Wastelands and Wonderlands

Utopias and Dystopias in Film and Literature

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Edited by Matthew Leggatt

Type

Studies

Subject

Genre > Fantasy

Keywords

fantasy, disaster films

Publishing date

2026 (April 01, 2026)

Publisher

State University of New York Press

Collection

SUNY series, Horizons of Cinema

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 330 pages
6 x 9 inches (15 x 23 cm)

ISBN

979-8-8558-0624-3

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Book Presentation:
Explores a wide range of utopias and dystopias in film and literature and their important relationship to our present moment.

Wastelands and Wonderlands challenges readers, in these uniquely dystopian times, to reevaluate their ideas about utopia and dystopia. Bringing together film, literary, and utopian studies scholars from across the world, this interdisciplinary collection explores a wide range of utopias and dystopias in film and literature, from visionaries as varied as William Morris and George Lucas to such fresh new and distinctive voices as Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah and N. K. Jemisin. Contributors dismantle myths about utopian and dystopian film, literature, and television and explore the nature of utopian and dystopian fiction and its important relationship to our present moment. Whether through ecocritical work, work aimed at decolonizing utopian studies, debates about our relationship with technology and the nonhuman, forms of utopian hope and pessimism, or new thinking about cinematic and literary techniques and production, these essays offer fresh insight into the subject area and something to interest any reader.

About the Author:
Matthew Leggatt is Senior Lecturer in English and American Literature at the University of Winchester, United Kingdom. He is the editor of Was It Yesterday? Nostalgia in Contemporary Film and Television, also published by SUNY Press, and the author of Play in Utopian and Dystopian Fiction and Cultural and Political Nostalgia in the Age of Terror: The Melancholic Sublime.

Press Reviews:
"One of the things that impresses me most about this collection is its ability to move beyond a narrow Anglocentric view of utopias and dystopias, including everything from Afrofuturism to ideologies of indigenous Australians. It considers films and literature, utopias and dystopias equally, while also exploring the connections between them." ― David Venditto, author of Whiteness at the End of the World: Race in Post-Apocalyptic Cinema

See the publisher website: State University of New York Press