Richmond Professor and student co-present paper in Cyprus

12/07/2011

Dom Alessio (Professor of History and Director of the Study Abroad Program) and Kristen Meredith (a Richmond History graduate and now a PhD student at Cambridge University) presented their paper “Utopia, Empire and the End of the World” on James Cameron’s film, Avatar (2009), for the Utopian Studies Conference at the University of Nicosia, Cyprus. The paper examined the role of popular culture in responding to, and influencing, both the war on terror and threats to the environment. However, their work also highlighted some of the postcolonial concerns the two authors had with the film, in particular the stereotyped imagery. The paper concluded by addressing the need to re-examine accepted “consensus” definitions of empire, and emphasised the role of corporate bodies in the imperial project.

Link to this page: http://www.richmond.ac.uk/n/1170.aspx