CMCI visual culture specialist Dr Richard Howells has a new scholarly article out this month. “Looking for Utopia: Creation, Creativity and a Utopian Theory of Design” combines cultural theory with a case study on Navajo design and appears in Thesis Eleven, a multidisciplinary journal: “reaching across the social sciences (sociology, anthropology, philosophy, geography, cultural studies, literature and politics) and cultivating diverse critical theories of modernity. Reflecting the broad scope of social theory it encourages civilizational analysis on a wide range of alternative modernities and takes critical theory from the margins of the world system to its centre.”
Howells’ article was previewed at the last KCL Humanities Festival here in London, but his interest in Navajo design goes back to his time as Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Center for the Arts in Society at Carnegie Mellon University.
The full details are: Richard Howells, “Looking for Utopia: Creation, Creativity and a Utopian Theory of Design” in Thesis Eleven, Vol. 123(1) 41–61, 2014, pp 41-61. DOI: 10.1177/0725513614543414.
