Professor Wes Williams discusses Paradise as a fictional construct that can be imagined into being or made in the act of naming. He considers Thomas More’s Utopia as a moment in the longer history of Paradise.
Speaker: Wes Williams, Professor of French Literature at the University of Oxford.
Lost edens, hoped for utopias. The idea that a better place exists haunts the human imagination.
Accompanying the ‘On Paradise’ exhibition at the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, this podcast series features members of the University of Oxford Humanities community discussing conceptualizations of paradise and utopia in different historical and cultural contexts. The exhibition, featuring the work of Oxford-based artist, Saad Qureshi, was curated by Paul Basu, Professor of Anthropology and Curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum, who also interviewed the podcast participants.
