Fun with (U)/(dys)topia

Reading this thing by Ira Shor, a Comp guy, (not the comp tests, the Comp studies), who gives an overview of his "frontloaded" student response class whose subject was, surprisingly, Utopia. And I saw myself teaching the class, editing his ideas, referencing works he's missing...instead of looking at what he's saying about pedagogy itself. Oops. It's interesting that he only referenced works in English...
          Of course, part of the issue is that his students are all 10 years older than me. His students didn't grow up during the grunge rock phenomenon, they weren't affected toward Marxism by the neo-Punk revolution started by Green Day in 1994, and they certainly hadn't gone through the Clinton scandal or 9/11. Teaching Utopia is different now; the questions have changed as the socio-economic atmosphere shifts further toward right wing capitalism.
          Damn, I'd love to teach a class on Utopia.
          And, every time I imagine myself teaching it, it is at Bluffton College. I mean, University.
          Shh. Don't tell. Especially Jeff, because he predicted it. He said that all my cynicism would one day turn back on itself and make me into a sentimental sap.
          That was during Modern Poetry, the class that probably meant more to me than any other class at BC. Again, shh. Don't tell. That class taught me how to handle graduate level work, before I even knew I was going to do this whole mess. That class gave me an in for Rotella's Modernism class, and wouldn't you know it. Guy Rotella stopped me in the hall Thursday to tell me that he wants to sit down and discuss my paper from last semester--in a good way! That it was a very nice paper.
          Confidence. How do you instill confidence in students? How did I get my confidence back, after I lost it my first year in grad school? Was it the summer alone with Kenneth Burke, M Keith Booker and a million other social and linguistic theories? Was it the anime? Is it that I now talk to Kari every day of the week, for at least 5 minutes? When did it shift?
          I once told Jeff that improvement for me doesn't happen like it does to other people. Most people gradually work toward a goal. For me, however, it's like electrons. You know. Electrons can only have certain energies, and there is no y=mx + b line to show how they increase in energy. Instead, it's sections of long plateaus followed by giant, sudden leaps, with white space in between. The shells around a nucleus are levels, not sloping lines; there is no connection. And when an electron shifts levels, it happens in a burst of light. Not that I also create bursts of light, but that the movement is sudden, and I rarely notice the change until much later in the plateau (I am sure electrons also do not notice their changes in location).
          What does this have to do with Utopia? My thinking on it has shifted again; I realize, reading Shor's article, that I must rethink the rhetorical situation of U/dys-topian lit. That in many ways, I am correct that it is written to be received by all audiences, and that the general public is aware enough of the conditions of Utopia and the problems it could pose. In many other ways, however, I have forgotten that although anyone can understand the literature, few actually pick up the books to engage in that relationship I outlined. I need to add one more factor, one more causality, into my neat little equation, one which will complicate the hell out of things, but will clean up the ultimate problem I have with rhetorical criticisms in general: How is it actually received? What are the conditions that are behind any one reading of the text? Other than shoving the book in their hands and holding a gun to their heads, how do publicists convince readers to read? Who else, other than publicists, do this job? What other conditions surround the reading of dystopian texts? Utopian texts? Don't they necessarily assume an engaged reader? What happens when the reader is forced to read ( F451 in high schools, for example)? What about the physical presence of the book?
          Silly Amy. How could I have overlooked such simple things? The theory, Oh, the theory....