暗网TV

Scribner Seminar, London FYE 2026

The Noses of Soho and the Ears of Covent Garden: Utopia and Dystopia in London

Beau Breslin, 
Professor and Joseph C. Palamountain, Jr. Chair in Political Science

London remains the perfect playground to explore questions of power and privilege, freedom and autocracy, good and evil. A city steeped in history, it has long been considered both utopian and dystopian, both hopeful and despairing. Indeed, there is no better setting than London to contemplate the competing political visions of good and evil.  鈥淭he Noses of Soho and the Ears of Covent Garden鈥� is a Scribner Seminar that explores, through British utopian and dystopian fiction, today鈥檚 hyper-political world. From Brexit to the Middle East conflict, and from Trump to Putin, politics on the world stage is really a fight to imagine, and then implement, a utopian vision. The problem is that those attempts to create the better (perfect?) nation-state often lead to just the opposite. For many, one鈥檚 utopian dream is another鈥檚 dystopian nightmare. Issues of immigration, border security, equality, voting, privacy, freedom, democracy, justice, wealth, privilege, and so on鈥攁ll issues currently contested in the United States and Britain鈥攖est our capacity to live together in peace and harmony.  

Beau Breslin is the Joseph C. Palamountain Jr. Chair in Government at 暗网TV. A former Director of the FYE, he has taught close to a dozen Scribner seminars in the past twenty years. In the fall of 2022, he had the great joy of leading another group of wonderful first year students in London. The author of three books and many articles, he writes about the Constitution, law, the death penalty, and justice. He writes a regular editorial on The Fulcrum.