The essays of this volume are based on lectures and talks given at the interdisciplinary conference "Thinking Utopia", March 1-3, 2001, held by the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at Essen and the Karl Ernst Osthaus-Museum Hagen under the direction of Jörn Rüsen and Michael Fehr.

The necessity of utopian thinking : a cross-national perspective / Lyman Tower Sargent -- Aspects of the Western utopian tradition / Krishan Kumar -- Visions of the future / Michael Thompson -- Utopia, contractualism, human rights / Richard Saage -- On the construction of worlds : technology and economy in European utopias / Wolfgang Pircher -- Bodies in utopia and utopian bodies in imperial China / Dorothy Ko -- Science, technology, and utopia : perspective of a computer-assisted evolution of humankind / Klaus Mainzer -- "Thinking about the unthinkable" : the virtual as a place of utopia / Claus Pias -- Natural utopianism in everyday life practice : an elementary theoretical model / Ulrich Oevermann -- Haunted by things : utopias and their consequences / Donald Preziosi -- Art, museum, utopia : five themes on an epistemological construction site / Michael Fehr -- Art, science, utopia in the early modern period / Wolfgang Braungart -- Utopiary / Rachel Weiss -- The utopian, East and West / Zhang Longxi -- Trauma : a dystopia of the spirit / Michael S. Roth -- From revolutionary to catastrophic utopia / Slavoj Zizek -- The narrative staging of image and counter-image : on the poetics of literary utopias / Wilhelm Vosskamp -- Rethinking utopia : a plea for a culture of inspiration / Jörn Rüsen.