultures, especially in French, Japanese, and Indigenous Australian contexts. In conclusion, it suggests that contemporary transformations in writing and reading utopias should encourage greater recognition of intercultural imaginaries of the ideal.

A Foundational Bibliography for American Intentional Communities

Lyman Tower Sargent has been the preeminent scholar of utopianism in our time and has undertaken a diverse network of approaches to the study of what he has called “social dreaming.” He has written monographs, articles, and essays and has been a relentless compiler of information on utopianism heretofore largely overlooked by his peers. One of the main directions of his work has been bibliographical, as he has compiled guides to the vast corpus of utopianism that he has uncovered.