Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Kaganovsky, Lilya
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Kaganovsky, Lilya
Committee Member(s)
Littlefield, Melissa M
Calderwood, Eric S
Rushing, Robert
Department of Study
Comparative & World Literature
Discipline
Comparative Literature
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Science fiction
speculative fiction
border studies
Language
eng
Abstract
This dissertation examines representations of border walls in speculative fiction. Films and novels analyzed include: What is to be done? by Nikolai Chernyshevsky; We by Evgeny Zamyatin; Sleep Dealer, directed by Alex Rivera; the MaddAddam trilogy by Margaret Atwood; A Planet for Rent by Yoss; and Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers. Using a theoretical framework that combines biopolitics, Marxist literary analysis and critiques of neoliberalism as well as border studies scholarship, I argue that border walls have been a useful trope in utopian world-building from the industrial and political revolutions of the nineteenth century, through the Cold War and the technological revolution of the twentieth century, and that they remain relevant to both our literary and political imagination in the twenty-first century.
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