What is utopianism? How did it emerge as a way of imagining alternatives to the present? Why do people often look to the past when they imagine an alternative future?
One of our researchers who has explored these questions in depth is Professor Richard Scholar, Chair of French in our School of Modern Languages and Cultures and Executive Director of the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (IMEMS), a role he shares with Prof Ita Mac Carthy.
An expert in early modern French and comparative literature, Richard recently completed a three-year Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship studying the development of utopianism in the early modern world through responses to Thomas More’s 1516 work Utopia.
Richard’s project was titled The Inventions of Utopia. He sought to explore how early modern Europeans responded to More’s Utopia, and what their responses add to our wider understanding of utopianism.
He suggests that they reveal a distinct culture of invention, at the heart of which is More’s work and the history of its translation across marked boundaries throughout the early modern world. This is a culture that speaks to the business of government at home and in what were then colonies. It involves readers, writers, thinkers, translators, printers, and illustrators in the process of inventing alternatives to the way we live now.
The major outcome of the project is a book with Princeton University press, due in 2026. Richard gave the first Simon Gaunt Memorial Lecture at the annual conference of the Society for French Studies, at the University of Stirling, in July 2024. During 2025 he plans to speak about the book in St Andrews, Paris, and Valladolid.
The project also supported two early career researchers, who were employed as teaching fellows and have since secured permanent academic posts at other universities.
Richard has published numerous books, and had his work translated into several languages. He joined us in 2019, having previously worked at the University of Oxford, where he was Fellow and Tutor in French at Oriel College.
He is now working with colleagues at IMEMS to develop the Institute’s support of interdisciplinary medieval and early modern research. With Prof Mac Carthy, whose research focuses on connections between early modern Italian literature and the visual arts, he has launched a new flagship programme of research at IMEMS called Inventing Futures.
Inventing Futures is a four-year programme that emphasises the future-oriented implications of past-oriented study.
Richard hopes to develop a collaborative utopian research project on the theme of Imagining Alternatives. Other possible themes include: the forging of social solidarities during religious wars, surviving gendered violence, and the building of intercultural understanding between West and East.
The programme will bring together researchers from different disciplines, both here at Durham and around the world. It will include researchers at all career stages, building interdisciplinary teams, developing major applications for funding from a range of sources, and training the professors of the future.
The copy of the first edition of Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) in Cosin’s Library, Palace Green, Durham University
/prod01/prodbucket01/media/durham-university/central-news-and-events-images/83431-1920X290.jpg)