Description: Anticipating some Soviet Union developments, Evgenii Zamyatsin's We (1920) is a futuristic dystopic novel in which D-503, builder of the first rocket ship, extols the glories of the Single State and discovers another way of life beyond his highly controlled society. From the newer field of biopoetics, which applies evolutionary psychology to art instead of emphasizing the social construction of human behavior and consciousness, Cooke (Texas A&M U.) explores themes in the novel including workforce mechanization, the symbolic roles of food-sharing, eugenics, and writing as subversion. Comparisons are made with other dystopian literature (e.g. Brave New World ), and novels by Russian authors including Solzhenitsyn and Tolstoy.
Brief description: Fenggang Yang is Professor of Sociology and the founding Director of the Center on Religion and the Global East at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana. His research focuses on the sociology of religion, religious change in China and immigrant religion in the United States. He has served as the President of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (2014-15) and the first President of the East Asian Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (2018-2020). He has given many invited lectures and keynote presentations at major universities and professional associations in the US, Asia, and Europe. His media interviews have appeared on the National Public Radio, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Time, Economist, CNN, BBC, etc.