Thinking Allowed on BBC Radio 4
for religion. Her Fellowship allowed her to determine the scope of her book, guided by fruitful conversations with other IAS Fellows such as the novelist Andrew Crumey and the historian Stephen Taylor. These conversations also helped her to refine the funding bids that will support her ongoing research.
Looking even further back, to our classical roots, Barbara Graziosi developed a project on Homer’s Iliad. She explored the ways in which ancient epics shaped or prophesised the future in their narratives, and thereby influenced the ways in which later cultures responded to their monuments and texts. She also contributed to a BBC Radio 4 broadcast that explored ideas about Utopia in societies of the past and present. Graziosi’s research shows how history can articulate this dialogue by reminding us that every society is concerned with the way in which future generations will reflect upon it.
One particularly potent way in which cultures both prepare for the future whilst stimulating positive change in the present is through imagining apocalypse. A seminar series on Apocalypse Now and Then and an international conference on No Future explored how apocalyptic futures have been envisioned in different historical and cultural contexts. Can such imaginary visions help to protect societies from potential downfall? To what extent did the catastrophes of the past (whether real or imagined) create a ‘blank canvas’ on which better versions of society could be drafted? Does it make a difference if apocalypse is imagined in poetry, the visual arts, or performance?
Is it possible to imagine Utopia in a twenty-first century age that is filled with anxiety and uncertainty? This question was debated by a panel of experts brought together by the IAS for the BBC Radio 4 programme, Thinking Allowed.
IAS Fellows Barbara Graziozi and Russell Jacoby joined the IAS Director, Ash Amin, and the Bishop of Whitby, Martin Warner (a Durham alumnus), to debate the topic of ‘Utopia.’
The panel discussed the ways in which our ability to think about the future is conditioned by both our cultural past and our social present.
The programme can be heard at
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wr9q0
Mary Carruthers’ Insights paper on ‘The Mosque That Wasn’t: A Study in Social Memory Making’ can be read at:
www.durham.ac.uk/ias/insights/volume4/article8/
Visions
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