Phillip E. Wegner

Phillip E. Wegner is a professor in the Department of English and the Marston-Milbauer Eminent Scholar in English at the University of Florida.[1]

Career

Wegner began working at the University of Florida in 1994 and was appointed the Marston-Milbauer Eminent Scholar Professorship in 2012. From 2009-2012 he served as the graduate program coordinator.[1] He was awarded the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Teacher of the Year award in 1996[1] and 2000.[2]

Professor Wegner has published four books and numerous articles on utopian fiction, contemporary literature, film, cultural studies, Marxism, and science fiction. His books include Imaginary Communities: Utopia, the Nation, and the Spatial Histories of Modernity, published in 2002 by the University of California Press, Life Between Two Deaths, 1989-2001: U.S. Culture in the Long Nineties, published in 2009 by Duke University Press, Periodizing Jameson: Dialectics, the University, and the Desire for Narrative, published by Northwestern University Press, and Shockwaves of Possibility: Essays on Science Fiction, Globalization, and Utopia, published by Peter Lang in the Ralaphine Utopian Studies series.[1]

Academic interests

Wegner's scholarship is often centered on questions of periodization, particularly in relation to the scholarship of Fredric Jameson, who Wegner has called "the most significant contemporary theorist of periodization."[3] For example, his book Life Between Two Deaths examines the "specific cultural period" of the 1990s, which Wegner argues stretches from the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to September 11, 2001.[4]

Wegner has also written extensively about utopia. In his first book Imaginary Communities, Wegner argues that the history of the utopian genre is "inseparable from a history of modernity in which the works comprising this important genre play such a significant role."[5] In Shockwaves of Possibility, Wegner makes a similar argument about utopia and the genre of science fiction, arguing that "Utopianism is not simply one among a range of possible themes or motifs in modern science fiction... Rather, Utopianism is fundamental to the very narrative dynamic of this vital modern practice."[6] In addition to his academic research on Utopia, Wegner served as President of the Society for Utopian Studies from 2010-2014.[7]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Phillip Wegner | Department of English". web.english.ufl.edu. Retrieved 2016-08-12.
  2. ↑ "Teaching and Advising Awards | Faculty and Staff | UF College of Liberal Arts and Sciences". clas.ufl.edu. Retrieved 2016-08-12.
  3. ↑ "Phillip Wegner: 2014 Colloquium Abstract | The Contemporary". thecontemporary.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2016-08-12.
  4. ↑ Wegner, Phillip (2009). Life Between Two Deaths, 1989-2011. Durham: Duke UP. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-8223-4473-5.
  5. ↑ Wegner, Phillip (2000). Imaginary Communities. Berkley: University of California Press. pp. xvi.
  6. ↑ Wegner, Phillip (2014). Shockwaves of Possibility: Essays on Science Fiction, Globalization, and Utopia. New York: Peter Lang. pp. xiii.
  7. ↑ "Committees". 2011-10-16. Retrieved 2016-08-12.
  • Phillip E. Wegner, Periodizing Jameson, available through the University of California's eScholarship digital library.
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