"At my feet lay a great city. Miles of broad streets, shaded by trees and lined with fine buildings, for the most part not in continuous blocks but set in larger or smaller enclosures, stretched out in every direction. Every quarter contained large open squares filled with trees, along which statues glistened and fountains flashed in the late-afternoon sun."
- Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward

We explore notions of "America" as an ideal place, focusing on utopian literature and community building as a social force in European and United States societies from the Puritan age to the Gilded Age. Starting with a brief introduction to John Winthrop's notion of America as a "city upon a hill," we explore literary depictions of this ideal place. Twin social conflicts form the backdrop of our analysis: (1) the wrenching transition from an agrarian economy to an industrial economy and (2) the growing sense that excessive individuality must be tempered through science and planning. Reading Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, we discover Edward Bellamy's ideological response to the teeming cities and idiosyncratic visions of the good life that marked his age. We also interrogate Bellamy's social machinery as a seed of the technological and social disciplines imposed in the twentieth century. In our studies, utopianism and dystopianism meet in the public sphere that re-submerges the individual under the power of state.

Reading: Bellamy

Viewing: Frontline - Apocalypse

Notes: Key Concepts in Looking Backward

Notes: National-Socialism in Looking Backward

Supplemental Resource: The American Jeremiad

Supplemental Resource: Summary of Winthrop's "Model of Christian Charity"

Supplemental Website: Wood's Bellamy Resources

Off-campus webpages about the Puritans

Anne Bradstreet, A Dialogue Between Old England and New (1630) - maintained by Hanover Historical Texts Project

Life of Anne Bradstreet - maintained by American Literature on the Web

Library of Congress, America as a Religious Refuge: The Seventeenth Century

Jonathan Edwards' Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God - maintained by John Mark Ministries

Christine Heyrman, Puritanism and Predestination

Phillip R. Johnson, The Hall of Church History: The Puritans

Maria Russo, Debunking the myths of the Puritans

Off-campus webpages related to Bellamy

Akamac E-text, Fourier, F.M.C.

Chicago Public Library, 1886 The Haymarket Riot

Gaslight, Edward Bellamy

Lucia Knoles, Edward Bellamy at the Lyceum

David Schwalbe, Haymarket Riot - more good background on labor issues in late nineteenth century

Note: These pages exist outside of San Jose State University servers and their content is not endorsed by the page maintainer or any other university entity. These pages have been selected because they may provide some guidance or insight into the issues discussed in class. Because one can never step into the same electronic river twice, the pages may or may not be available when you request them. If you have any questions or suggestions, please email Dr. Andrew Wood.