The City as Utopia: Bethlehem & Beyond

Lehigh University’s American Studies Program announces an interdisciplinary conference on the relationship between the city and the history of the striving for human perfection. Utopia will be broadly construed to include the achievement of ideal conditions and states through politics, law, social structure, and aspirational cultures of the city. The conference will meet amidst a period of dramatic transformation for Bethlehem’s South Side on the former site of Bethlehem Steel. The new owners have a range of ambitious plans, including the building of a new hotel, commercial and residential spaces, performing arts venues, and the National Museum for Industrial History. We will hold sessions that fit within one of the three crucial time periods and subject areas in the life of Bethlehem: the mid-18th century Moravian founding of Bethlehem, late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century industrial history, and early twenty-first century imaginings of the post-industrial city.

For the City as Utopia Conference Overview click here. [pdf]

For the City as Utopia Session Schedule please click here. [pdf]