To Stand with the Dreamers: On Utopia was a course on  Utopia and Utopianism.  It was first offered as part of Cairo instuite of Liberal Arts Sciences thematic courses in 2017. The course looked at  utopia through literature and theory from the field of Utopian studies. The course also investigated the relationship between imagination and fiction from one side and the sociopolitical from the other. The course started from conceiving Utopia as the education of desire and Utopia as hope and it speaks to the “utopian impulse” in humans for a better life.

Utopia as a vision of the “good life” starts from refusing the present and locating the potentialities and possibilities of better life. The course also moved beyond theory to look at the everyday life utopianism and how utopia can be used as a vehicle for radical transformation.

Because of the special nature of utopia, this course is an interdisciplinary between the arts and the social sciences. It’s meant to be a collective exploration and the reflections of the participants are important to the outcome of the course .The course included readings by Ernst Bloch, Ruth Levitas and Lyman Tower Sargent among others.