Primary: Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed (1974), Chapter 5

Supplementary: George Woodcock, ‘The Tyranny of the Clock’ (1944); Le Guin, ‘Hymn to Time’ in
Late in the Day: Poems 2010-2014 (2015)

Primary: Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed (1974), Chapter 2

Supplementary: Le Guin, ‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas’ (1973); Le Guin, ‘The Day Before
the Revolution’ (1974)

Primary: Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed (1974), Chapter 1

Supplementary: Paul Goodman, ‘Utopian Thinking’ in Utopian Essays and Practical Proposals (1962); Peggy Kornegger, ‘Anarchism: The Feminist Connection’ (1975)

This seminar will explore democratic opposition resistance to illiberalism in Hungary and Serbia. Drawing on recent civic mobilisations, protest movements in Serbia, and emerging spaces of opposition in both countries, the speakers will examine how citizens and local actors challenge the entrenched systems of Viktor Orbán and Aleksandar Vučić. In a comparative discussion, the seminar will shed light on the forms, limits, and potential of democratic engagement under illiberal rule in contemporary Europe.

In this talk Miriam Ruerup will discuss the challenges of writing a history of the experience of statelessness. At the centre of her research are the “victims” of the development of strong nation-states — those who experienced a fundamental loss of rights and security through the loss of their citizenship. The focus will, however, not only lie on the experience of loss, but also on those who translated their displacement into the creation of a diasporic community bound by their shared experiences of exile and trauma, as well as by a common cultural heritage.